Anatolian Languages Research Articles

Le mot carien pour ‘chef’, une nouvelle racine anatolienne et un changement phonétique carien-grec

Abstract In this paper, I analyse the Carian gloss σουαγγελα, attested in Stephen of Byzantium. I propose that possible cognates of γελα ‘king’, the second element of the gloss, may be identified in Hittite, Hieroglyphic Luwian, Lycian, and possibly cuneiform Luwian. This analysis incidentally provides viable etymologies for certain Armenian lexemes, which can now be considered as loanwords from Anatolian languages (specifically Luwian). The new Carian etymology enables the reconstruction of an Anatolian root meaning ‘head’ (vel sim.), accounting for most Anatolian lexical material through conservation or trivial semantic shifts. Additionally, it offers evidence for a sound change that likely occurred during borrowing of words from Carian into Greek. In the final section, I tentatively propose that the first element of the compound σουαγγελα also reflects an authentic Carian word. Through this contribution, I aim to demonstrate that even a seemingly uncertain item like a gloss can prompt a reevaluation of a set of words and uncover previously unnoticed etymological connections.

New Lycian and Greek graffiti from Patara: edition and onomastic commentary

Abstract In this article are published four new graffiti found in the Tepecik settlement in the Lycian harbour of Patara. These inscriptions, three of which are written in Lycian, and one in Greek, are dated from the mid-fifth to the first quarter of the third century BC. They correspond to Lycian personal names, most of which are new. Each of these forms is discussed in detail and compared with related names attested in other Anatolian languages.

Greckie wyrazy βόρατον, βράθυ, βουρί jako przykłady zapożyczenia wielokrotnego

The paper discusses three Ancient Greek appellatives βόρατον, βράθυ, βουρί denoting conifers from the Cupressaceae family and demonstrates a common Semitic origin of these dendronyms. They should be treated as examples of multiple borrowing, the ultimate source of which was the uniform Proto-Semitic archetype *burāṯ- ‘juniper, Juniperus L.’. It should be assumed that the ancient Greeks borrowed two synonymous terms βόρατον n. ‘stinking juniper, Juniperus foetidissima Willd.; savin juniper, Juniperus sabina L.’ and βράθυ n. ‘id.’ from two different Aramaic sources. On the other hand, the Pamphylian dialectism βουρί n. ‘Mediterranean cypress, Cupressus sempervirens L.’ was borrowed from an Akkadian source via Anatolian languages to Ancient Greek (Gk. Pamph. βουρί n. ‘cypress’ ← Lycian *burhi < *burehi < Luwian *burašiš c. ← Assyrian or Akkadian burāšu ‘(Phoenician) juniper’ < Old Akkadian burāšum ‘juniper’ < Proto-Semitic *burāṯ-). A carefully conducted analysis of lexical data clearly demonstrates that language contacts between the Semites and the Greeks took place at different times and in many places, so potential Semitisms could have gradually penetrated the Greek vocabulary by various ways.

Reflections on the Hesychian Lemma βουρικυπάρισσος

The Greek grammarian and lexicographer, Hesychius of Alexandria (5th–6th c. CE) included a Pamphylian gloss: βουρικυπάρισσος ἡ ἄμπελος. Περγαῖοι in his dictionary of rare and dialectal words. Based on a microphilological and lexical analysis, I suggest that the Greek text should be read as follows: βουρί˙κυπάρισσος ἢ ἄμπελος. Περγαῖοι (“bourí: cypress or grapevine. Citizens of Perge”). The Pamphylian gloss in question represents two different borrowings of terms originating in the Near East. The first item βουρί˙κυπάρισσος (‘cypress’) seems to have been borrowed from Akkadian burāšu(m) ‘a kind of conifer tree; juniper or cypress’ with a Lycian intermediary (Akk. burāšu → Luw. *burašiš > Lyc. *burehi > *burhi → Pamph. βουρί), whereas the second one βουρί˙ […] ἄμπελος (‘grapevine’) reflects a separate loanword from an Anatolian source, cf. Hitt. and Luw. muriš c. ‘a grapevine, a vine, a cluster or bunch of grapes or other fruit’. The Pamphylian dialect of Ancient Greek represents an extraordinary idiom, which was used in the neighbourhood of numerous Anatolian languages such as Lycian, Milyan, Sidetic, Pisidian and Cilician. It is therefore not surprising that the Pamphylian Greeks borrowed a number of cultural terms for plants from an Anatolian Indo-European source, as well as from Akkadian or other West Semitic languages via Luwian and Lycian. Additionally, other possible Anatolian borrowings into Ancient Greek (e. g. Gk. dial. βωληνή ‘a type of grapevine’, μῶλαξ ‘id.’ vs. Hittite maḫlaš c. ‘grapevine, Vitis vinifera L.’) are mentioned and reviewed.

