“Code-switching” strategies in republic-age literary Latin: 'polyphony' and 'reported speech'

Abstract

Distinction between code-switching and code-mixing of both different languages and registers in the fragmentary texts of early Latin literature can be made on objective and reliable criteria of syntactic facts. Their distribution is analyzed in the light of methodical approaches to linguistic polyphony and literary dialogism especially by contrasting occurrences of Oscan, Greek and Latin varieties in Lucilius’ fragments. Particularly combination of discourse strategies and styles of the reported speech seems to be profitable for the interpretation of a set of more controversial fragments.