Master thesis | Classics and Ancient Civilizations (MA)
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The occurrence of Greek loanwords in the second Targum to Esther (Targum Sheni) is one of the arguments for dating the text in the Byzantine Empire. Up until now these Greek loanwords have not been...Show moreThe occurrence of Greek loanwords in the second Targum to Esther (Targum Sheni) is one of the arguments for dating the text in the Byzantine Empire. Up until now these Greek loanwords have not been fully analyzed. The present research, following the methodology of Aaron Butt’s study on Greek loanwords in Syriac, analyzes the origin and integration of the Greek loanwords to find whether these can be used in dating Targum Sheni. The supposed Greek loanwords will prove to be not always originating from Greek, but also from Latin. Two major category for the loanwords can be distinguished: gem stones and administration. The first category consists of Wanderwörter and are not suitable for dating the text. The second category consists of both Latin and Greek loanwords which points at a Greco-Roman administration, such as in the Byzantine Empire. Lastly, a few reasons for borrowing the loanwords are distinguished. Loanwords are either used simply because of necessity, or because it transposes the story form the original Persian background, to the contemporary background of the audience. All in all, especially the combination between Greek and Latin loanwords can indeed support the argument for the dating in the Byzantine Empire.Show less
This thesis seeks to address how Jewish communities were able to integrate into the civic framework that was provided by the Greek cities during Roman rule. It does so through a case-study of...Show moreThis thesis seeks to address how Jewish communities were able to integrate into the civic framework that was provided by the Greek cities during Roman rule. It does so through a case-study of literary and epigraphic evidence originating from the communities of Ephesos, Hierapolis, and Sardis, who all are located in the province of Asia. In conclusion, the Jews of Asia were able to negotiate with Roman authorities and participated to a certain extent within the Greek urban settlements while simultaneously accentuating their Jewish cultural heritage. More generally, these findings are consistent with what has been published on Jewish diaspora communities but differentiate by showing that the Jewish community did not live on the margins of society, but rather was well integrated within the civic framework of the Greek city.Show less
Research master thesis | Classics and Ancient Civilizations (research) (MA)
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The thesis argues that the language of Aeneas Tacticus, writer of the earliest Greek manual on warfare, can be better understood when studying it as a 'technical treatise', accordingly written in a...Show moreThe thesis argues that the language of Aeneas Tacticus, writer of the earliest Greek manual on warfare, can be better understood when studying it as a 'technical treatise', accordingly written in a technical register.Show less
In this thesis, we present an experiment designed to examine the interpretation of scalar implicatures in Greek. Scalar implicatures appear to examples like “I ate some of the pasta.” This sentence...Show moreIn this thesis, we present an experiment designed to examine the interpretation of scalar implicatures in Greek. Scalar implicatures appear to examples like “I ate some of the pasta.” This sentence implies that the speaker uses the term “some” because s/he had reasons not to use the stronger word “all” in the sentence, e.g. “I didn’t eat all of the pasta.” Recent studies of experimental pragmatics suggest that the inference “I ate some (but not all) of the pasta” would not exist in face-saving acts (Bonnefon, J.-F., Feeney, A. & G. Villejoubert (2009). By contrast, Terkourafi and Weissman claim that face-boosting contexts favor lower-bound interpretations. We conducted an experiment addressing this issue, by testing a group of 40 adults (all native speakers of Greek) on four different scalar terms, , , , . Overall, our results indicate that Boost story Version favors lower bound interpretation and are consistent with Terkourafi and Weissman’s conclusions and opposite to Bonnefon’s and colleagues’ hypothesisShow less
The goal of this thesis is to focus on the Greek women of Istanbul and how all these political events influenced their lives, while also providing an analysis of their language choices and their...Show moreThe goal of this thesis is to focus on the Greek women of Istanbul and how all these political events influenced their lives, while also providing an analysis of their language choices and their status in the society of Istanbul. The analyses will be based on a set of letters of written by Sophia to her daughter Elpida who moved from Istanbul to Netherlands in 1954. In addition to these letters, other sources of data include interviews of five Istanbul Greek women, information from the Society of Greeks of Istanbul and books that have collected testimonies, newspaper articles and report of the Greek consul and speeches of Turkish officials. It can be concluded from all these source materials that the Greek women of Istanbul were unequivocally influenced by the political events of 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s in distinctive ways.Show less
