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3 Between isoglosses and loanwords: phonology, morphosyntax and lexicon
As anticipated above, my work has taken into account all traditional domains of (Indo-European) historical linguistics: phonetics/phonology, morphosyntax, and lexicon/etymology. What follows is a brief survey of the results of my case study analysis.
I have shown that some sound changes allegedly shared by Greek and one or more Anatolian languages which had been explained through language contact are typologically common (m > n / _#, cf. Section 2.1) or simply not restricted to the varieties of these two branches (assibilation in some Greek dialects and in Hittite, cf. Section 2.3). At the same time, the prohibition of initial /r/ is probably an areal phenomenon shared by IE and non-IE languages of the Aegean-Anatolian area. The extension of this restriction is such that one can only envisage the presence of a common substrate or prehistoric contacts. These are however impossible to define with the data we have (Section 2.2). Unlike the Auslaut phonotactic restrictions shared by Greek and Luwian (Section 2.1), which may point to exclusive contacts (or common substrate), the absence of initial /r/ (which—I contend—should not be hypothesised for reconstructed PIE) only tells us that Greek might have been affected by an areally diffused phenomenon in prehistoric times. Moving on to historic times, a study of Greek psilosis (Section 2.4), in relation to the hypothesis of its origin in the Greek regions of Asia Minor inhabited by speakers of Lydian, has revealed that the genesis of this phenomenon may well have been independent. This has been one of the chief examples of well-established and accepted theories being dependent upon very little data which may be drastically revised after the reconsideration of apparently insignificant details.
When one enters the domain of morphosyntax, the ground becomes even less firm, because grammatical interference often requires a substantial degree of language contact. In the first case study (Section 3.1), which included a comprehensive re-evaluation of the Homeric, Hesiodic, and Herodotean evidence, I have argued on the basis of the internal evidence that the basic value of the ‘Ionic Preterites’ (abbreviated IP s), i.e., those verbs formed with a suffix -(ε)σκ- attached to a present or aorist stem followed by secondary endings (e.g. φαιν-έσκ-ετο from φαίνομαι, φύγ-εσκ-ον from φεύγω) is similar to that of their Hittite counterparts. Contrary to the traditional interpretation, which regarded Greek -σκ- as an ‘iterative’ suffix, the unitary function of the IP s is that of an aspectual (namely imperfective) marker. Similarly to the Hittite šk-verbs, the IP s occur in strings and seem peculiar to narration. On these grounds I have re-evaluated (and proposed modifications to) the hypothesis of influence from Hittite.3 I contend that the idea of diffused bilingualism is difficult to uphold, suggesting instead that an eventual transmission might have taken place at the literary level. As in other cases (e.g. that of psilosis), it is rather difficult to sketch a realistic contact scenario, but if one regards the phenomenon as something peculiar to the language of narration (which clearly was not the case for psilosis), there is no need to postulate a condition of thorough bilingualism. The second morphosyntactic case study analysed (Section 3.2) has shown that the differences in the usages of Relational Adjectives (in -ιο-) in Greek and in the Luwic languages, together with the impossibility in proving actual contact between Luwian and Proto-Aeolic in a prehistoric phase, make the hypothesis of a contact-acquired feature (as per Watkins 2001) very difficult, and the idea of independent developments preferable. At the same time, I have pointed out a (certainly less far-reaching, but perhaps better defendable) possible contact-induced feature in Eastern Aeolic: the presence of papponymics in multiple Aeolic inscriptions from Asia Minor (one of which also displays a Relational Adjective), seems to reflect what happens not only in Hieroglyphic Luwian, but also in the immediately neighbouring Lydian (Section 3.2.3.1)
