Domain-Specific Languages for Epigraphy: The Case of ItAnt

This contribution illustrates how the definition of a Domain-Specific Language can support the activity of epigraphists and historical linguists. It presents and discusses a method and technological solution, based on Domain Specific Languages, for facilitating scholars in digitally representing the available knowledge of archaic languages and cultures, by increasing the human readability of the encoded data without sacrificing the compliance to standard models and formats. Such a work is framed in the context of an Italian National collaborative research project devoted to the study of the languages and cultures of ancient Italy, witnessed by a digital collection of inscriptions. The platform developed within this project offers an interesting use case and motivation for experimenting with DSLs for the creation of the needed digital critical editions. After explaining the DSL grammar definition process, we finally, test the applicability of the DSL grammar to 5 example inscriptions in the Faliscan language.