The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia (modern Turkey). The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, the earliest-attested Indo-European language.
Only discovered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Anatolian languages are probably the earliest branch to have split from Proto-Indo-European. The presence of the laryngeal consonants ḫ and ḫḫ in Hittite and Luwian provided support for the laryngeal theory of Indo-European linguistics. While Hittite attestation ends after the Bronze Age, hieroglyphic Luwian survived until the conquest of the Neo-Hittite kingdoms by the Semitic Assyrian Empire, and alphabetic inscriptions of Anatolian languages are fragmentarily attested until the early 1st millennium AD, eventually succumbing to the hellenization of Anatolia as a result of Greek colonisation.
Origins
The Anatolian branch is probably the earliest to have split from the Proto-Indo-European language, from a stage referred to either as Indo-Hittite or "Archaic PIE"; typically a date in the mid-4th millennium BC is assumed for the evolution of this branch, followed by a migration into Anatolia in the early 2nd millennium BC. Under the Kurgan hypothesis, there are two possibilities for how it reached Anatolia: from the north via the Caucasus, or from the west, via the Balkans;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. the latter is considered somewhat more likely by Mallory (1989), Steiner (1990), and Anthony (2007). Statistical research by Quentin Atkinson and others using Bayesian inference and glottochronological markers favors an Indo-European origin in Anatolia, though the method's validity and accuracy are subject to debate, and this is a minority view concerning the Urheimat (homeland) of PIE.
It has been theorized that Cernavodă culture, together with the Sredny Stog culture, was the source of Anatolian languages and introduced them to Anatolia through the Balkans after Anatolian split from the Proto-Indo-Anatolian language, which some linguists and archaeologists place in the area of the Sredny Stog culture.Краткая история освоения индоевропейцами Европы (in Russian) Petra Goedegebuure suggests Anatolian separated from PIE in the north by 4500 BC and had arrived in Anatolia by about 2500-2000 BC, via a migration route through the Caucasus.
Recent studies have provided evidence that Caucasus-Lower Volga population may have been the population that spoke Proto-Indo-European before the Anatolian split, due to the presence of their genetic signatures among the Bronze Age Anatolians. This would explain the puzzle of why the Hittites and other Indo-European populations in Anatolia lacked Steppe ancestry.
Classification Melchert (2012) has proposed the following classification:
Proto-Anatolian Hittite Luwic Luwian Carian Milyan Lycian Sidetic Pisidian Palaic Lydian
Kloekhorst (2022) has proposed a more detailed classification, with estimated dating for some of the reconstructed stages:
Proto-Anatolian (diverged around the 31st century BC) Proto-Luwo-Lydian Proto-Luwo-Palaic Proto-Luwic (–20th century BC) Proto-Luwian () Cuneiform Luwian (16th–15th century BC) Hieroglyphic Luwian (13th–8th century BC) Proto-Lyco-Carian Proto-Carian–Milyan Carian (7th–3rd century BC) Milyan (5th century BC) Proto-Lycian–Sidetic Lycian (5th–4th century BC) Sidetic (5th–2nd century BC) Pisidian (1st–2nd century AD) [unclassified] Proto-Palaic Palaic (16th–15th century BC) Proto-Lydian Lydian (8th–3rd century BC) Proto-Hittite () Kanišite Hittite (–1710 BC) Ḫattuša Hittite (–1180 BC)
In addition, the recently discovered Kalašma language is believed to be a Luwic language.
Features
Phonology
The phonology of the Anatolian languages preserves distinctions lost in its sister branches of Indo-European. Famously, the Anatolian languages retain the PIE laryngeals in words such as Hittite (cf. Ancient Greek , Lithuanian , Old Norse , PIE ) and Lycian (cf. Latin , Old Prussian , Archaic Irish (), PIE ). The three dorsal consonant series of PIE also remained distinct in Proto-Anatolian and have different reflexes in the Luwic languages, e.g. Luwian where > , > , and > . The three-way distinction in Proto-Indo-European stops (i.e. ) collapsed into a fortis-lenis distinction in Proto-Anatolian, conventionally written as vs. . In Hittite and Luwian cuneiform, the lenis stops were written as single voiceless consonants while the fortis stops were written as doubled voiceless, indicating a geminated pronunciation. By the first millennium, the lenis consonants seem to have been spirantized in Lydian, Lycian, and Carian.
The Proto-Anatolian laryngeal consonant *H patterned with the stops in fortition and lenition and appears as geminated or plain in cuneiform. Reflexes of *H in Hittite are interpreted as pharyngeal fricatives and those in Luwian as uvular fricatives based on loans in Ugaritic and Egyptian, as well as vowel-coloring effects. The laryngeals were lost in Lydian but became Lycian () and Carian (), both pronounced [k], as well as labiovelars —Lycian (), Carian ()—when labialized. Suggestions for their realization in Proto-Anatolian include pharyngeal fricatives, uvular fricatives, or uvular stops.
Verbs Anatolian morphology is considerably simpler than other early Indo-European (IE) languages. The verbal system distinguishes only two tenses (present-future and preterite), two voices (active and mediopassive), and two moods (indicative and imperative), lacking the subjunctive and optative moods found in other old IE languages like Tocharian, Sanskrit, and Ancient Greek. Anatolian verbs are typically divided into two conjugations: the conjugation and conjugation, named for their first-person singular present indicative suffix in Hittite. While the conjugation has clear cognates outside of Anatolia, the conjugation is distinctive and appears to be derived from a reduplicated or intensive form in PIE.
Gender Anatolian has a two-gender system: animate (common) and inanimate (neuter). Proto-Anatolian almost certainly did not have a separate feminine agreement class. In the past, the two-gender system has been described as a merger of masculine and feminine genders following the phonetic merger of PIE a-stems with o-stems. However, the discovery of a group of inherited nouns with suffix in Lycian and therefore Proto-Anatolian raised doubts about the existence of a feminine gender in PIE. Typically marked with , the feminine gender in other Indo-European languages may be connected to a derivational suffix , attested for abstract nouns and collectives in Anatolian. The appurtenance suffix is scarce in Anatolian but fully productive as a feminine marker in Tocharian. This suggests the Anatolian gender system is the original for IE, while the feminine-masculine-neuter classification of Tocharian + Core IE languages may have arisen following a sex-based split within the class of topical nouns to provide more precise reference tracking for male and female humans.
Case Proto-Anatolian retained the nominal case system of Proto-Indo-European, including the vocative, nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, genitive, and locative cases, and added an allative case. Nouns distinguish singular and plural numbers, as well as a collective plural for inanimates in Old Hittite and remnant dual forms for natural pairs. The Anatolian branch also has a split-ergative system based on gender, with inanimate nouns being marked in the ergative case when the subject of a transitive verb. This may be an areal influence from nearby non-IE ergative languages like Hurrian.
Syntax The basic word order in Anatolian is subject-object-verb except for Lycian, where verbs typically precede objects. Clause-initial particles are a striking feature of Anatolian syntax; in a given sentence, a connective or the first accented word usually hosts a chain of clitics in Wackernagel's position. Enclitic pronouns, discourse markers, conjunctions, and local or modal particles appear in rigidly ordered slots. Words fronted before the particle chain are topicalized.
Languages The list below gives the Anatolian languages in a relatively flat arrangement, following a summary of the Anatolian family tree by Robert Beekes (2010). This model recognizes only one clear subgroup, the Luwic languages. Modifications and updates of the branching order continue, however. A second version opposes Hittite to Western Anatolian, and divides the latter node into Lydian, Palaic, and a Luwian group (instead of Luwic)..
Hittite
Hittite (nešili) was the language of the Hittite Empire, dated approximately 1650–1200 BC, which ruled over nearly all of Anatolia during that time. The earliest sources of Hittite are the 19th century BC Kültepe texts, the Semitic Akkadian language records of the kârum kaneš, or "port of Kanes," an Assyrian trading colony within the city of Kanesh (Kültepe). This collection records Hittite names and words loaned into Akkadian (Old Assyrian) from Hittite. Other such examples are found in other Assyrian Karums in Southeast Anatolia.Dercksen, J. G., "On Anatolian Loanwords in Akkadian Texts from Kültepe", Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie, vol. 97, no. 1, pp. 26-46, 2007 The Hittite name for the city was Neša, from which the Hittite endonym for the language, Nešili, was derived. The fact that the enclave was Assyrian, rather than Hittite, and that the city name became the language name, suggest that the Hittite language was already in a position of influence, perhaps dominance, in central Anatolia.
The main cache of Hittite texts is the approximately 30,000 clay tablet fragments, of which only some have been studied, from the records of the royal city of Hattuša, located on a ridge near what is now Boğazkale, Turkey (formerly named Boğazköy). The records show a gradual rise to power of the Anatolian language speakers over the native language isolate-speaking Hattians, until at last the kingship became an Anatolian privilege. From then on, little is heard of the Hattians, but the Hittites kept the name. The records include rituals, medical writings, letters, laws and other public documents, making possible an in-depth knowledge of many aspects of the civilization.
Most of the records are dated to the 13th century BC (Late Bronze Age). They are written in cuneiform script borrowing heavily from the Mesopotamian system of writing of nearby Assyria. The script is a syllabary. This fact, combined with frequent use of Akkadian and Sumerian words, as well as logograms, or signs representing whole words, to represent lexical items, often introduces considerable uncertainty as to the form of the original. However, phonetic syllable signs are present also, representing syllables of the form V, CV, VC, CVC, where V and C denotes a vowel and a consonant, respectively.
Hittite is divided into Old, Middle, and New (or Neo-). The dates are somewhat variable. They are based on an approximate coincidence of historical periods and variants of the writing system: the Old Kingdom and the Old Script, the Middle Kingdom and the Middle Script, and the New Kingdom and the New Script. Fortson gives the dates, which come from the reigns of the relevant kings, as 1570–1450 BC, 1450–1380 BC, and 1350–1200 BC respectively.
All cuneiform Hittite came to an end at the end of the 13th century BC during the Bronze Age Collapse, with the destruction of Hattusas and the end of the empire, much of it having been annexed by the Middle Assyrian Empire over the preceding century and the capital and its surrounds sacked by the Phrygians in 1200 BC..
Palaic