Lexicon is by far the most studied part of Graeco-Anatolian contact, and in the fourth chapter I have gathered a representative sample of possible exclusive isoglosses and loanwords.4 My approach has not been as nihilistic as that of some contemporary scholars (e.g. Simon 2018; Oreshko 2018), but nonetheless I have argued that a good part of the Graeco-Anatolian isoglosses should not be regarded as such, and that the most likely origin of many (though not all!) Greek presumptive loanwords is not from Anatolian.5 If one is ready to accept ‘irregular’ adaptations of Anatolian sounds in Greek, a few more items can be considered real loanwords.6 On the basis of those Greek words which seem to be explained better with an Anatolian etymology, it is possible to offer some considerations on the phonetic adaptations which might have taken place in the borrowing process. We can confirm that most Anatolian consonants were adapted with the corresponding sound in Greek. However, we have seen that in order to accept some loanwords, we need to postulate different treatments of some sounds.7 From a semantic point of view, it seems that most loanwords, together with most Wanderwörter, refer to objects of common use, which may have been diffused through commercial relations between the Aegean and the ancient Near East (e.g. δέπας, μόλυβδος, τολύπη, and perhaps ὄβρυζα). In this case, as in that of the loanwords referring to concepts until then unknown in the Greek world (e.g. τύραννος, perhaps θεράπων and θύρσος), one may see the application of the concept of “a new word for a new thing”. However, there is a smaller number of lexemes which are peculiar to a different register, namely that of ritual and of literary language, and which might have had a different path of transmission (ἠλίβατος, ταρχύω, perhaps δαΐ and σιγαλόεις). A further methodological tenet should be emphasised at this point: the disparity and variability of the material we are working with (from mid-second-millennium inscriptions to late antique glosses) is often a crucial factor, and this applies especially to lexicon. Just to give an absurd example, as rigorous as one’s method can be, if—because of an accident of history—the entirety of pre-Byzantine Greek was lost, how could a linguist from the future (say, 5000 CE) exclude that Mod Gk. πάει [pai] ‘(s)he goes’ is related to (or even comes from) Hitt. pai- ‘to go’?
The case of Pamphylian, studied in the final chapter, revealed that in a situation in which Greek and one or more Anatolian dialects were certainly in close contact for a few centuries, the most affected domains were the lexicon (in particular its onomastic component) and the phonology, whereas the morphology and the syntax were left relatively untouched. I have analysed five case studies (lowering of the open-mid front unrounded vowel; aphaeresis; rhotacism; weakening of voiced velars; the quality of the linking vowel in compounds) which offer a panorama of possibilities that range from substrate to adstrate influence. I have argued that some sound changes (e.g. Pamphylian rhotacism: d > r / V_V) occurred at a very early stage of Pamphylian, were triggered by contact with Anatolian languages, and were disappearing under the influence of Koine Greek. I have also suggested that some sound changes undergone by Pamphylian (e.g. e > a) seem to point to contact with some varieties of Luwian rather than to influence from Lycian, which is much more difficult to prove. Linguistic data confirm what textual and archaeological findings point to: in this region, there has been a prolonged and intense mix of cultures and people that eventually led, on the Greek side, to what has been considered by some ancient writers a population contaminated by βάρβαροι. This contact probably began already in the second millennium, but what we can see from our evidence (which, it is always worth recalling, starts in the 4th–3rd c. BCE) is sometimes difficult to classify as an archaism, a contact-induced or an independent innovation. We must stress, though, that the long isolation of Pamphylian from the other varieties of Greek may in principle point to the first two options: as per Bartoli’s geolinguistic principles,8 an isolated area is more likely to conserve archaisms, and the coexistence with speakers of indigenous languages (mostly belonging to the Luwic group), which probably led to bilingualism, favoured the introduction of several features (from what we know, mainly at the phonological level) from Anatolian into Greek. One may perhaps postulate a specific scenario of language contact, that of imperfect L2 acquisition, but it is difficult to draw final conclusions from the Pamphylian data alone.
We can therefore say that each piece of Graeco-Anatolian contact that we are able to isolate lies within a series of layers which are often hard to distinguish. If one looks at Greek and Anatolian from a purely genealogical perspective, the two branches are quite distant in the Stammbaum, and this is confirmed by the grammatical structure and the few lexical isoglosses of PIE date. While their genealogical closeness is insignificant, secondary contacts are a much more complex matter, as they are stratified over centuries: as we have seen, these were often overrated in older scholarship (especially from the 1960s), but at the same time the plain rebuttal one finds in recent scholarship is often based on the wrong premises or insufficient grounds.
As anticipated above, my work has taken into account all traditional domains of (Indo-European) historical linguistics: phonetics/phonology, morphosyntax, and lexicon/etymology. What follows is a brief survey of the results of my case study analysis.
I have shown that some sound changes allegedly shared by Greek and one or more Anatolian languages which had been explained through language contact are typologically common (m > n / _#, cf. Section 2.1) or simply not restricted to the varieties of these two branches (assibilation in some Greek dialects and in Hittite, cf. Section 2.3). At the same time, the prohibition of initial /r/ is probably an areal phenomenon shared by IE and non-IE languages of the Aegean-Anatolian area. The extension of this restriction is such that one can only envisage the presence of a common substrate or prehistoric contacts. These are however impossible to define with the data we have (Section 2.2). Unlike the Auslaut phonotactic restrictions shared by Greek and Luwian (Section 2.1), which may point to exclusive contacts (or common substrate), the absence of initial /r/ (which—I contend—should not be hypothesised for reconstructed PIE) only tells us that Greek might have been affected by an areally diffused phenomenon in prehistoric times. Moving on to historic times, a study of Greek psilosis (Section 2.4), in relation to the hypothesis of its origin in the Greek regions of Asia Minor inhabited by speakers of Lydian, has revealed that the genesis of this phenomenon may well have been independent. This has been one of the chief examples of well-established and accepted theories being dependent upon very little data which may be drastically revised after the reconsideration of apparently insignificant details.
When one enters the domain of morphosyntax, the ground becomes even less firm, because grammatical interference often requires a substantial degree of language contact. In the first case study (Section 3.1), which included a comprehensive re-evaluation of the Homeric, Hesiodic, and Herodotean evidence, I have argued on the basis of the internal evidence that the basic value of the ‘Ionic Preterites’ (abbreviated IP s), i.e., those verbs formed with a suffix -(ε)σκ- attached to a present or aorist stem followed by secondary endings (e.g. φαιν-έσκ-ετο from φαίνομαι, φύγ-εσκ-ον from φεύγω) is similar to that of their Hittite counterparts. Contrary to the traditional interpretation, which regarded Greek -σκ- as an ‘iterative’ suffix, the unitary function of the IP s is that of an aspectual (namely imperfective) marker. Similarly to the Hittite šk-verbs, the IP s occur in strings and seem peculiar to narration. On these grounds I have re-evaluated (and proposed modifications to) the hypothesis of influence from Hittite.3 I contend that the idea of diffused bilingualism is difficult to uphold, suggesting instead that an eventual transmission might have taken place at the literary level. As in other cases (e.g. that of psilosis), it is rather difficult to sketch a realistic contact scenario, but if one regards the phenomenon as something peculiar to the language of narration (which clearly was not the case for psilosis), there is no need to postulate a condition of thorough bilingualism. The second morphosyntactic case study analysed (Section 3.2) has shown that the differences in the usages of Relational Adjectives (in -ιο-) in Greek and in the Luwic languages, together with the impossibility in proving actual contact between Luwian and Proto-Aeolic in a prehistoric phase, make the hypothesis of a contact-acquired feature (as per Watkins 2001) very difficult, and the idea of independent developments preferable. At the same time, I have pointed out a (certainly less far-reaching, but perhaps better defendable) possible contact-induced feature in Eastern Aeolic: the presence of papponymics in multiple Aeolic inscriptions from Asia Minor (one of which also displays a Relational Adjective), seems to reflect what happens not only in Hieroglyphic Luwian, but also in the immediately neighbouring Lydian (Section 3.2.3.1)
Lexicon is by far the most studied part of Graeco-Anatolian contact, and in the fourth chapter I have gathered a representative sample of possible exclusive isoglosses and loanwords.4 My approach has not been as nihilistic as that of some contemporary scholars (e.g. Simon 2018; Oreshko 2018), but nonetheless I have argued that a good part of the Graeco-Anatolian isoglosses should not be regarded as such, and that the most likely origin of many (though not all!) Greek presumptive loanwords is not from Anatolian.5 If one is ready to accept ‘irregular’ adaptations of Anatolian sounds in Greek, a few more items can be considered real loanwords.6 On the basis of those Greek words which seem to be explained better with an Anatolian etymology, it is possible to offer some considerations on the phonetic adaptations which might have taken place in the borrowing process. We can confirm that most Anatolian consonants were adapted with the corresponding sound in Greek. However, we have seen that in order to accept some loanwords, we need to postulate different treatments of some sounds.7 From a semantic point of view, it seems that most loanwords, together with most Wanderwörter, refer to objects of common use, which may have been diffused through commercial relations between the Aegean and the ancient Near East (e.g. δέπας, μόλυβδος, τολύπη, and perhaps ὄβρυζα). In this case, as in that of the loanwords referring to concepts until then unknown in the Greek world (e.g. τύραννος, perhaps θεράπων and θύρσος), one may see the application of the concept of “a new word for a new thing”. However, there is a smaller number of lexemes which are peculiar to a different register, namely that of ritual and of literary language, and which might have had a different path of transmission (ἠλίβατος, ταρχύω, perhaps δαΐ and σιγαλόεις). A further methodological tenet should be emphasised at this point: the disparity and variability of the material we are working with (from mid-second-millennium inscriptions to late antique glosses) is often a crucial factor, and this applies especially to lexicon. Just to give an absurd example, as rigorous as one’s method can be, if—because of an accident of history—the entirety of pre-Byzantine Greek was lost, how could a linguist from the future (say, 5000 CE) exclude that Mod Gk. πάει [pai] ‘(s)he goes’ is related to (or even comes from) Hitt. pai- ‘to go’?
The case of Pamphylian, studied in the final chapter, revealed that in a situation in which Greek and one or more Anatolian dialects were certainly in close contact for a few centuries, the most affected domains were the lexicon (in particular its onomastic component) and the phonology, whereas the morphology and the syntax were left relatively untouched. I have analysed five case studies (lowering of the open-mid front unrounded vowel; aphaeresis; rhotacism; weakening of voiced velars; the quality of the linking vowel in compounds) which offer a panorama of possibilities that range from substrate to adstrate influence. I have argued that some sound changes (e.g. Pamphylian rhotacism: d > r / V_V) occurred at a very early stage of Pamphylian, were triggered by contact with Anatolian languages, and were disappearing under the influence of Koine Greek. I have also suggested that some sound changes undergone by Pamphylian (e.g. e > a) seem to point to contact with some varieties of Luwian rather than to influence from Lycian, which is much more difficult to prove. Linguistic data confirm what textual and archaeological findings point to: in this region, there has been a prolonged and intense mix of cultures and people that eventually led, on the Greek side, to what has been considered by some ancient writers a population contaminated by βάρβαροι. This contact probably began already in the second millennium, but what we can see from our evidence (which, it is always worth recalling, starts in the 4th–3rd c. BCE) is sometimes difficult to classify as an archaism, a contact-induced or an independent innovation. We must stress, though, that the long isolation of Pamphylian from the other varieties of Greek may in principle point to the first two options: as per Bartoli’s geolinguistic principles,8 an isolated area is more likely to conserve archaisms, and the coexistence with speakers of indigenous languages (mostly belonging to the Luwic group), which probably led to bilingualism, favoured the introduction of several features (from what we know, mainly at the phonological level) from Anatolian into Greek. One may perhaps postulate a specific scenario of language contact, that of imperfect L2 acquisition, but it is difficult to draw final conclusions from the Pamphylian data alone.
We can therefore say that each piece of Graeco-Anatolian contact that we are able to isolate lies within a series of layers which are often hard to distinguish. If one looks at Greek and Anatolian from a purely genealogical perspective, the two branches are quite distant in the Stammbaum, and this is confirmed by the grammatical structure and the few lexical isoglosses of PIE date. While their genealogical closeness is insignificant, secondary contacts are a much more complex matter, as they are stratified over centuries: as we have seen, these were often overrated in older scholarship (especially from the 1960s), but at the same time the plain rebuttal one finds in recent scholarship is often based on the wrong premises or insufficient grounds.