Course description

Chechen is a language of the Nakh branch of the East Caucasian language family. It is spoken by approximately 1.5 million Chechens living in Chechnya (where it is an official language), in neighbouring areas such as Georgia and Daghestan, and as part of the Chechen diaspora, notably in Turkey, Kazakhstan, France, US. Chechen is characterised by ergative alignment, a mixed system of spatial cases and postpositions, 6 genders, a large variety of tense-aspect-mood-evidentiality forms (especially periphrastic ones), and many converb formations used for non-finite subordination.

Chechen is the largest East Caucasian language in terms of number of speakers and in terms of geographical spread. It boasts a rich dialectal variety in terms of both lexicon and grammar. Besides the dialects, which are spoken on a day-to-day basis, a standardised variety of Chechen exists, and has been written at least since the 18^th century, first in Arabic, very briefly in Latin, now generally in the Cyrillic script.

Chechen features a complicated morphophonology (including a rich system of umlaut and vowel deletion processes), but this can be elucided by comparing the language with its immediate sisters Ingush and Tsova-Tush. The Nakh branch, comprising only these 3 languages, due to its typological deviations from Daghestanian languages, is often said to be the first to split off from Proto-East-Caucasian, but actual proof remains extant.

Course outline

This course will consist of a general description of Standard Chechen grammar in typological perspective, relying mainly on written texts and occasional comparison to other Nakh languages. Participants will be invited to train their description skills by glossing and analysing many Chechen clauses themselves.

Lesson 1: Overview, sociolinguistics, phoneme inventory, gender system
Lesson 2: Phonological processes, core cases, Present/Preterite
Lesson 3: Numerals, pronouns, adjectives, demonstratives
Lesson 4: Nominal adjuncts, Imperfect/Remote past
Lesson 5: Alignment, verbal derivation, light verbs, basic text
Lesson 6: Imperative, Subjunctive, texts
Lesson 7: Perphrastic tenses, Evidentiality, texts
Lesson 8: Converbs, Subordination, texts
Lesson 9: Dialectology, texts
Lesson 10: Comparison with Tsova-Tush and Ingush, texts

Background reading

• Matsiev, Akhmat (1961) Čečensko-russkij slovar’ [Chechen-Russian dictionary]. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izda-tel’stvo inostrannyx i nacional’nyx slovarej. https://cls.ru.nl/staff/ekomen/che/dict/lexicon/main.htm
• Molochieva, Zarina. 2011. Aspect in Chechen. Linguistic Discovery 9(2):104-121.
• Nichols, Johanna (1994) Chechen. In The indigenous languages of the Caucasus. Vol. 4, The North East Caucasian languages, Part 2, Smeets, R. (ed.), 2-77. Delmar: Caravan Books.
• Komen, Erwin R.; Molochieva, Zarina; Nichols, Johanna. 2020. Chechen and Ingush. In: Polinsky, Maria (ed.) Oxford handbook of languages of the Caucasus. Oxford University Press. 317-365.

Prerequisites

No prior familiarity with East Caucasian is required. Knowledge of basic linguistic terminology is recommended.

Course description

Georgian is a Kartvelian language spoken by appr. 4 million speakers, mostly in Georgia (where it is the national language), in neighbouring Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran and by diaspora communities in Russia, Ukraine, US, Germany and elsewhere. It is one of only three languages of the Caucasus that have a historical writing tradition (besides Armenian (Indo-European) and Udi/Caucasian Albanian (East Caucasian)), and Georgian inscriptions have been found as early as the 5th c. AD.

In terms of phonology, Georgian features a three-way distinction in consonants (voiced, aspirated, ejective), and is famous for its large consonant clusters with up to 8 segments. Morphosyntactically, it features a modest case system (with traces of case stacking) and a split ergative, split active/inactive alignment system. Georgian morphology is agglutinative in principle, although tense-aspect-mood-evidentiality and person inflection involves so-called distributed exponence, in which the marking of grammatical meaning is distributed across multiple morphs, each of which contribute a subcomponent of that meaning. The Georgian verb can mark up to 3 arguments, which involves a complex hierarchy to decide which marker is overtly expressed. A special set of valency markers (pre-radical vowels) can cause valency operations, but each is also used to signal tense-aspect forms.

Although Georgian has changed very little over the centuries, it has adopted many Turkic, Iranian and Arabic loanwords, and despite it being a Kartvelian language, it shows many features of the Araxes linguistic area (lack of /f/, singular after numerals, ‘want’ = ‘must’ and more).

Course outline

This course will consist of a general description of Georgian grammar in typological perspective, relying mainly on extant texts and occasional comparison to other languages in the region. Participants will be invited to train their description skills by glossing and analysing many Georgian clauses themselves.

Lesson 1: Overview, sociolinguistics, phoneme inventory, Present, core cases
Lesson 2: Consonant clusters, declension types, adjectives
Lesson 3: Secondary cases/postpositions, numerals, pronouns, demonstratives
Lesson 4: Version (valency operations)
Lesson 5: Preverbs, Future, thematic suffixes
Lesson 6: Imperfect, texts
Lesson 7: Subjunctive, Future Subjunctive, Conditional, texts
Lesson 8: Aorist, Optative, Imperative, texts
Lesson 9: Perfect, Pluperfect, texts
Lesson 10: Subordination, dialectology, texts

Background reading

• Aronson, H. 1989. Georgian. A reading grammar. Bloomington: Slavica
• Vogt, H. 1971. Grammaire de la langue géorgienne. Oslo: University Press
• Harris, A. C. 1981. Georgian syntax. A study in relational grammar. Cambridge: University Press
• Harris, A. C. 1982. Georgian and the Unaccusative Hypothesis. Language, 58(2): 290-306.

Prerequisites

No prior familiarity with Georgian or its script is required. Knowledge of basic linguistic terminology is recommended.

Course description

TBA

Course description

The Caucasus mountain range, located between Russia in the north and the Middle East in the south, is famous for its ethnic and linguistic diversity, with approximately 60 languages spoken in an area the size of Germany. Besides several Turkic and Indo-European languages, the Caucasus is home to three so-called ‘indigenous’ language families: Kartvelian (4 languages, including e.g. Georgian), West Caucasian (5 languages, including e.g. Abkhaz), and East Caucasian, (40 languages, including e.g. Chechen, Avar, Lezgian). This course will give an introduction to all three families and provide case studies in the reconstruction of protolanguages of branches and families. Additionally, short mention will be made of the (failed) Ibero-Caucasian hypothesis, while substantial attention will be devoted to the (promising) North Caucasian hypothesis.

Course outline

Class 1. Introduction to languages of the Caucasus; the Kartvelian language family and reconstruction
Class 2. The Kartvelian language family and reconstruction; The Ibero-Caucasian hypothesis
Class 3. Introduction to the West Caucasian languages; Abkhaz reconstruction
Class 4. Circassian languages and reconstruction; Ubykh
Class 5. Reconstructing Proto-West-Caucasian; Hattic
Class 6. Introduction to the East Caucasian languages; Nakh languages and phylogenetics
Class 7. Introduction and reconstruction of the Avar-Andic-Tsezic languages
Class 8. Introduction and reconstruction of the Lezgic languages
Class 9. North Caucasian: Introduction, morphological comparison
Class 10. North Caucasian: lexical comparison; Situating North Caucasian in time and space

Background (non-required) reading

• Abdokov, A. I. [Абдоков] (1983). O zvykovyx i slovarnyx sootvetstvijax severokavkazskix jazykov [Phonological and lexical correspondences of the North Caucasian languages]. Nalchik: Elbrus.
• Chirikba, V. A. (1996). Common West Caucasian. The recontruction of its phonological system and parts of its lexicon and morphology. Leiden: Research School of Asian, African and Amerindian Studies (CNWS).
• Dumézil, G. (1933). Introduction à la grammaire comparée des langues caucasiennes du Nord. Paris: Champion.
• Fähnrich, H. (2007). Kartwelisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Leiden: Brill.
• Maisak, T. (2020). Grammaticalization in Lezgic (East Caucasian). In W. Bisang, A. Malchukov (eds.), Grammaticalization scenarios: Cross-linguistic variation and universal tendencies, vol. 1: Grammaticalization scenarios from Europe and Asia, 309–360. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter.
• Nichols, J. (2003). The Nakh-Daghestanian consonant correspondences. In K. Tuite, & D. A. Holisky (Eds.), Current trends in Caucasian, East European and Inner Asian linguistics: papers in honor of Howard I. Aronson (pp. 207–264). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Nikolayev, S. A., & Starostin, S. A. (1994). A North Caucasian etymological dictionary. Moscow: Asterisk.
• Polinsky, M. (ed.) (2020). The Oxford handbook of languages of the Caucasus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Schrijver, P. (2018). The origin of vowel alternation in Avar-Andi-Dido (North-East Caucasian), with special reference to the Dido languages. International Journal of Diachronic Linguistics 15, 199–223.
• Trubetzkoy, N. (1926). Studien auf dem Gebiete der vergleichenden Lautlehre der nordkaukasischen Sprachen. I. Caucasica, 3, 7-36.
• Trubetzkoy, N. (1930). Nordkaukasische Wortgleichungen. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 37, 76–92.
• Tuite, K. (2008). The rise and fall of the Ibero-Caucasian hypothesis. Historiographia Linguistica 35(1/2), 23-82.

Prerequisites

Knowledge of basic linguistic terminology and principles of comparative-historical linguistics is highly recommended.

Course description

This course provides an in-depth exploration of the structure of the Noun Phrase (NP) and the Verb Phrase (VP) in Mandarin Chinese. Divided into two parts, the course offers a focused approach to understanding these fundamental components of Chinese syntax.

In the first week, we will delve into the structure of the Noun Phrase, examining its key properties, such as classifiers, modifiers, and the role of determiners. We will review major syntactic analyses proposed in the literature and discuss unresolved questions that invite further investigation.

The second week shifts to the Verb Phrase, exploring its internal structure, including aspects such as verb complements and aspect markers. As with the NP, this section will provide an overview of influential analyses and highlight gaps in the current understanding, paving the way for future research.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the syntactic properties and internal structure of the Noun Phrase and Verb Phrase in Mandarin Chinese.
• Gain familiarity with key theoretical analyses in the literature and their implications for the study of Chinese syntax.
• Identify unresolved issues in the syntactic study of NP and VP in Mandarin Chinese and consider directions for future research.

Level and requirements/prerequisites

This course is designed for students who already have a solid foundation in theoretical syntax. While basic knowledge of the Chinese language is recommended, it is not a strict prerequisite.

