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SUMMARY:Bilingualism and Biliteracy in Oscan South Italy?  - Dr Nicholas Z
 air (Peterhouse\; Classics) 
DTSTART:20130501T110000Z
DTEND:20130501T130000Z
UID:TALK44488@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ruth Rushworth
DESCRIPTION:Dr Nicholas Zair (Peterhouse\; Classics) presents at the CRASS
 H Postdoctoral Research Seminar.\n\nThe event is free to attend but regist
 ration is required: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2433/\n\nAbstract\n
 \nThe South of Italy between 400 and 100BC was extremely multicultural and
  multilingual\, with speakers of various languages\, including Greek\, Lat
 in\, Oscan and Messapic all in contact at various times. My talk will exam
 ine the evidence for cultural and linguistic interaction provided by the u
 se of different alphabets to write Oscan\, a well understood language rela
 ted to Latin. Oscan was spoken from Campania to the toe of Italy\, and I w
 ill focus on the inscriptions from modern-day Basilicata\, Calabria and Si
 cily\, which use the Greek alphabet. Traditionally\, inscriptions written 
 in this alphabet have been seen as reflecting a fixed and rigid school of 
 trained scribes using an orthography specifically developed for writing Os
 can. Variation in the rules of this orthography have been attributed to a 
 reform at the start of the 3rd century under the influence of specific cha
 nges in the Oscan alphabet used further North\, or the Greek alphabet used
  to write Greek. I will argue that we should instead identify continuing v
 ariation in orthography due to individual factors\, in particular widespre
 ad Greek-Oscan bilingualism leading to shared Greek-Oscan orthographic pra
 ctices.\n\nAbout Nicholas Zair\n\nNicholas Zair is a Research Fellow at Pe
 terhouse and Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics. He is current
 ly working on the relationship between the orthography and phonology of th
 e Oscan inscriptions written in the Greek alphabet\, and what this can tel
 l us about the Oscan sound system\, dialectal variation\, and the social c
 ontext of writing Oscan. His research interests include the historical pho
 nology and morphology of the Italic and Celtic language families. His book
 \, The Reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European Laryngeals in Celtic\, came out
  in September 2012.
LOCATION:CRASSH\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge\, CB3 
 9DT
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