61-661: Cratylus ( / ˈ k r æ t ɪ l ə s / KRAT -il-əs ; Ancient Greek : Κρατύλος , Kratylos ) was an ancient Athenian philosopher from the mid-late 5th century BC, known mostly through his portrayal in Plato 's dialogue Cratylus . He was a radical proponent of Heraclitean philosophy and influenced the young Plato. Little is known of Cratylus beyond his status as a disciple of Heraclitus of Ephesus , Asia Minor . Modern biographers have not reached consensus on his approximate date of birth, arguing alternately for an age comparable either to Plato or Socrates . Cratylus
122-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in
183-498: A Corinthian epichoric alphabet. (See under Attic Greek .) Corinth contradicts the prejudice that Dorians were rustic militarists, as some consider the speakers of Laconian to be. Positioned on an international trade route, Corinth played a leading part in the re-civilizing of Greece after the centuries of disorder and isolation following the collapse of Mycenaean Greece. The Northwest Doric (or "Northwest Greek", with "Northwest Doric" now considered more accurate so as not to distance
244-529: A book of essays on poetry titled The New Cratylus. . Cratylus is mentioned twice in Emmanuel Levinas 's 1961 book, Totality And Infinity . Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into
305-518: A dialect that some consider to be predominantly Laconian. Philoxenus of Alexandria wrote a treatise On the Laconian dialect . Argolic was spoken in the thickly settled northeast Peloponnese at, for example, Argos , Mycenae , Hermione , Troezen , Epidaurus , and as close to Athens as the island of Aegina . As Mycenaean Greek had been spoken in this dialect region in the Bronze Age , it
366-477: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and
427-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in
488-462: A northern Greek dialect" with numerous adherents from the 19th century and on (Fick 1874; Hoffmann 1906; Hatzidakis 1897 etc.; Kalleris 1964 and 1976). Masson himself argues with the largely Greek character of the Macedonian onomastics and sees Macedonian as "a Greek dialect, characterised by its marginal position and by local pronunciations" and probably most closely related to the dialects of
549-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment
610-608: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek
671-630: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c. 300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as
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#1732764802326732-467: A step beyond his master's doctrine and proclaimed that it cannot even be done once. The contemporary philosophy Cratylism is based on a reconstructed version of Cratylus' theories of flux and language as they appear in Plato's dialogue. It has been influential to Eastern thinkers, including Buddhist semioticians . The Australian poet, academic, and literary critic Professor A. D. Hope published in 1979
793-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and
854-570: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of
915-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected
976-666: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to
1037-577: Is clear that the Dorians overran it but were unable to take Attica . The Dorians went on from Argos to Crete and Rhodes . Ample inscriptional material of a legal, political and religious content exists from at least the sixth century BC. Corinthian was spoken first in the isthmus region between the Peloponnesus and mainland Greece ; that is, the Isthmus of Corinth . The cities and states of
1098-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in
1159-552: Is mentioned in Aristotle 's Metaphysics in a passage which seems to imply that he was an established and active philosopher in Athens during the mid-late 5th century, and that Plato was briefly interested in his teachings prior to aligning with Socrates. In Cratylus' eponymous Platonic dialogue, the character of Socrates states Heraclitus' claim that one cannot step twice into the same stream. According to Aristotle, Cratylus went
1220-539: Is not a proper dialectal group but rather merely a case of areal dialectal convergence. Throughout the Northwest Doric area, most internal differences did not hinder mutual understanding, though Filos, citing Bubenik, notes that there were certain cases where a bit of accommodation may have been necessary. The earliest epigraphic texts for Northwest Doric date to the 6th–5th century BC. These are thought to provide evidence for Northwest Doric features, especially
1281-531: Is widely accepted that Doric originated in the mountains of Epirus in northwestern Greece , the original seat of the Dorians . It expanded to all other regions during the Dorian invasion ( c. 1150 BC ) and the colonisations that followed. The presence of a Doric state ( Doris ) in central Greece, north of the Gulf of Corinth , led to the theory that Doric had originated in northwest Greece or maybe beyond in
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#17327648023261342-711: The Achaean League , an Achaean Doric koine appeared, exhibiting many peculiarities common to all Doric dialects, which delayed the spread of the Attic -based Koine Greek to the Peloponnese until the 2nd century BC. The only living descendant of Doric is the Tsakonian language which is still spoken in Greece today; though critically endangered, with only a few hundred – mostly elderly – fluent speakers left. It
1403-621: The Balkans . The dialect's distribution towards the north extends to the Megarian colony of Byzantium and the Corinthian colonies of Potidaea , Epidamnos , Apollonia and Ambracia ; there, it further added words to what would become the Albanian language , probably via traders from a now-extinct "Adriatic Illyrian " intermediary. In the north, local epigraphical evidence includes
1464-708: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect
1525-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)
1586-520: The "northerners" might have spoken one dialect at the time of the Dorian invasion; certainly, Doric could only have further differentiated into its classical dialects when the Dorians were in place in the south. Thus West Greek is the most accurate name for the classical dialects. Tsakonian , a descendant of Laconian Doric (Spartan), is still spoken on the southern Argolid coast of the Peloponnese, in
1647-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):
1708-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from
1769-560: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs, Doric Greek Doric or Dorian ( Ancient Greek : Δωρισμός , romanized : Dōrismós ), also known as West Greek ,
1830-459: The Corinthian dialect region were Corinth , Sicyon , Archaies Kleones , Phlius , the colonies of Corinth in western Greece: Corcyra , Leucas , Anactorium , Ambracia and others, the colonies in and around Italy: Syracuse, Sicily and Ancona , and the colonies of Corcyra : Dyrrachium , and Apollonia . The earliest inscriptions at Corinth date from the early sixth century BC. They use
1891-572: The Greek North-West (Locrian, Aetolian, Phocidian, Epirote). Brian D. Joseph acknowledges the closeness of Macedonian to Greek (even contemplating to group them into a "Hellenic branch" of Indo-European), but retains that "[t]he slender evidence is open to different interpretations, so that no definitive answer is really possible". Johannes Engels has pointed to the Pella curse tablet , written in Doric Greek: "This has been judged to be
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1952-641: The Ionian Sea, and in the Achaean colonies of Magna Graecia in Southern Italy (including Sybaris and Crotone ). This strict Doric dialect was later subject to the influence of mild Doric spoken in Corinthia . It survived until 350 BC. By Hellenistic times, under the Achaean League , an Achaean Doric koine appeared, exhibiting many peculiarities common to all Doric dialects, which delayed
2013-661: The Northwest Greek-speaking Argead Macedonians hailing from Argos Orestikon , who founded the kingdom of Lower Macedonia . However, according to Hatzopoulos, B. Helly expanded and improved his own earlier suggestion and presented the hypothesis of a (North-)' Achaean ' substratum extending as far north as the head of the Thermaic Gulf , which had a continuous relation, in prehistoric times both in Thessaly and Macedonia , with
2074-687: The Northwest Greek-speaking populations living on the other side of the Pindus mountain range, and contacts became cohabitation when the Argead Macedonians completed their wandering from Orestis to Lower Macedonia in the 7th c. BC. According to this hypothesis, Hatzopoulos concludes that the Macedonian Greek dialect of the historical period, which is attested in inscriptions, is a sort of koine resulting from
2135-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has
2196-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in
2257-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West
2318-683: The decrees of the Epirote League , the Pella curse tablet , three additional lesser known Macedonian inscriptions (all of them identifiable as Doric), numerous inscriptions from a number of Greek colonies. Furthermore, there is an abundance of place names used to examine features of the northern Doric dialects. Southern dialects, in addition to numerous inscriptions, coins, and names, have also provided much more literary evidence through authors such as Alcman , Pindar , and Archimedes of Syracuse , among others, all of whom wrote in Doric. There are also ancient dictionaries that have survived; notably
2379-615: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of
2440-526: The following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c. 1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c. 1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c. 800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c. 500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been
2501-497: The group from Doric proper) group is closely related to Doric proper. Whether it is to be considered a part of the southern Doric Group or the latter a part of it or the two considered subgroups of West Greek, the dialects and their grouping remain the same. West Thessalian and Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Doric influence. While Northwest Doric is generally seen as a dialectal group, dissenting views exist, such as that of Méndez-Dosuna, who argues that Northwest Doric
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2562-506: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from
2623-424: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to
2684-704: The interaction and the influences of various elements, the most important of which are the North- Achaean substratum, the Northwest Greek idiom of the Argead Macedonians , and the Thracian and Phrygian adstrata. Achaean Doric most probably belonged to the Northwest Doric group. It was spoken in Achaea in the northwestern Peloponnese, on the islands of Cephalonia and Zakynthos in
2745-461: The modern prefectures of Arcadia and Laconia . Today it is a source of considerable interest to linguists, and an endangered dialect. Laconian was spoken by the population of Laconia in the southern Peloponnese and also by its colonies, Taras and Herakleia in Magna Graecia . Sparta was the seat of ancient Laconia. Laconian is attested in inscriptions on pottery and stone from
2806-493: The most important ancient testimony to substantiate that Macedonian was a north-western Greek and mainly a Doric dialect". Miltiades Hatzopoulos has suggested that the Macedonian dialect of the 4th century BC, as attested in the Pella curse tablet , was a sort of Macedonian 'koine' resulting from the encounter of the idiom of the ' Aeolic '-speaking populations around Mount Olympus and the Pierian Mountains with
2867-452: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which
2928-474: The one by Hesychius of Alexandria , whose work preserved many dialectal words from throughout the Greek-speaking world. Where the Doric dialect group fits in the overall classification of ancient Greek dialects depends to some extent on the classification. Several views are stated under Greek dialects . The prevalent theme of most views listed there is that Doric is a subgroup of West Greek . Some use
2989-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c. 1450 BC ) are in
3050-562: The phonology and morphophonology, but most of the features thus attributed to Northwest Doric are not exclusive to it. The Northwest Doric dialects differ from the main Doric Group dialects in the below features: Four or five dialects of Northwestern Doric are recognised. This dialect was spoken in Phocis and in its main settlement, Delphi . Because of that it is also cited as Delphian. Plutarch says that Delphians pronounce b in
3111-607: The place of p ( βικρὸν for πικρὸν ) Locrian Greek is attested in two locations: The dialect of Elis (earliest c. 600 BC ) is considered, after Aeolic Greek , one of the most difficult for the modern reader of epigraphic texts. Spoken at the Dodona oracle, (earliest c. 550 –500 BC) firstly under control of the Thesprotians ; later organized in the Epirote League (since c. 370 BC ). Most scholars maintain that ancient Macedonian
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#17327648023263172-450: The seventh century BC. A dedication to Helen dates from the second quarter of the seventh century. Taras was founded in 706 and its founders must already have spoken Laconic. Many documents from the state of Sparta survive, whose citizens called themselves Lacedaemonians after the name of the valley in which they lived. Homer calls it "hollow Lacedaemon", though he refers to a pre-Dorian period. The seventh century Spartan poet Alcman used
3233-666: The southern Aegean ( Kythira , Milos , Thera , Crete , Karpathos , and Rhodes ), as well as the colonies of some of those regions in Cyrene , Magna Graecia , the Black Sea , the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic Sea . It was also spoken in the Greek sanctuaries of Dodona , Delphi , and Olympia , as well as at the four Panhellenic festivals; the Isthmian , Nemean , Pythian , and Olympic Games . By Hellenistic times, under
3294-517: The spread of the Attic -based Koine Greek to the Peloponnese until the 2nd century BC. The Northwest Doric koine refers to a supraregional North-West common variety that emerged in the third and second centuries BC, and was used in the official texts of the Aetolian League . Such texts have been found in W. Locris, Phocis, and Phtiotis, among other sites. It contained a mix of native Northwest Doric dialectal elements and Attic forms. It
3355-665: The state of Epirus. The Northwest Doric koine was thus both a linguistic and a political rival of the Attic-Ionic koine. Proto-Greek long *ā is retained as ā , in contrast to Attic developing a long open ē ( eta ) in at least some positions. In certain Doric dialects (Severe Doric), *e and *o lengthen by compensatory lengthening or contraction to eta or omega , in contrast to Attic ei and ou ( spurious diphthongs ). Contraction: Proto-Greek *ae > Doric ē ( eta ) ~ Attic ā . Proto-Greek *eo, *ea > some Doric dialects' io, ia . Proto-Greek short *a > Doric short
3416-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies
3477-413: The terms Northern Greek or Northwest Greek instead. The geographic distinction is only verbal and ostensibly is misnamed: all of Doric was spoken south of "Southern Greek" or "Southeastern Greek." Be that as it may, "Northern Greek" is based on a presumption that Dorians came from the north and on the fact that Doric is closely related to Northwest Greek . When the distinction began is not known. All
3538-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,
3599-567: Was a Greek dialect, probably of the Northwestern Doric group in particular. Olivier Masson , in his article for The Oxford Classical Dictionary , talks of "two schools of thought": one rejecting "the Greek affiliation of Macedonian" and preferring "to treat it as an Indo-European language of the Balkans" of contested affiliation (examples are Bonfante 1987, and Russu 1938); the other favouring "a purely Greek nature of Macedonian as
3660-459: Was a group of Ancient Greek dialects ; its varieties are divided into the Doric proper and Northwest Doric subgroups. Doric was spoken in a vast area, including northern Greece ( Acarnania , Aetolia , Epirus , western and eastern Locris , Phocis , Doris , and possibly ancient Macedonia ), most of the Peloponnese (Achaea, Elis, Messenia, Laconia, Argolid, Aegina, Corinth, and Megara),
3721-478: Was apparently based on the most general features of Northwest Doric, eschewing less common local traits. Its rise was driven by both linguistic and non-linguistic factors, with non-linguistic motivating factors including the spread of the rival Attic-Ionic koine after it was recruited by the Macedonian state for administration, and the political unification of a vast territories by the Aetolian League and
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