Preparatory readings (must reads before coming to class)

• Huang, C-T. James, Y-H. Audrey Li, & Yafei Li. 2009. Chapter 1: Categories. The syntax of Chinese. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 9-35.
• Huang, C-T. James, Y-H. Audrey Li, & Yafei Li. 2009. Chapter 3: The verb phrase. The syntax of Chinese. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, only from p. 77 to p. 84

Background readings

NP

• Cheng, Lisa L.-S. 1986. de in Mandarin. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 31:313-326.
• Cheng, Lisa L.-S. & Rint Sybesma. 1999. Bare and not-so-bare nouns and the structure of NP. Linguistic Inquiry 30:509-542.
• Cheng, Lisa L.-S. & Rint Sybesma. 2014. The syntactic structure of Noun Phrases. In Huang C.-T. James, Li Y.-H. Audrey & Andrew Simpson (eds), The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics. London: John Wiley & Sons: 248-274.
• Del Gobbo, Francesca. 2014. Classifiers. In Huang J. C.T., Li. A. & A. Simpson (eds.) The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics. London: John Wiley & Sons: 26-48
• Paul Waltraud. 2005. Adjectival modification in Mandarin Chinese and related issues. Linguistics 4: 757-793
• Simpson Andrew. 2001. Definiteness Agreement and the Chinese DP. Language and Linguistics 2(1): 125-156
• Sybesma, Rint &  Joanna Sio. 2008. D is for demonstrative. Investigating the position of the demonstrative in Chinese and Zhuang. The Linguistic Review 25 (3-4): 453-478

VP

• Huang, C-T. James, Y-H. Audrey Li, and Yafei Li. 2009. Chapter3: The verb phrase The syntax of Chinese.Cambridge University Press: 77-110.
• Liu Meichun. 2015. Tense and Aspect in Mandarin Chinese. In  Wang William S-Y & Sun Chaofen (eds), The Oxford handbook of Chinese Linguistics. Oxford University Press: 274-289.
• Shen Li. 2004. Agreement and Light Verbs in Chinese: A Comparison with Japanese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 13(2): 141-179
• Soh, Hooi Ling, 2014, Aspect. In J. Huang, A. Li, A. Simpson (eds), The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics. London: John Wiley & Sons, 126-155
• Soh, Hooi Ling. 2017. Aspect, Modern. In R. Sybesma, W. Behr, Y. Gu, Zev Handel, C.-T. J. Huang and J. Myers (eds). Encyclopedia of Chinese language and linguistics. Leiden: Brill: 126-155.
• Sybesma, Rint. 2017. Aspect, Inner.  In R. Sybesma, W. Behr, Y. Gu, Zev Handel, C.-T. J. Huang and J. Myers (eds). Encyclopedia of Chinese language and linguistics. Leiden: Brill, Vol I, 186-193
• Tsai Dylan. 2008. Tense anchoring in Chinese. Lingua 118: 675-686

Course description

This course aims to provide participants with knowledge of the characteristic features of Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in China. Tibeto-Burman languages are one of the two major branches of the Sino-Tibetan language family (Benedict 1972; Matisoff 2003; Thurgood & LaPolla 2017). Spoken across a vast region, including parts of East and South Asia and peninsular Southeast Asia, these languages are traditionally categorized within the Sinosphere and Indosphere, corresponding to the Chinese and Indian spheres of cultural and linguistic influence. This course will focus specifically on a subset of Tibeto-Burman languages within the Sinosphere, distinguished by their geographic location in China and their historical and contemporary connections with Sinitic languages. The goals of the course are: (1) to become familiar with characteristic features of the Sinosphere found in most local languages, such as tone, monosyllabicity, isolating morphology, and classifier systems, and (2) to look beyond these standard Sinospheric features and explore the significant typological diversity among local groups, considering their contact history with Chinese.

In the first week we will start with an overview of the relevant groups (Tibetic, Lolo-Burmese, Na, Qiangic, Baic, Jingpo-Nungish-Luish), and unclassified languages such as Tujia or Caijia. We will focus on their distribution, typological profiles, and contact history.

In the second week, we will focus on several key features shared across local groups, including tone, differential marking of subjects and objects, evidentiality and epistemicity markers, verb serialization, as well as topic and focus strategies.

The course will feature both focused lectures and class discussions based on daily reading assignments, listening to recorded excerpts from several Tibeto-Burman languages, and analyzing interlinearized texts.

Requirements

There are no prerequisites for this course, other than a solid understanding of basic linguistic concepts.

Reading materials

The course will include selected texts from Tibeto-Burman linguistic sources, covering topics such as language sketches, phonology, morphology, syntax, sociolinguistics, contact studies, and historical linguistics. Reading materials will be provided in class.

References

• Benedict, Paul K. 1972. Sino-Tibetan: a Conspectus. Contributing Editor, James A. Matisoff. (Princeton-Cambridge Studies in Chinese Linguistics #2). New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Bradley, David, Randy J. LaPolla, Boyd Michailovsky, & Graham Thurgood (eds.). 2003. Language Variation: Papers on Variation and Change in the Sinosphere and in the Indosphere in Honour of James A. Matisoff. Canberra, Pacific Linguistics.
• Matisoff, James A. 1991. Areal and Universal Dimensions of Grammatization in Lahu. In Elizabeth C. Traugott and Bernd Heine (eds.), Approaches to Grammaticalization, Vol. II, pp. 383-453. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
• Matisoff, James A. 2003. Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman: System and philosophy of Sino-Tibetan reconstruction. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Matisoff, James A. 2015. Tibeto-Burman languages. Encyclopedia Britannica, 13 Mar. 2015, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tibeto-Burman-languages. Accessed 24 March 2022.
• Thurgood, Graham & Randy J. LaPolla. 2017. The Sino-Tibetan Languages (Second Edition). New York: Routledge.

Course description

Although substantial advances have been achieved in Chinese Historical Syntax, the relation between the loss of morphology and the development of new syntactic structures at the end of the Archaic and the beginning of the Middle Chinese periods is still an understudied field in Chinese linguistics. During this transition period the language was subjected to numerous substantial changes involving its phonology, morphology, and syntax. Many source structures of Modern Chinese develop during this period as the result of a transformation from a more synthetic to an analytic language (Feng 2014, Huang and Roberts 2017), caused by the loss of a former derivational morphology, a well-known process cross-linguistically. The course will focus on changes in the event structure of Chinese from Archaic to Middle Chinese. We will discuss the recent research on the topic following a brief introduction of the traditional reconstructions of the derivational morphology. Additionally, I will present and discuss the newest data and first research results of my DFG project ‘Event Structure and Diachronic Change in Chinese: A Morpho-syntactic Study’, which discusses the impact of the loss of verbal morphology on the development of new structures of resultativity, causativity, and on the disyllabification of verbs.

Course materials will consist of the relevant literature in the field (mostly in English); additionally, original data will be included. The students should become familiar with basic morpho-syntactic structures of Archaic and Middle Chinese and with the use of electronic text corpora for an independent research on diachronic morpho-syntactic issues.

Level and requirements/prerequisites

A basic knowledge of Classical Chinese would be helpful, but is not required. The same accounts for some knowledge of the processes of diachronic change in language and of basic syntactic concepts.

Background readings/Readings to be done beforehand

• Feng, Shengli. 2014. Light verb syntax between English and Classical Chinese. In Audrey Li, Andrew Simpson & Wei-Tien Dylan Tsai (eds.), Chinese syntax in a cross-linguistic perspective, 229–250. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Huang, C.-T. James & Ian Roberts. 2017. Principles and parameters of universal grammar. In Ian Roberts (ed.), The Oxford handbook of universal grammar, 307–354. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Jacques, G. 2016. How many *s-suffixes in Old Chinese? Bulletin of Chinese Linguistics, 9, 205–217.
• Jacques, G. 2022. On the nature of morphological alternations in Archaic Chinese and their relevance to morphosyntax. BSOAS 85(3):475-494. doi:10.1017/S0041977X22000854.
• Meisterernst, Barbara. 2023. The loss of morphology and the emergence of analytic structures in Chinese. Journal of Historical Syntax. Vol. 7 No. 6-19 (2023): Proceedings of the 22nd Diachronic Generative Syntax (DiGS) Conference / DiGS22 special issue.

Short description of the course:

During the Age of Exploration, when new continents were being discovered, Europeans came into contact with cultures previously unknown to them. An incredible amount of material was gathered to map, analyze, and describe hitherto unknown languages. In most cases, it was missionaries who deemed it important to learn the local languages to communicate with the local population. Naturally, the focus is on linguistic disciplines such as phonology, (morpho-)syntax, and semantics. The first part of the course covers foundational concepts,  followed by an overview of the production of these works across all continents. A deeper exploration is then undertaken into the description of Chinese, focusing specifically on the works of missionaries in China and Manila during the 16th–18th centuries.

Level and requirements/prerequisites:

No specific prerequisites.

Background readings/readings to be referred to and/or discussed in class:

• Zwartjes, Otto. 2011. Portuguese missionary grammars in Asia, Africa and Brazil, 1550-1800. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. (Chapter 1 + Appendix).
• Zwartjes, Otto. 2024. Missionary grammars and dictionaries of Chinese. The contribution of seventeenth century Spanish Dominicans. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. (Chapter 1).

Course description

This course will specialize on cross-linguistic patterns found in the domain of clause combining. In addition to looking at the morphological and syntactic strategies involved in clause combining, this course will also explore how these structures correspond to broader functions relating to discourse and information structure.  Finally, attention will be drawn to the diachronic development of certain clause combining strategies.

This course will allow students to examine clause combining structures from a typological and areal viewpoint.  The typological perspective will inform students about the prevalence of those structures in the languages of the world, whereas the areal perspective will address how those structures are diffused across languages that are in close contact with each other.

Course description

The purpose of the course is to reflect on and train in grammar writing. It is geared to people who are about to write a grammar or part of a grammar. It will not be prescriptive in nature but rather raise the issues one has to deal with when writing a grammar. The goals is to become aware of the many decisions we have to take and what their consequences are.

Topics that are discussed are: The genre of the descriptive grammar: We discuss different traditions in space and time and the revolution of recognizing the prerequisite of a phonological analysis. Organisation (the book and the work): We talk about both the organisation of your work dealing with questions such as which part do you write first, when do you decide on a table of contents. We also deal with the structure of the book: Do you present syntax first or last, do you divide the morphology along the lines of derivation versus inflection of along the lines of verbal versus nominal morphology, what to do with residual word classes, where to place the morphophonology, when and how to stop. Contents and labels: What should be included in the grammar? (lexicon, texts, greetings, idiomatic expressions, names, expression of time and space) How should we deal with dialectal and other variation? To what extend do we include sociolinguistic and socio-cultural information? Furthermore we discuss the choice of examples, adaptations, transcription, level of glossing and issues of translation.: Universal versus Language specific: The discussion is about how to handle theoretical consequences of observations on the language under description, about the differences between a descriptive grammar and a grammar that is consistent with a specific model, about when to use expected labels such as “pronoun” while you think there is no ground for that particular label in the language under description, about to what extent to follow a framework of description that is dominant in your field. We discuss the relationship between typology and description and we discuss the problem of deciding on terminology.

Course description

This course will provide an overview of the Indigenous languages of North America. We will begin with Indigenous perspectives on the origin, properties, and relations between languages and cultures. We will then correspond this view with the Western linguistic perspective of language family trees and linguistic features commonly found in Indigenous languages of North America. We will go through all major language families, highlighting typological and areal characteristics, with special emphasis on historical and contact-induced change. Regarding language shift, we will address the devastating effects of residential schools, forced assimilation, and foster care, with a brief exploration of the current-day legal status of Indigenous languages in Canada and the US. A final topic in this course will be to discuss language reclamation work by looking at the methods, the approaches, and the success stories that provide a varied picture of the efforts by speakers, educators, and linguists to relieve and reverse the effects of colonialism on North American languages and cultures.

Course description

In this course we will have a detailed look at both nominal and verbal number (a.k.a. pluractionality) in a range of languages in South America. Nominal number comprises the marking of number on the noun, the noun phrase, or the verbal predicate (agreement), verbal number implies the use of pluractional markers on the verb, expressing both plurality of events or states involved and participant plurality. Parting from a number of case studies we will see that languages may have several strategies to express nominal and verbal number, according to the functions involved. We will see that in that sense it is at times difficult to distinguish verbal number from, e.g., aspect or nominal number. Special attention will be paid to the role of verbal number in languages that do not have a nominal plural.

Course description

This course provides an introduction to collecting and working with audiovisual data. Participants will receive a practical introduction to audio recording devices, video recording devices, and how to select and use them. Essential supporting skills are also taught, including workflows and data management, as well as creating and using metadata.

Course description

Fieldwork is the backbone of modern linguistics—often invisible but vital to the whole field. Whatever you do with your data following your theoretical persuasion and interests, the analysis stands and falls with the quality and type of data you use. This course offers a broad overview of theoretical and practical aspects of the state-of-the-art in field methods. An important part of each session will be devoted to hands-on fieldwork practice with a speaker of a non-Indo-European language, developing skills that are rarely acquired through books or lectures.

Level

This course requires basic articulatory phonetic knowledge and familiarity with IPA. The course can only be attended physically as we work with a speaker who is present.

NB: The number of participants of this course is limited, so that a quick registration is advisable.

Course description

This course introduces students to three pieces of software that are widely used in language documentation, offers hands-on training in each software application, and then goes further to demonstrate how to use the three of them together. The course follows a typical fieldwork workflow, starting with audio segmentation, transcription, and translation in ELAN using EAF templates. Students learn how to compile their data into a searchable corpus and how to conduct searches across their data. Students will then be instructed in the fundamentals of Praat, its use for phonetic analysis, and its integration with ELAN. The course will then shift to FLEx, providing students with basic knowledge of its primary functions and how to build a lexicon, work with texts, and parse and gloss data. Finally, students will be guided through a step-by- step ELAN-FLEx-ELAN workflow so that they have the ability to benefit from the advantages offered by each program.

• Introduction to ELAN, the primary modes
• Using templates, starting a project, segmentation, transcription, translation
• Creating an ELAN corpus, searches with regular expressions
• Introduction to Praat, what it is used for, using Praat and ELAN together
• Introduction to FLEx, the primary modes
• Lexicography with FLEx, working with texts, parsing and glossing
• ELAN-FLEx-ELAN workflow

Course description

In this course we look at a spectrum of examples of community based practices that keep oral traditions alive. This includes storytelling and singing and a variety of other ways in which oral traditions can be performed, shared, and tapped into by those who live with stories. We get introduced to a variety of practices, policies and protocols that surround local day to day living with oral traditions and look at community based and international practices and approaches towards performance, documentation, interpretation and use of expressions of oral traditions. This does not only bring into view initiatives that encourage storytelling and singing as well as initiatives and the practices that surround them but also practices and protocols that shelter stories and songs from being shared in unwanted ways. This brings us to both that what is shared as well as to how it is shared (and not shared).

This course does not only put stories, songs and other expressions of oral traditions and the specific practices, performative acts and protocols that are part of them high on the agenda. It brings into view a wide range of ways in which various communities (and community members) understand, negotiate and shape how they live with oral traditions, connect with them and how they keep specific oral traditions alive. This is not only relevant for our understanding of specific oral traditions and practices. Listening to that what people share with regards to oral traditions and the practices and protocols that surround them may support the continuous reinventing of research and that what we do and why we do it and how we can do better.

This course has a strong collaborative approach and benefits those interested in languages/linguistics, ethnography/anthropology, journalism, history as well as those who are interested in orality and storytelling itself.

In this course students will:

1. Gain knowledge of practices, protocols and perspectives that can be part of oral traditions;
2. Acquire, rethink and practice approaches towards recording, transcription and translation:
3. Acquire, rethink and practice approaches towards ‘visual’ descriptions of performances and their contexts;
4. Learn to work with (and for) oral performances within cultural and socio-historical contexts.

Course description

Armenian is an Indo-European (IE) language spoken today by approximately 3 million people in the Republic of Armenia and by millions more in the Armenian diaspora, spread across countries such as Russia, the United States, France, Italy, Georgia, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Argentina, Turkey, and Ukraine. The global Armenian population is estimated at 7–11 million. Historically, Armenian was spoken across a vast territory encompassing the Armenian Highlands (the Armenian Plateau) and surrounding regions. Historical Armenia, referred to as Hayk‘ or Hayastan (based on the ethnonym hay ‘Armenian’), was centered around Mount Ararat (Masis), Lake Van, and the Araxes (Erasx) Valley.

The Armenian language is attested from the 5th century CE onward through an unbroken literary tradition that spans three major periods:

• Classical Armenian (Grabar): 5th to 11th centuries
• Middle Armenian: 12th to 16th centuries
• Modern Armenian: 17th century to the present

The Classical Armenian language, known as Grabar (literally ‘written language’ or Schriftsprache), is the foundation of Armenian literary tradition, with the 5th century often referred to as its Golden Age. The Armenian alphabet, invented by Mesrop Maštocʻ, originally comprised 36 letters.

Armenian dialectology traditionally identifies around 50–60 modern dialects, many of which have become extinct.

Armenian holds a significant place in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) due to its preservation of certain archaic features, despite undergoing substantial changes, particularly in its verbal system. Unlike Modern Armenian, which leans toward an agglutinative morphological structure, Classical Armenian is a highly inflectional language exhibiting strong IE characteristics.

Grammar Overview

Classical Armenian exhibits:

• Seven grammatical cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, instrumental, and locative.
• Two declension classes: exterior/vocalic (invariable) and interior/consonantal (variable).
• Loss of PIE dual and grammatical gender: though traces remain observable in stem vowels.
• A verbal system centered on present and aorist stems:
  • Present stem: indicative present, indicative imperfect, subjunctive present, and prohibitive.
  • Aorist stem: indicative aorist, subjunctive aorist, imperative aorist, and cohortative.

Morphological categories are mostly expressed through suffixation, although some involve prefixes (e.g., 3sg.aor. e-). Case marking displays internal vowel changes, such as the stem variation between -in, -un, and -an, which reflect the IE ablaut forms *-en-, -on-, and -n̥-, respectively.

While Classical Armenian retains some archaic IE features, it also exhibits significant innovations. For example, the PIE neuter heteroclitic -r/n- declension is only partially preserved (e.g., hur ‘fire’ vs. obl. hun- in hnoc‘ ‘oven, furnace’) but has evolved new paradigms in words like barj-r ‘high’ (nom.) vs. barj-u (sg. gen.) and barj-an-c‘ (pl. gen.), as well as cunr vs. obl. c(u)ng- ‘knee.’

Historical Context

After the IE dispersal, Proto-Armenian likely entered the Armenian Highlands via the Caucasus during the Middle to Late Bronze Ages. The relationship between Armenian and the Caucasian languages is therefore crucial for understanding the prehistoric stages of these regions. In more recent periods, the Iranian influence on Armenian has been particularly significant.

Course Objectives

This course aims to:

1. Introduce participants to the fundamentals of Classical Armenian grammar and its historical development.
2. Provide insights into the historical trajectory of the Armenian language, including its IE roots and interactions with neighboring languages, such as the Caucasian language families and Iranian languages.
3. Enable participants to read excerpts from Classical Armenian texts, such as the Bible translation and other original works, using a dictionary.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, participants will:

• be able to read Classical Armenian texts with the help of a dictionary.
• acquire general knowledge of the key issues in the historical development of the Armenian language.

Preparation
Participants are expected to learn the Armenian alphabet before attending the Summer School. The alphabet and accompanying exercises will be provided well in advance to facilitate this preparation.

Course description

The course offers an introduction to the Old Frisian language. We focus on reading and appreciating Old Frisian texts, especially the law texts which make up the bulk of the corpus of Old Frisian and which can be very vivid. Old Frisian grammar and structure will be discussed, including such problems as dialectology, periodization and its place within Germanic, including the Anglo-Frisian complex. We also pay attention to how Old Frisian literature functioned within the feuding society that Frisia was until the close of the Middle Ages.

Requirements
The daily homework consists of small portions of text to be translated, some grammatical and other assign­ments on the text, and reading a number of background articles.

Text

• Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, An Introduction to Old Frisian. History, Grammar, Reader, Glossary (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2009; revised reprint 2011).

Students can order the Introduction with a rebate of 50% straight from the publisher. Send your order to bookorder@benjamins.nl with your full postal address and the words 'Summer School'. As soon as you have paid the bill, the book will be sent to you.

See Mediterranean World Program.

Course description

This course introduces the Albanian language and its history to students of Indo-European linguistics. Due to its late first attestation, its abundance of loanwords from other Balkan languages and the obscurity of the history of both the language and its speakers, Albanian often does not get much attention from Indo-Europeanists. However, as a separate branch of Indo-European, Albanian is undoubtedly worth studying, serving a challenging but interesting case for testing our methodology of reconstruction within an Indo-European context. During this course, we will analyze and discuss the most important characteristics of Albanian, both synchronically (in Modern Albanian and Old Albanian) and diachronically. The goal is to equip students with the knowledge needed for studying Albanian from a historical perspective.

Some of the main topics that will be treated during this course are:

• Modern Standard Albanian
• Albanian dialectology
• Old Albanian literature
• Historical phonology of Albanian
• Historical morphology of Albanian
• Reconstructing Proto-Albanian
• Albanian in contact with other Balkan languages in the last 2500 years

Level

Familiarity with the basics of phonology, morphology and historical linguistics is advised.

