Ιστορική γλωσσολογία και φιλολογία [Historical linguistics and philology]

What is the relationship between historical linguistics and philology? This is the basic question addressed in this book. After a historical introduction and some clarificatory and terminological remarks, specific issues that constitute what is known as the ‘linguistic-philological’ approach are systematically examined, such as etymology, the critical processing of texts, poetic language, and dialectology. At the same time, additional allies are sought out in archaeology, in the study of culture, in the relationship between language and myth. Another issue addressed is the deciphering of as-yet-unknown scripts as a linguistic-philological process.

In terms of methodology, the work is built on an interdisciplinary basis, and explores an in-between area, the borderline that unites rather than separates historical linguistics from philology and other related disciplines. Commonly, in these in-between and often restricted areas, the researcher is faced with ambiguous situations, both in terms of methodology and in terms of research data and objectives. However, this particular case, according to the author, is not an ambiguous situation, but a robust area of research, a field of multiple convergences and divergences, where new ideas are born, scientific perspectives intersect, and interdisciplinary solutions are put forward.

The work seeks and puts forward ways to invigorate and enrich the linguistic outlook; in other words, it seeks allies for linguistics in the broader field of humanistic studies, particularly in philology. Phrased more appropriately perhaps, this work aims to rekindle the relationship between linguistics and these allies by locating and reinforcing the threads tying and the bridges connecting historical linguistics and classical philology.