Language and Linguistic Contact in Ancient Sicily

Olga Tribulato

Nov 2012 · Cambridge University Press

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Within the field of ancient bilingualism, Sicily represents a unique terrain for analysis as a result of its incredibly rich linguistic history, in which 'colonial' languages belonging to branches as diverse as Italic (Oscan and Latin), Greek and Semitic (Phoenician) interacted with the languages of the natives (the elusive Sicel, Sicanian and Elymian). The result of this ancient melting-pot was a culture characterised by 'postcolonial' features such as ethnic hybridity, multilingualism and artistic and literary experimentation. While Greek soon emerged as the leading language, dominating official communication and literature, epigraphic sources and indirect evidence show that the minority languages held their ground down to the fifth century BCE, and in some cases beyond. The first two parts of the volume discuss these languages and their interaction with Greek, while the third part focuses on the sociolinguistic revolution brought about by the arrival of the Romans.

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Olga Tribulato is Research Fellow in Classics at Ca' Foscari University, Venice. She has published on Greek morphology and dialectology, ancient scientific language, literary dialects and epigraphy, and co-edited Greek and Latin from an Indo-European Perspective (with Coulter George, Matthew McCullagh, Benedicte Nielsen and Antonia Ruppel, 2007).