Forms and functions of Greek words in Late Latin literary texts: a corpus-based approach

This chapter investigates forms and functions of Greek words in Late Latin literary texts which are part of a corpus specifically designed to study tex- tual bilingualism. Firstly, we will offer a quantitative account of the distribution of Greek words across different genres, along with a semantic analysis which considers the most represented lexical fields. Secondly, some illustrative cases will be discussed in order to show the main functions of using Greek in a selection of Late Latin texts, namely Pelagonius’ Ars ueterinaria, Macrobius’ Saturnalia, and Servius’ In Uergilii Aeneidos Libros. Finally, we shall focus on a specific word category, that of compounds created with Greek lexical mate- rial, providing a morphological classification and a quantitative survey of their textual distribution. This chapter provides evidence for the advantages of exam- ining ancient bilingualism, combining quantitative and qualitative perspectives thanks to a corpus-based approach.