The Writing Culture of Ancient Dadān A Description and Quantitative Analysis of Linguistic Variation

• Tác giả: Fokelien Kootstra
• Ngôn ngữ: eng
• ISBN-13: 978-9004512627
• ISBN-13: 978-9004512634
• Thông tin xuất bản: Brill, 2022
• Bộ sưu tập: Tài liệu truy cập mở
• ID: 375266
• Chủ đề: 1. al-ʿUlā; 2. Dadanitic inscriptions; 3. Western Arabia; 4. Palaeography (history of writing)

Tóm tắt

This work focuses the social context of writing in ancient Western Arabia in the oasis of ancient Dadan, modern-day al-ʿUlā in the northwest of the Arabian Peninsula between the sixth to first centuries BC. It offers a description and analysis of the language of the inscriptions and the variation attested within them. It is the first work to perform a systematic study of the linguistic variation of the Dadanitic inscriptions. It combines a thorough description of the language of the inscriptions with a statistical analysis of the distribution of variation across different textual genres and manners of inscribing. By considering correlations between language-internal and extralinguistic features this analysis aims to take a more holistic approach to the epigraphic object. Through this approach an image of a rich writing culture emerges, in which we can see innovation as well as the deliberate use of archaic linguistic features in more formal text types.