Ιστορία της ελληνικής γλώσσας: από τις αρχές έως την ύστερη αρχαιότητα [A history of the Greek language: From the beginnings to late Antiquity]

A history of the Greek language: From the beginnings to late Antiquity is the product of a publishing project designed and implemented by the Center for the Greek Language and published by the Institute of Modern Greek Studies. A.-F. Christidis, professor of Linguistics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, was in charge of the overall design of the project.

This collective work consists of 127 contributions, written by approximately 80 Greek and foreign researchers. It examines the history of Ancient Greek from its Indo-European origin to late antiquity, incorporating it in the triptych language-history-culture. The volume consists of an Introduction, in which the editor examines the historiography of the Greek language, and 9 sections.

The first section discusses the basic aspects of the phenomenon of language. The second one focuses on the interplay between language and history and its role in shaping the Greek language. The third section describes the mosaic of dialects making up the Greek language until the emergence of Koine in the Hellenistic period. The fourth section examines the structure and evolution of Ancient Greek from the 5th century B.C. to late antiquity: phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, including proper nouns. In the fifth section, the contacts between the Greek language and other languages come to the fore. In these contacts, the historicity of the language is illustrated in the most distinct way. The sixth section also discusses inter-cultural contacts, focusing on translation practices, an activity that flourished mainly in late antiquity. The seventh section traces the fortunes of Ancient Greek in the field of literature but also in the field of science (medicine, philosophy). Moreover, it investigates the special vocabularies related to basic institutions of ancient society (law, slavery, religion). The final part of this section provides an indicative example of the interplay between language, history and culture through the examination of the semantic transformations of five words (ελληνισμός [hellenism], φιλοτιμία [integrity], παράδεισος [heaven], άγιος [saint], ψυχή [soul]). The eighth section describes attitudes and practices towards language in antiquity: language and education, the grammarians of antiquity, Atticism. The ninth section focuses on the predominantly ideological issue of the fortunes of Ancient Greek in the medieval and modern period, both in Europe and in the context of modern hellenism.

The volume also includes three appendices addressing more specific aspects of Ancient Greek: script issues (punctuation, stress), special uses, specific topics that highlight the operation of linguistic mechanisms. For ease of reference, at the end of the book there is a list of all the ancient sources referred to by the authors, a glossary of terms, the symbols and the conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as well as tables presenting the evolution of the Greek phonetic system. The volume ends with four indices: an index of proper nouns, an index of languages/dialects, an index of words per language/dialect, and an index of terms and topics. The majority of the contributions in the volume are accompanied by excerpts from Ancient Greek texts, together with their translation in Modern Greek, which facilitate understanding of the issues addressed.

This second, revised edition contains some additional contributions, first included in the book's English translation, which was published in 2007 by Cambridge University Press.