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[German version] A. General, definition Since the beginning of the 19th cent. primarily outside the German language area (cf. French langues indo-européennes but German Indogermanische Sprachen) the common term for a group of related languages which in antiquity and in the Middle Ages stretched in a line running from the southeast to the northwest from India to Europe. This area of distribution gave its name to a family of ancient and recently attested, as well as extinct and still living languages. The Indo-European l…

[German version] (πολυσύνδετον/ polysýndeton, 'bound together many times'). Repetition of a coordinating copulative or disjunctive conjunction (cf. Quint. Inst. 9,3,50: “schema, quod coniunctionibus abundat: ... hoc πολυσύνδετον dicitur”; also Rutilius Lupus 1,14: “ hoc schema efficitur, cum sententiae multorum articulorum convenienti copula continentur)”. This stylistic figure of speech concerns the co-ordination of single words or syntactical units (groups of words, clauses, sentences) and emphasises the weight of individual elements. Thus, for example, 28 sections in Cic. De or. 3,207 are linked to one another by …

[German version] I. General definition Style (from Lat. stilus, 'stilt' > 'stylus' > 'writing style'; Gk. λέξις/ léxis) refers to the individual manner in which a person expresses himself orally or in writing. Its specific character is formed through the (more or less intentional) use of shaping elements such as stylistic figures during the process of turning thought concepts into language with the conscious or subconscious purpose of achieving certain situational effects. According to the Greek theory of rhetor…

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[German version] Summarizing term for the five principles of word order and clause order established by O. Behaghel (1854-1936) [2]. The best known of the five is the so-called law of increasing parts ( Gesetz der wachsenden Glieder): it is based on the tendency -- already apparent in antiquity -- to go from shorter to longer constituents [1. 139; 2. 6], see Demetrius Phalereus, De elocutione 18: ἐν δὲ τοῖς συνθέτοις περιόδοις τὸ τελευταῖον κῶλον μακρότερον χρὴ εἶναι. Cic. De or. 3,48: quare aut paria esse debent posteriora superioribus et extrema primis aut, quod etiam es…

[German version] The common technical term since Graeco-Roman times (Greek: παρένθεσις/ parénthesis, παρέμπτωσις/ parémptosis; Latin: interpositio, interclusio, 'insertion'; cf. Quint. Inst. 9,3,23) for a unit inserted into a sentence that remains structurally independent of the entire syntactic surroundings.  The parenthesis can consist of a single word, a group of words, an entire sentence, or compound sentence.  In modern usage, in contrast to ancient texts, the parenthesis is identified by punctuation marks…

[German version] (from τμῆσις/ tmêsis, ‘the act of cutting, separation’). An ancient term for the phenomenon of breaking up compound word forms (primarily verbal forms) by inserting or rearranging its constituents: cf. Serv. Aen. 1,412 “Figura tmesis est, quae fit, cum secto uno sermone aliquid interponimus” (“Tmesis is the rhetorical device that is forme…

[German version] (πρόληψις/ prólēpsis, 'anticipation'; Latin anticipatio or praeceptio…

[German version] (ἅπαξ λεγόμενον; hápax legómenon, ‘said only once’, also referred to as ἅπαξ εἰρημένον/ hápax eirēménon): in the strictest sense, hapax legomenon is a technical term for a word that is attested in only one place within the entire textual corpus of a language (literature, inscriptions, i.a.). One must distinguish between the following: (a) actual creations of new expressions, that is, forms created poetically, esp. those supported through the metre, (b) words that only appear once due to the nature of the sources (mainly spec…

[German version] The history of  writing shows that throughout the world there are fundamentally only three ways of transcribing the spoken word: pictograms, syllabic scripts and phonetic alphabets (in that order). All known scripts use either one of those techniques or a combination of them. Only the last of the three is suitable for an adequate representation of sound patterns. The consonantal script that was adopted mainly in the East constitutes a special form of phonetic script. In Hellas and the Aegea…

[German version] The Indo-Aryan languages (IL) comprise the majority of those  Indo-European languages that have been spoken on the Indian sub-continent since the immigration from the north-west in the 2nd millennium BC. Together with the  Iranian languages, they form the Indo-Iranian branch of this family of languages. Old Indo-Aryan (less precise: Old Indian) begins just before 1200 BC with Vedic and continues in Sanscrit [1. 16-48]. As an ancient and earl…

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[German version] (σχῆμα ἀπὸ κοινοῦ ‘a figure created through what is common’, cf. Apoll. Dysk. syntax 122,14). Unlike the ancient [1; 3.5-9] imprecise understanding of this, still common today [2], as a generally one-off formation of an element common to two sentences (or clauses) ( Ellipse,  Zeugma), apo koinou is now understood to mean ‘the logical and grammatical-syntactic relationship between one sentence element and two…

[German version] (Greek ἔλλειψις; élleipsis: ‘omission’, Lat. ellı̄psis: Quint. Inst. 8,6,21, cf. 9,3,58); in contrast with brachylogy, it refers to the actual omission of a syntactically essential constituent of a sentence, which can, however, be restored verbatim (not merely in its meaning) from context and situation (cf. Donat. 4,395,11: e. est defectus quidam necessariae dictionis). Some examples from everyday language: Καλλίας ὁ Ἱππονίκου (sc. υἱός), Pl. Ap. 20a; ad Diana…

[German version] (< Latin labium ‘Lip’ and velum ‘sail’). Stop simultaneously articulated with lips and velum. The labio-velars kw gw gwh , along with the velars k g gh and the palatals ḱ ǵ ǵh form the group kn…

[German version] Sixth letter of the Greek alphabet representing the sound value /u̯/at the beginning of a syllable (bilabial pronunciation as in water). The name digamma (‘double gamma’, i.e. ‘one gamma above another ’, cf. ὥσπερ γάμμα διτταῖς ἐπὶ μίαν ὀρθὴν ἐπιζευγνύμενον ταῖς πλαγίοις, Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1,20,3) refers to the appearance of the letter  and unlike other letter names was coined by the Greeks themselves. The model for the digamma was the consonant wāw /u̯/ of Phoenician [3]. The digamma stands for …

[German version] (ἀσύνδετον). ‘Unconnected’, cf. Aristot. Interpr. 17a 17 or Rh. 1413b 29; Latin correspondences: dissolutio (Quint. Inst. 9,3,50) or solutum (Aquila Rhet. 41). Conjunctionless stringing together of at least two coordinated syntactic constructions (individual words, groups of words, parts of a sentence or sentences) that are related to each other from the point of view of content and logic. Accordingly, differentiation is made between the word and the sentence asyndeton anthithesis:  polysyndeton. F…

[English version] Die i.S. umfassen die Mehrzahl derjenigen indogermanischen Sprachen, die auf dem ind. Subkontinent seit der Einwanderung aus NW im 2. Jt. v.Chr. gesprochen werden. Sie bilden zusammen mit den iranischen Sprachen den indoiran. Zweig dieser Sprachfamilie. Das Altindoarische (weniger genau: Altind.) beginnt gegen 1200 v.Chr. mit dem Vedischen und setzt sich im Sanskrit fort [1. 16-48]. Als altertümliche und frühbezeugte idg. Sprache hat es viele nicht nur for…

[English version] Als M. bezeichnet man diejenige Sprachform des Griechischen, in der die in der Schrift Linear B verfaßten Texte aus der Spätbrz. (ca. 1420-1180 v.Chr.) wiedergegeben werden. Diese Silbenschrift (Griechenland, Schriftsysteme) eignet sich nur eingeschränkt für die Erfassung der gesprochenen Wortformen: So kann der Männername e-u-po-ro etwa als / Ehupōlos…

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