Jan Nepomucen Józef Braun (1926–2015), filolog klasyczny, orientalista, kartwelista, sumerolog

Jan Braun, born on 15th May 1926 in Łódź, studied classical philology and classical archaeology at the University of Lodz (years 1947–1951). His MA thesis (1951) was devoted to the ethnogenesis of the Etruscans. He also worked as junior assistant at the Department of Classical Archaeology, University of Lodz (from May 1949 do September 1950) and later as junior lecturer at the Department of Classical Philology of the same university (from October 1950 to September 1951). In October 1951, Braun left for Georgia in order to complete his doctoral studies. From there he returned to Poland as PhD, specializing in Georgian and other oriental languages, especially the ancient languages of the Near East. In the years 1955–2002, he worked at the University of Warsaw, initially as assistant professor. In 1970, he became associate professor. In 1991, he received the higher doctoral degree (habilitation), and in 1995 he obtained the position of full professor. He studied the genetic relations of ancient and modern languages, including a suggested Basque-Kartvelian connection. During his habilitation colloquium, he gave an interesting lecture entitled Basic problems of historical-comparative research over the ancient languages of the Mediterranean area (Warsaw, May 28th, 1991), which is presented in Appendix No. 1 (with some comments and bibliographical references). The paper presents Braun’s main fields of research and his achievements made in Łódź (Poland), Tbilisi (Georgia) and Warsaw. According to Braun’s view, suggested as early as 1951, Etruscan represents an external member of the Anatolian languages (deriving from Luwian), so that it belongs to the Indo-European language family. In his opinion, Basque is a western member of the South Caucasian (or Kartvelian) family.

Pathways to split ergativity

AbstractThis paper reassesses the rise of ergative alignment in Anatolian and Indo-Aryan, two branches of the Indo-European linguistic family. Both of these branches acquire split-ergative morphosyntax in the course of their history but via different grammaticalization paths and with different results. In the Anatolian language Hittite, a denominative derivational suffix develops into an ergative case marker, which is restricted to so-called neuter nouns. In Indo-Aryan, on the other hand, a new ergative category with anterior aspectual semantics emerges in Middle Indo-Aryan originating from a P-oriented resultative construction in Old Indo-Aryan.

Onomastic interferences in Lycia: Greek reinterpretation of Lycian personal names

As is well known, Lycia, located on the south-western coast of Asia Minor, was a multicultural and polyglossian area, especially during the second half of the Ist millennium B.C. From the 4th century B.C. onwards — that is before Alexander’s conquests — Greek writing and language became more and more predominant in that region, as a language of prestige, to the detriment of Lycian, which is an Anatolian language related to Luwian and Hittite.
 Although most of the indigenous personal names persisted in Lycia until the first centuries A.D., as evidenced by their large number found in Greek inscriptions from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, some of them underwent a little transformation in order to look like Greek names. This process, which is common in a context of language contact, consists in adopting a homophonic or phonetically similar name or element of the name, called “cover name” or, in French, “nom d’assonance” (see Dondin-Payre and Raepsaet-Charlier 2001; Coşkun and Zeidler 2005). One famous example of this type of onomastic adaptation from one language to another is the name of the Mede general who invaded Asia Minor, known in the Greek sources as Ἅρπαγος (Harpagos): the underlying Iranian name is derived from the adjective arba- “small, young” (cf. Sanskrit arbha-) with the hypocoristic suffix -ka-, but it has been slightly modified in its Greek adaptation in order to get it closer to the Greek substantive ἁρπαγή (harpagē) “pillaging”, so the enemy conqueror is reduced to a simple plunderer. I intend to present and discuss some Lycian names adapted as cover names in Greek, like Purihimeti ⁓ Πυριβάτης, with a second element -βάτης (-batēs), cf. verb βαίνω (bainō) “to walk”, and well attested in typical Greek personal names (Bechtel 1917: 92). The other names that will be interpreted are Kuprlle/i- ⁓ Κοπριλις (Koprilis), cf. Κοπρύλος (Koprulos), but also Κύβερνις (Kubernis), Mizu- ⁓ Μεσος (Mesos), cf. μέσος (mesos) “middle”, and Xddazada- ⁓ Κτασασας (Ktasadas), cf. Κτᾱσι- / Κτησι- (Ktāsi- / Ktēsi-).

