Palmer L.R. The Greek Language
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2. Dialect Characteristics
I. Arcado-Cypriot
Phenomena shared exclusively by Arcadian and Cypriot:
1. The labiovelars usually > dentals before front vowels, but important are occasional examples of assibilation. In
Mantinea a special sign (
, transcribed s) is used, which suggests a sibilant (perhaps cerebral or palatal) distinct
from that represented by sigma:
= , = . In north Arcadia a spelling = occurs, and this recurs
in the glosses
= and = . Corresponding examples from Cyprus are and . Note,
however, the divergence between Arc. and Cypr. 'he will pay'.
2. Nominatives like for .
3. The genitive singular of the masculine a-stems in
: Arc. , Cypr. .
4. The pronoun for .
5. The preposition
for .
6. The syntactical innovation of constructing and with the dative/locative.
7. The conjunction for .
8. The third person middle ending (elsewhere , see p. 64); also Arc. second singular < *keisoi.
Further important characteristics are:
9. Athematic infinitives in ( also occurs in Attic-Ionic, see below).
10. for (this is not a phonological change).
11.
= .
12. inflexion of contracted verbs (e.g. ).
A notable difference between Arcadian and Cypriot is the conditional particle, and respectively, the former
being perhaps due to the influence of Attic. On the potential particle
/ and the treatment of the sonant nasals
and liquids, phenomena of importance in dialect classification, see below. For the Arcado-Cypriot words in
Homer, see p. 90.
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II. West Greek
The physiognomy of this dialect group is characterized by a constellation of archaic features:
1.
resists assibilation: , etc.
2. 'twenty' < *wi-knti * (p. 290).
3. , etc. (elsewhere ).
4. Article (elsewhere ).
Other points are:
5.
( = ).
6. ( = , see below).
7. Temporal adverbs in (instead of ): .
8. First plural active ( , etc.).
9. Future in .
10. Future passive with active endings: .
11. Athematic infinitive in (see p. 315).
12. 'thou' ( = ).
13. ( = ).
14. A point of word order: the modal particle follows the pronoun in .
West Greek innovations are:
1. The development of *qwetwores* to .
2. The aorists in
from verbs < *-dj- and *-gj- alike, see p. 302.
North-west Greek peculiarities are'
1. = (this is the retention of an archaism).
2. Present participle middle in (e.g. ).
3. Dative plural of consonant stems in (e.g. ).
4. Accusative plural of consonant stems in (e.g. ).
III. Aeoloc
Characteristics common to Lesbian, Thessalian and Boeotian are:
1. *qw* > p even before a front vowel:
, , etc. (p. 232).
2. The perfect participle active in : etc.
3. Patronymic adjective instead of genitive of father's name.
4. = .
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5. Dative plural of the 'third declension' in : , , etc.
To these may be added:
(a) Characteristics common to Lesbian and Thessalian:
6. Gemination of liquids and nasals instead of compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel in the reflexes of
the clusters -sm- and -sn-, etc. (pp. 236f.) :
, etc. Here belongs also -sw- > -ww-, e.g. Lesb.
< *naswos (see p. 238).
7. Athematic inflexion of contracted verbs: etc.
8. for .
9. for .
10. for / .
(b) Common to Lesbian and Boeotian:
11. for .
12. in future and aorist of verbal stems ending in a short vowel: (by analogy from : ).
13. for (this a positive characteristic despite the fact that it is a 'selection' from peda and meta, both
present in Linear B).
Found only in Lesbian but still probably Aeolic are:
14. Athematic infinitive in
: , etc. (see above).
15. *-sw- > -ww- : , (see above).
16. , etc. for .
17. Possibly also infinitives of the type
(see above on Linear B terejae).
Elements common to Thessalian and Boeotian are not necessarily Aeolic since both these dialects were strongly
infused with West Greek elements. The most important are:
1. Retention of
(but see below).
2.
'twenty'.
3. for .
4. aorists of verbs.
5. for (this an archaism).
The extension of the athematic infinitive in to thematic verbs ( , etc.) is a common innovation of the two
Mainland Aeolic dialects and it is also found in Homer (see below).
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IV. Attoc-Ionic
1.
> h (p. 214) : , etc.
2. v-ephelkustikon:
etc.
3. Quantitative metathesis (see below):
< , etc.
4. Aorist third plural active in : for (p. 298).
5. for / (see below).
6. In the personal pronouns nominative
accusative / (as against / or / , see p. 288).
7.
'he was', they were' (for < *es-t, < es-ent, p. 298).
