Event Description
Kathleen Coleman: A Biography of Latin, Word by Word: The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
Jine, 18, 2023, 12pm EDT
The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL) is a lexicon of classical Latin that has been published continuously in annual increments since 1900. The current team of lexicographers working on it at the Bavarian Academy in Munich are busy with the letter R. Their archive consists of millions of slips of paper containing all the known instances of every Latin word from the earliest attestations to approximately 200 CE, augmented by a selection of all the lexicographically significant usages between 200 and 600 CE. Whether the words are preserved in manuscripts or on inscriptions or mosaics or potsherds or via any other medium, they are documented in the archive and analyzed in the TLL.
This lecture tells the fascinating story of the genesis and evolution of, literally, a “treasury” (thesaurus) “of the Latin language” (linguae Latinae) and, hence, an unparalleled resource for understanding a language for which no native speakers survive to tell us what the words really sounded like or what they meant.
N.B. - You can view a recording of this, and other past events on Paideia's Youtube Channel.
Event Info
Jun 18, 2022 at 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM EDT
Guest Speaker
