Unit:
Κατεύθυνση Γλωσσολογία: Θεωρία και ΕφαρμογέςLibrary of the School of Philosophy
Supervisors info:
Νικόλαος Λαβίδας, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, ΕΚΠΑ
Μιχάλης Γεωργιαφέντης, Επίκουρος Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, ΕΚΠΑ
Βασιλική Νικηφορίδου, Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, ΕΚΠΑ
Original Title:
The Influence of Greek on the Gothic New Testament in relation to Proto-Germanic: Corpus-driven Evidence on Written Contact
Translated title:
The Influence of Greek on the Gothic New Testament in relation to Proto-Germanic: Corpus-driven Evidence on Written Contact
Summary:
The present study investigates verbal constructions in the Gothic New Testament text, Epistles to the Corinthians II:12. The corpus compiled is compared to the Greek source text and diachronic retranslations in English. Gothic is the only surviving language of the East Germanic branch, and the oldest within the Germanic family, as it dates back to the 4th AD. Although such an old language can provide insight into the typology of Germanic, the available manuscripts are limited; Biblical translations of the New Testament and fragmentary Old Testament excerpts are the only existing texts.
The results show slight similarities between the Gothic and English corpora under examination, concerning the expression of voice/diathesis and the typological preferences of the verbal constructions, as well as significant deviations from the Greek equivalent constructions. The prevalent typological patterns show the preference of Gothic for periphrastic translation of the Greek passive constructions, which is less observed in the equivalent English translations. The findings insinuate that such deviations can contribute to evidence of the parallel grammar systems that are diachronically manifested by written contact and can bear diachronic implications to the evolution of the languages involved. Statistical analysis within a contrastive approach, along with the examination of quantified data, can highlight typological patterns that were previously underexplored. Future studies could extend the scope of research to other intralingual Germanic translations in comparison to Gothic, in order to establish evidence on their typological relations.
Main subject category:
Language – Literature
Keywords:
Gothic, written contact, retranslation, English, Greek, diachrony, syntax, verbs, typology, corpus, computational
Number of references:
103
