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Anatolian languages

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Anatolian languages
 

Branch of the Indo-European language family spoken in Anatolia from the 3rd millennium BCE to the early centuries CE. The attested Anatolian languages are Hittite, Palaic, Cuneiform Luwian (Luvian), Hieroglyphic Luwian, Lycian, Lydian, Carian, and possibly Pisidian and Sidetic. Hittite, by far the most copiously attested of the group, is known chiefly from a vast archive of cuneiform tablets found from 1906 onward at the Hittite capital city, Hattusa, near the modern town of Bogazkale (formerly Bogazköy), Tur. By the late Roman or early Byzantine period at the latest, the Anatolian languages had all become extinct. Several non-Indo-European languages of ancient Anatolia are known from cuneiform texts: Hattian (Hattic), spoken in central and northern Anatolia before the coming of the Hittites and known solely from words and texts preserved by Hittite scribes; Hurrian, spoken in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE in northern Mesopotamia and southeastern Anatolia; and Urartian (Urartean), known from Anatolian texts of the 9th – 7th centuries BCE.

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Columbia Encyclopedia: Anatolian languages
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Anatolian languages (ăn'ətō'lēən) , subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see The Indo-European Family of Languages, table); the term “Anatolian languages” is also used to refer to all languages, Indo-European and non-Indo-European, that were spoken in Anatolia in ancient times. The progress made in the identification, decipherment, and analysis of the Indo-European Anatolian languages from extant texts owes much to 20th-century scholarship. These Anatolian languages were spoken in Anatolia, or Asia Minor, from about the 2d millennium B.C. and gradually became extinct during the first few centuries A.D. They include Cuneiform Hittite, Hieroglyphic Hittite, Luwian (also called Luvian or Luish), Palaic, Lycian, and Lydian. The Anatolian languages are the tongues of Indo-European-speaking invaders of Anatolia and became mixed to some extent with indigenous languages of the region. Much of the vocabulary of the Anatolian languages was apparently borrowed from these native tongues, but their grammar continued to be essentially Indo-European.

The principal known member of the Anatolian division of the Indo-European family is Hittite, the tongue of the Hittites, who entered and conquered much of Anatolia early in the 2d millennium B.C. The oldest surviving written records of Hittite, dated at about the 15th or 14th cent. B.C., are among the earliest extant remains of any Indo-European language. From c.1500 to 1200 B.C., Hittite was written both in cuneiform (a system of writing taken over from Mesopotamia) and in hieroglyphics (a form of picture writing unrelated to the hieroglyphics of Egypt). After the fall of the Hittite Empire (c.1200 B.C.) the use of cuneiform ceased, but writing in hieroglyphics continued until the 7th cent. B.C. Cuneiform and Hieroglyphic Hittite are separate but closely related languages.

A near relative of Hittite was Luwian, the Anatolian language of the now extinct Luwian people. Dominant in a large part of S Anatolia during the period of the Hittite Empire, Luwian was written in cuneiform, and its surviving documents go back to the 14th cent. B.C. In areas of N Anatolia, Palaic flourished. Also close to Hittite, it was written in cuneiform. Grammatical features common to Hittite, Luwian, and Palaic include: two genders, one of which combines masculine and feminine as a common gender and the other of which is neuter; two moods, indicative and imperative, the first of which has a present and a preterit tense; and two voices, active and middle. Lycian, a language of SW Anatolia for which there are written records dated from about the 5th to 4th cent. B.C., may have been a continuation of Luwian. Lycian was written in a form of the Greek alphabet, as was Lydian. Lydian was spoken in W Anatolia, and the surviving written records date from about the 5th to 4th cent. B.C.

Bibliography

See E. H. Sturtevant and E. A. Hahn, A Comparative Grammar of the Hittite Language (2d ed. 1951); J. Friedrich, Extinct Languages (tr. 1957, repr. 1971).


