RESEARCH IN PROGRESS The research is not complete. The content is being checked, it changes, and it is not a final position of the Atlas.
ATLASEllinofonia
The Circle Ελληνικά
THE BRIDGE BETWEEN PERIODSΗ ΓΕΦΥΡΑ ΤΩΝ ΠΕΡΙΟΔΩΝDraft under review

Greek through time

From Linear B to today's diaspora, with overlapping research windows instead of clean breaks. Koine, Late Antiquity, Byzantium, the Middle Ages and the early modern period connect the four pillars.

The research windows

The layout shows order and overlap, not duration. Only the medieval window has a sourced date: about 1100 to 1700.

Bronze Age, Mycenaean

Evidence to keep apart
Tablet findspot, archive, sign reading, transliteration, lexical interpretation, destruction and administrative dates
Research question
Do the constraints of the script permit the proposed phonological inference?
Sources
B03

UNITS IN THE INDEX

The periods here are search windows. They overlap, and they do not define simultaneous linguistic breaks everywhere. The date a text was composed, the date of the surviving manuscript, of the exemplar it was copied from, of a printed edition, of a recording and of a linguistic feature are different fields. A fifteenth century copy can preserve older material. A learned Byzantine form may imitate antiquity rather than record everyday speech.

The medieval and Byzantine programme

The Cambridge Grammar of Medieval and Early Modern Greek covers roughly 1100 to 1700. That window reflects the quantity and nature of accessible vernacular texts, and its introduction explicitly separates the language of the preserved texts from the inferred grammar of speakers B04 General Introduction pp.xvii–xix. That is why a "Byzantine" label does not on its own specify register, spoken grammar or a political boundary.

The section is organised in four dossiers: Late Antiquity and the early medieval period with their gaps; learned, ecclesiastical and administrative writing practices; later vernacular literary and documentary traditions; and regional differentiation into early modern descriptions. The epitome of the Kriaras dictionary is accessible through the Centre for the Greek Language B11 landing page. Athens Digital Glossa Chronos is a relevant cross period tool, but its stated release limits mean it cannot be assumed to be a complete, balanced corpus B12 Release status (v0.4).

Koine

The Centre for the Greek Language overview describes Koine as an interdialectal convergence B06 opening history paragraphs. That does not support a uniform speech map for the whole empire. Research studies levelling together with competing registers, such as literary Atticism.

Sources on this page

  1. B04 Holton, David, Geoffrey Horrocks, Marjolijne Janssen, Tina Lendari, Io Manolessou and Notis Toufexis. 2019. The Cambridge Grammar of Medieval and Early Modern Greek. Cambridge UP. DOI 10.1017/9781316632840. Passage inspected
  2. B11 Centre for the Greek Language. Epitome of the Kriaras Dictionary. Metadata only
  3. B12 Lavidas, Nikolaos et al. 2026. AthDGC: Athens Digital Glossa Chronos. NKUA. Project citation on site: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20439182. Passage inspected
  4. B06 Centre for the Greek Language. Peter Trudgill: Modern Greek Dialects. Portal/export copyright2006; composition date unestablished. Passage inspected