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  • Bilingualism in ancient society: Language contact and the written word ed. by J. N. Adams, Mark Janse, and Simon Swain
  • Joseph F. Eska
Bilingualism in ancient society: Language contact and the written word. Ed. by J. N. Adams, Mark Janse, and Simon Swain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. x, 483. ISBN 0199245061. $98 (Hb).

There is an immense amount of evidence that pertains to bilingualism in the ancient and early medieval worlds, little of which has been adequately studied. This volume, the proceedings of a conference held at the University of Reading in 1998, focuses on sociolinguistic issues in written texts, taking up matters such as deliberate interference in translation to increase grammatical parallelism in bilingual texts, varying degrees of biliteracy, language choice as dictated by genre or cultural domain, the expression of identity via language choice, diglossia, and symptoms of incipient language death.

The volume is divided into four parts following an introduction by J. N. Adams and Simon Swain. In the first, general, part, D. R. Langslow reviews important themes in current research on bilingualism and illustrates how it may be applied to the study of ancient texts, assesses the value of written sources as evidence for historical linguistic circumstances with special attention to the influence of ‘standard’ languages.

The second part deals with Greek-Latin bilingualism. Frédérique Biville studies the mutual influence of the languages upon each other; J. N. Adams examines motives behind language choice in epigraphic texts in a community of fully bilingual Roman and Italian traders on the island of Delos; Simon Swain explores the ways that Cicero chose to use Greek in his Latin discourse; and Martti Leiwo develops a typology of the kinds of contact situations that can be identified in epigraphic texts. [End Page 872]

The third part treats bilingualism and language contact between Greek and other languages. Ian Rutherford examines the mutual influence of Greek and Lycian upon each other; Penelope Fewster studies cultural implications of language choice between Greek and Egyptian; Claude Brixhe outlines linguistic interactions between Greek and Phrygian; Zeev Rubin analyzes grammatical interference in the Greek translations of Middle Persian and Parthian inscriptions; David G. K. Taylor investigates interaction between Greek and Aramaic in late antique Syria and Mesopotamia; and Mark Janse contrasts two varieties of Greek from the perspective of language contact: conscious interference in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Septuagint, and unconscious influence on modern Cappadocian Greek by Turkish.

The final part looks at interaction between Latin and other languages. Philip Burton searches for possible evidence for contact effects with Gothic, and Pierre Flobert examines the lexical evidence for Latin-Frankish bilingualism in sixth-century Gaul.

The majority of the papers in this volume are concerned with the close analysis of texts, but the linguist can learn a lot about social factors tied to bilingualism without becoming immersed in the individual philological traditions.

Joseph F. Eska
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
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