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Historia de la lengua griega
Greek is one of the few languages still known to us after three thousand years that are still spoken today. In this English translation of Francisco Rodríguez Adrados’s Historia de lengua griega, an overview is presented of the development of the Greek language at its different stages. Professor Adrados touches on a rich variety of topics, making A History of the Greek Language into a colourful collection of linguistic ideas.
- GenresHistory
319 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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September 7, 2021
Disconnected ramblings from someone who should have retired in the '80s.
Are you interested in finding out e.g. how Proto-Indo-European developed into Common Greek, as per the title of the first chapter, "From Indo-European to Greek"? Perhaps you'd like a discussion of Common Greek's phonology, and an overview of the sound changes that have taken place since the PIE stage? Tough luck, all you get is a dozen or so pages of vague word association.
There's no systematic review of any stage of Greek anywhere in the book—no phonology, no morphology, certainly no syntax—and when any of those things are obliquely touched on, it's only ever to impress on the reader that Adrados has relevant knowledge on the subject, never ever to communicate that knowledge. (Unsurprisingly, four full pages of the bibliography are taken up by what seems to be all of Adrados' own publications, many dating back to the 1950s, and he makes frequent explicit reference to them in the text as well.) More time is spent on long-form discussion of archaeological, historical, and political contexts than on any aspect of the language itself, and Adrados knows very little about any of that—it's mostly half-remembered versions of whatever was popular at the time he last paid any attention. This book was published in 2005, and he directs the reader who wants to know more about pre-IE Europe to Marija Gimbutas.
It's tempting to blame Adrados' aversion to structured information and love of bullshitting on him being a philologist rather than a linguist proper (I don't know or really care if he was), but the philological aspects are rife with factual errors as well—he places Corinna in the Archaic period (even older than the traditional dating of the 5th century), for example, and attributes the Catalogue of Women and even The Shield of Heracles to Hesiod without so much as a footnote! Even apart from those, his tendency to make sweeping statements about the characteristics of works that have been lost in their entirety, without ever acknowledging that they have been lost, should be enough to render the whole first half of the book ("From Indo-European to Attic") suspect.
I'm less equipped to judge the correctness of the second half ("From Koine to the Present"), but the information density does not increase. Here, his focus is almost entirely on lexical borrowings from and to Greek, and the wall of text is often interrupted by relatively contextless lists of such borrowings, always without substantial justification or concern for how many intervening languages the words passed through.
Obviously a 315-page book was never going to comprehensively cover all the ground that could be covered in a genuine history of the Greek language. At 50 cents a page, though, I feel like someone could have made the attempt.
Are you interested in finding out e.g. how Proto-Indo-European developed into Common Greek, as per the title of the first chapter, "From Indo-European to Greek"? Perhaps you'd like a discussion of Common Greek's phonology, and an overview of the sound changes that have taken place since the PIE stage? Tough luck, all you get is a dozen or so pages of vague word association.
There's no systematic review of any stage of Greek anywhere in the book—no phonology, no morphology, certainly no syntax—and when any of those things are obliquely touched on, it's only ever to impress on the reader that Adrados has relevant knowledge on the subject, never ever to communicate that knowledge. (Unsurprisingly, four full pages of the bibliography are taken up by what seems to be all of Adrados' own publications, many dating back to the 1950s, and he makes frequent explicit reference to them in the text as well.) More time is spent on long-form discussion of archaeological, historical, and political contexts than on any aspect of the language itself, and Adrados knows very little about any of that—it's mostly half-remembered versions of whatever was popular at the time he last paid any attention. This book was published in 2005, and he directs the reader who wants to know more about pre-IE Europe to Marija Gimbutas.
It's tempting to blame Adrados' aversion to structured information and love of bullshitting on him being a philologist rather than a linguist proper (I don't know or really care if he was), but the philological aspects are rife with factual errors as well—he places Corinna in the Archaic period (even older than the traditional dating of the 5th century), for example, and attributes the Catalogue of Women and even The Shield of Heracles to Hesiod without so much as a footnote! Even apart from those, his tendency to make sweeping statements about the characteristics of works that have been lost in their entirety, without ever acknowledging that they have been lost, should be enough to render the whole first half of the book ("From Indo-European to Attic") suspect.
