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- Title
PHRYGIAN BETWEEN GREEK AND ARMENIAN.
- Authors
KORTLANDT, Frederik
- Abstract
In an earlier study I argued that we can think of Thracian as an early dialect of Proto-Armenian. Both languages shared the devoicing of the PIE glottalic stops *b, *d, *g to *p, *t, *k. The alleged voiced aspirates appear as plain voiced stops. The voiceless stops remained unchanged. The Thracians evidently did not perceive the aspiration of the Greeks. Like Balto-Slavic and Daco-Albanian, the Thraco-Armenian complex belongs to the satǝm languages. I assumed that Phrygian did not share the Thraco-Armenian consonant shift. However, Lubotsky has pointed out that this does not yield an acceptable interpretation. I conclude that the Thraco-Armenian consonant shift affected Phrygian as well and was a dialectal Indo-European innovation cutting through the division between centum and satǝm languages, which may have arisen around the same time. In view of its geographical distribution, I suspect that the devoicing of the glottalic stops can be attributed to the influence of a Proto-Anatolian substratum because the Anatolians passed through future Thracian and Phrygian territory on their way from the Indo-European homeland north of the Black Sea to Anatolia. The development of the laryngeals in Phrygian was evidently the same as in Greek. The inflection of nominal o-stems in Phrygian is virtually identical to that in Greek and Armenian. As far as we can reconstruct the Phrygian verbal system, it is largely identical to that of Greek and Armenian. It appears that there are reflexes of the present, imperfect, aorist, perfect, future, subjunctive, optative, imperative, active and transitive middle. I conclude that Greek, Phrygian and Thraco-Armenian reflect a single Indo-European dialect area that was divided by two major isoglosses, viz. the devoicing of the glottalic stops which separated Phrygian from Greek and the satǝmization of the palatovelars which separated it from Thraco-Armenian. Phrygian provides in several respects the missing link between Greek and Armenian. In particular, the paradigms of the middle voice appear to have been more extensive than what we find in the separate languages. The archaic character of the Phrygian language is corroborated by the Indo-Iranian and Italo-Celtic evidence.
- Subjects
THRACIANS; GLOTTALIZATION; LANGUAGE &; languages; PHRYGIANS; INDO-Iranian languages; CONSONANTS
- Publication
Linguistique Balkanique, 2016, Vol 55, Issue 2/3, p249
- ISSN
0324-1653
- Publication type
Article