Claude Brixhe (24 April 1933 – 2 March 2021)[1] was a French linguist and Professor Emeritus at theUniversity of Nancy in France. His research interests includedAncient Greek dialects and modernGreek dialects,Koine Greek, the history of theGreek alphabet, and languages related toGreek, most notablyPhrygian.[2]
Claude Brixhe was born on 24 April 1933 inSerrouville.[3]
In a 1993 article, Brixhe wrote about the influence ofkoine on theDoric dialectCretan. He studied Cretaninscriptions from theHellenistic period and substantiated the presence of forms that were a product oflinguistic admixture, as well as those that could be attributed tokoine. Araceli Striano writes: "This fact highlighted something which scholars had already suspected: koine did not suddenly replace the local dialects nor did those dialects disappear abruptly. On the contrary, the process of linguistic leveling in the Greek-speaking world was rather gradual, fostering the emergence of standard local varieties with their own distinctive particularities due to the coexistence of koine and different variants of ancient Greek."[4]
