Balkan Indo-European

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In Indo- European research, the - presumed - common preliminary stage of Greek , Phrygian and Armenian is called Balkan Indo-European ; mostly Albanian is also traced back to this branch of the Indo-European languages.

In a broader sense, all languages ​​of Indo-European origin spoken in the Balkans today or in the past are referred to as "Balkan Indo-European", regardless of the exact origin of the respective - often only fragmentary - languages. In this broader sense, Thracian once spoken in today's Bulgaria , Dacian once spoken in today's Romania (a dialect of the latter) and Illyrian also belong to Balkan Indo-European.

Research history

The assumption of a common origin for Greek and Armenian was first formulated in 1924 by the Danish linguist Holger Pedersen , who had shown in previous years that the number of Greek-Armenian etymological word equations is greater than the correspondences between Armenian and any other Indo-European language . A little later (1925, 1927) Antoine Meillet investigated morphological and phonological matches and postulated that the precursor languages ​​of Greek and Armenian were dialects that were spoken in the immediate vicinity of the common precursor language. Meillet's hypothesis gained approval with his “Abriss” ( Esquisse ) from 1936 on.

Georg Solta , on the other hand, did not want to adopt a Greek-Armenian proto-language, but also, in view of the parallels in vocabulary and morphology, considered Greek to be the language clearly closest to Armenian (1960). Hamp (1976) in turn supported the hypothesis of a Balkan Indo-European proto-language with the formulation that there was a time “when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian”. The work of Wolfram Euler Indo-Iranian-Greek commonalities in nominal formation and their Indo-European foundations (1979) brought about a breakthrough for the recognition of a Balkan Indo-European proto -language . Clackson (1994) last represented an intermediate position, who does not consider a Greek-Armenian subgroup of Indo-European as proven, but classifies the Armenian language as part of an extended Greek-Indo-Aryan language family.

Implications and Problems

The adoption of a Balkan Indo-European proto-language raises dating and localization issues. According to the Copper Age expansion model of the Indo-European languages ​​from the northern Pontic steppe region, the Balkan Indo-European could have developed in the first half of the 3rd millennium; according to the Neolithic expansion model from Anatolia, however, depending on the source, two to three millennia earlier.

In general, research into Balkan Indo-European raises questions similar to that of Italo-Celtic : Here, too, two neighboring Indo-European families have specific similarities that can only be explained unsatisfactorily by feudal relationships. For this reason, a common period of limited duration is also assumed here by the majority.

One difficulty in corroborating the Balkan Indo-European hypothesis was the late beginning of the tradition of Armenian - which was also heavily changed by the neighboring Iranian languages ​​- from the 5th century AD and, above all, the very fragmentary tradition of the other paleo languages ​​of the Balkans, namely of Phrygian and Macedonian .

Migration movement of the Armenians

Herodotus reports that the Armenians were originally Phrygian colonists. If so, they would be around 700 BC. Immigrated through Asia Minor (also called Anatolia) into the area of ​​what was to become Armenia (including what is now eastern Turkey). The Armenian language would then be a descendant of Phrygian with subsequent satemization , similar to the development in French and partly also in Spanish and Italian. Regardless of this phonological question, there are a number of indisputable lexical peculiarities that connect Albanian, Greek, Macedonian, Phrygian and Armenian and that today are predominantly not (or not only) attributed to language contact , but (perhaps also) to a common origin.

The east-west division of the early Indo-European

Within the Indo-European languages the Balkanindogermanische belongs to the Indo-Iranian Indo-European language family to the eastern branch. The first division of Indo-European into an Eastern and a Western group in the second half of the 4th millennium BC is still very speculative. Assumed the separation of Indo-Iranian from Balkan Indo-European to the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. BC, whose subdivision in individual languages ​​into the middle or the late 3rd millennium BC Chr.

The classification of Albanian

All Albanologists see Albanian as belonging to the Balkan group of Indo-European languages. The exact relationships to both the little-known Illyrian and the Thracian remain the subject of research.

literature

  • James Clackson : The Linguistic Relationship between Armenian and Greek (=  Publications of the Philological Society 30; also Diss. Cambridge / MA, Trinity College). Blackwell, Oxford et al. a. 1994, ISBN 0-631-19197-6 .
  • Wolfram Euler : Indo-Iranian-Greek similarities in nominal formation and their Indo-European foundations (=  Innsbruck contributions to linguistics. Lectures and smaller writings 30; at the same time diss. University of Gießen, 1978). Institute for Linguistics of the University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck 1979, ISBN 3-85124-550-4 .
  • Wolfram Euler, Konrad Badenheuer : Language and origin of the Teutons. Demolition of Proto-Germanic before the first sound shift. Verlag Inspiration Un Limited, Hamburg u. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-9812110-1-6 .
  • Jan Henrik Holst : Armenian Studies. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-447-06117-9 .
  • Gert Klingenschmitt : Albanian as a member of the Indo-European language family. In: Jens Elmegård Rasmussen (ed.): In honorem Holger Pedersen . Colloquium of the Indo-European Society from March 25 to 28, 1993 in Copenhagen. Reichert, Wiesbaden 1994, ISBN 3-88226-823-9 , pp. 221-233.
  • Joachim Matzinger: Phrygian and Armenian. In: Gerhard Meiser, Olav Hackstein (eds.): Language contact and language change . Files of the XI. Conference of the Indo-European Society, 17. – 23. September 2000 in Halle on the Saale. Reichert, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 978-3-89500-475-9 , pp. 375-394.
  • Antoine Meillet : Remarques sur l'étymologie de quelques mots grecs. In: Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris 26 (1925), ISSN  0037-9069 , pp. 1-6.
  • Antoine Meillet: De la prothèse vocalique en grec et en arménien. In: Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris 27 (1926–1927), pp. 129–135.
  • Antoine Meillet: Esquisse d'une grammaire comparée de l'arménien classique. Mekhitharistes, Vienna 2 1936.
  • Holger Pedersen: On the history of the Armenian language. In: Journal for Comparative Linguistic Research in the Field of Indo-European Languages 38 (1905), ISSN  0937-2679 , pp. 194-240.
  • Holger Pedersen: Armenian and the neighboring languages. In: Journal for comparative language research in the field of Indo-European languages 39 (1906), pp. 334–485.
  • Rüdiger Schmitt: Research into Classical Armenian since Meillet (1936). In: Kratylos 17 (1972), ISSN  0023-4567 , pp. 1-68.
  • Georg Renatus Solta : The position of Armenian in the circle of the Indo-European languages. An examination of the Indo-European components of the Armenian vocabulary (=  studies on Armenian history 9). Mechitharisten-Buchdruckerei, Vienna 1960 ( ZDB -ID 525349-4 ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klingenschmitt 1994.
  2. ↑ Hans J. Holm: Albanian basic word lists and the position of Albanian in the Indo-European languages. In: Journal for Balkanology , Issue 45-2 (2009).
  3. ↑ Herodotus, Histories 7.73.
  4. ^ Jan Henrik Holst: Armenian Studies . Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-447-06117-9 , On the Origin of the Armenian Language: Trümmersprachen and Balkan Indo-European, p. 63–67 ( excerpt [accessed April 1, 2019]).
  5. ↑ Hans J. Holm: Albanian basic word lists and the position of Albanian in the Indo-European languages. In: Journal for Balkanology , Issue 45-2 (2009).