Assimilation phenomena often attract phonologists’ interest, as they are common in every language. However, various assimilation phenomena remain unstudied, especially in terms of experimental...Show moreAssimilation phenomena often attract phonologists’ interest, as they are common in every language. However, various assimilation phenomena remain unstudied, especially in terms of experimental phonology and phonetics. One of the most common cases is /s/-voicing in Standard Modern Greek (SMG), i.e. the conversion of a voiceless [s] to a voiced /z/ when followed by a voiced consonant as a result of regressive voice assimilation. Most of the previous research indicates variability across speakers and across different types of consonants. Overall, the realization of /s/-voicing is described as gradient rather than categorical. Previous studies have only focused on /s/-voicing across word boundaries. However, /s/-voicing also occurs within the boundaries of a word. In many cases, clusters containing a sibilant and a voiced consonant are formed by morphological processes. This study aims to investigate the /s/-voicing across word boundaries, morpheme boundaries, and stem internally in order to describe the application of /s/-voicing in SMG in different morphological environments. For the goals of this study, native speakers of SMG were recorded during a production experiment. The speakers read aloud a number of passages designed to contain different cases of /s/-voicing. Various acoustic correlates were examined in order to describe the tokens phonetically and compare the assimilated tokens with the sibilant phonemes /s/ and /z/ of SMG. The applicaiton of voicing was measured as the ratio of the voiced part of over the total duration of the sibilant. The different morphological boundaries did not seem to clearly affect the application of /s/-voicing. However, the voicing ratio differs across the different types of following consonants as well as across speakers. These results confirm the previous literature in regard to the effect of the following consonant and between-speaker variability. The center of gravity was the most distinctive characteristic between assimilated and non-assimilated tokens and differences in terms of duration and intensity were found between the non-assimilated and [s] tokens as well as between assimilated and [z] tokens.Show less
Master thesis | Classics and Ancient Civilizations (MA)
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Both δέδεικται and ἐδείχθη are used by Greek mathematical authors in their proofs to refer to something that has already been proved. In this master’s thesis, the use of the passive aorist and the...Show moreBoth δέδεικται and ἐδείχθη are used by Greek mathematical authors in their proofs to refer to something that has already been proved. In this master’s thesis, the use of the passive aorist and the middle perfect in ancient Greek mathematical texts is discussed. The modern interpretations of the verbal aspects in (literary) Greek by Rijksbaron, Sicking and Stork serve as a theoretical framework. I intend to demonstrate that mathematical Greek, despite its dense, formulaic language, does follow the rules of Greek grammar that hold for conventional language use. This research focusses on metacommunicative verbs, that refer to the procedure of a proof, as opposed to verbs that are used in the construction of a diagram. The indicative forms and participles of a selection of verbs (δείκνυμι, ἐπιτάσσω, προτίθημι, εὑρίσκω, λέγω and δίδωμι) were analyzed in a confined corpus including works of Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonius. The aim was to explain the distribution of the aorist and perfect forms. This analysis led to the conclusion that the aorist emphasizes the performed action and marks a new step in a proof. The perfect, on the other hand, stresses the attained result of an action and is therefore used to refer to a finished proof or a completed construction of figures. In the conclusion, a hypothesis will be offered on the interpretation of the perfect imperative, a heavily debated phenomenon that is frequently encountered in Greek mathematics.Show less
The current thesis aims to investigate the set of factors operative in gender assignment process in Greek-Turkish nominal constructions, that is in code-switching where Greek determiners (gendered)...Show moreThe current thesis aims to investigate the set of factors operative in gender assignment process in Greek-Turkish nominal constructions, that is in code-switching where Greek determiners (gendered) and Turkish nouns (non-gendered) are combined together. MacSwan (2005) using the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1995) suggests that in determiner-noun code-switches determiners can only stem from the gendered language, since it encodes the largest amount of uninterpretable features compared to the non-gendered language it interacts with, while nouns as non-function words might as well originate in the non-gendered language. Likewise, Matrix Language Frame was proposed by Myers-Scotton (1993b) in an attempt to set up a theoretical framework within which insertional CS production occurs and is framed by constraints. The latter theory posits that in bilingual speech only on language is dominant, the Matrix Language, while other-language constituents stem from the Embedded Language(s). Bilingual NP Hypothesis complementing MLF model suggests that system morphemes can only stem from the Matrix Language. As opposed to system morphemes, content morphemes may be lexical items from the Embedded Language. In either way, Matrix language accounts for the morpho-syntactic frame in bilingual speech. This results in DPs where Matrix Language, that is Greek, is responsible for determiner. Drawing on the abovementioned frameworks, a 20-person sample of Greek Turkish bilinguals were called to