What Linguists Are Good For

This paper gives a personal and polemical account of why linguists are useful and why departments of classics should embrace us. Students of Greek, Roman, and (for that matter) other civilizations are hungry for insight into the languages they study, while linguists are a vibrant and versatile breed, able to teach an unusually wide range of coursesand teach them well. Among the specific points explored are the meaning of "theory," the utility of understanding such technical matters as Grassmann's Law and ablaut, and the application of linguistic methodology to the problematic sequence ΠΕΡΙΓΝΥΣΙ in verse 152 of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.