"Gicht" im Altgriechischen. Korpus-basierte Studie ("Gout" in Ancient Greek. Corpus-based study)

• Main Author: Dariya Rafiyenko
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: Prof. Dr. Charlotte Schubert, Prof. Dr. Reinhold Scholl, Dr. Roxana Kath, Dr. Michaela Rücker 2016-02-01
• Series: Digital Classics Online
• Subjects: Byzanz; Medizin; distant reading; Thesaurus Linguae Graecae Online
• Online Access: http://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/dco/article/viewFile/24187/21868

The article comprises a comprehensive analysis of the Greek lexemes referring to the concept of gout (a disease characterised by intensely painful, swelling joints) for the period from 6th c. AD to 15th c. BC. In the article, two major goals are pursued. The first one is to contribute to the study of medical terminology of the period under review. The second goal is to develop and refine the methodology which would allow to trace the concepts in historical corpora. For the purpose of this study a sample with approximately 1500 utterances was created. Each entry has been annotated along a set of metadata variables such as, for example, the specific lexeme used to denote this disease and its part of speech, the period of the attestation, type of a context in which the utterance is attested, etc. Using basic statistical methods (above all frequency analysis), the distribution of metadata in the sample is analysed. This way a historical overview of the concept of gout according to the corpus is given. In addition a number of regularities in the use of different parts of speech and lexemes emerge.