Form and Structure in Aeolic Lyric Meter
By Angelo Mercado, Grinnell College
Of all the meters that we encounter in our poetic texts and metrical handbooks, lyric would sit high up the taxonomic pyramid for its complexity and terminological richness. However, an economy can be found to underlie all that wealth.
Some Clarifications Concerning the Origin and Relatives of γῆ/γαῖα ‘earth’
By Andrew Merritt, Cornell University
The origin of γῆ ‘earth, land’ (extra-Attic-Ionic γᾶ) and its by-form γαῖα has been a crux of Greek etymology. Association with the theonym Δημήτηρ (: Δαμάτηρ) is unfruitful for want of good reason to suppose that δᾶ meant ‘earth’ (EDG: 295, 324). Since, moreover, γῆ is the normal word vis-à-vis γαῖα, there has been a similarly fruitless temptation to speculate that the latter is a poetic creation based on αἶα ‘earth, land’ (Schwyzer 1959: 473), whose preform presumably came to bear that meaning because of EARTH IS MOTHER (cf. Lat. avia ‘grandmother’).
Neither Here Nor There: Interactive Functions of Vagueness in Roman Comedy
By Tomaz Potocnik, University College London
In this exploratory paper, I address the linguistic phenomenon of vagueness in Latin. According to Fraser (2010: 25), “most expressions are vague, although we do not realise it.” Vagueness is a part of speakers’ communicative competence and knowing how to interpret vague expressions is a central feature of everyday conversation (Jucker et al. 2003: 1738).
The Latin -to Imperatives in Late Republican Epistolography
By Solveig Hilmarsdottir, University of Cambridge
Title: The Latin -to Imperatives in Late Republican Epistolography
Abstract: