Greek Dialogues - A new approach to the linguistic diversification of ancient Greece

Date and Time: Thursday, 27th April, 2023 at 18:00h BST

Venue: Room 1.11, Faculty of Classics, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 9DA and

Online: Access details below

In this, the eighth seminar in season three of the Greek Dialogues series, Professor David Goldstein (Lewis-Gibson Visiting Fellow and Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, explores the development of ancient Greek dialects and the use of current analytical methods which are yielding interesting and significant results.

The diversification of the ancient Greek dialects remains one of the most recalcitrant problems in Greek linguistics. Debates persist over a number of fundamental issues, including the methodology of historical inference, the divergence times of the subgroups, and the distribution of the dialects in the second millennium BCE.

Over the past twenty years, the advent of Bayesian methods has revolutionized the investigation of such issues. We not only have new ways of approaching old debates, but can also pursue questions that were previously out of reach.

In this talk, Prof Goldstein presents the results of Bayesian phylogenetic analyses carried out on a newly curated dataset. His results bear on the diversification of the ancient Greek dialects as well as the methodology of phylogenetic inference more generally.

Topic: Greek Dialogues - A new approach to the linguistic diversification of ancient Greece
Time: Thursday 27th April, 2023 at 18:00h BST

Join Zoom Meeting: https://zoom.us/j/93585390346?pwd=TXRMVG56UTlaQjl6TTR1cnRNVDFrZz09

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Meeting ID: 935 8539 0346
Passcode: 617261

: The Cambridge Centre for Greek Studies Channel

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