- . t2THBKOI NE: A NEWLANGUAGEFORANE,W STORLDStepbenCo/ain1. The koine has traditionallyproved a difficultnotionto pin down. Pardythis is owing to the fact that the ancieflt sourcesare themselvesconfused,and Ishall argue that such confusion qpicallygrows out ofa iinguisricenvironment characterizedby koine and diglossia.Modem studiessuggestthag in cultures which employ a koine basedon a prestigious literary canon,itis syrnptomaticof linguistic thought that itis focussedon the wriftenlanguagetosuch a degree that the telationship(historicaland synchronic)beweenthe spoken language(s)and the writtenlanguageis ignored ormisunderstood.One of the reasonsthat Westernscholarshiphas found itdifficulttounravel thelinguistic culture ofthepostclassicalwoddisptecisely the dysfunctionalrelationshipwithlanguage that was inhedtedftomthat wodd;a usethl way tosidestep the lens throughwhichwe viewthe linguistic landscapeis to turn to modem linguistic studiesofparallelsfromother cultures. \X/eshall lookfora general model ofhowa koineworksinthecontextofptestigious l.iteraryand cultural heritage; foralthough the Gteek koine is oftensupposed to have been a feature ofvetbal intetaction, we have infact very litde evidenceabout the spokenlanguageinthe postclassicalGreek wodd. ModemstLrdiesmay providetypological parallels to help us fillthe gaps.2. The polysemy attaching to the tefmkoine can be structutedby shiftingthe termfroma purely linguisticdomaintoone where language, cultuteand politics coincide. In general the uncertainty suffounding the term koinehas two sources.Firsdy, the term was taken over by modern linguistics andhas been used in a variety ofways, none of which necessarilyreflectsthesocialand historicalconditions surounding the 'original' koine. Secondly,there has been litde consistencyin the way the term has been applied to thelinguisticsituation ofthe ancient wodd.Forclassicists the koine is the langrage associatedwiththe new woddcreated inthe easternMediteraneanby the Macedonian hegemony, a- ) 1!StepbenCaluinwodd graduallytaken ovet and reunited by the Roman state.The starlingpointis arbittadly, and notunreasonably,set at the end ofthe foutthcentury BCwhen the Macedonian state ovetran the Grcek wodd,ftstundetPhilip II(died 336 nc) and then under Alexander. Thete ate reasonstobelieve that its linguistic forebear(s) had been crystallizing over the previoustwocenturies,l butsince the koine is a poJitical and ideological term asmuchas a linguistic one, extending thetermback intimewouldbeconfusing and misleading.As the litutgical languageof the Greek church'was more orless koine, and,had a lasting and ptofoundeffect oflthehistory oftheGteek language,it is far more difficult to assigna convenientend-date;inpractice texts later than Justinian (died ao565) are rarelyquoted to illustrate koine (asopposed to Byzantine) Greek. We shall returnto this questionat the end.The tetm koine has passedinto modern linguisticsto mean a languagevatiety used over a wide area byspeakerswhoengageinlevelling (thelevelling out ofregional peculiarities) forthe sake ofcommunicationalefficiency:a comptomise acrossdia-lects,implying some degteeof institutiona.lstandardization.The wotdhas been used to denote a variety of differentsituations, butkey ovedapping features2generally include the following:i) a koineadses fromrelated dialects (otclosely related linguisticvarieties)rather than from languageswhich arewholly distinct fromeachothet;ii) levelling:itatisesfromseveraldialects,by a processin which localpeculiatities ate ironedout;iii) it may be the result of dre transportation of relatedvatietiesto newptoximity in a new geographicallocation, or it may be due to a newsoci aJor pol i ri cal ci rcumsrancei n an exi sti ngarea;iv) it may become a litetary ot national standatd;it may become nativized.lAn implication of the aboveis that there ate likely to be identifiable stagesin the evolution ofakoine, eachmatkedby salientcharacteristicswhich donotnecessatilypertain tothe wholel.ifecycleofthe phenomenon. Ingenetal the notionof koine implies a lingua franca, though the two are notexactly equivalent and should notbe confused(a lingua ftanca does notimply a koine).Ifweconsidet the featureslisted