I'm less equipped to judge the correctness of the second half ("From Koine to the Present"), but the information density does not increase. Here, his focus is almost entirely on lexical borrowings from and to Greek, and the wall of text is often interrupted by relatively contextless lists of such borrowings, always without substantial justification or concern for how many intervening languages the words passed through.
Obviously a 315-page book was never going to comprehensively cover all the ground that could be covered in a genuine history of the Greek language. At 50 cents a page, though, I feel like someone could have made the attempt.
July 15, 2007
A History of the Greek Language is a translation of Francisco Rodriguez Adrados' Historia de la lengua griega, originally published by Editorial Gredos in Madrid in 1999. Rodriguez delights in the nearly unbroken continuity of the Greek language from its beginnings three thousand years ago, and his book seeks to cover the history of Greek from Indo-European to the modern language.
From the work's title, one might expect a gentle introduction to the evolution of Greek for those who, while they might have some knowledge of either the classical or modern language, are nevertheless new to the field. Well, that's not the case. From the very first chapter, discussing the Indo-European basis of Greek, it's clear that the author expects the reader to have much prior training in all the matters he will discuss. Terms central to Indo-European linguistics("laryngeals", "heteroclitic", "monothematic") are used without definition, and prominent figures at the sides of various debates are mentioned without introduction. Instead, a major purpose of A HISTORY OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE seems to be the setting forth of the author's own views on the subject against possibly competing arguments by his colleagues. For example, Rodriguez holds that Hittite split of from IE long before a number of important features like gender evolved, setting him apart from Beekes (yet putting him together with Cowgill, mention of whom is, for some strange reason, missing here).
Once past the Indo-European stage, the book reveals itself as something of an outline, presentation of material being as bare as lecture notes. Discussion of the history of Classical Greek is heavily skewed towards literary styles, the chief research concern of the author. Coverage of the phonology of Greek is nowhere as substantial as in W. Sidney Allen's Vox Graeca, but this is somewhat compensated by an intriguing interest in the Greek lexicon and its gradual expansion through borrowings or derivations.
There are some features of the history of Greek that are inexplicably missing. For example, there is no discussion of the Balkan sprachbund, which binds Greek in an important fashion to surrounding languages. Many works one should think central to the field are missing from book's bibliography, perhaps due to the poor holdings of Madrid university libraries (half of my undergraduate studies in Classics with an IE bent were done there, I was miserable with such paltry collections).
Bottom line, if you are looking for a history of Greek that synthesizes the work of the entire scholarly community, look elsewhere. Rodriguez's book is only for those with prior training in the field who want to see the views of a single scholar.
From the work's title, one might expect a gentle introduction to the evolution of Greek for those who, while they might have some knowledge of either the classical or modern language, are nevertheless new to the field. Well, that's not the case. From the very first chapter, discussing the Indo-European basis of Greek, it's clear that the author expects the reader to have much prior training in all the matters he will discuss. Terms central to Indo-European linguistics("laryngeals", "heteroclitic", "monothematic") are used without definition, and prominent figures at the sides of various debates are mentioned without introduction. Instead, a major purpose of A HISTORY OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE seems to be the setting forth of the author's own views on the subject against possibly competing arguments by his colleagues. For example, Rodriguez holds that Hittite split of from IE long before a number of important features like gender evolved, setting him apart from Beekes (yet putting him together with Cowgill, mention of whom is, for some strange reason, missing here).
Once past the Indo-European stage, the book reveals itself as something of an outline, presentation of material being as bare as lecture notes. Discussion of the history of Classical Greek is heavily skewed towards literary styles, the chief research concern of the author. Coverage of the phonology of Greek is nowhere as substantial as in W. Sidney Allen's Vox Graeca, but this is somewhat compensated by an intriguing interest in the Greek lexicon and its gradual expansion through borrowings or derivations.
There are some features of the history of Greek that are inexplicably missing. For example, there is no discussion of the Balkan sprachbund, which binds Greek in an important fashion to surrounding languages. Many works one should think central to the field are missing from book's bibliography, perhaps due to the poor holdings of Madrid university libraries (half of my undergraduate studies in Classics with an IE bent were done there, I was miserable with such paltry collections).
Bottom line, if you are looking for a history of Greek that synthesizes the work of the entire scholarly community, look elsewhere. Rodriguez's book is only for those with prior training in the field who want to see the views of a single scholar.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews