ΟΝΟΜΑΤΑ ΔΕΝΔΡΩΝ. Per uno studio sul lessico botanico greco a partire dal glossario di Esichio: prospettive linguistiche, onomastiche ed etnolinguistiche

The Greek botanical lexicon has been a quite unexplored field of study. Nevertheless, phytonyms are really interesting as they are part of the onomastics, as well as the lexicon. This dissertation, whose title is "ΟΝΟΜΑΤΑ ΔΕΝΔΡΩΝ. A study on the Greek botanical lexicon starting from Hesychius' Lexicon: linguistics, onomastics and ethnolinguistics", deals with the formation of Greek names of plants, by choosing a group of glosses from that Lexicon and analysing them. The thesis is divided up into three main sections. Within the first part the idea of a botanical classification is taken into account, as it is related to every human society. Secondly, a historical overview on Greek literature focuses on the botanical knowledge at the ancient times, as Hesychius' Lexicon also shows. Afterwards, each gloss is individually considered, in order to understand how and how much all these phythonyms take part into a system that can be taken as a whole and what kind of peculiarities this lexical system has. As far as Greek linguistics is concerned, this approach appears to be rather innovative, as it involves several aspects, from a diachronic but also a synchronic perspective, such as sociolinguistics and ethnolinguistics. The comparative analysis of these phytonyms, for instance, was essential to identify the names of plants which occur the most within the Lexicon and so, probably, within Greek language. From this starting point, several hypotheses have been made, in order to give explanation to such linguistic and botanical phenomena. The name of the Quercus L., for instance, is the most common in the Lexicon and the reason could be explained by different evidences. Firstly, it could be motivated by the fact that the oak also used to be one of the most common tree in the Mediterranean area; secondly, and maybe not alternatively, by the peculiar use of the Greek word for oak, δρῦς, that could often have the meaning of "tree". This phenomenon could easily lead to an overlap between hyponym and hypernym, which is not unusual in a language. The comparison between the ancient and the modern taxonomy has also contributed to focus the attention on many valuable aspects. An ancient Greek man did not think about plants in the same way a modern man does. In addition, within Greek literature only Theophrastus tried to create a classification for plants in his Historia Plantarum. However, his system was not based on proper scientific criteria, as he chooses instead some external characteristics, such as the colour of the timber, the similarity with other plants, animals or objects, and the property of that plant from a medical point of view. Nevertheless, some of these criteria correspond to some fixed structures, metaphors and paradigms that can be easily found in other modern languages. One may find several examples in this thesis, such as those names of plants which come from the connection with religion and traditional myth. This kind of derivation can be also found in other different lexical areas, as in the case of zoonyms. The linguistic and the cultural perspective should also be related in a research work, as shown by all these instances. In this respect, the contribution of Sapir is extremely significant: The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. Not two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.