above in the context of the Gteek koineit may lead to some useful distinctionsbetweenthat situationand modernusageof the tetm.2.1 Firstly, the Gteek koine was 'common'in the sensethat it becameanationa.lstandatd,whete pteviously dialectaldiversity had existed.Itwasnot common in the sensethat the word seemsoften to havein a modetn.'rzTbekoine: a newlangaagefora newworldcontext, namely formedftomthe dialects bya(roughly symmetrical)process oflevelling. Some scholars ofthemodernerhave assumedthatitdidinfactarise fromthestraightforwardmixing(linguisricaccommodation)of Attic,Ionic, West Greek, Aeolic, and (theoretically)Arcado-Cypriot.They echo a stainof thought in the ancientgrammaticaltraditionwhich assertedptecisely this (minus Arcado-Cypriot,which is nota group the ancients recognised): compare, forexample, a tematk recotdedin the scholiato Dionysius Thtax;(aSCrCn I, 3. 469(Or rheKoin):Tuldggoor,vilruorir 6qeil.er,rcorvriKol.io0or,dl,l"dplurri,ei nep { rouvldndteoodpcovolvdotlrcev'ori 1dp r{v5udreoocrprovqappcrtov3pn}"ootpovrouvlvroLotpev,dDd purcrriv.rcalro),6EBl"elovrcrtrcrnpdgtotE l"dyowogrriv rouvr\vouvlorco0nrdr rriv rroodporv,rccrinpdgroutor,g,6tu pritnpriror,vri'eL 1cp ruEelnou6rr,6opuori,gcrpiv6tl rd rcorvdvor-rro0,ii ci,o)'r,ori6pro[coE,lj iuori,,ii drrrruori.Somesaythatif in factthe CommonDialectis composedof four elements[sc. Attic, Ionic, Doric, AeoJic]it shouldnot be called 'common', but 'mixed'- for rvedo not call a salvethat is madeof four drugs 'common', but 'mlxed'.And this is a good argumentagainstthosewho claimthat the CommonDialect arosefrom a combinationof the four dialects;andtheyhaveanothergood argumentwhen they saythat the Common Dialectis the mother[sc. ofthe otherdialects].For ifsomebodyusestheexpression 'in theDoricdialect',we saythat thisis equivalentto 'in commonDoric', andthe samefor 'in Aeolic',or 'in Ionic', or 'in Attic'.4The koine was,rather,an expandedand Ionicized form of Attic, which (atleast in its literary fotm)showed a small admlrture oflexical items thatappearpoetic from the petspectiveofclassicalAttic. This may be becausethey wete Ionicinotigin,otsimply becauseofthe artificia.l natute oftheliterary koine: later u/ritendrew onthe lexical resourcesofthe classicalpast,and this sometimesincludedthe poets (especiallyepic).5It is the case,however, that the Greek koine developedina context ofcloselyrelateddialects.To the extent that there waslevelling,this itoned out some ofthespecifically Atticpeculiarities ofinflection,whichledtoa simplifiedmorphologicalsystem.6Anexample of this is the teplacement of the 'Atticdeclension' in which the change o > 1 followedby quantitative metathesisled toforms such as l"e6E,vet[Efromld6g etc. The koine 'reinttoduced'l"o69fromthe non-Attic-Ion.ic dialects(and it was familiar from Homer).Theteatmentofthis inthe later grammatical ttaditionlumps ittogethetwitha separatephenomenon,the wavering over the adoptionofthe Atticinflection of zlstemnouns in placeof the non-ablautingpattern commonto the other dialects (includingIonic);33StepbenCalain(b) Hdn. (Or tbeDecknsionafNaun:) GrGr 7II,2.704-5:&Eu6vdotr, Lttiosr 610noiov oitiov td Botgl3o6E oi llveror, rccr'UrrcolvArrlrlvtoOo eigro r,l.orwoiv elneiv6rl to drreivovrotd o eiEto t.l drirdrv rccrocpeu6vrrrrvrcoird nopol"fllovgrovfeveig e percBoL?leuoiov dcplgdQr.og69eorg,ndi"r"gn6l"uogrol.eorg,vo6Evrtirg,l"o6El"eriE.Itis worth enquiring why boat fnom] - baos [gen.] is not affected by theAttic lengtheningof a to ,. One can statethat thosecaseswhich lengthenofollowing a vowel to a alsochangethis penultimatevowel to e,^s i7 aphr -aphiar/aphedr, P,lir - P0/i0r/p0/edr, sd1r/nedr,/,ior/kd.Inthespoken languagethere can hardly have been any phonologicaldiffetencebetween 6puoEanddqer4 atthistime.Thedistinctionisorthogaphic,and this is typical ofthe culture ofthe koine:(c) (i) Hdn. (Ox Oxhograpb)Gr Crrt.2,432:6orr. 1dp 6qr,g6qr,oErcouvtlg.oi )\rtlrcoioiv tperfovrd ueige roi rd o tig rorni dydverodqrr'4 rcain6l,eoE....for in the common idiom it is ophit - apbios.Speakersof Atticchangedthe i to e and the o to d and there deyelopedo4be1r^nd.p1le,aJ.(c) (n) Hdn. (Partitiottu, 'Categoies') Botssonade201:dcplE,rigrr'rg... i{tturc16ddotwri rcllougri 6rdrotr