Authenticity and Language Contact in two Ostracon Documents from the Eastern Desert (O.Claud. 1.141 and 142)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4312/keria.25.2.157-174Keywords:
Post-classical Greek, ostraca, Eastern Desert, authenticity, language contactAbstract
I discuss two near-identical passages preserved on ostraca from the Eastern Desert (O.Claud. 1.141, ll. 1–4 and O.Claud. 1.142, ll. 1–3). Although they seem to provide an insight into how speakers of Greek in the first centuries AD perceived the relationship between finite and non-finite clauses, their interpretation turns out to be an intricate task. This is because the authors of most texts from the area were L2 speakers of Greek (Leiwo, ‘L2 Greek in Roman Egypt’). Based on the concept of authenticity (Joseph, ‘Textual Authenticity: Evidence from Medieval Greek’), I nonetheless argue that the passages in question reflect the wider processes that took place in Koine, resulting in the use of the perfect infinitive to convey anteriority in the infinitive clauses dependent on verbs of saying and thinking.
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