Ancient Greek Sociolinguistics and Dialectology

(5,488 words)

Carlo Consani

Article Table of Contents

1. 1. Introduction

2. 2. Dialectology

3. 3. Sociolinguistics

4. Bibliography

1. Introduction

Ancient Greek presented several, geographically distinct, varieties for almost a

millennium, i.e., from the Mycenaean Age (15th c. BCE) to the Hellenistic Age (4th c.

BCE). The period of greatest dialectal diversity was the Archaic Age (8th-6th c. BCE),

when inscriptions were written in different forms of Greek according to their place of

origin. Yet, irrespective of its archaic structure, even Mycenaean Greek, which dates back

to the Bronze Age (15th-13th c. BCE), gives some indications that it was dialectally

marked. The first form of common Greek appeared only during the Hellenistic Age,

subsequent to the formation of the Koine, literally the “common (dialect)”, which was

used as the official language by the Macedonian monarchy. Certain dialects were used in

literary genres by authors who were considered as typical of their respective dialect by

the grammarians of the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

Notwithstanding its dialectal diversity, Greek was considered ‘one’ language by all

Greeks, since its fragmentation was seen as a consequence of its speakers’ different

ethnicity. This can be seen from the well known Hesiodic fragment Héllēnos d’egénonto

philoptolémou basilêos/Dôrós te Xoûthós te kaì Aíolos hippiokhármēs ‘From Hellen the

warlike king sprung Doros and Xouthos and Aiolos who fight from a chariot’ (9 M-W): the

myth of Hellenic origins shown in this quote is largely taken up in the following centuries

so as to become a ‘construction of identity’ which was obtained by the correlation of

different factors, particularly ethnic, linguistic, religious and cultural ones. One of the

most eloquent statements of this is found in Herodotus, where the Athenians reject doubt

concerning a separate agreement between Athens and the Persians by arguing that it was

impossible “in consideration of the fact that Greekness (tò Hellēnikón) is of the same

blood (homaîmon) and of the same language (homóglōsson) and that the temples of the

gods and sacred rites and customs are similar” (Hdt. 8.144.2). As a consequence, the

Greeks created the word diálektos to refer to the fragmentation of their language, a word

which is still used in modern linguistics to refer to dialects. The word diálektos was used

by ancient authors with the meaning of “a way of speaking” (Consani 1991:15-19); in the

classical period, some statements, for example by Aristophanes (fr. 552/706 K-A), showed

that the term was taking on a more technical meaning and referred to urban and/or social

varieties (Language and Variation in Greece).

2. Dialectology
Modern research on Greek dialects began in the 19th c. with Ahrens (1839-43), but his

research is based on limited sources. Much progress was made by Meister (1882-9) and

Hoffman (1891-8) who, on the basis of the decipherment of the Cypriot syllabary,

classified a group of dialects different from Doric and Ionic and called them ‘Achaean’;

this new group included Aeolic dialects, later “nord-achäisch”, and Arcadian and Cypriot,

which were defined as “süd-achäisch”. In an 1887 pamphlet, H. W. Smyth recognized a

different group, namely Arcado-Cypriot. This classification, which was promoted at the

beginning of the 20th century by Thumb (1909), Buck (1910) and Meillet (1913), is

widely accepted and still maintained. In the 19th century, following the progress of

historical-comparative linguistics, the main goal of scholars was to reconstruct the various

undocumented phases of Greek and analyze the process which led to the dialect

geography of classical Greece. Today, scholars analyze both the description of dialects

and their classification, considering the description a priority. The analysis of the

structural characteristics of each variety forms the basis for inter-dialectal comparisons

that serve to determine the affinity among the various groups and to understand the way

in which dialects are genetically related.

The methods used by modern dialectology, in particular those used for spoken dialects,

cannot be employed for reconstructing the linguistic system of any ancient Greek dialect,

since such an investigation is necessarily based on written sources. This fact has several

implications: first of all, the spontaneity of speech is dimmed by the process of writing,

particularly in the case of official documents. The differences between spoken dialects and

their respective written form can only be gauged by the example of the Ionic dialect; but

in fact, the epigraphic corpus from Ionia does not show any trace of the four varieties of
the area to which Herodotus refers (1.142). Secondly, since writing was introduced in

different periods in the different regions of Greece, some dialects were documented in the

Archaic period (e.g. Cretan, Ionic, Attic), while most of the documentation available dates

back to the Hellenistic period when the Ionic-Attic Koine and other Koinai, above all in

the Doric area, interfered considerably with the dialect system. Furthermore, important

phenomena of ancient Greek dialects are not adequately recorded in the writing systems

that were used in different periods (e.g. the Linear B script, the Cypriot syllabic script, the

alphabet). The relative inadequacies of these writing systems can be explained by the fact

that all of them derived from other scripts related to non-Indo-European languages and

were only later adapted to record Greek.