A Kappadokiaiak És Nyelvük A KR. E. II. Évezredtől Napjainkig

Jelen tanulmány átdolgozott változata a híres ELTE Eötvös József Collegiumban 2016. február 16-án elhangzott előadásomnak, melyet lehetőségem volt Görögország akkori magyar nagykövete, Dimitris Yannakakis jelenlétében megtartani. Szeretném hálás köszönetemet kifejezni Horváth László tanár úrnak a meghívásért és a lehetőségért, hogy magyarul is megjelentethetem tanulmányomat a neves Antik Tanulmányokban. Nagy megtiszteltetés számomra, hogy magyar körökben is bemutathatom kutatási eredményeimet. Úgy gondolom, a kappadokiai nyelv és nép története sok szempontból az ember örök törekvését szimbolizálja, hogy régi és új azonosságtudatát összeegyeztesse régi és új hazájával, és felhívja a figyelmet minden nyelv egyedi értékére.

Anatolian Languages as the Main Substrate of the Ukrainian Language

Until now, the Ukrainian linguistics has claimed that the main substrate for the Ukrainian language is North Iranian / Scythian. This dominant opinion was based on the well-known hypothesis of the Soviet school philologists and, in particular, of the Ossetian linguist Vaso Abaiti (better known as Vasyl Abaev (Abayev)) about the Iranian origin of the Scythian language. The scholar insisted that the Ossetian language descended from the hypothetical Scythian-Sarmatian one, and tried to explain the names of the largest waterways not only of the Black Sea region but also of the entire Ukraine and Eastern Europe using only Iranian-Ossetian words.The author of the article has prepared a number of materials to refute this false claim of modern researchers. In this respect, undoubtedly helpful is a unique artifact, a prehistoric inscription discovered ten years ago in the basement of a temple in the regional center, Zhytomyr. It turned out that the modern Ukrainian vocabulary contains a large number of words whose meanings and sounds are almost identical to the Anatolian glosses – Phrygian, Lydian, Thracian, Lycian A and Lycian B (Milyan), Carian, as well as the preceding languages – Hattic/Hattian and Luwian/Luvian. As evidenced by the lexical material of the Phrygian-Ukrainian dictionary, prepared by the author of the article, most of such related words (full cognates) are observed in these two languages – Phrygian and Ukrainian. This refutes another false linguistic statement which most closely relates Ancient Greek to Phrygian. It was made by linguists relying on forty Greek words that sound similar to Phrygian. The proposed study provides striking discoveries: more than a half of the Old Phrygian words known today have entered the vocabulary of the Ukrainian language. Why has it been concealed before? It turns out that the researchers have so far compared Phrygian only with Greek, Armenian, Old Macedonian, Albanian; however, for some reason, no one dared call it the closest relative of the Ukrainian language. This might have been prevented by the fact that, by Herodotus’ definition, Phrygian was considered “the most ancient language of the world”.

The linguistic relationships between Greek and the Anatolian languages

Abstract This summary presents the main findings of my DPhil. thesis, written under the supervision of Andreas Willi at the University of Oxford, on the linguistic relationships (with a particular emphasis on language contact) between Greek and the Anatolian languages between the second millennium and the first half of the first millennium BCE.