 
WordNet: Anatolian language
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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: an extinct branch of the Indo-European family of languages known from inscriptions and important in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo European
  Synonym: Anatolian


 
Wikipedia: Anatolian languages
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Indo-European topics

Indo-European languages
Albanian · Armenian · Baltic
Celtic · Germanic · Greek
Indo-Iranian (Indo-Aryan, Iranian)
Italic · Slavic  

extinct: Anatolian · Paleo-Balkans (Dacian,
Phrygian, Thracian) · Tocharian

Indo-European peoples
Albanians · Armenians
Balts · Celts · Germanic peoples
Greeks · Indo-Aryans
Iranians · Latins · Slavs

historical: Anatolians (Hittites, Luwians)
Celts (Galatians, Gauls) · Germanic tribes
Illyrians · Italics  · Cimmerians · Sarmatians
Scythians  · Thracians  · Tocharians
Indo-Iranians (Rigvedic tribes, Iranian tribes) 

Proto-Indo-Europeans
Language · Society · Religion
 
Urheimat hypotheses
Kurgan hypothesis
Anatolia · Armenia · India · PCT
 
Indo-European studies
Extent of the Hittite Empire
Map showing area where the Luwian language was spoken
Map showing areas where later Anatolian languages were spoken

The Anatolian languages are a group of extinct Indo-European languages, which were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language.

Contents

Origins

The Anatolian branch is generally considered the earliest to split off the Proto-Indo-European language, from a stage referred to either as Indo-Hittite or "Middle PIE", typically a date in the mid-4th millennium BC is assumed. Under the Kurgan hypothesis, there are two possibilities of how early Anatolian speakers could have reached Anatolia: from the north via the Caucasus, and from the west, via the Balkans[1], with the Balkans route being considered somewhat more likely by Mallory (1989) and Steiner (1990).

Languages

  • Hittite (nesili), attested from ca. 1600 BC to 1100 BC, official language of the Hittite Empire.
  • Luwian (luwili), a close relative of Hittite spoken in adjoining regions sometimes under Hittite control.
  • Lycian (Lycian A; standard Lycian), spoken in Lycia in the Iron Age, a descendant of Luwian, extinct in ca. the 1st century BC, fragmentary.
    • Milyan, also called Lycian B, a dialect of Lycian, known from a single inscription.
  • Carian, spoken in Caria, fragmentarily attested from graffiti by Carian mercenaries in Egypt from ca. the 7th century BC, extinct ca. in the 3rd century BC.
  • Pisidian and Sidetic (Pamphylian), fragmentary.
  • Palaic, spoken in north-central Anatolia, extinct around the 13th century BC, known only fragmentarily from quoted prayers in Hittite texts.
  • Lydian, spoken in Lydia, extinct in ca. the 1st century BC, fragmentary.

There were likely other languages of the family that have left no written records, such as the languages of Lycaonia and Isauria.

Extinction

Anatolia was heavily Hellenized following the conquests of Alexander the Great, and it is generally thought that by the 1st century BC the native languages of the area were extinct. This makes Anatolian the first known branch of Indo-European to become extinct, the only other known branch that has no living descendants being Tocharian, which ceased to be spoken around the 8th century.

Some words descended from the Anatolian languages may still live in the modern Turkish language, especially place names such as Side and Adana.

Features

Hittite seems to exhibit a simpler morphology than others of the older Indo-European languages. Some Indo-European characteristics seem to have disappeared in Hittite, and other IE language branches developed different innovations. Hittite contains a number of archaisms that have disappeared from other IE languages. Notably, Hittite has no IE gender system opposing masculine : feminine; instead it exhibits a rudimentary noun class system based on an older animate : inanimate opposition.

It has been proposed that the Tyrsenian and the wider Aegean language family are related to the Anatolian branch, but in mainstream linguistics the evidence in support of such claims is not considered conclusive.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ While models assuming an Anatolian PIE homeland of course do not assume any migration at all, and the model assuming an Armenian homeland assumes straightforward immigration from the East.

References

  • J.P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London (1989).
  • G. Steiner, The immigration of the first Indo-Europeans into Anatolia reconsidered, JIES 18 (1990), 185–214.
  • Patri, Sylvain (2007), L'alignement syntaxique dans les langues indo-européennes d'Anatolie, (StBoT 49), Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, ISBN 978-3-447-05612-0

External links


 
 

 

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