An example of this inadequacy can be seen in the way the vowel system was recorded,

since in both the syllabic writings and the alphabet the difference of vowel length and

openess are not marked. With the introduction of the Ionic alphabet for Attic and the

Koine, at the time of the so-called Euclidean reform (403/402 BCE), the six phonemes /e,

eː, ɛː, o, oː, ɔː/ were written as <E, EI, H, O, OY, Ω>, thus using one grapheme for each

phoneme; this differs from archaic writing, which employed just the two graphemes <E,

O>. Since long vowel quality, which results from compensatory lengthening, is the most

important way to distinguish the dialects (e.g. Attic kórē (ΚΟΡΗ) vs. Ionic koúrē (ΚΟΥΡΗ)

vs. Laconian kṓrā (ΚΩΡΑ) < *korwā) ‘girl’, it is clear that only through an adequate

writing system it would be possible to reconstruct the dialectal phonological systems, as

well as to determine the inter-dialectal differences.

2.a. The Classification of Dialects

In the second half of the 20th c., and particularly in the last thirty years, important

findings and developments in the field of description and analysis of ancient Greek

dialects were made by various scholars, overcoming the dialectal description of the 19th

and the beginning of the 20th centuries (Consani 2006:11-16; Dialects, Classification of).

From a methodological point of view, both the proximity among dialects and the

geographical distribution of isoglosses ‒ that is, the ideal lines which link all the points of

a place that are characterized by the same linguistic trait ‒ should be considered.

Secondly, in order to establish the relationship between two varieties, it is important to

consider the following criteria (in increasing order of importance): a) the preservation of

archaic linguistic traits; b) the choice among elements which are supposedly present at

the same time also in Proto-Greek (Proto-Greek and Common Greek); c) the presence of

those innovations which are unlikely to have been developed independently (Adrados

1952).

On the basis of these criteria, it is possible to distinguish the following four dialect

groups:

(1) (IA)
Ionic (, Western Ionic, Eastern Ionic)
Attic;

(2) Arcado-Cypriot (AC)

Arcadian
Cypriot;

(3) (Ae)
Thessalian
Boeotian
 Lesbian;

(4) West Greek (WG)

Doric (D)
North-West Greek (, , , ) (NWG)

Pamphylian: unclassified

However, certain issues remain unresolved, above all in cases where isoglosses were

diffused beyond the geographical area to which they originally belonged and thus

influenced neighboring dialects of other groups. This is the reason why Aeolic (Aeolic

Dialects) and Arcado-Cypriot, which are characterized by geographical discontinuity,

present contact phenomena with other neighboring dialects that belong to different

groups. For example, Thessalian and Lesbian share the athematic inflection of vowel-stem

verbs with the AC group; Eastern Thessalian shares a nasal demonstrative (one/onu) with

AC and with Cretan, while Boeotian features various characteristics of the WG group and

Attic. As is clear, this typology of phenomena poses several problems for the dialectal

classification in the four major groups, showing that the family tree model can be

integrated with the principles of the wave model, so that linguistic phenomena should

also be considered according to their spatial distribution.

2.b. The Prehistory of Dialect Distribution in the Classical Age

At the beginning of the 20th century, P. Kretschmer (1909) suggested that the Greeks

settled in their historical locations in three waves. According to him, the Ionic group and

their dialect arrived in Greece at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE; the second

wave took place between the 18th and 17th centuries BCE, supposedly marking the

arrival of the Achaeans and the speakers of the Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot dialects;
finally, the Dorians arrived in Greece at the end of the Bronze Age, between the 13th and

12th centuries BCE. This reconstruction was much debated towards the end of the last

century. By applying the methods of modern dialect geography, it was attempted to

establish the chronology of the various isoglosses independently from supposed

settlements of the population (e.g. Risch 1949). Furthermore, shortly thereafter (1952), a

highly important event for Greek dialectology radically changed the positions formerly

held: the decipherment of Mycenaean. In fact, the existence of a dialect which was

diffused during the 15th and 13th centuries from mainland Greece to the Peloponnese

and Crete and that had isoglosses in common with IA and AC (e.g. the ti-assibilation and

1st-person pl. ending -men) would allow us to solve the issue of the spatial discontinuity

of the AC group.

