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Towards a Grammar of
Byzantine Greek
Staffan Wahlgren
Published online: 06 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Staffan Wahlgren (2002): Towards a Grammar of

Byzantine Greek, Symbolae Osloenses: Norwegian Journal of Greek
and Latin Studies, 77:1, 201-204
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TOWARDS A GRAMMAR OF BYZANTINE GREEK *

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STAFFAN WAHLGREN
The title of my paper might need some clarification. I am concerned with aspects
of the description of written Greek from the Byzantine era. I am not trying to
write the Byzantine grammar, I am simply interested in looking at the
possibilities and the desirability of certain kinds of research. I do, however, take
as my starting-point the conviction that language is an underdeveloped field of
research in Byzantine studies.
Within general linguistics there are mechanisms at work which, paradoxically,
have acted restrictingly on the study of language, and there has been, indeed still
is, a strong tendency among linguists to consider spoken language as the only real
language. Natural is one of several epithets with a positive connotation given to
spoken language.1 And this has hit hard the study of historical languages, and,
consequently, has resulted in less than adequate support from general linguistics.
This neglect is felt particularly in cases of languages with strong diglossic
phenomena, such as Greek. In these cases the diglossia in itself may very well be
considered an interesting object of study, but not the high level language as such.2
Now, in ancient Greek studies, we have to some extent been able to
compensate for this lack of support from general linguistics. A research tradition
Another is spontaneous. The scientific discovery of the spoken language has to do with the
development of new fields of linguistic enquiry, such as phonology, and with a scholarly
generation including F. de Saussure; almost any post-Saussurian grammatical work could be
cited as evidence for the tendency to give primacy to the spoken language. A more favourable
attitude towards written language can be discerned in recent works, such as G. Horrocks,
Greek: a History of the Language and its Speakers (London/New York 1997 ) and J. NiehoffPanagiotidis, Koine und Diglossie (Wiesbaden 1994).
2 Katharevousa has been ignored by scholars, increasingly so as society has made less and less
use of that form of language; some work on katharevousa was done in the 19th and early 20 th
centuries by scholars such as Krumbacher and Kalitsunakis. Noteworthy is Babiniotis, who has
shown an interest in katharevousa in our timethis, however, in an attempt to argue that one
should accept and promote a Neohellenic Koine on the basis of linguistic phenomena which
include katharevousa. Other examples of languages with diglossic situations, where a higher or
less natural form is being suppressed, are: literary Arabic which, at least in present-day
scholarship, is relatively seldom dealt with, whereas the dialects attract much attention;
nynorsk, New Norwegian, which has a long tradition of being described only normatively;
mediaeval Latin which has been neglected almost as completely as Byzantine Greek (for which
see below), although developments, which eventually will produce a grammatical description
of mediaeval Latin, are now in progress.
1

*This is an annotated and slightly revised version of a paper read at the XXe congre s
international des e tudes Byzantines, Paris, August 2001. Thanks to professor Tomas Ha gg,
Bergen, and to my family for criticism.