Ionic is distinguished from Attic by:
1. The thoroughgoing change of > h, whereas in Attic this is 'inhibited' (see below) after e, i, i and r : ,
etc.
2. Absence of 'Attic' contraction (p. 239) in
, etc.
3. The compensatory lengthening in , etc. ( < , p. 227).
4. for (p. 225).
5. in genitive singular of masculine a-stems ( < > > ; Attic substitutes p. 270).
A chronological note on the change > h will be relevant to the discussion below on dialect interrelations. Since
the change is common to Attic and Ionic, the change must have been at least initiated in the proto-Attic-Ionic
period (*A-I). An intermediate stage
before merger with is posited because in some islands h was used for
the sound < *a, whereas the original *e was represented by e. The relative chronology may be deduced from a
variety of samples:
(a)
'temple' < *naswos implies the succession 1, nahwos (p. 238), 2, nawos, 3, , 4, , 5, neos. The last
change, 'quantitative metathesis', being peculiar to Attic and Ionic, is also *A-I. Since the effects are visible in
Homer, this is further evidence of its early date (p. 85). Further, since the change in words like
requires the
loss of intervocalic digamma, this loss must also be *A-I.
(b)
'cheek', cf. Aeol. < *par-ausa 'cheek', lit. 'alongside the ear' (with compositional lengthening
of the initial vowel of *aus- 'ear') > *parawa. The subsequent stages are 1, ; 2, ; 3, (for
shortening in hiatus,
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see p. 239 ); 4, parea. 1. The word shows that at stage 2 the inhibiting effect of r was not yet operative, for the later
e implies at least the initial step
. The 'inhibition' is thus a prevention on the further development of to [e:]. This
forces us to conclude that Attic is due to the reversion of to a, just as the final reverted to a under the
influence of the preceding e, as in the next example.
(c)
'new' < *newa: 1, , 2, , 3, nea.
(d) < korwa: 1, , 2, , 3, kore. This shows that the 'reversing' influence of preceding r had ceased
before the loss of post-consonantal w. That this change is post-*A-I is shown by the contrast of A
I
(pp. 227f.).
(e) 'temple' (of head) < *korsa: 1, , 2, , 3, korre. The reversing influence of r had ceased before -rs-
> -rr-, which is also post-*A-I (cf. Ionic
). For the late merger of and h see below.
The examples where the a is not original but due to the peculiarly Attic 'vowel contraction' need separate
discussion.
(f)
(acc. sing.) 'full' < *pleres-m * > proto-Greek *ple-reha: 1, plerea, 2, , 3, plere. Thus the reversing
action of r had ceased before the contraction of ea >
.
(g) (acc. sing.) < *su-gwijes-m* (p. 233) > proto-Greek hugieha: 1, hugiea, 2, , 3, hugia.
(h) (acc. sing.) 'deficient' < *deu(s)- > Proto-Greek * endeweha: 1, endewea, 2, endeea, 3, , 4, endea.
These two examples show that the reversing action of the preceding e and i persisted after the contraction.
An important point of relative chronology emerges from the adjective
'how big, how old' < *qwali-kos*.
The stages are 1, palikos, 2, ; i.e. the change of the labiovelar to labial before a non-front vowel preceded the
change of a to
and will have belonged to an early stage of A-I. Similarly the characteristic change exemplified in
Boeot.-Thessalian Lesb. belongs to Proto-Aeolic.
One dialect, Pamphylian (on the name see below), is difficult to place within the above major grouping, and it is
best treated as sui generis. Archaic features are the absence of the article and the retention of
, and in particular
the numeral
1 The other Attic form is difficult; possibly < *paraw-ia.
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'twenty'. But this may be a West Greek feature (the city of Aspendos is stated to have been a colony of Argos),
and this is also true of
. The medial endings and are common to all dialects except the Arcado-
Cypriot group. Points of affinity with Cypriot are
< > , the verb (this, however, is an archaism, cf.
Myc. woka = 'chariot'), the infinitive in and, most important, with the dative.
3. Dialect Interrelations and Historical Interpretation
The historical interpretation of this network of dialect interrelations will best begin with the most evident and least-
disputed case. From the virtual identity of Cypriot and Arcadian, together with the 'island' position of the latter in a
sea of Peloponnesian West Greek, it emerges that Cyprus was colonized from the Peloponnese at a time when the
ancestral dialects occupied the Peloponnesian coastal regions. The isolation of Arcadia is evidently due to a
movement of West Greek speakers into the Peloponnese, the original pre-Dorian dialect surviving only in the
mountain fastness. This raises the question of the affinities of Mycenaean.
