Through the vast labyrinth of languages and dialects: The emergence and transformations of a conceptual pair in the early modern period (ca. 1478-1782)

Although the roots of the twin concepts "language" and "dialect" hark back to Greek antiquity, there is no general agreement about their definitions in present-day scholarship, to the point that a number of scholars refrain from using the term "dialect" as distinct from "language." In order to arrive at a better understanding of this pair and its modern conceptualization, a systematic historiographical study of its origin and development is required. For the history of the concepts "dialect" and "language" in particular, the early modern period is a crucial stage. During this period, scholars theorized on these concepts, and applied their insights to the study of the Ancient Greek dialects, traditionally divided into Attic, Ionic, Aeolic, Doric, and koine (‘common dialect/language’). The close and complex interplay between these two aspects of early modern language study has, however, not yet been investigated systematically, a research lacuna which the present project aims to fill.nrpages: 589status: publishe