Therefore, on the basis of Mycenaean, it was hypothesized that dialect fragmentation in

the Archaic period was preceded by the existence of two groups in the 2nd millennium.

Essentially, Mycenaean and the ancestors of Arcadian and Ionic were supposedly diffused

in all southern and eastern areas, while the Doric and North-West Greek dialects remained

in the western and northern areas; furthermore, the first group which was characterized

by innovative isoglosses, distinguished itself from the second group, which maintained

archaic features that were not very distant from Proto-Greek. At the end of the Bronze

Age, after the collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms, populations who spoke northern

dialects may have migrated towards the Peloponnese and the Aegean islands, creating the

dialectal situation of the Archaic period (Porzig 1954, Risch 1955).

2.c. Unresolved Problems

The position as described above is widely accepted, even if two issues continue to fuel

debate. One, related to Mycenaean, has important consequences for inter-dialectal

relationships and concerns the language of the tablets. The other regards the possibility

that dialect differentiation was already present in southern or eastern Greek in the

Mycenaean or sub-Mycenaean Age.

Linguistic variation among the various continental archives, and between the various

continental archives and the archive from Knossos is limited with respect to a deep

difference among dialects which were spoken in the areas during the first millennium,

already dominated by Mycenaean culture (Duhoux 1987). Conversely, for some time now,

differences in the Mycenaean of Pylos have been detected, which, subsequent to further

investigation, have been revealed valid for other continental archives as well (Varias

1994-95, Hajnal 2006) and, to a lesser degree, for the Knossos archive (Woodard 1986,

Hajnal 1997). Essentially, the differences consist of the following: the dative ending of

consonant stems (<Ce-i> [-ei] vs <Ci> [-i]), the vocalization of syllabic nasal and

liquid (o-color vs a-color) and the variable color (e/i) in nouns and lexical items that

often do not have an Indo-European etymology (Risch 1966); to these features Nagy

(1968) added the presence/absence of assibilation (ti vs si).

In the course of the 1960s, E. Risch and other scholars purported that ‘normal Mycenaean’

(MN), i.e., the most frequent forms of the above four phenomena, corresponded with the

administrative language, while ‘special Mycenaean’ (MS) was the language spoken by

scribes; therefore, MN would have disappeared with the fall of the Mycenaean kingdoms,

while MS would have found continuity in the dialects of the 1st millennium in southern
Greece (Risch 1979), or alternatively in Doric dialects, if this ethnicity was present in

Greece from the onset of the Mycenaean era, in a subordinate position to the elite in the

palaces (Chadwick 1976). Even though the significance of the variation within

Mycenaean was interpreted differently (Consani 1983, Negri 1988:13-24, Brixhe 1991),

further research has shown that it may be attributed to chronological differences among

various archives or among series of tablets from the same archive (Hajnal 1997,

Thompson 1996-1997 [1998]). In addition, given the co-presence of ‘conservative’,

‘innovative’ and ‘incoherent’ scribes (Hajnal 1997:220-236) and the fact that tablet

authors might have been functionaries in the administrative hierarchy, rather than simple

scribes (Palaima 1988, 2003, Driessen 2000), it may be the case that Mycenaean archives

show a natural language, codified in written form for practical purposes, rather than an

administrative language. This implies that these phenomena, which have been the object

of such a long debate, are to be taken as diaphasic or ‘diamesic’ variables, which occur in

every language. As a consequence of this, the phenomena described above do not have

any direct implication either for the co-presence of standard and sub-standard varieties in

Mycenaean texts, or for the continuity of one of these varieties with respect to the dialects

of the 1st millennium (Consani 2006:17-24).

