Intralinear Construed texts in the Ancient World
Greek and Roman Construed Texts.
Papyrus Sorbonne. inv. 2069 (3rd cent. Anno Domini) is a particularly complex text, and of great interest to us here at the Latinum Institute.
Written on the outside of a reused papyrus roll, Papyrus. Sorbonne. inv. 2069 contains a list of words in alphabetical order, beginning with s, t, u with inflectional information and the Greek translation.
The layout is in columns with continuous text: the Latin L2 is followed, after a blank, by its Greek gloss L1. Then there is a space, and the next entry continues. Text runs over to the next line, as this is constructed as a continuous text.
Just as in the later renaissance versions of this type of text, the two languages are given different letterforms. In this case, an ancient Latin cursive form is used for Latin, and Greek capitals for Greek, giving a clear visual differentiation.
It is the nature of texts like these that they do not survive in large numbers. That we have examples at all is something of a miracle. But what is clear is that the method in it's broad outlines was developed early on, was found to work, and then was replicated across the centuries.
In this text we can see a fully developed teaching system. It is the earliest we have evidence of, but in all likelihood it had been constructed as a system for teaching languages much earlier on in time.
It is the nature of schoolbooks that they get destroyed through use, or get thrown away. Most examples will not have survived, and some of those that did survive for us to see come from ancient garbage piles preserved in the Egyptian climate - so we do not know what other types of text would have been presented in this particular way. That any survived at all is in itself surprising.
It is quite interesting to note that all the elements present in the renaissance construed texts, the model followed here at the Latinum Institute, are to be found in these ancient ones: different letterforms for each language, alternating L2 text and its L1 gloss, and presentation in the natural order of reading, as opposed to a below-the-line interlinear.
Another early example in existence of this particular construed layout used here at the Latinum Institute is found in the Codex Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, AC 1499 (end of the 4th – beginning of the 5th century). This codex ( a book, as opposed to a scroll) is a Greek-Latin word-list based on Pauline Epistles (2 Cor., Gal., Eph.) followed by a Greek-Latin word-list taken from an unknown legal text.
Most surviving bilingual educational texts are in two narrow columns, with one giving a literal translation that follows the L2 syntax; but here as in the Sorbonne papyrus, the bilingual text is arranged as a construed text, on the full page in long continuous lines, where the L1 text and L2 glosses follow each other in sequence; a colon (:) is used to separate the L2 text from the corresponding L1 gloss, while an X normally separates the L2 gloss from the L1 text that follows it. This is an elegant, efficient and systematic approach.
Some renaissance printers followed the narrow column format. Modern evidence based studies have found that these are harder for students to use than the construed or interlinear approach
Other surviving texts used textual differentiation (well, strictly speaking letterform, as these are all manuscripts) to distinguish L1 from L2. This system of textual differentiation was copied by the renaissance printers, using Italics and bold, or Italics and black letter or other typographical variations. (The Soncino press famously developed an entirely new typeface for Hebrew, based on a cursive model, called Rashi script, because most famously the glosses of Rashi to the Talmud and Bible text were printed using them, to differentiate the gloss from the principal text.)
The construed texts found in these papyri can get more words onto a page than the columnar format. The same drive for economy might have lead to its use in the renaissance: schoolbooks needed to be cheap, and paper was expensive.
More likely, an ancient model was being followed, but even here the format, with all its notable elements, may have come about in ancient times in an attempt to be economical.
Much of the renaissance was just that, a ransacking of the past for its ideas. Many aspects of renaissance second language teaching methodology can be traced back to older Roman and Greek models. An example is the extensive use of colloquia, or artificial dialogues. And here, the revival of the use of the construed glossed text as a language teaching tool.