A glimpse into Greek linguistics

The conference is devoted to the Greek language and linguistics, another scientific area that has been indelibly marked by the ancient Greeks. It will look at the immense significance of Greek – a European language with the longest written tradition – for modern philology and linguistics and explore different aspects of its study including current psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic perspectives.
 
The event will conclude with the screening of Last Words (2014), a film about the discovery of Cappadocian language that had been assumed extinct. Spoken in Cappadocia until the First World War, the dialect was gradually dying away. It was not until recently that Prof. Dr. Mark Janse discovered speakers of the Cappadocian language and started to study their language and culture.
 
 

A Round Table discussion entitled “Greek Language and Grammatical Gender” is also planned. It will address the complex and relevant issue of grammatical gender. Ancient Greek Sophist Protagoras (481–411 BC) was the first to use the terms masculine and feminine (grammatical) gender.
 

The conference is organised by Cankarjev dom in cooperation with the Faculty of Arts, (Departments of Classical Philology and Department of Comparative  and General Linguistics, University of Ljubljana).

Speakers: Prof. Dr. Mark Janse (University of Gent & Harvard University), Prof. Dr. Geoffrey Horrocks (University of Cambridge), Prof. Dr. Brian D. Joseph (Ohio State University), Prof. Dr. Spyridoula Varlοkosta (University of Athens) and other linguists from Slovenia and abroad.
 

Programme

9.00: Welcome addresses:
dean Roman Kuhar
academician Peter Štih, vice-president of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
his exellency Eleftherios Kouvaritakis, the ambassador of the Hellenic Republic in Slovenia

9.30‒10.40: Brian Joseph (Ohio State University): The decipherment of Linear B: opening a window into Greek in the prehistoric Mediterranean 

10.40‒11.10: Orest Xherija (University of Chicago): Restoring ancient text with artificial intelligence: the case of Greek 

11.10‒11.40: Coffee break

11.40‒12.50: Geoffrey Horrocks (University of Cambridge): What's in the middle? Two voices or three?

12.50‒13.20: Brian Joseph (Ohio State University), Jerneja Kavčič (University of Ljubljana), Christopher Brown (Ohio State University): Teaching Modern Greek to classicists 

13.20‒14.30: Lunch break

14.30‒15.40: Spyridoula Varlokosta (University of Athens): Patterns of (morpho)syntactic production and comprehension in aphasia: the contribution of Greek

15.40‒16.10: Christina Manouilidou (University of Ljubljana) and Michaela Nerantzini (University of Ioannina): Language disorders from antiquity to modern era

16.10‒16.40: Coffee break

16.40‒17.10: Matej Hriberšek (University of Ljubljana): At the intersection of Slovenian and Greek: lexicographer Dominik Pen and his work

17.10 ‒18.10: Mark Janse (University of Gent & Harvard University): From Katpatuka to Ionanistan: the rise, demise and resurrection of Cappadocian Greek, a language once believed dead 

18.15: projection of the documentary Last words