Greek vocabulary in manuscript tradition

The vocabulary of the Greek language has undergone a permanent process of evolution, from the classical period via late Antiquity, the Byzantine period and modern age up to the Modern Greek vernacular of our days. Whilst the language of the classical and patristic authors has been well documented by lexica (especially those by Liddell- Scott and Lampe) and by the CD-ROM of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG), until recently the situation regarding the Greek vocabulary of the Byzantine period was much less satisfactory. It is the aim of the Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität (LBG) which will have reached half of ist extent (A-K) by summer 2001, to fill this lacuna. In addition to the material gathered for the LBG, the project presented hereby focuses on a hitherto rather neglected category of sources: variants, glosses and interpolations in manuscripts as documented in the apparatus criticus of modern editions of ancient Greek and Byzantine texts. While for the editors these variants etc. are simply deteriorations or later additions to what can be reconstructed as the original texts, for lexicographical research they are valuable sources, insofar as they reflect in one way or the other the stage of the language in the time of the copyist, be it in the way of explaining notes or alleged improvements made by the copyist on purpose, be it in the way of changes he made involuntarily, just following his own feeling for the language. It is the aim of the project to collect rare and hitherto undocumented words from manuscript variants, glosses and interpolations of published Greek texts and thus to improve to a considerable extent our knowledge of the development of the Greek language during the Byzantine centuries. By tracing vulgarisms, i.e. elements of a lower level of language apart from vernacular literature in the strict sense, it will be possible to arrive at a more precise and more subtle understanding of the various stages and levels of development of the language. For this purpose the apparatus criticus of a great number of editions will be gone through. The bulk will be Byzantine authors; in addition, works of classical, biblical and patristic literature will be taken account of depending on the expected output.

The aim of the project was the evaluation of manuscript tradition for an enlargement of our knowledge of the Greek vocabulary particularly of the Byzantine period. The vocabulary of the Greek language has undergone a permanent process of evolution, from the classical period via late Antiquity, the Byzantine period and modern age up to the Modern Greek vernacular of our days. Whilst the language of the classical and patristic authors has been well documented by lexica (especially those by Liddell- Scott and Lampe) and by the online version of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG), until recently the situation regarding the Greek vocabulary of the Byzantine period was much less satisfactory. It is the aim of the Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität (LBG) which will has now reached half of ist extent (A-K), to fill this lacuna. In addition to the material gathered for the LBG, the project presented hereby focused on a hitherto rather neglected category of sources: variants, glosses and interpolations in manuscripts as documented in the apparatus criticus of modern editions of ancient Greek and Byzantine texts. They are valuable sources for lexicographical research, insofar as they reflect in one way or the other the stage of the language in the time of the copyist, be it in the way of explaining notes or alleged improvements made by the copyist on purpose, be it in the way of changes he made involuntarily, just following his own feeling for the language. Therefore texts were chosen for relevant treatment, from which good results could be expected, on the one hand according to their nature ("living" texts often read and copied in the Middle Ages), on the other hand regarding the situation of scholarly treatment (presence of reliable modern editions with a sufficiently rich apparatus criticus). In this respect dealing with the books of the Greek Old Testament and of the works of Gregory of Nyssa (on the basis of the Göttingen edition of the Septuagint and the Werner Jaeger edition of Gregory of Nyssa respectively) proved very fruitful. Among the Byzantine texts excerpted in this way the verse chronicle of Constantine Manasses deserves special mention because of a considerable number of vernacular variants.