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STAFFAN WAHLGREN
of its own has developed which has had its strong points, especially in the
intimate knowledge of the material and in the understanding of the problems of
its transmission.3
But when we turn to Byzantium it is obvious that the lack of linguistic backing
has not been compensated for. Only very few works analyse the grammatical
structure of Byzantine texts, and the fact, or the impression, that a text represents
an extreme form of high level Greek has generally meant that it has not been
considered necessary to deal with its linguistic form. High level Greek in
Byzantium is, accordingly, simply ancient Greek, good or bad: if good, not
necessary to deal with; if bad, not worthy of attention. Of course, the history of
how so much Byzantine Greek has been neglected is a much wider issue than
hinted at here. And part of the reason why so little large-scale investigation has
been carried out is, surely, to be found in the practical and methodological
difficulties involved. Nevertheless, I think the present diagnosis contains some
truth of importance.
Let us now take a look at two specific examples; the first illustrates the attitude
towards Byzantine Greek described above; the second is an actual investigation
quite a good one, but one which tells us much about the shortcomings of most
work that has been done so far.4
First, R. Browning in his Medieval and Modern Greek and in his short outline
on post-classical Greek in the Introduction to Greek Philology edited by H.-G.
Nesselrath.5 Browning deals exclusively with the spoken language, and his
attitude towards other levels of linguistic production in Byzantium is best
described as irritable; the high level languagewhich for him is ancient Greek
is the lamentable device which in particular conceals the real thinghow people
talkedfrom us. It is, in fact, one of those distorting mirrors.
Apart from the research which has produced our handbooks on the classical language, one
may mention exponents of the Greek branch of the grammatical tradition which goes back to
E. Lo fstedts post-classical Latin studies, e.g.: C. Fabricius, Zu den Jugendschrifte n des Johannes
Chrysostomos (Lund 1962); K. Hult, Syntactic Variation in Greek of the 5 th Century A.D.
(Go teborg 1990).
4 There are, of course, more studies to be mentioned. Interesting but problematic are those by
Hunger and S evc enko on levels of style, dealing with the phenomenon of metaphrasis (e.g. H.
Hunger-I. S evc enko, Des Nikephoros Blemmydes Basilikow Andriaw und dessen Metaphrase
von Georgios Galesiotes und Georgios Oinaiotes: ein weiterer Beitrag zum Versta ndnis der
byzantinischen Schrift-Koine (Wien 1986), with references to the authors earlier work on levels
of style, e.g. I. S evc enko, Levels of Style in Byzantine Prose, Jahrbuch der o sterreichischen
Byzantinistik 31.1 (1981) 290 -312 ). Both Hungers and S evc enkos studies tend to contain
extensive lists with alternative constructions; one may wonder what synthesis the authors had
in mind when they abandoned this line of research. I fear there is a risk that this kind of
presentation will perpetuate the conception of Byzantine Greek as consisting of two, or more,
distinct levels of style, of which the higher is looked upon as ancient Greek.
5
R. Browning, Medieval and Modern Greek (Cambridge etc. 1983) ( 2 nd ed.). H.-G.
Nesselrath, Einleitung in die griechische Philologie (Stuttgart-Leipzig 1997 , 156-168 ).
3

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TOWARDS A GRAMMAR OF BYZANTINE GREEK

My example of a detailed study is G. Bo hligs Der rhetorische Sprachgebrauch
der Byzantiner, a work much more limited in scope than the title seems to imply.6
It concentrates on Psellos, and the comparison made with other Byzantine
authors is restricted and unsystematic. It also has other shortcomings that reveal a
lack of theoretical framework. It contains, for example, a jungle of interspersed
information on how the finds relate to the sayings of the ancient grammarians, or
to ancient Greek. And it is clear that standard knowledge of ancient Greek, much
more than Psellos or his times, has shaped the investigation.
In fact, the only comprehensive study there is of a genre in Byzantine Greek is
still St. Psaltes Grammatik der byzantinischen Chroniken, which, unfortunately,
lacks a syntax.7
So far the research situation. What I would also like to do is to outline a
research project.
First, when it comes to time, genre and language level, I think one should
simply postpone all discussion on where in time to begin, or end, a grammar of
Byzantine Greek, what kind of texts to include and so on. One should really
begin work on material from any one period, from one generation, and from
texts which seem to be of the same type and level. The question as to what texts
are suitably included in one and the same work should be faced when more data
have been collected.
But the openness implied in this work policy should run in other directions
too. If we really want to deepen our knowledge of Byzantine Greek, our effort
should be in the form of a multi-step project, with each step autonomous and a
meaningful contribution to Byzantine studies in its own right. Further, we should
avoid a situation where one researcher, or group, spends years, or decades,
preparing work which is then considered as final and cannot be added to. We
should consider cooperation and the sharing of interim results.
Now for the project. Taking for granted that the problem of getting texts into
machine-readable form is, more or less, a problem of the past, I turn to the
question whether we should compile an annotated corpus of Byzantine texts.8
Annotation, or tagging, is a term used by general linguists to describe a wide
range of techniques whereby word classes, syntactical relations or semantical or
G. Bo hlig, Der rhetorische Sprachgebrauch der Byzantiner (Berlin 1956).
St. Psaltes, Grammatik der byzantinischen Chroniken (Go ttingen 1974 ) (2 nd ed.). Even for
the fields which it covers it explicitly limits itself to points where the Byzantine usage is
different from the classical, i.e. it does not give an overall picture of the normal usage in a given
situation. Cf. n. 11 below.
8 There are several projects aiming at providing texts in machine-readable form, notably the
TLG-project at Irvine (Cal.). It is also getting quite easy to scan texts on ones own. As one
preliminary stage of a comprehensive research effort one should also consider the need for a
bibliographie raisonne e; the bibliographical tools at our disposal so far are, chiefly, the
supplement of BZ, and Ph. D. Apostolopoulos, Inventaire me thodique de linguistique byzantine
(Thessaloniki 1994 ).
6
7

