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Research Center for Language and Cognition (CLCG) Research Theoretical and Empirical Linguistics

Ancient Greek Linguistics

The research of the Ancient Greek Linguistics group (belonging to the chair group of Greek Language and Literature) focuses on diverse aspects of the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of Greek expressions. In doing so, the group members draw mainly on functional and cognitive linguistic paradigms. Please consult the personal profile pages of the group members (see table below) for more detailed information on the individual research focus of each.

Short summary:

Prof. dr. Gerry C. Wakker has widely published on a range of syntactic, pragmatic and semantic phenomena. Her monograph Conditions and Conditionals: an investigation of Ancient Greek (1994) focused on the meaning and function of the Greek subordinator ε ἰ , using the paradigm of Functional Grammar. Prof. Wakker has co-authored nine edited volumes on the Hellenistic Greek world and language. The organization of discourse is the topic of several of her articles, as well as the co-authored edited volume Discourse Cohesion (2009). Moreover, she has co-authored several textbooks of Ancient Greek linguistics for students and secondary school pupils, among which the widely used Beknopte Syntaxis van het Klassiek Grieks (“A Concise Syntax of Classical Greek”). Prof. Wakker’s current main research interests concern the choices made by language users to convey aspectual information, the syntactic variety in Greek expressions of the future and the semantic and pragmatic function of interactional particles in Greek texts. Besides her work as a linguist, Prof. Wakker is currently Dean of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Groningen.

Dr. Saskia Peels-Matthey works on questions of lexical and conceptual semantics of Ancient Greek. Her monograph, entitled Hosios: a semantic study of Greek piety (2016), focused on the field of words that give expression to the notion of pleasing gods. The online database A Collection of Greek Ritual Norms (2016, co-authored), a digital humanities project, elucidates 225 inscriptions which present the laws, customs and norms surrounding Greek rituals. Its linguistic contribution is the study of the vocabulary of the elusive concepts of sacrifice and purification. Greek notions of ritual purity are also treated in the edited volume Purity and Purification in the Ancient Greek world (2018, co-authored). Her current NWO Veni project Polytheism as Language focuses on the ‘polysemous’ nature of Ancient Greek gods, aiming to study this much-debated topic by applying insights from modern cognitive linguistics.

Dr. Remco F. Regtuit primarily works on didactic topics, in order to bridge the gap between academic research and the practice of teaching Greek and Latin at secondary schools. Previous work focused on the active use of Latin in teaching; at present he is working on near-synonyms (primarily in Latin) and on discourse organization (primarily in Greek). Dr Regtuit has co-authored several textbooks of Ancient Greek for secondary school pupils. He is also co-editor of the series Groningen Workshops on Hellenistic Poetry.

Group members:

NameExpertiseDisciplines
Peels-Matthey, dr. S. Ancient Greek religion, Ancient Greek literature, Greek epigraphy, digital humanities Classics
Regtuit, dr. R.F. Greek Language and Literature, Aristophanes, scholia, textual criticism Classics
Wakker, prof. dr. G.C. Ancient Greek linguistics; Ancient Greek Literature; Discourse Analysis Classics
Language & Linguistics
Communication Studies
Last modified:19 October 2022 09.39 a.m.