Requirements

To test and activate the knowledge about the treated material, especially concerning the grammar, there will be a few homework exercises.

Course description

This course is an introduction to Tocharian B language and literature. Tocharian B, an Indo-European language from Kuča in NW China from the 5th to 10th centuries CE, is better attested and generally more archaic than the closely related Tocharian A. In the first week, Tocharian B phonology and morphology will be introduced, together with selected points of historical grammar. In the second week, the focus will shift to reading excerpts of selected Tocharian B texts with the help of a glossary.

Level

No previous knowledge of Tocharian is required, though it will be helpful.

Requirements

There will be short daily homework assignments. For additional ECTS points, there will be a take-home final exam.

Text

Course documents will be provided; no textbook is required.

Course description

This course offers an introduction to the study of Old Church Slavonic with an emphasis on the comparative linguistic perspective. Old Church Slavonic is the language of a corpus of 10th and 11th century religious written in an early variant of Slavic. During the first week of the course, we will discuss how the Old Church Slavonic corpus came about and we will cover the major grammatical features of Old Church Slavonic. The second week will be dedicated to the long and complicated history of the Old Church Slavonic sound system, which we will eventually trace back all the way to Proto-Indo-European. Specific Old Church Slavonic features that are not found in other Slavic languages will also be discussed. Towards the end of the second week, we will discuss the historical morphology of Old Church Slavonic.

Requirements

This course will be difficult to follow without basic knowledge of comparative Indo-European linguistics and/or knowledge of at least one Slavic language.

Course description

The Anatolian branch consists of ten languages that were spoken in ancient Anatolia (modern-day Türkiye and Nord-Syria) with textual remains dating from the 20th c. BCE to the 1st c. CE. Anatolian holds a special position in the field of Indo-European linguistics. Not only is it the first attested branch of the family, it is nowadays also generally regarded as the first branch that split off from the Indo-European family tree (the “Indo-Anatolian” model). This makes Anatolian of paramount importance for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European and the prehistory of the Indo-European family as a whole.

In this course, we will reconstruct Proto-Anatolian on the basis of the attested Anatolian languages (primarily Hittite, Luwian, and Lycian, but the other Anatolian languages will be taken into account as well), and discuss its repercussions for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European. We will focus on topics from phonology, morphology, and lexicon.

Level

In order to follow this course it is recommended to have at least some knowledge of synchronic Hittite, but this is not obligatory. Students who have followed ‘Historical grammar of Hittite’ during a previous Summer School should be aware that there will inevitably be some degree of overlap between that course and the present one.

Course description

This course examines sacred texts and rituals from pre-classical and classical Greek and Latin literature, alongside other Indo-European (IE) traditions such as Vedic hymns, Avestan liturgies, Old Norse Eddas, Old Irish epics, Balto-Slavic incantations and tales, Armenian lyro-epic poems, Anatolian catalogues and sacred laws. These texts offer insight into Indo-European mythopoetic/ritual traditions and heroic narratives, contributing to cultural reconstruction.

Designed for both beginners and advanced students, the course focuses on lexical, phraseological, textual, and hyper-textual aspects of IE sacred texts, ‘divine’ and ‘heroic’ poetry and explores theological, cosmological, and anthropological themes that include:

• Rituals and sacred language for communication with the Divine: votive offerings, oaths, divinations, fire sacrifices.
• Rituals and related (aetiological) myths that emulate cosmological acts: establishment of sacred temenoi, altars, monuments.
• Rituals of anthropological relevance: marriage, birth, naming, various initiations.
• Hymnal and heroic poetry as a sacred way of re-creation of the universe through ritual linguistic acts.

Course outline

After an overview of classical scholarship on PIE social structures (priesthood, sacred kingship, warriorhood, male/female age-groups) and their respective mythologies, the course explores various mythological, ritual, and poetic topics:

1. Creation Myths in Ritual: (a) Cosmogonic myths reflected in rites (setting sacrificial fire[s], construction of nomadic tents, sacrificing first fruits, pouring milk into fire). (b) Founding myths of cities and tribes (Kadmos’ Thebes, Romulus’ Roma quadrata, the Avestan “Aryan homeland”, the Five Tribes of India, the Five Irish Clans, the Four Tribes of Mabinogi). (c) Indo-European "sacred bestiary" in cosmogonic/cosmological myths.

2. Sacred Chronology: divine and human generations; “chthonic” vs. “uranic” mythology: dichotomies (Asuras vs. Devas, Titans vs. Olympians). Dialectic between settlement and nomadic expansion.

3. Sacred Genealogy: (a) Change of generations (Kumarbi myth, Hesiod's Five Ages, Germanic/Celtic generation-sequence myths). (b) Deity/hero ancestry catalogues as forms of mythological glorification.

4. Sacred Onomasiology: names, epithets and (poetic) phraseology: theophoric names, names with reference to sacred time/space, to astrological/astronomical events; benedictory function of naming. Genealogical identifiers (paternal/maternal line, cognomina).

5. Sacred Topography: Mythic representations of space (Achilles’/Heracles’ "shields" at Homer/Hesiod, St. Patrick’s breastplate). Sacred space delineation in Greek, Italic, and Vedic traditions.

6. Sacred Biology: Mythological classifications of plants/animals and their ritual/pragmatic dimensions. Indo-Iranian sacred plants, Germanic and Balto-Slavic herbal magic, plant cosmos in Greek (Hesiod) and Italic (Vergil).

7. Sacred Physiology: (a) Healing rituals using body part enumeration (Irish, Greek/Slavic, Indic). (b) Cosmogonies from primordial giant’s body parts (Vedas, Edda). (c) Rituals of cursing in love, court, or competitions (Greek/Latin, Sanskrit, Avestan).

8. Sacred Sociology: Gods of settled/nomadic groups, age-group rituals (Hellenic ephebes, Italic, Germanic, Welsh/Irish, Indo-Iranian youth-gangs). Myths of Centaurs, Amazons, totemic cults, animalistic transformations.

9. Sacred Numerology: (a) Fixed sacred numbers of Seasons linked to various items of the Universe (Vedas; St.Adamnan’s Féilire). (b) Sacred triads, tetrads, pentads in Germanic, Celtic, Iranian traditions. (c) Ascending/descending numeric lists.

10. Sacred Aretology: (a) Divine/hero’s res gestae as mythic/axiological patterns (Heracles, Augustus). (b) Poetry of War and Peace: collocations, epithets, kenningar, names characterizing the hero’s person/deeds.

Focus

The study of Indo-European poetic language has become crucial to Comparative Linguistics since 1853, as Kuhn identified phraseological parallels between Vedic and Homeric poetry (the formula of ‘imperishable glory’). Early scholarship (Oldenberg, Günthert, Benveniste, Dumézil, Thieme, subsumed 1967 in Schmitt’s Dichtung und Dichtersprache) influenced modern classical studies (Watkins, Nágy, Toporov, Puhvel, West, Burkert, Katz, Janda): Thus, language comparison extended from phonology and morphology to higher linguistic levels: syntax, phraseology, stylistics, incl. poetic formulae, figures of speech, epithets, proper names. Ongoing research comprises encyclopaedic projects by García-Ramón, Oettinger, Jackson, Calin. A new volume on Indo-European text linguistics (Sadovski & Panagl) is prepared as part of Indogermanische Grammatik (Heidelberg); this course partly previews its material.

Presentations and Discussion

The Leiden Summer Schools foster interactive learning in a relaxed environment, encouraging future professionals from different countries to get to know each other’s work and personalities. Readings include original texts from various Indo-European traditions with translations, allowing accessibility for students unfamiliar with individual languages. A few students may present 20-minute papers on topics of special interest for their theses.

Course description

This course will focus on synchronic linguistic features of the Middle Welsh language (11-15^th centuries). Students will be introduced to Celtic languages in general and their place among other Indo-European languages. The classes will contain a mixture of learning Middle Welsh grammar whilst translating the oldest Arthurian tale Culhwch and Olwen and analyzing secondary literature concerning different tools and methods in the field of Celtic linguistics and philology.

After this module students will be able to

• put Welsh in the context of other Celtic and Indo-European languages;
• translate excerpts of an unseen Middle Welsh text;
• explain grammatical constructions in a straightforward way.

Course description

Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language spoken by a small minority (a little over 1%) in Scotland, and in parts of Nova Scotia, Canada. Along with its close relatives Irish and Manx, Scottish Gaelic descends from Old Irish, which spread from Ireland to north-western Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. As such, it can provide a gateway to a better understanding of Old Irish, which may otherwise be daunting to students wholly unfamiliar with Celtic languages. With a long history, especially rich in poetry, song and folklore, Scottish Gaelic also opens up a window into the fascinating culture and history of Scotland. To linguists, the language offers an interesting display of several typologically rare features, such as grammatically conditioned word-initial lenition, VSO-syntax, three-way contrasts in lateral and rhotic consonants, and pre-aspiration.

In this course, we will practice introductory Scottish Gaelic conversation and go through the basic grammar. In the second week, we will read and listen to a short folklore text with the help of a glossary. We will also listen to a number of traditional songs to both gain more familiarity the sound and structure of the language, and to introduce some additional thematic topics relating to Scottish Gaelic culture and history. The final class will provide an overview of resources to aid students in their further study of Scottish Gaelic.

Homework

Homework in the first week will consist of short grammar exercises to practice the material discussed in class. In the second week, we will translate a text, which will require students to prepare a few lines each day. An additional, recurring part of the homework assignments will be to listen to Scottish Gaelic songs and read along with the lyrics.

Level

Basic knowledge of linguistics, such as a familiarity with the IPA and concepts like grammatical case, would be useful. No prior knowledge of Scottish Gaelic or any other Celtic language is required.

Course description

This course is meant as a beginners’ introduction to the Ancient Celtic languages spanning more than a millennium from the early 6^th century b.c. until the middle of the 1^st millennium a.d. The written traditions that will be covered are Cisalpine Celtic (i.e. Lepontic and Cisalpine Gaulish), Celtiberian, Gaulish, fragments from other regions on the Continent, and the insular ogam corpus (i.e. Primitive Irish). After an introduction to the historical phonology of Celtic. the course will give an overview of what we know about the diverse ancient Celtic traditions and an outline of their grammar, as far as it is accessible in the written documentation. Some of the most important textual witnesses of these language will be introduced and discussed.

First readings

• David Stifter, Cisalpine Celtic. Language. Writing. Epigraphy [= AELAW Booklet 8], Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza 2020.
• Francisco Beltrán Lloris and Carlos Jordán Cólera, Celtiberian. Language. Writ­ing. Epigraphy [= AELAW Booklet 1], Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza 2016.
• Alex Mullen and Coline Ruiz Darasse, Gaulish. Language. Writing. Epigraphy [= AELAW Booklet 6], Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza 2018.
• David Stifter, Ogam. Language. Writing. Epigraphy [= AELAW Booklet 10], Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza 2022.

