Doric. Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics

EnCyCLopEdiA oF AnCiEnt GrEEK LAnGuAGE

And LinGuiStiCSVolume 1

A–F

General EditorGeorgios K. Giannakis

Associate EditorsVit Bubenik

Emilio Crespo Chris Golston

Alexandra Lianeri Silvia Luraghi

Stephanos Matthaios

LEidEn • BoSton2014

This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV

table of Contents

Volume one

introduction .................................................................................................................................................... viiList of Contributors ....................................................................................................................................... xitable of Contents ordered by thematic Category ............................................................................... xvtranscription, Abbreviations, Bibliography ........................................................................................... xxiList of illustrations ......................................................................................................................................... xxiiiArticles A–F ..................................................................................................................................................... 1

Volume two

transcription, Abbreviations, Bibliography ........................................................................................... viiArticles G–o .................................................................................................................................................... 1

Volume three

transcription, Abbreviations, Bibliography ........................................................................................... viiArticles p–Z ...................................................................................................................................................... 1index .................................................................................................................................................................. 547


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expected **boupolos, showing the labiovelar outcome we do in fact find in aipolos ‘goatherd’ and amphipolos ‘attendant,’ with -polos in both cases from earlier *-kʷolos.

Otherwise examples of dissimilation are restricted to particular lexical items, a situa-tion that gives rise to debate about whether dissimilation actually occurred in a widespread or clearly definable way. Sihler (1995:56) notes a development from *wew > *wei, e.g. in the aorist of the verb for ‘speak,’ eîpon < *eweikʷom < *ewewkʷom; as well as aweid- ‘sing’ < *awewd- (see further Beekes 2010:23). It has been sug-gested that zízuphon ‘jujube tree’ results from an earlier *zuzu-, but Beekes (2010:502) rejects this; for vowel dissimilation in Attic inscriptions, see Threatte (1980:390–391). There are a number of cases that involve dissimilation of /r/ (see Lejeune 1972:150; Poultney 1972; Vine 2011, with further literature). The most prominent of these is perhaps the suggestion of Wackernagel that argos ‘bright; swift’ < *argros, an idea which has recently been called into question (Vine 2011).

BibliographyAldrete, John D. and Stefan A. Frisch. 2007. “Dissimilation in

grammar and the lexicon”. In: The Cambridge handbook of phonology, ed. by Paul de Lacy, 379–398. Cambridge.

Beekes, Robert S. P. 2010. Etymological dictionary of Greek. Boston – Leiden.

Bye, Patrik. 2011. “Dissimilation”. In: The Blackwell compan-ion to phonology, vol. 3: Phonological processes, ed. by Marc van Oostendorp et al., 1408–1433. Malden, MA.

Grassmann, Hermann. 1863. “Ueber die Aspiraten und ihr gleichzeitiges Vorhandensein im An- und Auslaute der Wurzeln”, Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete des Deutschen, Griechischen und Latein-ischen 12:81–138.

Lejeune, Michel. 1972. Phonétique historique du mycénien et du grec ancien. Paris.

Posner, Rebecca. 1961. Consonantal dissimilation in the Romance languages. Oxford.

Poultney, James. 1972. “Assimilatory and dissimilatory gain and loss of r”, The American Journal of Philology 93:198–214.

Sihler, Andrew L. 1995. New comparative grammar of Greek and Latin. New York – Oxford.

Suzuki, Keiichiro. 1998. A typological investigation of dissimi-lation. Ph.D. diss., University of Arizona.

Thompson, Rupert. 2010. “Mycenaean Greek”. In: A compan-ion to the Ancient Greek language, ed. by Egbert Bakker, 189–199. Malden, MA – Oxford.

Threatte, Leslie. 1980. The grammar of Attic inscriptions, vol. 1: Phonology. Berlin – New York.

Vine, Brent. 2011. “On dissimilatory r-loss in Greek”. In: Indogermanistik und Linguistik im Dialog. Akten der XIII. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft vom 21. bis 27. September 2008 in Salzburg, ed. by Thomas Krisch und Thomas Lindner, 1–17. Wiesbaden.

David Goldstein

Doric

1. Introduction

Like every spoken language, Ancient Greek pres-ents several dialectal varieties from the begin-ning of its history. The Greek dialects are defined as such because they all share a series of exclu-sive linguistic features that make them clearly different from each other. One of the most ancient isoglosses that enables us to divide the Greek dialects into two clearly distinct groups is already attested in the Mycenaean tablets (14th–13th c. BCE) (→ Mycenaean Script and Lan-guage). This innovation occurs in forms such as e-ko-si /(h)ekhonsi/ (Att. ékhousi ‘they have’) and involves the change of the final syllable -ti into -si (→ Assibilation). Although this feature is char-acteristic of the dialects known as East Greek (→ Southeast Greek), it is not present in the dialects grouped under the term (North-)West (NW) Greek (→ Northwest Greek), in which -ti is in fact preserved (ékhonti). The Doric dialects belong to this latter group of West Greek.

Within the Doric group, a distinction is usu-ally made between Doric dialects proper and Northwest dialects, that is, Doric varieties that were spoken in the northwest of Greece (Aeto-lian, Acarnanian, Locrian, Phocidian, etc.). There is no linguistic argument to support the hypoth-esis that the Northwest Doric dialects form an independent group either from a diachronic or from a synchronic point of view. The pecu-liarities and innovations that every single NW Greek dialect presents may not be shared by the others; the label ‘North-West’ refers primarily to the geographical aspect, even though it may also be of a certain use(fulness) for the orga-nization/classification of the Doric dialects as a whole (Méndez Dosuna 1985; Brixhe 2006; Colvin 2007).

The West Greek dialectal group is held to have been spoken by the Dorians, one of the lineages that Ancient Greeks considered to have been the founders of their people. Thus, in order to define the dialectal Doric group, two main criteria are used, which seem to be insepara-ble: linguistic evidence, on the one hand, and (sense of) ethnic community and history, on the other. The former relies on the presence/recognition of a series of phonetic, morphologi-cal, syntactic and lexical features shared by this group of dialects. The latter is based on evidence


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of a different nature altogether: the testimony of the ancient Greek historians, supported by mythological legends belonging to the collective memory of the Greek population. Such myths can ultimately be traced back (in part at least) to historical events and may also be confirmed on occasion by the study and interpretation of archaeological finds. A number of historical institutions common to many Doric cities may also be mentioned. Hence, when the linguis-tic evidence leads to conclusions that coincide both with the accounts given by ancient authors and the modern archaeological information, the existence of a dialectal community correspond-ing to a single ethnic Greek group stands upon a firmer scientific basis (Hall 2002).

Archaeological studies have also thrown light on some of the accounts provided by ancient his-torians, proving their veracity in some cases and disproving it in others. Older hypotheses that defended the penetration of the Greek peninsula by a homogeneous Doric people, who suppos-edly pushed out or annihilated other Greek peo-ples who had previously settled in the same area, have been modified in recent years. The lack of archaeological evidence supporting this hypoth-esis has now led to a different point of view, and current theory maintains that the ancient Doric people settled alongside other Greeks in the Greek peninsula over the second millennium BCE (Hall 2002). Thus, it seems much more plau-sible that the Dorians started off from the north and moved southwards through Greece proper, substituting or pushing out ancient populations (→ Pre-Greek Languages; → Pre-Greek Substrate) who lived there during the second millennium BCE, or even succeeding in making these peo-ples adopt and speak their own form of Greek, i.e., a form of the (proto-)Doric dialect.

The absence of Doric features in the most ancient Greek texts (i.e., the Mycenaean tablets and Homeric Greek) does not necessarily mean that this dialect arose at a later date than others (→ Dialects, Classification of) or that it did not exist as such in the second millennium BCE. The fact that it is not attested in these texts simply demonstrates our lack of written evidence of it at such a remote period.

The penetration of Greece by the Doric peo-ples, who moved from the north of the Balkan peninsula downwards, is also evident from a linguistic point of view. The language of the Mycenaean tablets in the latter part of the sec-

ond millennium BCE belongs to East Greek; however, the dialect of the inscriptions dating from the first millennium BCE and originating from the places in which the ancient Myce-naean palaces were located is now Doric (West Greek). This dialectal change, at least in the regions of Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos and Cnos-sos, is undisputed and demonstrated by the epi-graphic data, namely the alphabetic inscriptions found in these regions, which are written in the → Argolic, Messenian (→ Laconian, Messenian) and → Cretan epichoric dialects, all of which are considered Doric.

2. Geographical Distribution

The Doric dialects were spoken across a vast geo-graphical area that spans the following areas:

(1) In the north of Greece, we find the North-west Doric dialects spoken in the regions of Acarnania, Aetolia, Epirus, Eastern and Western Locris, Locri Epizephyrii in Magna Graecia, Phocis, Doris, dialects of the Gulf of Malis and Achaea Phthiotis;

(2) In the Saronic Gulf, Corinthian, Megarian and Eastern Argolic;

(3) In the Peloponnese, Achaean, → Elean, Western Argolic, Laconian and Messenian;

(4) On the islands in the eastern and southern parts of the Aegean Sea, we find the dialects of Crete, Rhodes (→ Rhodian), Thera, Cos and other minor islands;

(5) In the north of Africa, the dialect of Cyrene (→ Cyrenaean), a colony sent out from Thera;

(6) In Magna Graecia and Sicily, a significant number of the colonies dispatched from some of the aforementioned metropoleis are located, such as the Laconian colonies of Tarentum and Heraclea, the Rhodian col-onies of Gela and Acragas, the Corinthian colony of Syracuse and its colonies, and the Megarian colonies of Megara Hyblaea and Selinus;

(7) In the area of the Black Sea, the Megarian colonies of Heraclea Pontica, Mesembria and Chersonesos; in the Propontis, Byzantium and Chalcedon, and in the Chalcidian Pen-insula, the Corinthian colony of Potidaea.

The distance between the Doric regions must have contributed to a significant dialectal frag-mentation based on innovations and choices


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peculiar to each area. The regularity of many inscriptions is, therefore, somewhat deceptive. The main difficulties which a dialectologist may face arise from the fact that many inscrip-tions provide us with Doric varieties that are extremely influenced by the → Koine. Secondly, the majority of inscriptions are of an official nature (decrees, laws and treaties) and, as such, they are relatively rigid in structure and tend to be written in a uniform language. In many cases, we begin to have sufficient levels of documenta-tion only when dialects start to die out.

3. The Epichoric Alphabets

The three main types of Greek regional alphabets (the so-called ‘green’, ‘red’ and ‘blue’ (light-dark) archaic alphabets, on the basis of Kirchhoff ’s epichoric variety map colors (1863)) (→ Local Scripts; → Alphabet, the Origin of the Greek) are found in the ancient inscriptions coming from the areas in which Doric dialects were spoken (→ Epigraphy). On the islands of Thera, Melos and Crete, the alphabet used is that of the green type, but in Argolis and in Corinth it is the dark blue type, while in the remaining areas it is the red type of the alphabet that is documented. In Sicily, the most widespread alphabet is the red one, with the exceptions of Megara Hyblaea and Selinus, which use the blue alphabet.

It is important to point out that some of the earliest uses of <H> for /eː/ are documented in Doric areas and, in particular, on the islands of Thera (e.g. Proklês, 7th c. BCE), Rhodes (ēmí, ‘I am’, 8th c. BCE), and Crete (mēdén, ‘nothing’, 7th c. BCE). In these archaic documents, <H> is also used for denoting the initial → aspiration, which means that it is a rather versatile sign. On Rhodes and Thera, for example, we find Tḗlephos ho Ialúsios ‘Telephos, the Ialysian’ and Arkha-gétas together with Proklês. The first attempts towards a graphemic differentiation between /oː/ and /o/ are attested on the islands of Melos, Cnidos, Crete, and Thera.

With regard to the direction of writing, Doric inscriptions witness the same range of variation as the rest of Greece, although the inscription that registers the famous law code of Gortyn (→ Gortyn Code) is one of the last examples of the boustrophedon style, probably used here to add a feel of archaism to the document (fake boustrophedon).

4. Characteristic Features

Inscriptions carved on stones and literary works of Greek authors provide the linguistic sources that define and represent the different Doric dialects. In addition to the complex nature of correlating synchronic and diachronic data with influences from other dialects, we are faced with difficulties relating to the development and behavior of the Greek language over the centuries.

The first dialectologists drew up a list of lin-guistic features that characterize the different dialectal varieties of Ancient Greece (cf. Buck 1910). The fact that so many local dialects which were geographically so much distant from each other shared these features ought to demon-strate that all of them derive from the same linguistic common ancestor (→ Proto-Greek and Common Greek). This view of the facts, how-ever, has changed substantially in recent years. The existence of a single nucleus of an original population that would have spoken a Doric dia-lect consisting of the entirety of the defining features of the dialect can only be defended from a theoretical viewpoint. The classification of the dialects under these terms is still useful, but only from an functional point of view. It is a rather well-known fact now that the evolu-tion of languages is a more complex phenom-enon than usually assumed, and the theory that all languages develop from a unitary common ancestor has been questioned and rejected in the field of dialectology (Penny 2000). In fact, a sound demonstration of the problems that may arise from the acceptance of this theory can be seen in the conclusions drawn by Vot-téro (2006) with regard to → Boeotian, a dialect traditionally considered to be a member of the → Aeolic group. Indeed, linguistic boundaries are not clear-cut in any language. Dialectologists prefer to speak of a ‘dialectal continuum’ rather than of dividing lines and clearly defined, cat-egorical borders. However, matters may become even more complicated when the documentary evidence at hand is scanty and has come down to us only in the form of written texts. In this sense, Finkelberg’s (2005) proposal is reduced to a slight variation of the traditional hypothesis, with the same lists of isoglosses used by previous dialectologists, although the undeniable pres-ence of border areas which must have acted as a bridge between different varieties is insisted upon (→ Dialects, Classification of ).


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Even though each Doric dialect had its own history and was the result of the different lin-guistic influences to which the people who lived in a given area had been subjected previously, as well as of those who were their neighbors, the Doric character of all of these dialects can be clearly identified. Features that define the Doric group are the following (Buck 1955, Mén-dez Dosuna 2007, Colvin 2007):

4.a. Phonology /aː/ is maintained as opposed to /eː/ in → Ionic and → Attic. → Contraction of /aː + oː/ > /aː/: cf. → genitive → plural -â of -a-stems. Contraction of /a: + o/ > /aː/: cf. genitive singular -ā of -a-stems. Contraction /a + e/ > /ε:/: cf. 3 sg. imperf. eníka-e > enikē ‘(he) won’ No assibilation in the final syllable -ti of the active 3 sg. in verbs and in wíkati ‘twenty’. The → labiovelar → glide wau is generally preserved in archaic inscriptions, but this is not also the case with the epichoric varieties on the Doric islands of the Aegean (Rhodes, for example), where no trace of wau is found since the earliest documents already.

4.b. Morphology → Nominative plural of the definite article toí, taí as opposed to Attic hoi, hai (→ Definiteness/Definite Article). → Aorist and future forms in -x- of -ázō verbs. Contracted future generalized as -sô < -séō. Athematic → infinitive ending in -men. First person plural of the → active voice ending in -mes, e.g. phéromes ‘we carry’. The future → passive taking on active endings.

4.c. Vocabulary

(1) → Adjective hiaros ‘holy’ instead of Att. hieros.

(2) Artamis instead of Att. Artemis (→ Theo nyms (Names of Gods)).

(3) → Conjunctions and temporal → adverbs ending in -ka: toka ‘then’, poka ‘when?’, hoka ‘when’.

(4) Adjective prâtos instead of prôtos ‘first’. (5) → Numerals: hundreds ending in -kátioi

(Att.-Ion. -kosioi); hébdemos ‘seventh’ (Att. hébdomos); tétores ‘four’ (Att. téttares).

(6) Preposition (→ Adpositions (Prepositions)) potí ‘towards’ instead of Att. pros (cf. Arg. poí before a dental consonant, Cret. portí).

(7) → Dative singular of the first person of the personal → pronoun emín instead of Att. emoí.

(8) odelos ‘obol’ instead of obolos.

(9) le(í)ō ‘I want’ instead of thélō or boúlomai, although these forms may co-occur in some (sub-)dialects.

(10) → Conditional conjunction ai ‘if ’ and modal particle ka (→ Particles); → word order ai tís ka ‘if somebody’.

A variety spoken in a particular area is defined as Doric if it presents the isoglosses listed above. In fact, these listed features appear in most Doric dialects, although they are not comprehensively shared by every single dialect of the group. Thus, this list of isoglosses can be subject to slight variations in the reference material consulted. The pre-Doric substrate can explain the absence of some features: e.g. this is how the presence of the masc. and fem. nom. pl. of the article hoi, hai, instead of the expected toí, taí, is explained in Cretan; or the use of 1 pl. -men instead of -mes in verbs. In other cases, the scarcity of dialectal inscriptions means that we must be cautious; thus, we have no example of -mes in Rhodes. As expected, each Doric dialect has its own pecu-liarities too; for example, the athematic infini-tive ending in Rhodian is -mein instead of -men.

5. Classification

Doric dialects differ in their long-vowel system. Two kinds of long-vowel systems can be identi-fied: those consisting of seven vowels and those that have only five. The difference between the two systems is based on the presence of both close middle and open middle vowels (/eː/ and /εː/, /oː/ and /ɔː/) or the absence (/eː/ and /oː/) of two sets of middle vowels that differ in their height. Depending on the type of the long middle vowels (and their origins), three different subgroups of Doric dialects can be distinguished (see below).

The weak articulation across Greek dialects of the sibilant deriving from an Indo-European *s (→ Indo-European Linguistic Background; → Consonant Changes), when in contact with a liquid or nasal consonant, led to new long vowels in the majority of the Greek dialects that emerged after the so-called ‘first → compen-satory lengthening’. When their pronunciation differed from that of the existing middle vow-els, these new long mid-close vowels brought about a change into the vowel system of several dialects. Being mid-close vowels in their tim-bre, they were distinguished from the inherited


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mid-open vowels, and consequently, they were generally represented through different graph-emes. In other Doric dialects though, second-ary mid-vowels merged with the primary ones and all of them were written in the same way; in that case, the vowel system was made up of five long vowels. Later phonetic developments (contraction of vowels as well as the so-called ‘second’ and ‘third’ compensatory lengthenings) led to the appearance of even more long vowels (→ Vowel Changes). In most dialects, the same process repeated itself: in those dialects with a system of seven long vowels, the new long middle vowels merged with the mid-close long vowels, while in the dialects with five vowels they merged with the inherited middle vowels. A third small group of Doric dialects attest to an intermediate situation: they did not generate new vowels after the first compensatory length-ening but did that at a later date, usually after the isovocalic contractions [e + e] and [o + o] had taken place. The terminology of Ahrens (1843) is still used and thus every group is labeled as Doris Severior, Doris Mitior and Doris Media (Bartoněk 1972), respectively, depending on the greater or lesser resistance shown by each dia-lect to the generation of new long mid-close vowels (eː and oː).

5.a. Dialects with a Five Long-Vowel System (Doris Severior ‘Strict Doric’) These epichoric varieties have been considered as the most conservative Doric dialects. They do not generate new long vowels that diverge from the inherited ones, as is clearly demonstrated by the fact that they are all rendered by the same graphemes <H> and <Ω>, respectively: e.g. títhēmi ‘I put’, but also ēmí ‘I am’; tôn anthrṓpōn ‘of the men’, but also bōlá ‘counsel’. The dialects of this group are the Laconian, Messenian, Cre-tan, Cyrenaean, and Heraclean dialects.

5.b. Dialects with a Seven Long-Vowel System (Doris Mitior ‘Mild Doric’) The dialects belonging to this group are slightly distanced and innovative in terms of what would have been their inherited long vowels. The mild Doric dialects have a vowel system similar to that of Attic-Ionic, with new long mid close vowels originating from the first and second compensatory lengthenings on the one hand and from isovocalic contractions on the other. These secondary vowels are never confused with

the inherited or primary ones and are rendered by the graphemes <EI> and <OY> rather than by the graphemes used for the inherited vowels, i.e, <H> and <Ω>: e.g. títhēmi ‘I put’, but eimí ‘I am’; tôn anthrṓpōn ‘of the men’, but boulá ‘counsel’. The Northwest dialects, as well as East-ern Argolic, Corinthian and Megarian belong to this group.

5.c. Dialects in an Intermediate Position (Doris Media) The middle Doric dialects differed originally, i.e., after the first compensatory lengthening, from the ‘mild’ dialects in the respect that they had a five long-vowel system like Doris severior. However, new diverging vowels arose after the second compensatory lengthening in some dia-lects and after the isovocalic contractions in some others. This is the case of the dialects of the Doric islands of the Aegean such as Rhodes, Cos, Thera and other minor islands, as well as Western Argolic.

5.d. Some Classification Issues This simple classification, essentially on the basis of phonology, allows us to distinguish the vari-ous dialectal sub-groups of Doric. In that respect, it represents an important step forward on the grounds that it involves looking past each par-ticular dialect and examining the overall result, thus providing us with a clearer overview of the whole group, which would not be possible if we simply focused on the minute details of each dia-lect. It goes without saying that even these small details are of undisputed scholarly significance, especially for the description of the individual dialects; but on the other hand, they can obscure our understanding of the evolution of the group as a whole, along with all the intrinsic problems which it must have faced in its development.

In the above classification, it is clear that the first compensatory lengthening took place across all Doric dialects; but the same cannot be said of the second compensatory lengthening, in which only the secondary group -ns- (and -nts) in word-medial and word-final position were affected. As a matter of fact, there are some Doric dialects in which these clusters show no change (e.g. fem. sg. nom. pánsa ‘all’, masc. pl. acc. tons ‘the’ in Western Argolic) or the preceding vowel is not lengthened after the loss of the nasal conso-nant (cf. the accusative plural of thematic stem nouns in -os on Cos and in Cyrene). In some


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other dialects the outcome of -ns- may differ, depending on whether it is in the middle or at the end of the word (for example, in Cyrenaean feminine participles end in -oisa, as opposed to the thematic plural accusative which ends in -os). The same can be said of the third com-pensatory lengthening which is only detected in some dialects (Western Argolic, Cretan) but is absent from the rest of the group, where the loss of the /w/ after a nasal or liquid consonant did not lead to any vowel lengthening. On the other hand, the outcome of the isovocalic contractions seems to have been much more uniform.

It is important to draw the attention to the fact that, although this grouping has its own advantages, Ahrens’ theory about the more con-servative nature of the strict (severior) dialects as opposed to the more innovative Doris mitior has influenced our linguistic interpretation of these dialects. It has been widely accepted that a system comprising fewer vowels is more archaic than one with more vowels. The fact that one of the dialects belonging to the Doris severior subgroup was Laconian seemed to con-firm such a view up to the point that linguistic arguments may have been mixed with other theories that were not of a linguistic nature at all. An example of this is seen in the appar-ently archaic and non-innovative character of the Spartan society, which strictly adhered to its ancestral customs and was not receptive of inno-vations from elsewhere. However, it has been pointed out that this theory may not reflect the reality of these dialects (Méndez Dosuna 1985, 2007). It is much more likely that the new mid-close long vowels were differentiated from the inherited long mid-open vowels across all of the Greek dialects from the very beginning and that, subsequently, i.e., at a later date, they may have merged with the inherited vowels. According to this theory, the most innovative dialects would have been those with a five long-vowel system, e.g. Laconian.

6. The Doric Koinai

Official decrees, treaties between cities and other documents written in Doric appear from the second half of the 4th c. BCE onwards. They are generally written according to a structure that is very similar to the contemporary documents composed in the Attic-Ionic Koine, but with a number of Doric characteristics. These features

agree to a greater or lesser extent with those mentioned in the above list of isoglosses which define the Doric character of any document, since a significant number of the first Doric inscriptions are written in a Koina (→ Formation of Doric Koines, the). The coincident wording of the public and official documents written in the Attic-Ionic Koine and in Doric raises a legiti-mate suspicion that the Doric documents are mere imitations of the Attic-Ionic administrative and official register. It seems as if the Doric cit-ies wished to have their own standard language and created a convergent form of Doric with the Attic-Ionic Koine in mind, an attempt that was not as much successful as the Koine. As far as we can establish, the successive attempts of creat-ing a Doric Koina did not achieve the same uni-form result as in the case of the Attic-Ionic Koine (especially in Greece), to the extent that small local differences can be found in documents from region to region. It is also of relevance that other individual koinai arose in other regions, such as those associated with the Aetolian and Achaean leagues in the Hellenistic period. Therefore, fea-tures that are very specific to a particular dialect are often found in the Koina of inscriptions from Doric areas (cf. the example of the Elean Koina, Minon 2007:601–630). It may be the case after all that it was not actually possible to cre-ate a neutral Doric supradialectal variety which would not reflect any specific Doric dialect, but would eliminate the most striking and/or exclu-sive local features and would manage to bring all dialects together as much successfully as in the case of the Attic-Ionic Koine (→ Ancient Bidi-alectalism and Bilingualism; → Ancient Greek Sociolinguistics and Dialectology).

Generally speaking, the most widespread Koina is a variety of Doris mitior in which the most representative Doric isoglosses are present. This (supra)dialectal form is also the one found in the Doric inscriptions in Sicily and has the fol-lowing general defining features:

(1) <ει>, <ου> as a result of the first two pro-cesses of compensatory lengthening and/or of homophonic contractions

(2) Consistent use of /a:/ instead of /ɛː/ (3) The → hiatus /eo/ is transcribed as <εο> (4) Genitive plural of -ā-stems in -ān (5) Athematic infinitive ending -men (6) The hybrid ei ka ‘if ’ (instead of ai ka).


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As the local peculiarities gradually disappeared altogether, the aforementioned characteristics could appear in inscriptions written in Koina, but could also be substituted by others in certain areas. It is important to stress that on this point Koina differs from the homogeneous Koine of the documents.

In conclusion, the analysis indicates that this instrument of written communication was pos-sibly more artificial than the Attic-Ionic Koine, in the respect that the Doric Koina was purely administrative in nature and was probably never spoken as such (→ Language Policies; → Attitudes to Language). In fact, there is some concrete evidence which seem to favor this hypothesis: in documents written in Koina we come across hybrid forms such as a fem. gen. pl. triakosiân ‘of three hundred’ instead of the expected Doric triakatiân or Attic-Ionic Koine triakosíōn. We also find hyperdialectalisms, such as the mechanical substitution of <A> for any <H>, even in words which never had /a:/ (Brixhe 1993 illustrates this point with examples and documents from Crete). The presence of hyperkoinisms is more doubtful and these are more difficult to identify. In fact, this phenomenon could reflect the first symptoms of the decline of the dialect since hypercorrection and/or hyperkoinisms tend to occur when speakers become progressively less competent in a specific dialect: confusions and mistakes can easily occur, thus leading to forms that may not have existed actually in real speech (→ Language Change). It is therefore plausible to think that the Koina did not reach the degree of standardization necessary for its further prog-ress, and that was in fact the main factor that led to its eventual disappearance. On the other hand, it seems that the Koine followed its own particular course of development and evolution as a spoken and literary language (Horrocks 2010) (→ Language and Variation in Greece; → Written versus Spoken Language).

7. Difficulties and Problems in Interpretation

Given that a significant number of Doric docu-ments appear to have been written in the Doric Koina, it is not easy to identify the status and form of the Doric epichoric dialects before the rising of a common form for use in official writ-ten documents. The Doric dialects that present the most particular features are Elean, Laconian,

Cyrenaean and Cretan; but undoubtedly, the uniform nature of the other Doric dialects is also remarkable. For instance, the only peculiarity of the Rhodian dialect (which seems to have survived into the Roman Imperial period, if we accept at least what the Roman historian Sue-tonius, Tib. 56 says) seems to be the athematic infinitive ending in -mein.

It is likely that the intonation with which an epichoric Doric dialect was spoken mixed together with the Attic-Ionic Koine gave rise to a special accent that characterized the speak-ers of each Doric region (→ Doric Accentuation; → Accentuation). However, our written sources provide no concrete evidence in support of this plausible hypothesis. It is reasonable to think that the spoken language would also have preserved these local peculiarities for a longer period of time and that the dialect itself would have lasted for longer than the epigraphical documents seem to suggest (→ Dialectal Convergence).

8. Forms of Doric Literature

We hardly have any literary texts written in a Doric dialect. We know that → choral poetry must have had Doric origins, because in antiquity this kind of composition was associated with the Doric dialect. However, the conventions of the genre, which includes elements of Aeolic and → epic diction, mean that the original features of the Doric dialect are hard to detect through literature. The most important evidence we can trace in literature are located in the poetic work of Alcman (7th c. BCE), the only poet to have included some features of the Laconian dialect in his poetical compositions, although we can-not be certain that these features were in fact present in his original text after all. Through the process of literary transmission several altera-tions may have been introduced and some of the most evident Laconian features (like the development of the voiceless aspirated dental /th/ into a sibilant /s/, unknown in the archaic epigraphical data) may be the result of changes introduced by the Alexandrian grammarians and/or even by the Laconians themselves, since the singing of Alcman’s Partheneia in Laconia and the reworking of his compositions through-out Greece would have continued, even at later periods (Hinge 2005). There are also some odd features that remain unexplained, such as the presence of some short forms of the accusative


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plural in the -ā-stem nouns (→ Inflectional Classes). Equally strange is the existence of short thematic infinitives that can only be explained as specific Doric features (→ Thematic and Ath-ematic Verbs ); however, they lack any parallel in Laconian inscriptions, although they are present in a small number of other Doric dialects.

Moreover, some characters which appear in the comedies of Aristophanes (Acharnians, Lysis-trata) attempt to speak in a manner that reflects features of the Megarian and Laconian dialects. But these sources must be treated with caution since the comic playwright may exaggerate in the style of his characters’ accents, by means of a somewhat deformed impression of these dialect variants, in order to produce a comic effect for his audience (→ Comedy, Diction of).

On the other hand, important information has also come down to us indirectly, through the glosses in Hesychius: the lexicographer provides us with a significant number of Laconian, Elean and Cretan words in particular (→ Dictionaries of Dialects: From Antiquity to the Byzantine Period).

Direct sources too, i.e., in the form of inscrip-tions, provide too little information to be discussed in this section. The content of the epigraphical texts does not normally correspond to what we consider as literary texts, although minor exceptions may be made when it comes to certain sources of a historical nature and/or of a particular length, such as the so-called Chroni-cle of the Temple at Lindos, a long epigraphic text from the island of Rhodes which dates back to the first century BCE.

Inscriptions written in verse, which are almost limited to funerary epigrams, usually present a conventional dialectal form which is particu-lar to this genre. Their dialectal linguistic form includes many elements of epic diction which tend to mask the vernacular features. However, before the conventions of the genre were estab-lished, archaic epigrams did appear in their respective dialects. This fact indicates that a spe-cific epigraphical poetry must really have existed in each region of Greece (Passa 2008).

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Araceli Striano

Doric Accentuation

Doric Greeks like Stesichorus and Ibycus seem to have had a slightly different pattern of high and low tones in their words than speakers of other dialects. Thus → Attic Greek philosophoi had its high tone (´) on the antepenultimate syllable, third from the end, while → Doric Greek had it on the penult (philosophoi), second from end. Compare the following Doric and Attic-Ionic forms:

Doric Attic-Ionic

elégon élegon ‘they said’angéloi ángeloi ‘messengers’tuptoménoi tuptomenoi ‘being beaten’ankúrai ánkurai ‘anchors’


Doric. Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics

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