participate in the Director-Matcher task. Through this controlled elicitation and artificial technique Greek-Turkish bilinguals were instructed in such a way that they were prompted to use Turkish nouns within Greek phrases and sentences. Except for the Director-Matcher task, the same subjects were asked to reply to an online linguistic questionnaire where they had to answer crucial for this research questions as well as to evaluate their language skills. The results from the Director-Matcher task indicate that Greek-Turkish bilinguals in Western Thrace use neuter as default, while phonological and analogical factors play no role in gender assignment to Turkish nouns. Significantly enough, the persistent use of neuter in the data points to that, despite the perpetual affiliation of Greek and Turkish among the bilinguals in Western Thrace, they treat Turkish nouns as foreign. This study shows that this is true even for the bilingual system of individuals who are members of a community that has been bilingual for a century. Furthermore, the prevalence of neuter as default gender in Greek-Turkish nominal constructions proves the claim that the criterion determining the factors based on which grammatical gender is assigned to the nouns depends on the language pair under study. Another essential issue which drew my attention while transcribing the data I recorded is the absence of articles (definite or indefinite) in several data points (n=124). It is necessary to highlight that these occurrences do not adhere to the rules of Greek syntax and as, a result, violate the grammaticality of the Greek language system. Last but not least, this study confirms that neuter is the default gender in Greek.Show less
Waarom was de Griekse kolonisatie van de Zwarte Zee zo succesvol? De culturele dominantie van de Grieken lijkt hiervoor de belangrijkste factor te zijn geweest. Wat zorgde echter voor deze...Show moreWaarom was de Griekse kolonisatie van de Zwarte Zee zo succesvol? De culturele dominantie van de Grieken lijkt hiervoor de belangrijkste factor te zijn geweest. Wat zorgde echter voor deze culturele dominantie? Dit onderzoek naar de interactie tussen de Griekse kolonisatoren met de inheemse bevolking rondom de Zwarte Zee en de redenen (push & pull factoren) voor het vertrek van Griekse migranten naar het Zwarte Zeegebied tracht dit te beantwoorden.Show less
Research master thesis | Classics and Ancient Civilizations (research) (MA)
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The present thesis centres on languages and linguistic features encountered in the documentary texts from the Dead Sea region, focussing on the documentary texts from Wadi Murabba’at and Nahal...Show moreThe present thesis centres on languages and linguistic features encountered in the documentary texts from the Dead Sea region, focussing on the documentary texts from Wadi Murabba’at and Nahal Hever. Especially those features that might tell something about the identity of the people responsible for the production of these documents will be examined in detail. The overall aim is to detect these features and to explain them in light of their cultural background: to what extent do the formal and linguistic features visible in the documentary texts convey elements of conscious choices and unconscious linguistic patterns relating to the identity of the people who wrote these texts and how can these features be explained? It will be attempted to answer this general question through two key-objectives: 1. Through determining linguistic features and patterns of language choice in selected case studies. 2. Through explaining these features in light of their cultural-historical background.Show less
Master thesis | Classics and Ancient Civilizations (MA)
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A semantic study on hosios and cognates which compares the semantics and the uses of hosios in Euripides, Isocrates and Xenophon to Plato’s and focuses on Plato's (persuasive) use of the term.
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
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The aim of this thesis was to propose an account for the different uses of the Greek particle μή with an intersubjective approach (Verhagen 2005). The main finding is that the analyzed...Show moreThe aim of this thesis was to propose an account for the different uses of the Greek particle μή with an intersubjective approach (Verhagen 2005). The main finding is that the analyzed constructions (complement clauses, main clauses, conditional clauses) show family resemblances for 3 characteristics: expressing undesirability, negation and/or giving the addressee responsibility. The most prototypical constructions show all three characteristics, less prototypical constructions show less (cf. Geeraerts 1997).Show less
Bachelor thesis | Griekse en Latijnse taal en cultuur (BA)
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It is known that the density of ancient commentaries is higher in the beginning of the book. I connected this with the mise en page of the Venetus A manuscript, one of the most famous Iliad...Show moreIt is known that the density of ancient commentaries is higher in the beginning of the book. I connected this with the mise en page of the Venetus A manuscript, one of the most famous Iliad manuscripts. The content from different sources is divided over different places on the page. The scribe made his own choices in selecting the content for the manuscript, but was guided by the pedagogical tradition before him, in which the first 12 books of the Iliad were the most important. The amount and content of the scholia is very diverse.Show less