Course description

This course is intended as a first introduction to the Old Irish language from a descriptive and comparative perspective, especially in the Indo-European perspective. Rudolf Thurney­sen’s Grammar of Old Irish has been a corner stone for the study of the language since its first publication (in German in 1909; in a moderately revised English translation in 1946. However, our understanding of the Old Irish language, the number of sources available to us and our approach to them, the scholarly and technical tools, and the very way how we speak about language has undergone profound transformations since then. Crucial progress has been made in historical phonology. In the morphology of Old Irish – nominal, pronominal and verbal – much more variation is recognised than was apparent at the beginning of the 20^th century. Syntax and typology have assumed a much more prominent position in linguistic description. An attempt will be made in this course to present the most important developments of the past years and decades. This will cover aspects as diverse as the Indo-European background and the prehistory of Irish, the philology and comparative grammar of Old Irish, and the sources and tools for its study.

Reading (not compulsory)

• David Stifter, ‘Early Irish’, in: Martin J. Ball and Nicole Müller (eds.), The Celtic Languages. 2^nd Edition, Abingdon – New York: Routledge 2009, 55–116.
• Aaron Griffith and David Stifter, ‘Old Irish’, in: Saverio Dalpedri, Götz Keydana and Stavros Skopeteas (eds.), Glottothèque: Ancient Indo-European Grammars online (electronic resource). Göttingen: Universität Göttingen 2019. URL: https://spw.uni-goettingen.de/projects/aig/lng-sga.html.
• Aaron Griffith and David Stifter, ‘Old Irish’, in: Götz Keydana, Saverio Dalpedri and Stavros Skopeteas (eds.), A Handbook of Ancient Indo-European Grammars, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press forthc.

Course description

In this hands-on, fast-paced course for advanced students, we will plunge into the vast world of Vedic Sanskrit literature (composed over a period covering approximately 1200 to 500 BCE) by following particular legends or themes through their evolution in texts spanning the entire Vedic period, while paying attention to how the language evolves with time and context. Besides the old and complex hymns of the R̥gveda, we have the simpler hymns and old prose of the Atharvavedic and Yajurvedic Saṁhitās, the later prose of the Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas, and Upaniṣads, and the terse instructions and occasional narrative digressions of the Sūtras. Examples could include accounts of the beginning of the world and of what happens after death, reflections on material and perception, or stories like that of “From-a-dead-egg” Mārtāṇḍa, the aborted ancestor of humankind; stories around gambling and addiction; or lesser known legends such as that of god Indra’s transformation into the wife of “Bull-horse” Vr̥ṣaṇaśva and other metamorphoses. The texts we read will be supplied with vocabulary to facilitate preparation.

Level

Students are expected to attempt to translate in class; a minimum of two years of Sanskrit (classical is fine) is therefore a prerequisite.

Recommended reference grammar

Whitney’s Sanskrit Grammar or Macdonell’s A Vedic Grammar for Students (any edition; PDFs available online).

Introduction

In the recent decades, scholars have undertaken serious research into Indian social history, based on pre-Classical Sanskrit texts and supported by (re-assessed) comparative Indo-European evidence. This has decisively widened our perspective on the social structures of Ancient India in the interaction between establishment – kingship, priesthood, warrior elites – and para-establishment elements, esp. the male age-groups apostrophized as the Old Indic “Männerbund”.

In this course we will read and discuss Vedic and Epic Sanskrit texts that function as our sources concerning Indic social structures from the earliest times to the epic and classical period.

Course Outline

I. With regard to kingship as both a socio-cultural institution and a sacr(aliz)ed object of mytho-religious reflection, we will analyse:

1. R̥gvedic hymns dedicated to the Sacred Royalty and the Männerbund leader, respectively
2. Atharvaveda-Paippalāda XV on sacred dimensions of Kingship/kingdom vs. Vrātya-Kāṇḍa (Atharvaveda-Śaunaka) and Männerbund mythologization.
3. Yajurvedic parallels from the (Kapiṣṭhala-)Kaṭha-/Maitrāyaṇīya-/Taittirīya-Saṃhitā.
4. Exegetic passages: Rigveda-Brāhmaṇas (Aitareya/Kauṣitaki-Br.), Black Yajurveda-Saṃhitās/Brāhmaṇas, White Yajurveda (Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa).
5. Relevant Mahābhārata texts/commentaries.

II. Social Establishment: social reality, ritual practices, mytho-religious transformations.

• Functions of the establishment leader (‘king’) within the ancient Indic society.
• Duties of a sacred king conceived not only as a rational human social activity but also as part of a powerful cosmo-poetic narrative linking items of the (sacral) macrocosm with elements of the (sacral[ized]) microcosm. Sociological, mythological, theological dimensions of the notion of ‘cosmic order’.
• Establishment institutions in Brāhmaṇic/epic texts: images of warriors and kings.

III. Männerbund: source-texts and methodological problems

We examine literary and archaeological sources concerning gender/age-set groups, analysing Vedic (Saṃhitās [e.g.Śatarudrī̆ya-mantras], Brāhmaṇas, ritual Sūtras) and Epic Sanskrit texts.

Focus

Key themes include:

1. (Re)constructions of social systems in Ancient India compared to various Indo-European traditions:

• Unmarked vs. “special” social structures (Sondergesellschaften): Para-/extra-social fellowships. Vrātyas.
• Reconstructing models of social reality.

1.1. Consolidation (1960s–1990s) and renaissance (21^stc.) of research:

• Key studies: Merkelbach (ephebic cults; Mithra societies), Burkert (Athenian/Spartan Apollo cults), Bollée (Vedic backgrounds of Modern Indian Männerbünde), McCone (Italic/Celtic/Germanic vs. Indic male bands), Falk (brotherhoods and dice-play), Meiser/Das (Indo-European backgrounds of ‘male societies’), v.Cieminski (Graeco-Roman Männerbünde), Gerstein (Germanic parallels).

1.2. [Controversial] precursor works, 1902–:

• Schurtz (ancient ‘age-groups’), Hoefler (‘shapeshifter myths/cults’); Wikander (Old Iranian Männerbund; OIran. Vaiiu/Ved. Vāyu cult).

1.3. „Tripartite theory”, its variations and controversies (Dumézil, Eliade; Puhvel).

1.4. Post-tripartite reconstruction systems (Lincoln; McCone).

2. Constructive elements and social reality of the Indic Männerbund↔social establishment:

2.1. Land-ownership↔outsidership: par-oikia, met-oikia, ‘out-landishness’.

2.2. Vagabond groups expanding social nucleus on unconquered territories.

2.3. (Dis)continuity of social space: between cultural expansion, ‘grand colonization’ and para-social, a-social, even anti-social nomadism.

2.4. Dynamic factor mobility: esp. itinerant/vagabond groups/Wandergruppen.

3. Constructive feature (CF) age – underage and liminal groups: Age-fellowships/Alters(klassen)-genossenschaften.

4. CF gender – gender-marked and gender-segregated groups: Dynamic factor masculinity: male communities/Männerbünde.

5.CF hierarchicity – para-governmental/out-of-government groups: Dynamic factor leadership: Youth bands around a (young) male group leader. Group leader vs. ‘groupees’.  The notion of vrātya- between the designation of an (individual) member of a (vrātya-)grāma-group and that of the group leader.

6. CF cults/ritual, esp. official community cult – para-/extra-official cultic groups. Special and secret cult communities (Sonder-/Geheimkultgemeinschaften). Männerbund deities.

7. CF (socio-religious) ritual initiation – para-/extra-initiatory groups: Dynamic factors sectaniarism/secrecy; mystic/initiatory and totemic animalistic cults. Were-Wolves as metaphor of the “pack”.

8. CF communication – socio-constitutive linguistic acts: Ved. vratá-~Avestan uruuata- ‘(verbal) indication, dictates, commandment, instruction’, then ‘(devotional) oath, vow’. Dynamic factors: commandment/obedience: Ved. vratá- as a bidirectional regulative linguistic act, both ‘indication/commandment’ and ‘vow (to obey toward the authority of such commandment)’ (↔‘swearing of legally relevant oath’).

9. CF legality – para-legal/out-law groups

10. CF family – para-/extra-familiar groups: Para-/extra-matrimonial communities – parasocial, esp. diastratic marriages; excommunicated companionships; non-married partners. Dynamic factor bachelorhood – bachelor fellowships/Junggesellenbünde.

11. CF socio-economic class – class/rank groups, economic establishment↔outsiders.

12. CF ethnicity – “ethnically marked”/segregated communities. Dynamic factor Völkerwanderung – ethnic migration groups. Aryan migration waves (Parpola, Witzel vs. Falk).

By comparing static social structures with dynamic para-social groups, we assess how Sanskrit literature reflects on socio-cultural, ethic-normative, and religious-mythological dimensions of Indic society.

Participants and Discussions

The course is open to students of linguistics, Indology, anthropology, cultural studies. Sanskrit knowledge is beneficial but not mandatory. We address cultural-historical and linguistic/literary aspects from both an Indic and comparative perspective, offering insights into ancient Indo-European traditions.

Course description

This course aims to familiarize students with various aspects of R̥gvedic poetics.  Topics covered will include:

• The origins of the R̥gveda: where, when, and why it was composed.
• External and internal chronology; older and younger sections; the date of final redaction; arrangement and internal structure of the text.
• Tradition: Saṃhitāpāṭha vs. Padapāṭha, Anukramaṇī. Traditional recitation.
• Hermann Oldenberg (1888) and the reconstruction of the R̥gveda as originally composed.
• Metrical patterns: various meters, catalectic lines, regular vs. irregular meters.
• Line extention vs. line truncation.
• Formulaic diction and its role in poetic composition.
• Reconstructing syllable count: abhinihita and kṣaipra sandhi, contractions, laryngeal hiatus, etc.
• Syllable weight and vowel length: Kuiper’s Law, laryngeals making position (or not), metrical lengthening, *yi- / *vu-, long augment, redactorial changes, and other relevant aspects.
• Rhythmical issues.
• Accent and meter.
• Poetic techniques and stylistic devices.

Level

At least one year of Sanskrit would be an advantage.

Course description

This course provides a historical-comparative introduction to the Nuristani languages, a group of about a half-dozen languages or dialect continua in eastern Afghanistan – Kati, Ashkun/Wamai, Prasun, Waigali/Nuristani Kalasha, with the precise position of Tregami and Dameli being unclear. While Nuristani is clearly part of Indo-Iranian, its exact position within the branch is still controversial.

