Linguistic representations of identity between Greece and the East. Sociolinguistics models and Historical Linguistics

This paper presents first results of the authors’ specific work within the larger project ‘Sociolinguistic dynamics under Greek influence: linguistic change, variation and contact’ carried on at the University “La Sapienza”, Rome. The Eastern area of Greek influence is represented, on the one hand, by the Anatolian area, where language contact is attested from the Mycenaean Age and goes on during the 1st millennium B.C., On the other hand, it reaches Iran – where the most important documentation goes back to the middle of the 1st millennium B.C. – and India – where language contact is attested after the expedition of Alexander the Great which gave rise the constitution of the so-called Indo-Greek kingdoms (last centuries B.C.). A parsed-inductive approach is the high road in order to obtain a stylistic/social classification of the contact phenomena emerging from the linguistic sources at our disposal.