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Transformation of legal language – Early Byzantine legal discourse

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Published/Copyright: June 20, 2017

Abstract

This article examines the complicated legal-cultural process in which Roman law became Byzantine law and Roman legal discourse altered into Byzantine legal discourse. Roman law’s transformation into Early Byzantine law is analysed from the point of view of legal language which mutated from Latin to Greek. The approach is legal cultural and legal linguistic and focuses on the overall shape and general patterns. The goal is to highlight how legal-cultural transformation was incremental, language-bound and that there was no radical or sudden culmination point. Moreover, the analysis answers generally to the question of why sixth-century Byzantine legislative Greek contained frequent Latin loans, expressions, phrases and distortions. The discussion concentrates on the Novellae as an integral part of the process of legal cultural and linguistic change from Roman to Byzantine. Instead of going into detailed linguistic analysis, this article underlines generally the contextuality of law and the importance of legal culture

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Paul du Plessis, Heikki Mattila, and Heikki Pihlajamäki for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the article. The usual disclaimer applies.

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Received: 2016-12-23
Accepted: 2017-2-21
Published Online: 2017-6-20
Published in Print: 2017-6-27

© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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