I've been fascinated by the mysteries surrounding the spread and relationship of various Indo-European languages, particularly those that seem to have sprung from the Balkans. The topic is not helped by the extreme paucity of linguistic data on which to draw conclusions, but that has rarely stopped linguists from speculating anyway.
The situation is fairly complex. A number of languages clearly were in the Balkans at one point or another, and a number of other languages probably originated there as well. Here's what we know.
Greek moved into Greece from the north. It therefore must have originally been a Balkan language. Greek seems to be most closely related (although that's relative) to Armenian. According to early historians (Herodotus, mostly) the Armenians did come from the Balkans and migrated across the face of Asia minor. Herodotus also called them "a tribe of Phrygians." Phrygian is another language that is poorly known, but which is attested in Asia minor a few hundred years after the fall of the Hittites. If Phrygian was a sister language to ancient Armenian, then Phrygian was also probably related to Greek and part of the same Balkan complex of languages.
We also know that Albanian is a Balkan language today, and stands alone as a separate branch of Indo-european. It was almost certainly related to languages coming out of the Balkan complex, but close relationships with Greek and/or Armenian are not to be found. Some linguists say Albanian must have been an Illyrian language, since the Illyrian tribes were found in modern day Albania. Others say that they were a Thracian or a Dacian people. Some linguists say that Thracian and Dacian were closely related languages, others that they were not. Some link Illyrian with Thracian, Dacian or both; others with neither.
Some say that Thracian was the language of the Kimmerians, up north of the Black Sea and was therefore broader in scope that simply the Balkans, where they were intrusive. This group also posits a Thracian/Iranian link of some kind---but whether a contact relationship or genetic relationship is impossible to tell given the lack of good Thracian texts of any kind.
To further complicate things, several languages of Italy, particularly the east coast of Italy, are not closely related to the Italic branch that gave us Latin, and are proposed to have come from across the Adriatic. Messapic and Venetic in particular occupy our attention, and both have been claimed by some to be Illyrian in nature.
Cutting across all of this complicated Balkan linguistic picture is the original Anatolian language family, which---by all accounts---came out of the Balkans into Asia minor before any of the languages referenced so far came about. The Anatolian languages are not believed by anyone to be closely related to later Indo-European languages; in fact, the Indo-Hittite hypothesis posits that technically the Anatolian languages aren't even Indo-European; they're a closely related sister group to Indo-European, not Indo-European itself, since Indo-European went subsequent further development before dispersing after the Anatolian languages split off.
This is somewhat consistent with Marija Gimbutas' wave model, where "kurgan" tribes moved out from the Pontic-Caspian steppes (the IE homeland) in a series of waves; Anatolian being the first to come through, and the languages that developed into the Balkan-Danubian complex being a subsequent wave or waves.
Some things to keep in mind; we don't know enough about any of these early Balkan-Danubian languages to clearly propose genetic linkages between them, except to say that Anatolian was not related to the rest of them and Greek and Armenian seem to have split from each other at some point subsequent to their dispersal from Proto-Indo-European as a whole. However, it's also not stricly necessary for any of these languages to be closely genetically related to still maintain a fair amount of similarity. The concept of a Sprachbund comes to mind; where languages in close geographical proximity for a long time gradually converge towards each other could be operating in the Balkan-Danubian region.
My personal uneducated speculative model calls for a Balkan complex that includes proto-Greek, proto-Armenian (which was a dialect or branch of proto-Phrygian) as well as proto-Illyrian as being genetically related, and overlaid on a substrate that may have included elements of proto-Anatolian. This group gradually spread out, into Greece, into Anatolia, and across the Adriatic into what is today Italy. I believe that they construed a spectrum of dialects and languages of increasingly distant similarity all the way across the steppes, gradually turning into very primitive proto-Indo-Iranian. Some of these languages on the western fringe of the spectrum could today be part of the Thracian-Dacian complex, and although they were not as closely related to the original Balkan-Danubian complex, close and prolonged contacts gradually churned all of these languages together to a certain extent.
The mysterious Sea Peoples, of the famous Great Karnak inscription probably are one example of unrest amongst this Balkan-Danubian complex, and the destruction of Mycenean greek palace society and the Hittite Empire probably have something to do with their migrations. The Dorians, who later populate Greece, appear to have come from the north bringing with them their own languages (or at least different Greek dialects than the prior Myceneans spoke) and the Phrygians and Armenian migrations into and across Asia Minor were probably also part of this same mass folk migration. This of course further entangled the various branches of languages, exposing people to other language groups and contact relationships that shaped their languages. Perhaps even pressure from the steppes themselves related to the advent of Thracians and/or Dacians into the area prompted the Sea Peoples' migrations.
Anyway... just noodling around with ideas. The probably permanent tangle of these languages is unlikely to be resolved any time soon unless some prior unknown archive with texts in these various languages comes to light. But I've always loved a good mystery.
No comments:
Post a Comment