Project description
Investigating early medieval linguistic contacts in Western Europe
The ERC-funded GLOSSIT project focuses on exploring the origins of early medieval language and intellectual exchange in Western Europe. Utilising annotations or 'glosses' found in medieval manuscripts as primary sources, the project aims to deepen our understanding of the linguistic and cultural ties of this period. Despite the rich insights these glosses provide, their full potential has been hindered by a lack of comprehensive editions. To address this, GLOSSIT will create digital editions of key manuscripts of works by Bede and Priscian which contain Insular Celtic (Breton, Irish and Welsh) and Latin glosses. The project combines methods from comparative philology, historical linguistics, digital humanities, cultural history and computational biology to illuminate the complex interrelationships between these languages and their speakers.
Objective
Glosses are fingerprints of the society in which texts were composed, copied, and read. Most importantly, they play a much more significant role than previous research has acknowledged and offer insights about the multilingual and multi-ethnic environment of medieval manuscript and text production the principal texts cannot: they are first-hand testimonies of the close linguistic and cultural contacts between Insular Celtic (Old Breton, Old Irish, Old Welsh) and Latin speakers. GLOSSIT researches this largely neglected source for early medieval linguistic and intellectual exchange in Western Europe. This comparative study on the vernacular Insular Celtic and Latin glosses shows that the interlinear and marginal glosses (or paratext) of 9th10th century manuscripts have a marginal character only at a first glance.
A striking lack of editions has so far been a strong obstacle for in-depth investigations. GLOSSIT addresses this shortcoming and produces digital editions to research the interrelationships between the languages involved (i.e. Latin/vernacular and intra-vernacular contact) as well as the knowledge transfer observable in early medieval glossing traditions. It tackles this issue through combining methods of comparative philology and historical linguistics, digital humanities (handwritten text recognition, network analysis, natural language processing), (cultural) history, and in a first-of-its-kind approach biological computation (applying DNA-sequence alignment methods to glosses).
The core sources are early medieval copies of the computistical works of Bede and Priscians Latin grammar with multiple manuscript witnesses transmitting Insular Celtic and Latin glosses. For the first time, GLOSSIT puts their glossing traditions at the centre of a large-scale investigation into language contact and knowledge exchange between the Celtic-speaking world and the Carolingian empire in an era that was foundational for Europes intellectual history until today
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities languages and literature linguistics
- humanities history and archaeology history
- humanities languages and literature literature studies history of literature
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
8010 GRAZ
Austria
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