Book contents
- The Cambridge World History of Lexicography
- The Cambridge World History of Lexicography
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Editor’s Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I The Ancient World
- 1 Ancient Mesopotamia
- 2 Ancient and Coptic Egypt
- 3 Ancient China
- 4 Ancient India
- 5 The Greco-Roman World
- Part II The Pre-Modern World
- Part III The Modern World: Continuing Traditions
- Part IV The Modern World: Missionary and Subsequent Traditions
- Appendix 1 The Language Varieties
- Appendix 2 The Lexicographers
- Primary Sources
- Secondary Sources
- Index
5 - The Greco-Roman World
from Part I - The Ancient World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2019
- The Cambridge World History of Lexicography
- The Cambridge World History of Lexicography
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Editor’s Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I The Ancient World
- 1 Ancient Mesopotamia
- 2 Ancient and Coptic Egypt
- 3 Ancient China
- 4 Ancient India
- 5 The Greco-Roman World
- Part II The Pre-Modern World
- Part III The Modern World: Continuing Traditions
- Part IV The Modern World: Missionary and Subsequent Traditions
- Appendix 1 The Language Varieties
- Appendix 2 The Lexicographers
- Primary Sources
- Secondary Sources
- Index
Summary
Scholars specializing in Greco-Roman lexicographical texts are very insistent on distinguishing between lexica, where the organizational principle is alphabetical, and glossaries, following the order of a source text from which all lemmata are culled, whether selectively or not. The third important category of lexica is that of the onomastica, organized by semantic areas and not alphabetical.
Almost all Greek lexica extant in the direct tradition date from the Byzantine period (for which see ) as a result of the fact that later lexicographers tended to supersede earlier works and caused their disappearance. However the indirect tradition, and, from the end of the nineteenth century onwards, the evidence provided by papyrological discoveries help to shed light on the history of a much older, and wide-reaching, tradition, with a high degree of methodological awareness, and a carefully thought-out range of typologies for textual presentation on the written page.
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- The Cambridge World History of Lexicography , pp. 84 - 106Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019