Linguistic Interaction in Roman Comedy

Peter Barrios-Lech

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781107129825
• eBook ISBN: 9781316592854
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This book presents a comprehensive account of features of Latin that emerge from dialogue: commands and requests, command softeners and strengtheners, statement hedges, interruptions, attention-getters, greetings and closings. In analyzing these features, Peter Barrios-Lech employs a quantitative method and draws on all the data from Roman comedy and the fragments of Latin drama. In the first three parts, on commands and requests, particles, attention-getters and interruptions, the driving questions are firstly - what leads the speaker to choose one form over another? And secondly - how do the playwrights use these features to characterize on the linguistic level? Part IV analyzes dialogues among equals and slave speech, and employs data-driven analyses to show how speakers enact roles and construct relationships with each other through conversation. The book will be important to all scholars of Latin, and especially to scholars of Roman drama.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Note on texts and translations
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• Part I How to command and request in early Latin
• Part II How to say “please” in early Latin, and more
• Part III How to greet and gain attention, and when to interrupt
• Part IV The language of friendship, the language of domination
• Part V Role shifts, speech shifts
• Appendices
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index rerum
• Index vocabulorum et locutionum
• Index locorum potiorum