9 Linguistics - SunoikisisDC/SunoikisisDC-2024-2025 GitHub Wiki

Papyrological texts and linguistic research

SunoikisisDC Digital Classics: Session 9

Date: Thursday March 20, 2025. 16:00-17:30 GMT.

Convenors: Marja Vierros (University of Helsinki), Polina Yordanova (University of Helsinki)

Youtube link: https://youtu.be/A4Pc2cm3bjA

Slides: tba

Outline

This session discusses linguistic approaches to studying the language and text of ancient papyri, in particular on the use of Treebanks (texts digitally encoded with morphological and syntactic annotations). We begin with a theoretical overview of the topic, the kinds of research questions that these methods may be applied to, and some examples of recent projects and tools for digital analysis of ancient Greek Treebanks. We then focus on two main case studies, projects looking at variations in post-classical Greek through morphology and syntax, and on word order in documentary papyri, respectively. We end with a demonstration and proposed exercise involving two major recent tools: PapyGreek Search and KilnTreebank.

Required readings

  • Henriksson, E. and Vierros, M. 2025. "PapyGreek Search: Exploring the Language of Greek Papyri." In: Reggiani, N. ed. Digital Papyrology III: The Digital Critical Edition of Greek Papyri: Issues, Projects, and Perspectives. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 163-184. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111070162-011
  • Mambrini, F. 2016. "The Ancient Greek Dependency Treebank: Linguistic Annotation in a Teaching Environment." In Romanello M. & Bodard G, Digital Classics Outside the Echo-Chamber. London: Ubiquity Press. Available: https://doi.org/10.5334/bat.f

Further readings

  • Lajos Berkes. 2018. "Perspectives and Challenges in Editing Documentary Papyri Online A Report on Born-Digital Editions through Papyri.info." In: Reggiani, N. ed. Digital Papyrology II: Case Studies on the Digital Edition of Ancient Greek Papyri. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 75-86. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110547450-004
  • Biagetti, E., Inglese, G., Zanchi, C., & Luraghi, S. 2023. "Reconstructing variation in Indo-European word order: A treebank-based quantitative study." Language Dynamics and Change, 13(2), 198-231. https://doi.org/10.1163/22105832-bja10025
  • Chronopoulos, Stelios, Felix K. Maier, and Anna Novokhatko, eds. 2022. Digital Text Analysis of Greek and Latin sources; Methods, Tools, Perspectives. Classics@ 21. Available: https://classics-at.chs.harvard.edu/volume/classics20-digital-text-analysis-of-greek-and-latin-sources/
  • Dell'Oro, Francesca, Helena Bermúdez Sabel & Paola Marongiu. 2020. “Implemented to Be Shared: the WoPoss Annotation of Semantic Modality in a Latin Diachronic Corpus.” Sharing the Experience: Workflows for the Digital Humanities. Proceedings of the DARIAH-CH Workshop 2019. Available: https://zenodo.org/record/3739440#.XzqoTZMzZTZ
  • Keersmaekers, Alek. 2021. “The GLAUx corpus: methodological issues in designing a long-term, diverse, multi-layered corpus of Ancient Greek.” Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change 2021, 39–50. Association for Computational Linguistics. Available: https://aclanthology.org/2021.lchange-1.6
  • Mambrini, F., & Passarotti, M. 2016. "Subject-Verb Agreement with Coordinated Subjects in Ancient Greek: A Treebank-Based Study." Journal of Greek Linguistics, 16(1), 87-116. https://doi.org/10.1163/15699846-01601003
  • Passarotti, Marco. 2019. "The Project of the Index Thomisticus Treebank." In Monica Berti (ed), Digital Classical Philology: Ancient Greek and Latin in the Digital Revolution. De Gruyter. Pp. 299–320. Available: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110599572-017
  • Polis, S. & S. Rosmorduc. 2013. 'Building a Construction-Based Treebank of Late Egyptian: The Syntactic Layer in Ramses'. In Polis, S. & J. Winand (eds.), Texts, languages & information technology in egyptology: selected papers from the meeting of the Computer Working Group of the International Association of Egyptologists (Informatique & Égyptolgie), Liège, 6-8 July 2010. Liège: Presses Universitaires de Liège. 45–59. Available: https://orbi.uliege.be/bitstream/2268/110297/1/AegLeod9_03_Ramses2.pdf
  • Nicola Reggiani. 2017. Digital Papyrology I: Methods, Tools and Trends. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110547474
  • Nicola Reggiani (ed.). 2018. Digital Papyrology II: Case Studies on the Digital Edition of Ancient Greek Papyri. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110547450
  • Nicola Reggiani (ed.). 2025. Digital Papyrology III: The Digital Critical Edition of Greek Papyri: Issues, Projects, and Perspectives. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111070162
  • Joanne Stolk. 2018. "Encoding Linguistic Variation in Greek Documentary Papyri The Past, Present and Future of Editorial Regularization". In: Reggiani, N. ed. Digital Papyrology II: Case Studies on the Digital Edition of Ancient Greek Papyri. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 119-138. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110547450-007
  • Lucia Vannini. 2022. "Online availability, impact and sustainability of digital papyrological resources." Digital Classics Online 8. Available: https://doi.org/10.11588/dco.2022.8.87562
  • Vierros, M. 2018. Linguistic Annotation of the Digital Papyrological Corpus: Sematia. In Nicola Reggiani (Editor), Digital Papyrology II: Case Studies on the Digital Edition of Ancient Greek Papyri (pp. 105–118). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. Available: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110547450-006
  • Marja Vierros & Polina Yordanova. 2022. “Querying Syntactic Constructions in Ancient Greek Parsed Corpora: A Case Study on the Genitive Absolute in Literature and Documentary Papyri.” Classics@ 20. Available: https://classics-at.chs.harvard.edu/querying-syntactic-constructions-in-ancient-greek-parsed-corpora-a-case-study-on-the-genitive-absolute-in-literature-and-documentary-papyri/

Treebanking Guidelines:

Resources

Exercise

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