Proto-Greek language
From Freepedia
| History of the Greek language (see also: Greek alphabet) |
| Proto-Greek (c3000BC)
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| Mycenaean (c1600BC-1100BC)
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| Ancient Greek Dialects: Ionic, Attic, Doric, Aeolic |
| Koine Greek (from c323 BC)
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| Medieval Greek (c330-1453)
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| Modern Greek (from 1453) Dialects: Tsakonic, Pontic, Katharevousa |
The Proto-Greek language is the common ancestor of the Greek dialects, including the Mycenean language, the classical Greek dialects Attic-Ionic, Aeolic, Doric and North-Western Greek, and ultimately the Koine and Modern Greek. Some scholars would include the fragmentary Ancient Macedonian language, either as descended from an earlier "Proto-Hellenic" language, or by definition including it among the descendents of Proto-Greek.
Proto-Greek would have been spoken in the 3rd millennium BC, most probably in the Balkans. The earliest Hellenic migrants entering the Greek peninsula roughly around 2000 BC spoke the predecessor of the Mycenaean language. They were separated from the Dorian Greeks, who entered the peninsula roughly one millennium later (see Dorian invasion, Greek Dark Ages), speaking a dialect that had in some respects remained more archaic.
The evolution of Proto-Greek should be considered with the background of an early Palaeo-Balkan sprachbund that makes it difficult to delineate exact boundaries between individual languages. The characteristically Greek representation of word-initial laryngeals by prothetic vowels is shared by the Armenian language, which also shares other phonological and morphological peculiarities of Greek. The close relatedness of Armenian and Greek sheds light on the paraphyletic nature of the Centum-Satem isogloss.
Close similarities of Ancient Greek and Vedic Sanskrit suggest that either both Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian were still quite similar to late Proto-Indo-European, which would place the latter somewhere in the 4th millennium BC, or a post-PIE Graeco-Aryan proto-language. Graeco-Aryan has little support among linguists, since both geographical and temporal distribution of Greek and Indo-Iranian fit well with the Kurgan hypothesis of Proto-Indo-European.
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Phonology
Greek is a Centum language, which would place a Graeco-Aryan protolanguage before Satemization, making it identical to late PIE. Proto-Greek does appear to have been affected by the general trend of Palatalization characteristic of the Satem group, evidenced for example by the (post-Mycenaean) change of labiovelars into dentals before e (e.g. kwe > te "and"), but the Satemizing influence appears to have reached Greek only after it had lost the palatovelars (i.e. after it had already become a Centum language).
The primary sound changes separating Proto-Greek from the Proto-Indo-European language included
- Aspiration of /s/ -> /h/ intervocalically
- De-voicing of voiced aspirates.
- Dissimilation of aspirates (Grassmann's law), possibly post-Mycenaean.
- word-initial y- (not Hy-) is strengthened to dy- (later ζ-)
The loss of prevocalic *s is was not completed entirely, famously evidenced by sus "sow", dasus "dense"; sun "with" is another example, contaminated with PIE *kom (Latin cum, Proto-Greek *kon) to Homeric / Old Attic ksun.
Sound changes between Proto-Greek and Mycenaean include:
- Loss of final stop consonants; final /m/ -> /n/.
- Syllabic /m/ and /n/ -> /am/, /an/ before resonants; otherwise /a/.
- Vocalization of laryngeals between vowels and initially before consonants to /e/, /a/, /o/ from h₁, h₂, h₃ respectively.
- The sequence CRHC (C = consonant, R = resonant, H = laryngeal) becomes CRēC, CRāC, CRōC from H = h₁, h₂, h₃ respectively.
- The sequence CRHV (C = consonant, R = resonant, H = laryngeal, V = vowel) becomes CaRV.
- loss of s in consonant clusters, with supplementary lengthening, esmi -> ēmi
- creation of secondary s from clusters, ntia -> nsa. Assibilation ti -> si only in southern dialects.
These sound changes are already complete in Mycenaean. For changes affecting most or all later dialects see Ancient Greek.
Morphology
An isogloss between Greek and the closely related Phrygian is the absence of r-endings in the Middle in Greek, apparently already lost in Proto-Greek.
Proto-Greek inherited the augment, a prefix é- to verbal forms expressing past tense. This feature it shares only with Indo-Iranian and Phrygian (and to some extent, Armenian), lending some support to an "Graeco-Aryan" or "Inner PIE" proto-dialect. However, the augment down to the time of Homer remained optional, and was probably little more than a free sentence particle in the proto-language, that may easily have been lost by most other branches.
The PIE dative, instrumental and locative cases are syncretized into a single dative case. Some desinences are innovated (dative plural -si from locative plural -su).
Nominative plural -oi, -ai replaces late PIE -ōs, -ās.
The superlative on -tatos becomes productive.
The first person middle verbal desinences -mai, -mān replace -ai, -a.
The future tense is created, including a future passive, as well as an aroist passive.
The suffix -ka- is attached to some perfects and aorists.
Infinitives in -ehen, -enai and -men are created.
The pronouns houtos, ekeinos and autos are created. Use of ho, hā, ton as articles is post-Mycenaean.
The peculiar oblique stem gunaik- "women", attested from he Thebes tablets is probably Proto-Greek; it appears, at least as gunai- also in Armenian.
Numerals
- "one": nominative hēs, genitive hens; feminine hmia.
- "two": duwō (hom. duō, ion. duwo, att. boiot. duo)
- "three": nominative treyes accusative trins (att. treis, lesb. trēs, kret. trees)
- "four": nominative qetweres, genitive qeturōm
- "five": qenqe
Example text
Eduard Schwyzer in his Griechische Grammatik (1939, I.74f.) projected the initial lines of Plato's Apology into Proto-Greek:
- ὅτι μὲν ὑμεῖς, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, πεπόνθατε ὑπὸ τῶν ἐμῶν κατηγόρων,
- wotti mān umme. ō aneres Athānaioi, pepasthe upo katāgoron meo.
- οὐκ οἶδα: ἐγὼ δ' οὖν ... οὕτω πιθανῶς ἔλεγον.
- ou woida; egō de eon (?) ... tō(s) pithanō(s) elegont.
- καίτοι ἀληθές γε ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν οὐδὲν εἰρήκασιν
- kaitoi alāthes ge ōs wepos weipeen oude hen wewrēkati.
Note that this reconstruction, dating to 1939, is ignorant of Mycenaean and laryngeal theory, and assumes Proto-Greek loss of labiovelars and syllabic resonants, among other things. Instead of wotti, we would today reconstruct iod kwid, instead of wepos, wekwos, etc. Schwyzer's reconstruction thus corresponds to an archaic but post-Mycenaean dialect rather than actual Proto-Greek.