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STAFFAN WAHLGREN
pragmatical information are marked in a text, normally in an ordinary text-file
with footnotes.9
Such a corpus would be something quite new in Byzantine studies. One point
in its favour would be its use for many purposes, even purposes not originally
envisaged by the compiler.
I am myself contemplating making a start. I am thinking about compiling and
tagging a corpus of Byzantine texts, most likely high level texts, and to make the
corpus available on the Internet.10
In addition, I am thinking about making a limited number of investigations
and illustrating some uses to which this corpus could be put. In doing so, I plan
to ignore ancient Greek completely. I shall try to provide an analysis of Byzantine
linguistic usage.
To conclude, I am not unaware of the difficulties that the comprehensive
description of Byzantine Greek will involve. At the same time, I do think that
some of the objections raised against such an undertaking are open to discussion.
It has often been claimed that we do not yet have adequate editions of
Byzantine texts. I think we have. First, it is a mistake to believe that most new
editions will change the picture to any extent, not at least as far as syntax is
concerned. My own edition of the Chronicle of the Logothete will not add
anything of importance to our grammatical knowledge. Nor does a grammar
have to aim at completeness in the same way as a lexicon.11
It has also been claimed that the referential systems of the Byzantine writer
were fixed in antiquity, and that high level Byzantine Greek is nothing but the
more or less perfect internalization of ancient Greek.12 This is, to say the least, a
gross underestimation of the Byzantine writer and denies the existence of
inherent dynamics in his or her language.
Let us therefore look at Byzantine Greek with fresh eyes, with a view to
liberating it from its classical bonds.
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Department of History/Classical Studies
There is a growing literature on the general subject of annotation, e.g.: H. v. Halteren,
Syntactic Wordclass Tagging (Dordrecht/Boston 1999); R. Garside et al., Corpus Annotation
(London/New York 1997 ); J. Svartvik (ed.), Directions in Corpus Linguistics (Berlin/New York
1992 ). See also http://www.ruf.rice.edu/] barlow/corpus.html
10 I am planning to start with either the mid-Byzantine era (probably with the two midquarters of the 10 th c.) or with the age of the Palaiologoi (if so probably with the first half of the
14 th c.).
11 Even the best Byzantine lexicons are, I think without exception, incomplete in the sense
that they only deal with the points where Byzantine Greek differs from ancient Greek. This
produces a distorted picture of Byzantine usage, and testifies to the inferior status enjoyed by
Byzantium, in the eyes of posterity, as compared with antiquity. Cf. n. 7 above.
12 This is reflected even in such an excellent work as J. Niehoff-Panagiotidis, op. cit., p.
189:
die Schriftsprache entwickelt sich intentional nicht.
9

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