Anatolian Languages as the Main Substrate of the Ukrainian Language

Until now, the Ukrainian linguistics has claimed that the main substrate for the Ukrainian language is North Iranian / Scythian. This dominant opinion was based on the well-known hypothesis of the Soviet school philologists and, in particular, of the Ossetian linguist Vaso Abaiti (better known as Vasyl Abaev (Abayev)) about the Iranian origin of the Scythian language. The scholar insisted that the Ossetian language descended from the hypothetical Scythian-Sarmatian one, and tried to explain the names of the largest waterways not only of the Black Sea region but also of the entire Ukraine and Eastern Europe using only Iranian-Ossetian words. The author of the article has prepared a number of materials to refute this false claim of modern researchers. In this respect, undoubtedly helpful is a unique artifact, a prehistoric inscription discovered ten years ago in the basement of a temple in the regional center, Zhytomyr. It turned out that the modern Ukrainian vocabulary contains a large number of words whose meanings and sounds are almost identical to the Anatolian glosses – Phrygian, Lydian, Thracian, Lycian A and Lycian B (Milyan), Carian, as well as the preceding languages – Hattic/Hattian and Luwian/Luvian. As evidenced by the lexical material of the Phrygian-Ukrainian dictionary, prepared by the author of the article, most of such related words (full cognates) are observed in these two languages – Phrygian and Ukrainian. Thus, another false linguistic statement is refuted which most closely relates Ancient Greek to Phrygian. It was made by linguists relying on forty Greek words that sound similar to Phrygian. The proposed study provides striking discoveries: more than a half of the Old Phrygian words known today have entered the vocabulary of the Ukrainian language. Why has it been concealed before? It turns out that the researchers have so far compared Phrygian only with Greek, Armenian, Old Macedonian, Albanian; however, for some reason, no one dared call it the closest relative of the Ukrainian language. This might have been prevented by the fact that, by Herodotus’ definition, Phrygian was considered “the most ancient language of the world”.

Did Lycian adopt a new clause structure in place of inherited -r-passives?

Abstract The corpora of the IE Anatolian languages vary widely in script, legibility, size, date, subject matter, and in the extent to which we understand them. Four syntactic features which they appear to have inherited are: a S(ubject)- O(bject)-V(erb) clause structure; declined anaphoric pronouns attached enclitically to a clause’s first accented element; the ability to move the object or verb to the start of a clause for emphasis (“fronting”); the option not to enforce case and number agreement among more than two coordinated elements. The discovery of the Lycian languages and our current understanding of them is summarised. It is proposed, although the evidence comes primarily from Lycian A: that languages of the southwest Luwic area, namely, the alphabetically written Carian and the two from Lycia, had changed to a basic SVO clause; that Lycian A, and probably B too, abandoned the inherited medio-passive conjugations in -r-, which are absent from their corpora; that the passive preterite was expressed by a periphrastic OVS construction with fronted direct object, then me and a particle chain starting with the n- found clause-initially in Hittite but absent from other Luwic dialects, then innovatively appending *-an to the verb, and with the subject last.

Urindogermanisch Wein und Met in den anatolischen Sprachen

The existence of wine and mead already in the Proto-Indo-European language is not compatible with the traditional hypothesis of a nomadic origin, but supported by the attestations of these words in the Anatolian languages: Hittite, Luwian in cuneiform texts, Late Luwian in hieroglyphic texts and even Lycian and Carian, albeit only in toponyms. There is no obstacle to supposing that the agrarian Proto-Indo-Europeans did already domesticate grapes and bees, like Anatolians and like Mycenean Greeks in the second millenium BC, and the loan of the word for wine into West-Semitic is a strong argument for this.

Ancient Anatolian languages and cultures in contact: some methodological observations

Ancient Anatolian languages and cultures in contact: some methodological observations

The position of determiners in Ancient Greek and Luwian: Between syntax and information flow

Abstract The present paper explores the positional (and syntactic) behavior of determiners in Luwian, a very archaic article-free Indo-European Anatolian language which relied on a limited set of demonstratives, as well as in some specific constructions of Ancient Greek, an Indo-European language with definite articles and with a relatively “free” word order. Its aim is to highlight the structural differences and analogies between these languages. The present contribution will employ a framework-independent approach in investigating aspects of the combinatory constraints of determiners and determiner phrases. It will interpret these constraints as syntactic filters that regulate the interaction between syntax and information flow. The results will highlight how this model of interpretation can be applied even to languages that resort to different strategies to encode definiteness.

