A corpus and usage-based approach to Ancient Greek: from the Archaic period until the Koiné

Duration of the project

01.03.2018. - 30.05.2018.

Countries and institutions involved in the project

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University of Latvia
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Leipzig University
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University of Cologne
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Vilnius University
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University of Tartu

Aim of the project

Traditionally the research in Classical Philology was based on intuitions of scholars and on a selection of examples which, in turn, resulted in non-falsifiable claims. However, by now most Ancient Greek texts have been digitalized and structured into various corpora (cf. http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/).

These corpora allow for acquiring large-scale pictures on the development of grammar, texts and topics across various periods (Archaic period, Hellenistic/Koiné, Byzantine period, etc.). The figures acquired from the corpora can now be statistically evaluated according to the current statistical methods such as Logistic Regression Analysis to establish significant trends that may be subsequently analysed.

The aim of this conference was to gather researchers that exploit statistical and corpus obtained data for their analyses and claims.

The conference venue – the University of Latvia in collaboration with the universities of the other Baltic countries. Moreover, in this workshop, we focused on the usage-based research into Ancient Greek while methodological and technical aspects were subordinate at this conference.

Confirmed speakers:

Klaas Bentein (Ghent), Giuseppe Celano (Leipzig), José Luis García Ramón (Harvard/Cologne), Chiara Gianollo (Bologna), Dag Haug (Oslo), Geoffrey Horrocks (Cambridge), Daniel Kölligan (Cologne), Martti Leiwo, Sonja Dahlgren & Marja Vierros (Helsinki), Amalia Moser (Athens), Paul Widmer & Florian Sommer (Zürich)

Main activities of the project

  1. The conference “A corpus and usage-based approach to Ancient Greek: from the Archaic period until the Koiné”

URL: http://rafiyenko.info/riga2018/

Venue: Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities of the University of Latvia, Kalpaka Blv. 4, Riga

  1. Two guest lectures (Ilja Serzants, Dariya Rafiyenko):

1) Corpus Studies on Ancient Greek: Exploiting “Thesaurus Linguae Graecae” and other corpora,

2) A digital approach to scholarly editing in Classical philology: A long way from the primary source to a digital edition.

Venue: Faculty of Humanities, University of Latvia, Visvalža Str. 4a, Riga

Target group and number of persons involved

Direct: first, the project/conference organizers (the project leader from the University of Latvia as well as three collaborators from Germany) benefited from the conference because this gave the opportunity to initiate more tied joint research between Latvia and Germany and, more specifically, between the applicant and the partners. Secondly, two guest lectures were given on the topic of the project. We thus foresee that students, doctoral students and the staff of the Faculty of Humanities of University of Latvia, as well as other universities of the Baltic region will considerably benefit from the intellectual exchange on research results and new statistical methods as well as by acquiring the respective skills. Finally, the participants and attendants of the conference greatly benefited from exchanging their ideas and research results at a conference of this level.

The direct target group – 91 researchers and students.

Indirect: the indirect benefit of this collaboration reveals itself in the visibility of the University of Latvia in Germany as well as of the involved universities of Germany in Latvia. Researchers from such well-known universities as Harvard, Cambridge, Cologne, Leipzig, Zürich, Oslo and Ghent participated in the conference. The envisaged research exchange fostered research exchange in other areas as well because the conference was one of the main international events of the University of Latvia in April 2018 and thus attracted attention of scholars from other areas to the advantages of German-Latvian cooperation. Our colleagues from Estonia and Lithuania assisted as well. The indirect target group – ~300 researchers and students.