Pragmatic Resources in Old Indo-European Languages - visit from Professor Jared Klein

PROIEL will be a close linguistic study of the language of the Greek text of the New Testament as well as its translations into the old Indo-European languages Latin, Gothic, Armenian and Church Slavonic. In its first stage, the project aims at describing and accounting for the so-called 'pragmatic resources' of these languages, i.e. the resources that the grammar makes available for structuring information in a text. In producing oral or written discourses, speakers/writers mark discourse referents (eve nts, times, places and individuals that are spoken about) as old, new or contrastive information in order to make it easier for listeners/readers to keep track of them. The grammar, and in particular the syntax, offers different resources that can be used for this purpose. The world leading expert on the comparative syntax of the languages of the early Indo-European bible translations is Professor Jared Klein of the University of Georgia and it will be of vital importance to PROIEL to be able to work cl osely with him. During his stay in Norway, we plan to organise several seminars as well as the official opening conference of PROIEL.