Die Sprache Alkmans: Textgeschichte und Sprachgeschichte

The Spartan poet Alcman is crucial to our understanding of the early history of the Greek dialects and the development of the Greek poetical language. He is not only the earliest choral lyric poet to have his fragments surviving to an appreciable extent, but also the only poet to use the Laconian dialect. Until now, a comprehensive treatment of the idiom of Alcman did not exist. The present book fills this gap, addressing itself to Classicists and Indo-Europeanists alike. The work is at the same time a phonology and morphology of the dialect of Alcman and a historical investigation of the formation of the poetical language and the transmission of the text.