Die Pronominal‑ und Partikelkette in den altanatolischen Sprachen

Zusammenfassung The Indo-European languages of Anatolia in the second and first millennium B. C. share the following typological particularity: The beginning of the sentence shows a chain containing sentential particles, pronominal elements and local particles (referred to as “PPC”). This PPC has a fixed inner order. Our aim is to explain the emergence of the PPC and to verifiably judge the question to which degree the PPC is inherited. Therefore, we investigate the structural differences within individual languages’ PPCs and try to reconstruct the basic PPC-structure common to all Ancient Anatolian languages. Our approach is fundamentally sustained by new considerations concerning the discrepancy between (1) the phonological realization of the PPC and (2) the potential diversity in the underlying syntactic structure, which hitherto has mostly been ignored. We succeed in presenting evidence that, for the potential formation of the basic PPC-structure, not only Wackernagel’s Law plays a crucial role, but at least two further mainly (morpho-)phonological processes are crucial. Our findings lead to a better understanding of Common Anatolian phrase structure.

Greek-Anatolian Language Contact and the Settlement of Pamphylia

The Ancient Greek dialect of Pamphylia shows extensive influence from the nearby Anatolian languages. Evidence from the linguistics of Greek and Anatolian, sociolinguistics, and the historical and archaeological record suggest that this influence is due to Anatolian speakers learning Greek as a second language as adults in such large numbers that aspects of their L2 Greek became fixed as a part of the main Pamphylian dialect. For this linguistic development to occur and persist, Pamphylia must initially have been settled by a small number of Greeks, and remained isolated from the broader Greek-speaking community while prevailing cultural attitudes favored a combined Greek-Anatolian culture.

Selected Pisidian problems and the position of Pisidian within the Anatolian languages

Selected Pisidian problems and the position of Pisidian within the Anatolian languages

Zu lykisch ϑϑẽ und seiner etymologischen Interpretation

Zusammenfassung Of the putative attestations of PIE *dʰeh1s- in the Anatolian languages not a single example is persuasive: Lycian ϑϑẽ has the meaning ‘altar’ only when it adjoins kumezijẽ; its basic meaning should be ‘construction’. The tahñtãi associated with ϑϑẽ signifies ‘buildings’, according to the Greek translation, and reappears probably in Lycian B tasñtuwadi. Lydian taśẽν is an obsolete reading for taiẽν, designating a column. Hieroglyphic Luwian tà-sá-za is most probably not a complete word, but a phonetic complement to *256 and of unclear meaning, Hieroglyphic Luwian tasa- is something like ‘stone’, without a cultic context, and Hieroglyphic Luwian tà-na has vanished altogether, having been reanalysed as enclitic -tà plus POST. For Cuneiform Luwian tānid-, Hieroglyphic Luwian tanišaand Luw.-Hitt. taninu- it is certainly not necessary to postulate a derivation from *dʰ(e)h1s-no-. Palaic tašūra is some sort of recipient for offerings and therefore comparable to an altar, but with no obvious semantic connection to Luwian tasaor Lycian ϑϑẽ.

Anatolian Default Accentuation and Its Diachronic Consequences

This paper adduces evidence for and attempts to phonologically motivate a pattern of descriptive “retraction” of surface word accent in the Anatolian languages. It is proposed that the innovative accentual peak ( ictus ) in the relevant forms is due to Anatolian Default Accentuation , which applies when no constituent morpheme in a prosodic word is lexically specified as accented and assigns ictus to its leftmost syllable. Diachronic prosodic change is shown to result from the interaction of various morphophonological developments and the stable operation of this default accentual principle, whose effects in Hittite, Palaic, and Luwian require its reconstruction for Proto-Anatolian. Furthermore, the Anatolian evidence is argued to support Kiparsky and Halle’s (1977) reconstruction of the same default principle for Proto-Indo-European on the basis of Vedic Sanskrit and Balto-Slavic evidence.