As concerns the second issue, two elements could shed light on the gap that exists

between the Bronze Age and the dialectal situation of the 1st millennium. On the one

hand, the new Theban tablets favor the hypothesis that some innovative forms, typical of

Aeolic dialects, existed in continental Mycenaean; for example, the athematic inflexion of

the Theban vocalic stem verbs; the suffix generalization in cases of feminine oblique

nomina agentis , /-tirră-/ vs. /-triā-/; expressing ‘son’ by means of the innovative noun
hū(j)os, characteristic of Thebes and Mycenae, rather than the conservative /hījus, hījeu-/

of Pylos (Hajnal 2006:64-66, 2007:149-152). Furthermore, in the area of southern Greece

in contact with the Aegean Sea, it is possible to identify three innovative isoglosses that

date back to the Mycenaean period and that brought together Mycenaean and Arcado-

Cypriot in opposition to Ionic: 1) the reduction of tricausal to bicausal prepositional

government with ablative and dative syncretism (Thompson 2000:429); 2) the

palatalization of groups formed by voiceless stop + j/w and the reduction of the

labiovelar stop before back vowels occur in opposite sequence in Mycenaen, Arcadian and

Cypriot, in contrast to Ionic (Brixhe 1991:265-266); 3) the innovation which results from

the transformation of the voiceless labiovelar in front of i, which in Arcadian became an

affricate consonant and in Cypriot became voiceless. This feature is in opposition to

Mycenaean and Ionic types, implying that there was communication between the

Peloponnese and Cyprus (Consani 2006:26-29).

The above phenomena allow us to identify the existence of different dialects in different

areas of the Mycenaean world during the period from the 15th to the 12th c. BCE. The

differences correspond to distinctive characteristics of the two dialect groups, namely

Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot, which in historic times were used in these areas. However, the

isoglosses that existed between Mycenaean and Aeolic may have been due to contact and

interference between Mycenaean and ‘northern’ dialects; whereas the isoglosses that were

common to Arcadian, Cypriot and Mycenaean may have arisen as a consequence of

internal dynamics in the southern Aegean area, in opposition to the Ionic dialect.

3. Sociolinguistics
3.a. The Sociolinguistics of Dialects

According to speaker attitude, dialects have different types of prestige that are due to a

number of factors (Attitudes toward Language). During the Archaic and Classical periods,

the role of politics in each city was a fundamental factor in determining the prestige of

each dialect; Sparta and Athens are an example of this, even if the governments of the

two cities adopted different approaches in their language policy towards Laconian and

Attic. In fact, Sparta demonstrated a unique disinterest for promoting and elaborating its

own dialect; this policy may even have influenced the continuity of Laconian up until

Roman times and beyond (Morpurgo Davies 1993:265-270). This behavior seems peculiar

if compared with the policy of other areas towards dialects belonging to the same group,

such as Boeotian (Morpurgo Davies 1993:270-273), and particularly with respect to the

policy of Athens (Language Policies and Attitudes). Indeed, in this case, the attempt of

diffusing standard Attic in all the cities of the Delio-Attic league ‒ a true form of

“linguistic imperialism” (Crespo 2006) – is accompanied by a widespread speaker-positive

attitude towards one’s own dialect which is considered superior to others, as can be

deduced from a number of original sources and indirect documents. Furthermore, the

moral, physical and linguistic disapproval towards Boeotian and the Boeotians could be

considered an example of negative ethnolinguistic stereotype (see also Morpurgo Davies

1993:263-264).

However, Old Comedy (Comedy, Diction of), and particularly Aristophanes’

representation of dialects other than Attic, reveals that dialect diversity was not
considered as linguistic inadequacy due to a non-standard code (Colvin 2000). This may

be due to the existence of various forms of Attic differing from the standard, as can be

seen in Aristophanes and in other documents of semi-literates (Colvin 2005); the diversity

of Attic could be so deep as to create two phonological systems; the former, more

conservative and closer to the written standard, became the basis for the Hellenistic Koine

(Koine, Origins of), the latter, which was more innovative, anticipated several phenomena

of the Greek spoken in Roman times (Teodorsson 1974, 1977). Another factor which

might have influenced the prestige of each dialect is that some varieties were used for

literary purposes and linked to specific genres; for example, Doric was used for choral

lyric, Lesbian for monodic lyric, and Attic for oratory. ‘Literary’ dialects are not identical

with their , but rather correspond to that have been influenced by literary language

(Tribulato 2010). Interestingly, grammarians in Hellenistic and Roman times increasingly

turned their attention to literary dialects and their respective authors, rather than to

spoken dialects, which were no longer in use. This is the reason why the grammatical

tradition of late antiquity is founded mainly on literary dialects.