Topics discussed in the first week include the external relationship and the internal subdivisions of Nuristani as well as a historical phonology from Proto-Indo-Iranian to individual contemporary Nuristani languages. We not only look at phonological questions such as ruki and the development of the Proto-Indo-European dorsal stops, but aim to give a full overview of the development of the Proto-Indo-Iranian vowels and consonants (including consonant clusters) in the individual Nuristani languages.

In the second week, we focus on historical morphology. For example, we look at the development of case, number and gender in Nuristani, the survival of noun classes and the use of the Indo-Iranian *-ka-suffix. While the starting point for comparison are Proto-Indo-Iranian and the oldest attested Indo-Iranian languages, attention is also given to very recent developments in Nuristani morphosyntax, often due to the influence of Pashto.

Course description

Remarkably, Sogdian, the Middle Iranian language of Sogdiana in present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, is much better attested outside of its original area than in it. The Sogdian texts from the Silk Road are for the most part religious, Buddhist, Manichaean, and Christian. The Buddhist group is from the library of Dunhuang. They were first studied by Robert Gauthiot in Paris, now in subsequent editions: E. Benveniste: Vessantara Jātaka, Mission Pelliot en Asie centrale: Série in-Quarto, 4, Paris 1946; D. N. MacKenzie: The 'Sutra of the causes and effects of actions' in Sogdian, London 1970. There are definitely no Buddhist Sogdian texts from the Sogdiana whereas there were theoretically texts in Manichaean and Christian although they have not been found (yet, if ever).

Following on an introduction to Sogdian and Sogdian script, the course will aim to cover the main issues presented by the documents. We can read a part of both Vessantara Jātaka and the Sutra of the causes in transcription. We can also look at the some of the other texts available. Course materials will be provided.

There are no formal requirements for participation in the course, though some previous knowledge of Sogdian or another Middle Iranian language and of Sogdian script would be an advantage.

Course description

After an overview of the language and some Parthian texts outside of Manichaean sphere, there will be an introduction to Manichaean script and the Manichaean community in Turfan. The course will further deal with the language and contents of the Manichaean Parthian texts in the Turfan Collection in Berlin by reading them. Besides some historical/hagiographical texts, the Parthian texts mostly consist of hymns and homilies and reflect the community life of the Uigur and Sogdian speaking Manichaeans in Turfan, which used Middle Persian and Parthian as church languages. We will read individual hymns and parts of the hymn-cycles and parts of two well-attested homilies. For convenience the texts can be consulted in Mary Boyce: A reader in Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian, Leiden 1975. This will be supplemented by examples from manuscripts and younger editions for the homilies. For the vocabulary see M. Boyce: A word-list, Leiden 1977 and D. Durkin-Meisterernst: A Dictionary of Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian, Turnhout 2004. For translations see J. P. Assmussen: Manichaean Literature, Delmar 1975 and H.-J. Klimkeit: Gnosis on the Silk Road, San Fransisco 1993.

Introduction

This course deals with two Old East Iranian languages of the Zoroastrian religious corpus of the Avesta: Young (Later) Avestan and Old Avestan (Zarathuštra’s Gāthās/Yasna Haptaŋhāiti). Alongside Old Persian and Vedic Sanskrit, Avestan is crucial for Indo-Iranian and Indo-European linguistic reconstruction.

Course Outline

The course aims to present the structure and development of Avestan. After an introduction to the corpus, we will examine phonology (incl. differences between Old, “Middle” and Young Avestan), inflectional (nominal, pronominal, verbal) and derivational morphology (incl. derivation/composition), (case) syntax. Key phonological and morphological correspondences between Avestan, Vedic and other Indo-European languages will be highlighted. No prior knowledge is required, though familiarity with Sanskrit and historical linguistics is helpful.

We will also read Avestan texts, assessing their linguistic and cultural value. Selected Young Avestan texts include liturgical and hymnal poetry (Younger Yasna, Vīsprad; Yašts) and prose with socio-cultural significance (Vīdēvdād). Old Avestan readings focus on the Gāthās and the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti, discussing their importance for Indo-Iranian religious and social history and their role in reconstructing ritual and mythology. Linguistic (diachronic/diatopic/diastratic) variations between Old and Young Avestan will be examined, tracing developments from Proto-Iranian and Proto-Indo-Iranian to Proto-Indo-European.

Focus

In addition to the strong grammatical emphasis of the course, it integrates exercises based on original Avestan texts. The text readings will highlight lexical archaisms, figures of speech, epithets, and phraseological collocations with relevance for Indo-Iranian and Indo-European reconstruction. Furthermore, interested students are encouraged to explore related topics in the Advanced Indo-European Programme and the course “Indo-European Sacred Texts, Myth, and Ritual” that will analyse additional Avestan sacred texts.

Level

No prior knowledge of Avestan is expected. The course is designed for students at beginner/intermediate level with interests in Historical and General Linguistics, Iranian, Indic, and Indo-European Studies, interested in language comparison and reconstruction. Knowledge of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin is beneficial but not required.

Literature

Detailed bibliographies and presentations will be provided in class. For beginners, we strongly recommend: Martinez/de Vaan, Introduction to Avestan, Enyclopaedia Iranica online articles by Hoffmann (“Avestan Language I-III”), Kellens (“Avesta, the Holy Book of the Zoroastrians”), Gnoli (“Avestan Geography”), Boyce (“Avestan People”). Advanced students may consult Cantera/Redard, “Introduction to Young Avestan”, Kellens/Redard, “Introduction à l’Avesta”. On Avestan religion/ritual in historical and comparative context: Cantera, “A Substantial Change in the Approach to the Zoroastrian Long Liturgy”, Sadovski, Ritual formulae and ritual pragmatics in Veda and Avesta”, “Ritual Formulae, Structures, and Activities in Vedic and Avestan Liturgies, and “A Step Forward in Reaching to the Indo-Iranian Backgrounds of the Avestan and Vedic Liturgies.

Course description

Bakhtiari, spoken by over 1.5 million people in southwestern Iran, is a descendant of Middle Persian (300 BC–800 AD), which in turn evolved from Old Persian (c. 525–300 BCE). The language preserves features lost in Standard Modern Persian, making it an important subject for historical linguistics and Iranian language studies.

A portion of the Bakhtiari population continues to lead a semi-nomadic life, with seasonal migrations across the Zagros mountains. Their lexicon and lifestyle offer valuable insights for researchers interested in anthropology, nomadism, and lexical reconstruction within the broader context of Indo-European linguistic development.

Knowledge of Bakhtiari would benefit scholars in the field of historical linguistics as well as scholars of anthropology, history, and culture, specifically in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Course outline

This course provides a foundation in Bakhtiari grammar, both written and spoken, while also exploring the historical and cultural significance of the language and its speakers. Students will also analyze examples of Bakhtiari songs from various genres, such as lullabies, hunting, mourning, and agricultural songs.

Level

No prior knowledge of the language or its script is required.

Course Materials

A reader, including teaching materials, exercises, and a lexicon, will be provided.

Course description

All aspects of languages undergo change, from sounds, word formation and lexical meaning to sentence structure. How does this change take place and what causes it? This course will introduce students to the basic concepts and methods of historical linguistics.

Week 1: Mechanisms of change

• Monday: Introduction
• Tuesday: Lexical change
• Wednesday: Sound change
• Thursday: Morphological change
• Friday: Syntactic change

Week 2: Methods, causes, and effects

• Monday: Relatedness between languages
• Tuesday: The comparative method
• Wednesday: Internal reconstruction
• Thursday: How changes spread
• Friday: Languages in contact

Level

Students must be familiar with the basics of phonetics, morphology and syntax or simultaneously be following courses on these subjects.

Requirements

Students will be asked to review the topics covered in class and do exercises before each class.

Literature

The course will largely follow Robert McColl Millar (2023), Trask’s Historical Linguistics (4^th ed.; London: Routledge). Students are encouraged, but not required, to acquire their own copy of this or the second/third edition, or of Lyle Campbell (2021), Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (4th ed.; Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).

Course description

Syntax is the study of structure of sentences. In this course, students are first introduced to the important terms and concepts within the study of syntax. Then, students learn how to identify constituents and hierarchical structure. Next, they are introduced to the building blocks of syntax, and the principles by which they combine. In the second week of the course, we will build up the sentence from bottom to top, starting with the structure of the verb and its arguments, followed by the structure for tense and agreement, and finally, question formation and embedding.

Textbook

Adger, D. (2003). Core Syntax. A Minimalist Approach. Oxford University Press.

Course description

How do people signal different (social, ethnic, gender) aspects of their identity through language? Conversely, how does a person's position in social hierarchy affect the way(s) they speak and the kinds of language(s) they have access to? And how do language users combine linguistic with other semiotic resources (visual, graphic) to create meaning? In this course, we take up language as a social phenomenon, produced by the (linguistic) actions of individuals but also constraining what those actions can be and how they are interpreted. Topics discussed include: languages as products of ideology; resources & repertoires; language variation; multimodality & social media; code mixing; style & Identity; language attitudes; linguistic landscapes; and language flows. The course has a distinct multi-modal and cross-linguistic focus and students are encouraged to bring their own examples illustrating textbook concepts to class.

Textbook

Jones, R. H., & Themistocleous, C. (2022). Introducing Language and Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (e-book available)

Course description

This course offers a comprehensive introduction to the scientific study of speech sounds, covering both phonetics and phonology. Over two weeks, students will learn about the production and perception of speech sounds, and the ways in which they are organized and used in different languages.

The first week of the course will focus on the basic features of speech sounds, including consonants, vowels, and suprasegmentals such as tone. Students will learn about the process of speech production and develop skills for analyzing and transcribing speech sounds.

In the second week, the course will delve into the study of sound systems, with a focus on establishing sound inventories and recognizing patterns of phonological variation such as minimal pairs and complementary distribution. Through practical exercises, students will develop skills for presenting phonological analyses in a clear and systematic manner.

Home preparation

To prepare for the course, students are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols and basic terminology. You can use any of the resources below to do so, or explore others on your own:

• IPA chart (or the textbook A course in Phonetics by Peter Ladefoged), or
• Phonetics  (sections 1,2,6), or
• IPA 15-Minute Tutorial

This course serves as a stepping stone for students who wish to pursue further study in linguistics or its related disciplines. It also caters to the interests of those looking to utilize phonetic and phonological skills in their respective fields.

See Language Description Program.

