Hi Marco,
During my PhD research on the text of a New Testament letter (to the
Hebrews), I found a fairly unmistakable correlation between substantive
(i.e. semantic) and orthographic (e.g. spelling) variation among
manuscript copies:
purl.org/tfinney/PhD/
See especially the chapter named "Results" in the first volume
(part1.pdf). The relevant maps can be seen in the third volume
(part3.pdf). (Apologies for the lack of figures in the PDF of vol. 1.
They can be found under the RTF directory.)
A possible explanation of this phenomenon is localised spelling
practice. If so then we need to think in terms of regional spelling
dialects rather than universally consistent spelling. (We have the same
phenomenon today in, e.g., differences between English/English and
English/US.) The regional dialects could have changed over time, too.
Sometimes I think I can hear an accent behind the way Greek words were
written in, say, Egypt (e.g. rho/lambda interchange).
Best,
Tim Finney
purl.org/tfinney/
On 11/02/2012 08:03 AM, DIGITALCLASSICIST automatic digest system wrote:
> Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 17:31:57 +0100
> From: Marco BÜCHLER<[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: [spelling standardisation in Greek and Latin]
>
> Hi,
>
> i do recent work on a passage how to pre-process historical texts -
> focussing on Greek and Latin. Nowadays, we have something a standard for
> writing a word. Everything that differs is commonly understood as a
> spelling error.
>
> As more we go back on the timeline, I assume, as less restrictive those
> rules are. I do ask me all the day if we know when the first spelling
> reform was made? Or what are early kinds of spelling reforms like that a
> person X is seen as authority so that all (or most) follow his or her
> "guidelines"?
>
> For any help, thanks in advance,
> Marco
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