3.b. Sociolinguistics of the Common Language

The sociolinguistic panorama of Greece became more complex in the 4th century BCE

with the development and spread of the Hellenistic Koine. Even though Great Attic had

been a means for creating pan-Hellenic cohesion and identity in the course of the 5th

century (Colvin 2009), it is certain that Hellenistic Koine was the first form of standard

ancient Greek; this can be deduced by the appearance of the Koine (Consani 1998) as well

as by the functions it had in Greece and in its territories (Bubenik 1989:9-10) (Koiné,
Origins of). The term Koiné (diálektos), i.e., “common (dialect)” has several meanings in

modern research and in grammatical inquiry of late antiquity (Brixhe-Hodot 1993). In a

general sense, it can refer to post-classical Greek, both in its written and the spoken form,

the latter viewed by grammarians in a derogatory manner. Notwithstanding this, Koine as

the standard form of Greek was intended to be the language used in administration and

state institutions by the Macedonian monarchy. This language was structurally based on

Great Attic, and in its spoken form had a conservative phonological system. Such a

variety soon became the language used by the military as well as the international lingua

franca for trade and broad-range communication. Therefore, the situation naturally gave

rise to with , with the Koine functioning as the high variety and the dialects as low

varieties, even though certain regions tried to maintain their local varieties, with different

degrees of success, as a symbol of political independence and local identity. Consequently,

the linguistic repertoire of Greek-speaking communities became more complex than

before and can be outlined as follows:

(1) the standard written Koine;

(2) regional Koine varieties formed through the interference with other dialects or with
other adstrate languages;

(3) dialect Koines (used in literature and by political institutions such as the and s);

(4) spoken local dialects, which were increasingly in decline.

This type of social repertoire was reflected in speaker language use, hence characterized

by code-switching and code-mixing, as well as various forms of interference. This has two

fundamental consequences, namely:

a. Pressure from the Koine on the dialects, which was caused by diglossia, producing

dialect forms featuring interference from the Koine. At the same time, the Koine may have

comprised some traits (phonetic/phonological and lexical) from local varieties which

were either ancient dialects or different languages.

b. Resistance of dialects to the Koine for reasons of identity linked to political

independence; the consequence is the preservation of various dialectal forms or the

revitalization of old dialect features.

The first situation is well represented by the case of Cypriot. Historically, the island

distinguished itself from other regions of Greece through a marked local peculiarity, the

use of a syllabic writing system (Cypriot Syllabary) for the local dialect (see Egetmeyer

2010:8-19). Throughout the Archaic period up until the end of the 5th century BCE,

Cypriot inscriptions in the Greek alphabet were rare and by authors which could not be

local. Instead, Cypriots used local writing and dialects for public and private settings

(Consani 1990). In the 4th century BCE, there was a rapid and decisive diffusion of the

alphabet and of the Koine in all types of inscriptions and throughout all regions of the

island (Collombier 1991:437-438) at the end of Cypriot political independence, when the

island was taken over by the Macedonian monarchy and the Lagid dynasty. By the

beginning of the 3rd century BCE, only the alphabet was used in inscriptions as the

vehicle for a type of Koine that did not have particular characteristics. Hence the use of

the syllabary and of the dialect in the inscriptions on Kafizin pottery (225-218 BCE) is a

special case in point. In fact, it is worth noting that this example cannot be considered as

representative of the sociolinguistic situation in the island, since it is restricted to a

religious setting, a particular social group and a rural environment, and that these are the
reasons for the low competence in dialect and in the use of the syllabic writing shown by

the Kafizin potters (Consani 1986).

A particularly meaningful example of this situation is the use of prepositions of motion

from a place, apó and ek, in the Kafizin corpus. The first preposition never appears in the

dialect phonetic form (apú), and in the alphabetic inscriptions it takes the genitive case,

similarly to the Koine, while in the syllabic inscriptions (11 examples) it takes the dative,

similarly to the local dialect (Consani 1986:62-64). Therefore, the only exception, a-po to

[ ... ve]-te-o-se (apò tô wéteos) ‘since the year’, found in a syllabic inscription (Kf 136), is

highly important since it shows that the use of the syntactic model of the Koine does not

only depend on occasional instances of digraphia/diglossia, but also on individual speaker

competence, even in cases when potters wanted to use the syllabic writing and the local

dialect. Conversely, the preposition ek/ex, characteristic of alphabetic texts and of the

Koine, appears in dialect form in syllabic texts as e-se (es), and takes the genitive case,

rather than the dative of the dialect (Consani 1986:65-66). Therefore, it seems clear that

in the production of Kafizin pottery the use of the dialect was a conscious choice by force

of its symbolic values, which were strengthened by the use of syllabic writing. However,

this type of dialect can no longer be considered a living language.