Course description

Since the 1960s in particular, literature on how grammatical systems vary has grown exponentially alongside our ability to provide sophisticated analyses of cross-linguistic variation. Pioneering work in historical syntax includes that by Traugott (1965, 1969), Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968), Givon (1971), Andersen (1973), Lehmann (1973, 1974), Allen ([1977] 1980), Timberlake (1977) and Lightfoot (1979). These fundamental works will form the basis of this advanced course in historical syntax which will focus on state-of-the-art methods and theories of word order variation and change. We'll explore the following topics in detail with examples from a diverse range of languages:

1. Introduction to historical syntax
2. Types of syntactic change
3. Grammaticalisation
4. Degrammaticalisation
5. Contact and borrowing
6. The Actuation & Transition Problems
7. Syntactic reconstruction I
8. Syntactic reconstruction II
9. Models & Approaches to explain syntactic change
10. Methods in historical syntax

Prerequisites

Participants should have a good foundation in core linguistics domains and have completed at least one introduction to syntax course.

Course description

In the last quarter of the 20^th century, structuralism —both the classical, Saussurean, and the generative, Chomskyan, varieties— began to be challenged by so-called “usage based” approaches, built on the hypothesis that an individual’s knowledge of a language is the result of experience with language use (hence “usage-based”). Towards the end of the century, with further elaboration, it developed into a comprehensive theory of language, including its systematicity, as an emergent phenomenon: in communicative interaction (dialogic structures), in an individual’s lifetime (acquisition), and over generations (language change, grammaticalization). This approach replaces the structuralist view of language as an “autonomous” system with that of an evolving “complex adaptive” system, and revives, corrects, and supplements some ideas put forward by Darwin and a few linguistic ‘early adopters’ of evolutionary theory in the 19^th century.

Largely independently, research into the origins of language became a new object of empirical and theoretical investigation towards the end of the 20^th century as well, after having been a ‘taboo’ topic for a long time. These modern approaches do not attempt to identify a single causal process leading to symbolic communication, but postulate a complex interaction between ecological, cognitive and communicative factors, in particular a dynamic interplay of genetic and cultural evolution.

Starting with a summary overview of the key language views of the 19^th and 20^th century, this course provides an introduction to present day evolutionary linguistics as the merger of these developments, its fundamental concepts, types of empirical evidence and methods of investigation, as well as its connection to behavioral biology, esp. the study of the evolution of (vocal) communication systems.

Textbook

Pleyer, Michael, and Stefan Hartmann (2024). Cognitive Linguistics and Language Evolution. Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009385022      

Course description

Whereas semantics deals with the potential meaning carried by linguistic expressions, pragmatics is interested in the actually communicated meaning when linguistic expressions are used in real-world circumstances (who is saying/signing what to whom when and where). A number of theories have been proposed for how this works, which grant variable importance to the speaker's intentions and the context of utterance. This course reviews the main theories in this area, starting with Grice's and Austin's foundational theories about implicature and speech acts, respectively. Recent developments in Neo-Gricean pragmatics and Relevance Theory are also covered. Theoretical concepts are illustrated with examples and there is the possibility to apply the theories to real-world examples after the end of the course for extra credit.

Textbook

Clark, Billy (2022) Pragmatics: The Basics. London: Routledge (e-book available)

Course outline

1-2. Hieratic Papyri from Pharaonic Egypt (Ben Haring)

July 21: Ben Haring will introduce the students to the hieratic script and documentary conventions of the Ancient Egyptian scribes. Hieratic is the cursive script current during the entire Pharaonic and Hellenistic Period, for documentary, religious, and literary texts. In the Hellenistic Period, its use was restricted to religious contexts (hence the Greek name ‘hieratic’, or priestly). In the previous two and a half millennia, however, it was much more universal. Aspects that will be dealt with are, among others, the relation and differences between hieratic and the monumental hieroglyphic script, the different textual genres throughout pharaonic history, and material aspects of writing and producing papyrus manuscripts. 

July 22: visit to the papyrus collection of the National Museum of Antiquities [ON CAMPUS ONLY].

3-4. Multicultural Society: from Ptolemaic to Byzantine Egypt (Joanne Stolk)

July 23. After the conquest by Alexander the Great, Egypt became a Hellenistic kingdom ruled by the Ptolemies. Greek became the new language of administration and the aristocracy, but the rulers also adopted many Egyptian traditions. How Greek was Ptolemaic Egypt? And how did Greeks and Egyptians live together? By the time Egypt became part of the Roman Empire, most of these initial differences between ‘Greeks’ and ‘Egyptians’ had disappeared. The Greek language had become the norm and the possibilities to write Egyptian were decreasing. How did Egyptians correspond with each other during this period? Was everyone bilingual? We shall read several Greek papyrus documents (in English translation), illustrating various aspects of multicultural and multilingual life in Ptolemaic, Roman and Byzantine Egypt.

July 24: visit to the papyrus collection of the Leiden Papyrological Institute [ON CAMPUS ONLY].

5. From Byzantium to Bagdad: Papyri from Early Islamic Egypt (Eline Scheerlinck)

July 25. In the first half of the 7th century, Egypt faced tumultuous times. As a province of the Byzantine empire, Egypt was occupied by foreign rulers twice. First by the Sassanids, who after a brief period were expelled again by the Byzantines. In the 640’s, however, Arab warriors conquered the province and took control of Alexandria and other strategic points. Egypt was now cut off from the Byzantine empire and incorporated in the Islamic empire that was coming into existence. In the next century and a half, the cultural and linguistic landscape of Egypt transformed. Processes of Arabisation and Islamisation were set in motion. This lecture discusses the impact of the Arabic conquest of Egypt on the basis of the papyrological documentation in the period of transformation in the 7th and 8th century AD.

6. Aramaic Papyri from Achaemenid Egypt (Margaretha Folmer)

July 28: During the Achaemenid rule of the ANE (c. 550-332 BCE) Aramaic was used as the official language of communication and administration in every corner of this vast empire. A special case is the island of Elephantine in Upper Egypt. A group of Judean mercenaries stationed on this island has left behind a particularly rich and well preserved collection of Aramaic papyri datable to the 5^th c. BCE. Among the papyri are legal documents, private letters, communal letters, administrative documents and a famous literary text which until the present day circulates among native speakers of Aramaic (the story and wisdom of the wise Ahiqar). After a general introduction we will read in translation part of a correspondence concerning the destruction and rebuilding of the local Judean temple at Elephantine. We will discuss several aspects of letter writing (such as the writing material, the layout and the style used in these letters) and the historical and religious relevance of these texts.

7. What Do Demotic Papyri Tell Us? (Koen Donker van Heel)

July 29: Introduction to (the history of) the demotic language and script and the role it played in Egyptian society. Survey of the wide range of sources about daily life in ancient Egypt. In the second part of this class we will address the famous Siut trial (2^nd century BCE), showing what the ancient Egyptians were like in real life!

8.  Arabic papyri from an early Islamic chancery (Jelle Bruning)

July 30: In c.700 CE, Egypt was a province in the Muslim empire of the Umayyad caliphs, whose capital was Damascus. In Egypt, many of the country’s administrative elite, including a governor appointed by the caliph himself, lived and worked in Fustat, a city that was located near today’s Cairo. The country’s administration was trilingual: its Muslim top in Fustat communicated in Arabic and in Greek with regional administrators, who, in turn, used Greek and Coptic in their correspondences with village representatives. This meeting focuses on Arabic documents produced in the chancery of Qurra ibn Sharik, Egypt’s Muslim governor between 709 and 714. They have been preserved in the archive of an Upper Egyptian pagarch named Basileios, to whom they were addressed. Thanks to the preservation of this archive, Qurra ibn Sharik’s short governorate is arguably the best documented period of Umayyad rule over Egypt. His Arabic letters often concern administrative matters such as taxation and related topics. But they also deal with legal disputes, the maintenance of the Muslim soldiers in Fustat, and the organisation of wars against the Byzantine empire. In this meeting, we will study these documents for what they tell us about the scribes and couriers who worked for Qurra ibn Sharik’s chancery. Who were these people? What do the documents that they wrote or delivered tell us about their origins, skills and employment? What do the documents reveal about the functioning of an Umayyad-era chancery?

9. Coptic Papyrology and Christianity (Renate Dekker)

July 31. Late Antique Egypt (ca. 284-639 CE) was a bilingual, Christian society, in which Sahidic Coptic was increasingly adopted alongside Greek for liturgical, literary and documentary texts as well as inscriptions. Coptic is the last phase of the ancient Egyptian language, and is thoroughly influenced by Greek with regard to its vocabulary and script. Sahidic is the variety of Coptic attested in texts from the fourth till the fourteenth centuries (but was replaced by the Bohairic variant as the official church language by the eleventh century). During this session, we will read Coptic letters (in English translation) addressed to the monk-bishop Pesynthius of Koptos (599-632), who temporary fulfilled his office in the neighboring district, supposedly out of fear for the Persians, who occupied Egypt in 619-620. Pesynthius received many petitions, even from people outside of his own diocese.

10. The mortuary cult (Koen Donker van Heel)

August 1: One of the ways in which the deceased could hope to survive in the hereafter was by hiring a libationer who would bring a weekly offering of water (and probably also bread, beer and incense). Some of these libationers took care of hundreds of mummies. In the second part of this class we will address women in the demotic papyri. They tell us that women were the legal equals of men. If they no longer loved their husbands they could simply go away.

Requirements

No previous knowledge of the languages in question is required.

No textbook is required; course documents are provided in class or sent to the students two weeks before the start of the Summer School.

Course description

Coptic represents the final stage of the Egyptian language. It belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family and also shows a remote relationship to Semitic languages, for example in patterns of word formation. Coptic is written in the Greek alphabet with heavy borrowing of Greek vocabulary. The use of an alphabet with vowels makes it the most accessible form of Ancient Egyptian and essential for a better understanding of the phonology and morphosyntax of older stages of the Egyptian language. Coptic was written in Egypt from the fourth until the fourteenth century, after the seventh century slowly being replaced by Arabic, although the northern variant (Bohairic) is still in use as the liturgical language of the Coptic Church.

This course offers an intensive introduction to the grammar of Sahidic, the most important variant of Coptic, which was used in southern Egypt between the fourth and eleventh centuries. It is aimed at learning to read Coptic texts independently in a short period of time.

Level

No previous knowledge is required.

Textbook

We will be following the text book of C.H. Reintges, Coptic Egyptian (Sahidic Dialect): A Learner’s Grammar, Keulen 2004/2018. It is not necessary to acquire the book in advance: all essential information will be provided in class. Introductory readings will be sent to the participants two weeks before the start of the Summer School.

Course description

Mycenaean civilization flourished in mainland Greece and the Aegean islands in the Late Bronze Age. The Mycenaeans have left behind an impressive material legacy, including the remains of mighty palaces, precious objects, decorative pottery, as well as thousands of clay tablets. These tablets, which all form part of local administrations, are written in the Linear B script, which was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris. The documents are written in the Mycenaean language, an archaic form of ancient Greek.

