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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Dear all,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">This Autumn’s second Helsinki Research on the Ancient World (HelRAW) seminar takes place on October 3rd with Robert Crellin (University of Oxford, Crossreads project) and the talk “D(ominus) or D(ecimus)? Using context
to measure the ambiguity of Latin abbreviations in epigraphic texts”. While this is a hybrid event, we extend a warm welcome to join us with our speaker at Metsätalo in room 18 at 17.15!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Abstract: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">A characteristic feature of Latin inscriptions from antiquity is their use of abbreviations. Words of various classes may be abbreviated, including:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm" type="disc">
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span lang="EN-US">Names, e.g. L(ucius), C(aius)<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span lang="EN-US">Nouns, e.g. IMP(erator)<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span lang="EN-US">Verbs, e.g. D(edicavit), D(edit)<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span lang="EN-US">Adjectives, e.g. NN (= nostri)<o:p></o:p></span></li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">This feature distinguishes Latin inscriptions from contemporary Greek inscriptions, whose use of abbreviations is much more sparing (Cooley 2012: 357; McLean 2002: 49; Gordon 1983).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Much research on abbreviations in the ancient, especially Roman world, has tended to focus on their use as potential dating markers. Such an application is in principle possible because of the changing use of abbrevations
over time (Cooley 2012: 359; for an example, see e.g. Salomies (2014: 157–158)). Latin abbreviations have also (rarely) been studied in their own right (Hälvä-Nyberg 1988; Gordon 1948), although more recently abbrevations have tended to feature as lists in
more general manuals of epigraphy (Lassère 2005; Limentani 1968).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The advent of digital technologies has provided the possibility of considerably expanding the coverage and recording of abbreviations. Thus the size of Tom Elliott’s inventory of abbreviations (<a href="https://paregorios.org/resources/abbrev/">https://paregorios.org/resources/abbrev/</a>,
last accessed 13th September 2022) considerably exceeds that of book-published alternatives (Cooley 2012: 357). One characteristic of Latin abbreviations that emerges clearly from Tom Elliot’s work is the shere number of possible expansions of certain abbreviations:
Elliot lists no fewer than 189 possible expansions for the abbreviation D, for example.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The very large number of possible expansions of certain abbreviations immediately raises the question of the basis on which contemporary readers themselves expanded the abbreviations. It seems reasonable to suppose that
contextual variables — where ‘context’ is construed in both narrow and broad terms — is fundamental to this task.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">In this paper I harness the 81,883 Latin inscriptions in the Epigraphic Database Heidelberg (EDH) corpus (<a href="https://edh.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/">https://edh.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/</a>) to provide a preliminary assessment
of the degree to which it is possible to expand Latin abbreviations on the basis of their context. In this preliminary study, both the words surrounding a given abbreviation (n-grams) and the type of object on which the abbreviation is written (e.g. ‘stele’)
are incorporated into a Machine Learning model. The model is used to make predictions on separate test datasets, and the accuracy of these predictions is measured. I give an assessment of the preliminary results, looking at the method’s strengths and weaknesses
as currently implemented, and suggest avenues for further development.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">References<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Cooley, A. (2012) The Cambridge handbook to Latin epigraphy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Gordon, A. E. (1948) Supralineate abbreviations in Latin inscriptions. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Gordon, A. E. (1983) Illustrated introduction to Latin Epigraphy.
</span><span lang="DE">Berkeley: University of California Press.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE">Hälvä-Nyberg, U. (1988) Die Kontraktionen auf den lateinischen Inschriften Roms und Afrikas: bis zum 8. Jh. n. Chr. (Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae. Dissertationes humanarum litterarum 49). Helsinki: Suomalainen
Tiedeakatemia.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE">Lassère, J. (2005) Manuel d’épigraphie romaine (Antiquité/Synthèses 8).
</span><span lang="IT">Paris: Picard.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="IT">Limentani, I. C. (1968) Epigrafia latina. Milan: Instituto Editoriale Cisalpino.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">McLean, B. (2002) An introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman periods from Alexander the Great down to the reign of Constantine (323 B.C.–A.D. 337). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Salomies, O. (2014) “The Roman Republic.” In Bruun, C. and Edmondson, J. (eds) The Oxford handbook of Roman epigraphy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, <No pages>. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195336467.013.009
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">When: October 3rd, 2022, at 17:15 (UTC+3)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Where: Room 18, Metsätalo (Unioninkatu 40, 4th floor)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE">Online: <a href="https://helsinki.zoom.us/j/64129444826?pwd=OTgzbGIxc0phakJKSjVSbjhOV3Qwdz09">
https://helsinki.zoom.us/j/64129444826?pwd=OTgzbGIxc0phakJKSjVSbjhOV3Qwdz09</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Meeting ID: 641 2944 4826<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Passcode: 953226<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Event page: <a href="https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/news/language-culture/helraw-robert-crellin-3.10.2022-0">
https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/news/language-culture/helraw-robert-crellin-3.10.2022-0</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">About the speaker: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Robert Crellin is a historical linguist whose work focuses on the syntax and semantics of ancient languages, the structure of ancient writing systems, and computation approaches to language. He completed his PhD in Classics
at Cambridge in 2012, where he wrote on the syntax and semantics of the perfect in Ancient Greek, especially its postclassical varieties. Robert’s subsequent research has encompassed analyses of Biblical Greek, including the translation of the Greek verb system
in the early versions of the New Testament and the morphology of personal names.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Between 2014 and 2016 Robert worked on the Greek Lexicon Project in Cambridge, now published as The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, where he was responsible for writing articles on prepositions. Most recently Robert has been
employed on the ERC project Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems. His work here has focused on the writing of vowels in Northwest Semitic writing systems, especially Punic, and on word division. Robert has just published a monograph which
analyses the semantics of word division in Northwest Semitic writing systems, including Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew and Greek. The particular focus of this work is the syntax-phonology-graphematics interface, investigating the relationship between the written
‘word’ and the morphosyntactic and phonological words, adopting a variety of syntactic, phonological and computational frameworks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">In Jonathan Prag’s Crossreads project he is conducting inter alia syntactic analysis and markup of texts in the I.Sicily corpus.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The event is a part of an interdisciplinary seminar series titled Helsinki Research on the Ancient World. This monthly seminar operates under the aegis of the PapyGreek (<a href="https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/digital-grammar-of-greek-documentary-papyri">https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/digital-grammar-of-greek-documentary-papyri</a>)
and SpaceLaw (<a href="http://www.spacelaw.fi">www.spacelaw.fi</a>) projects. The seminar is open for all.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Welcome!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-language:FI">Pyry Koskinen<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-language:FI"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-fareast-language:FI"><a href="mailto:pyry.i.koskinen@helsinki.fi"><span lang="EN-US" style="color:#0563C1">pyry.i.koskinen@helsinki.fi</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-fareast-language:FI"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-fareast-language:FI">+358505262774<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-fareast-language:FI">Tutkimusavustaja / Research assistant<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-fareast-language:FI">Law, Governance and Space: Questioning the Foundations of the Republican Tradition (</span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-fareast-language:FI"><a href="http://www.spacelaw.fi/" target="_blank"><span lang="EN-US" style="color:#0563C1">www.spacelaw.fi</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-fareast-language:FI">)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-fareast-language:FI">Siltavuorenpenger 1 A, huone / room 323<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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