On the other hand, the use of dialects by local institutions of Hellenistic Thessaly,

particularly in the area of Pelasgiotis, is a perfect example of resistance to the

introduction of Koine. That various Thessalian cities maintained their local dialect can be

understood as a symbol of political autonomy (first from the Macedonian monarchy and

then from the Romans); moreover, the various uses of the dialect reveal different degrees

of competence and different forms of reaction to the Hellenistic Koine. The great
inscription containing the letters of Philip V and the response of the city of Larissa (IG

IX,2 517) is characterized by a planned opposition between dialect and Koine (Consani

1989). This text generally exhibits coherent dialect forms and important dialect traits,

such as the 1st person plural singular active ending -men or the lexical form mespodì (=

mékhri(s) ‘until’ in the Koine), used only in this dialect. However, pressure from the Koine

is manifest in an isolated instance, namely the lapsus tàn dè állan rather than tan ma

allan ‘but the other-fem. sg.’, and in the use of words and formulaic items which were

characteristic of the bureaucratic language of the Hellenistic period (Horrocks 2010:90-

94).

The inscription from Scotussa on the investigation and the reconstruction of the city wall

(Missailidou-Despotidou 1993), which dates to the Hellenistic period, evidences the will

to maintain the local dialect. This results in hypercorrect forms, characteristic of low

dialect competence, arrived at only by the use of some fixed rules of automatic conversion

and reflecting the actual diglossic situation. An example of this is oidenós (= oudenós,

singular genitive of oudeís ‘no one’): the initial oi- does not exist in the dialect and

appears to be an attempt to create a difference with respect to the ou- of the Koine,

applying a rule of automatic conversion that is applicable only in certain inflectional

morphemes (o-stem genitive: dialect <-oi> vs. Koine<-ou>) (Consani 2004:152).

The honorific decree issued at the beginning of the 2nd century BCE by the city of Larissa

for Bacchus, a Mytilenean citizen, is a complex example of the different types of forms

used and of the extra-linguistic setting of the text (Tziafallias-Helly 2004-2005). The

desire of the city to act in an international context and the writing of the act in 196 BCE,
the year when the Thessalian koinón was rebuilt, immediately after the defeat of Philip V

by the Romans, are sufficient reasons to justify the use of the dialect as a sign of the city’s

reaffirmed autonomy. From a linguistic point of view, the long text allows us to

reconstruct a particularly complex repertory in which forms typical of the Larissa variety

are combined with Pelasgiotis regional forms and occasionally with traits of western

Koine (Consani 2010). It is worth mentioning that most of the dialect traits occur at the

morphological level, more specifically in verb morphology, rather than the phonetic or

lexical levels, as usually happens in similar situations.

Interferences among dialects and between dialects and the Koine allow us to dismiss the

20th-century dialectology paradigm, which is characterized by its neglect of the dialect

forms of Hellenistic and Roman times. In fact, the analysis of ancient Greek dialects is a

means not only for reconstructing dialectal relationships from a diachronic point of view,

but also for an accurate description of the language as used by different speech

communities in different periods of time. If this is the case, the analysis of interference

phenomena may shed some light on linguistic forms which in the traditional approach

would have been lost. This means that we should analyze ancient Greek dialects of the

Hellenistic age as context-linked phenomena.

Carlo Consani

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Cite this page:

Carlo Consani. "Ancient Greek Sociolinguistics and Dialectology." Encyclopedia of Ancient

Greek Language and Linguistics. Edited by: Georgios K. Giannakis. Brill Online, 2014.
Reference. Carlo Consani [aff. Università degli Studi di Chieti e Pescara]. 09 April 2014
<http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-ancient-greek-language-
and-linguistics/ancient-greek-sociolinguistics-and-dialectology-EAGLL_COM_00000024>
First appeared online: 2013