This course gives an introduction to Mycenaean language and culture. The language will be taught in a hands-on manner, by reading a selection of tablets in class (mostly in transliteration, but also considering Linear B script). While close-reading these texts, we will deal with philological and interpretative problems; the linguistic relationship between Mycenaean and later Greek (dialects, Homer) as well as Indo-European plays an important role. In addition, the course addresses various aspects of Mycenaean culture and society, such as the political organization of Mycenaean Greece, literacy in the Late Bronze Age Aegean, and contacts between Mycenaeans and contemporary civilizations like Egypt and the Hittite Empire. One class will be devoted to the issue of origins and historicity of the ‘Homeric world’ on the basis of archaeological, linguistic and textual data.

Course description

Early in human history we see how people in the Mediterranean started to record their business transactions, such as sales, but also, for example, wills to make sure that their estate would end up with the people of their choice. By looking at this phenomenon during different periods from various angles across the Mediterranean, this course aims to give an insight into how language was used to achieve this. And how and why language turned into legalese.

Course outline

1. The Ancient Egyptian Language of Law: Written and Oral (Ben Haring)

July 21: In the system of common law that prevailed in the earliest periods of Egyptian history, the development of a formulaic legal language was first and foremost an oral affair. Written legal texts from pharaonic Egypt prior to the Late Period are scarce, and may already have been so at the time they were produced. Were legal documents only produced in exceptional circumstances, or when much was at stake? And why don’t we find any written regulations belonging to Egypt’s legal system before the Late Period?

When we find a legal text settling a dispute, or stipulating the future of someone’s property, we usually assume that parties involved would act accordingly. Unless there are indications to the contrary. In this session we will turn to the documentation of a community where such indications do exist, and where these are even plentiful: the Ramesside community of workmen at Deir el-Medina. Their papyri and ostraca, covering a period of roughly two centuries (ca. 1300-1100 BCE), show us that the language of law was often pronounced and put into writing there, but that locals were not always particularly impressed by it.

2. Introduction to the Language of the Law (Quintijn Mauer)

July 22. Language and law go hand in hand. Whether the law is written or unwritten, whether the law is codified or of a customary nature, whether it is secular or religious, the law is always put in language. In this introductory class the importance of language to the law is explored by examining different ancient and more modern legal systems.

3. The Language of the Law in Babylonia (Jan Gerrit Dercksen)

July 23. Cuneiform sources document the legal history in ancient Iraq during almost 2500 years. This session will focus on royal law collections (read in English translation) from around 2000 BC and their role in legal practice.

4. The Language of the Law in Assur and its trade colonies, c. 1875 BC (Jan Gerrit Dercksen)

July 24. Long-distance trade led to specific legal practice to deal with complex financial and societal situations in the city-state Assur and its trade colonies in Anatolia. In this session we will discuss the evidence, ranging from legislation in Assur to the practice of arbitration among merchants abroad.

5. Amnesty for tax evaders: legal language in the village (Eline Scheerlinck)

July 25. The Coptic protection letters were legal documents used in villages in late antique and early Islamic Egypt to facilitate the return of people stranded away from home. When someone had left home for purposes of tax evasion, or because of an unresolved conflict, a return could mean being arrested or prosecuted. Protection letters, usually issued by village heads or monastic leaders, provided a promise of amnesty, so that the holder of the letter could return home without facing a penalty. They represent negotiations between locals and their immediate authorities through which a kind of self-imposed expulsion could lead to – although it did not always lead to – a readmittance in the village or monastic community. The Coptic protection letters operate on the crossroads of the administration of the province, private legal conflicts, and the social life of the villages of late antique and early Islamic Egypt.

6. The Role of Aramaic in Jewish Legalese (Margaretha Folmer)

July 28. In this session we will explore and reflect on the imprint of Aramaic on the language of law in Judaism, which is noticeable until the present day. For this purpose we need to go back to the role of Aramaic as a language of communication and administration under the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian and Persian administrations, when also the earliest known legal documents in Aramaic were written.

7. One Empire, Two Legal Traditions?  (Koen Donker van Heel)

July 29. Few people––including Egyptologists––are aware that around 700 BCE there were actually two competing legal traditions in Ancient Egypt. By that time the country had been divided into roughly two parts for several centuries, viz. the Delta in the north and everything south of present-day Cairo. To cut a long story short: in the end the people from the Delta won and reunified the country. They also imposed their legal system and legalese on the southern administration. These were exciting times. So how do we trace these developments in the legal evidence? We can actually trace it back to one family of scribes. How did the north and south of Egypt reflect on (the role of) women in society? The evidence is conflicting, but on the whole it seems that women in Ancient Egypt were pretty much their own boss. Does that change if we look at the written evidence recorded when they married? How does Ancient Egypt legalese describe them––and more importantly––what is left unmentioned in the legal documents? And why was this so?

8. To Have and to Hold: Are You Sure This is Your Property? (Koen Donker van Heel)

July 30. In the Late Period one specific class of mortuary priests is said to have owned the lands that they had received for their weekly services (as well as the tombs they worked in). But is this really true? What if they had received these lands and after two years they simply said: “Well, these are my lands now, so I will cut down my mortuary services to once a year, and there is nothing you can do about it.” This would of course severely endanger the after-life of the person on whose behalf this land had been donated in the first place. One supposes this scenario would not have gone down well with a donor of such a piece of land. So how could they make sure these priests would keep up their end of the bargain? In other words, are the apparent owners of these lands – and tombs – really the owners or do we have to look for another explanation?

9. The Legal Concept of Hypotheca (Quintijn Mauer)

July 31. In almost every modern-day society people borrow money in order to, for example, invest in a start-up, to buy a house or to cultivate land. Creditors, however, often ask their debtors reassurance that the debts will be timely paid. To this end the legal concept of hypotheca was invented, which allows the creditor to lay claim on property of the debtor and sell it to the highest bidder if the capital was not paid back in time. This ancient legal concept, which is still in use, is not only known extensively through Roman legal writings included in Justinian’s Corpus Iuris Civilis, but also through the contractual practice from Roman Egypt, which can be reconstructed via Greek papyri. In this seminar a brief introduction will be given on the basics of Roman law in general and more specific of Roman private law (Roman Law 101), after which we will have a detailed examination and legal comparison of the legal concept of hypotheca in Roman legal writings and the contractual practice as found in documents from the Hellenistic East.

10. What Happens with the Property of a Deceased Person? (Quintijn Mauer)

August 1: Many quarrels, especially among (close) family members of the deceased, have been fought over this question. To answer this question for the timeframe of the second and third century AD the Roman law of inheritance will examined closely. Romans were very keen on making testaments and developed a specific formulaic testamentary style. A mock example of this can be found in the so-called testamentum porcelli (testament of a little pig), in which the author made fun of this specific legal language. Through testamentary documents from the Hellenistic East from this timeframe, it becomes evident that the scribes in the East have also developed a highly specific and formulaic testamentary style to draw up these documents. In this seminar a legal comparison will be made between the Roman legal theory from the Corpus Iuris Civilis, legal theory from a Roman Egyptian source, namely the Gnomon of the Idios Logos (preserved on two papyri) and the legal practice as found in legal documents from the Hellenistic East.

Requirements

No previous knowledge of the languages in question is required.

No textbook is required; course documents are provided in class or sent to the students two weeks before the start of the Summer School.

See Indo-European Program II.

Course outline

We will be reading and discussing the novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, along with a few additional texts. All readings, which can be downloaded here, must be completed in advance. It is also advisable to reread Orwell’s novel 1984.

This year’s course is centered around the theme: ‘A biography of Sergey Yesenin in his poems’.

Course outline

This course provides an overview of the development of Arabic script, focusing on the evolution from its Nabataean origins through the early Islamic period. Students will learn to identify and differentiate between Nabataean, Nabataeo-Arabic, Paleo-Arabic, and early Islamic Arabic scripts.  The course will cover key aspects of each script, including letter forms, diacritics, ligatures, formulae, and the challenges of dating and localization. Emphasis will be placed on understanding the historical and cultural contexts that shaped the development of these scripts and their content.  Students will have the opportunity to work with facsimile materials and digital resources to develop the skills necessary to read, transcribe, and analyze early Arabic texts, and defend their interpretations.

Course outline

The Semitic language family includes such well-known languages as Arabic, Hebrew, and Akkadian. Their long written history and broad attestation make the task of reconstructing their last common ancestor, Proto-Semitic, exceptionally rewarding. This course will provide an introduction to the reconstruction of Proto-Semitic and the main developments in several major daughter languages and subfamilies.

1. Introduction to the Semitic languages
2. Phonology: consonants
3. Phonology: vowels
4. Morphology: nouns and pronouns
5. Morphology: the verb
6. East Semitic: Akkadian and Eblaite
7. Northwest Semitic: Canaanite, Aramaic, and Ugaritic
8. Arabic and Ancient North Arabian
9. Modern South Arabian: Mehri and its closest relatives
10. Beyond Proto-Semitic: the Afroasiatic phylum

Level

Students should be familiar with at least one (classical) Semitic language or have a good understanding of the comparative method.

Requirements

Students will be asked to review the topics covered in class.

Literature

Students who do not know any Semitic language should read A. D. Rubin, A Brief Introduction to the Semitic Languages (2010; Piscataway: Gorgias Press) to prepare themselves. Students without any training in historical linguistics may want to consult chapters 3–5 and 8–9 of R. McColl Millar, Trask’s Historical Linguistics, 2nd or 3rd ed. (2015; London & New York: Routledge) in advance.

Course description

Rabbinic Hebrew is the main language of the vast religious literature of Judaism in post-Biblical times. This course will offer an introduction to the linguistic characteristics of Rabbinic Hebrew through reading various text types (Mishnah, Talmud, Midrash, Bible commentaries etc), ranging from the second century CE to medieval times. A general overview of Rabbinic literature will be provided

Material

All necessary material will be provided during the course.

Requirements

A working knowledge of either Biblical or Modern Hebrew.

Course description

Classical Ethiopic, or Geez, belongs to the Northern branch of Ethio-Semitic, together with Tigrinya, Tigre and Dahalik. The language is first attested in inscriptions from the 3^rd-4^th centuries CE and it died out after 1000 CE, but a sizeable literature, consisting of both translations (mainly from Greek and Arabic) and original works, was written up to the 19^th century. Geez is still used today as the liturgical language of Ethiopian Christianity and Judaism.

This course will provide an overview of the script, phonology, morphology and syntax of Classical Ethiopic. After an introduction to the basic grammatical features, the aim is to acquire a working knowledge of Geez grammar and vocabulary by reading several text passages, using grammars and dictionaries. In addition, a concise overview of Ethiopian literature will be provided.

Material

All necessary material will be provided during the course.

Requirements

A working knowledge of another Semitic language is useful, but not required.

IMPORTANT NOTE: In order to make as much progress as possible, students are required to master the Ethiopic script by themselves before the start of this course!