After long debate scholars have generally returned to the first intuitive judgement that Mycenaean is most closely
related to Arcado-Cypriot. A major factor in this earlier opinion was doubtless the conclusion long proposed and
accepted that 'Arcado-Cypriot' was spoken in the Peloponnese before the coming of the Dorians. Most striking
points first seized on were the middle endings in
and the datival construction of paro. Certainly it has been
argued that
carries little weight in the calculus of dialect relations since it is merely a retained archaism, but the
fact that
is found in all other dialect groups is surely evidence that this was an early isogloss from which A-G
was excluded.
An important methodological point must now also be stressed. 'Arcado-Cypriot' is a linguistic construction: this is
merely the name given to a set of linguistic features common to the Iron Age dialects Arcadian and Cypriot,
features so peculiar that we are justified in attributing them to a group of dialects spoken in the Bronze Age
Peloponnese before the coming of the Dorians. This construction does not imply, however, a completely uniform
language in the Mycenaean Peloponnese. The
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dialect inscriptions of Arcadia and Cyprus themselves show local differentiations; for instance there is evidence
both for
and , whereas Mycenaean has the peculiar form ano.
In Mantinea the labiovelars are represented by
s, but elsewhere by t (rarely as in Tegea). In Mycenaean they
are still retained. The infinitives at Tegea end in
, but in (< ) at Lycosoura. Mycenaean has .
Consequently, we may expect to find in Mycenaean features which did not occur in the dialect(s) from which
Arcadian and Gypriot are descended. Thus both have analogical nominatives of the type
, and this
resemblance is too peculiar to be attributed to independent development after the separation. Yet Linear B has
abundant nominatives in
.
Such examples raise two problems. Was the 'Linear B' language (the term is preferred to the question-begging
'Mycenaean') an archaic supraregional administrative language which gives us no direct evidence of the
contemporary local dialects of Pylos, Mycenae, Thebes, Knossos, etc.? Or did the pre-Dorian Greeks continue to
occupy the Peloponnese after the great collapse and have a common linguistic development before sending out
colonists to Cyprus?
This raises a chronological problem on which archaeologists have firmly pronounced. H. W. Catling writes:1 'The
proposal to locate Aegean colonies in Cyprus during the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. has never
surmounted the obstacle of missing evidence.' On the other hand, the city of Enkomi was replanned and rebuilt
'after the destruction at the end of the thirteenth century B.C., which coincides with the arrival of Achaean
colonists from Greece.' Another disaster took place in Mycenaean III C 1, and this has been attributed to the 'Sea
Peoples' defeated by Rameses III in 1191 B.C. New waves of fugitives from the Aegean appeared in Cyprus
(associated with 'Granary' style pottery, i.e. not earlier than 1150 B.C.). There is also evidence that this flight from
Greece to Cyprus continued until the beginning of the Iron Age. Catling concludes (p. 213): 'It fell to Cyprus to
shelter the remains of Mycenaean civilization, including its political structure, aspects of its language,
1CAH, 3rd edn., 11 2, xxii (b), 200 'Cyprus in the Neolithic and Bronze Age Periods'.
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traces of its writing and much of its visual art long after its complete disappearance from the Greek mainland.'
This archaeological evidence pointing to a progressive exodus from the Greek mainland extending from the fall of
the palaces until the beginning of the Iron Age may be supported by a linguistic observation concerning the
semantic development of the Linear B word qasireu, if this is correctly identified as gwasileus * =
'king'.
In early post-Mycenaean times the Basileus was at the heart of the 'political structure'. In Cyprus he functions also
as the priest of the goddess Wanassa. Yet qasireu in the Linear B tablets is the title of a minor functionary: he
appears simply as the local headman of a royal (that is 'non-temple') establishment of craftsmen. In Homer the
are at least petty kings who enjoy the same title as Agamemnon, though graduations are implied by the
comparative and superlative . It was as a consequence of political fragmentation and
local autonomy that the former local 'manager' of the king's industrial establishments could rise to his new status.
If, then, qasireu (always supposing that the generally accepted equation with
is correct) was taken to
Cyprus with the meaning 'king' (perhaps already in the form basileus), we should have to postulate a quite lengthy
period of political and linguistic development to bridge the semantic gap.
It was perhaps during this period that 'Arcado-Cypriot' innovations, like
developed. Still more cogent
evidence for a post-palatial 'Achaean' occupation of the Peloponnese is provided by the potential particle, which
will be discussed in detail below. Arcadian presents a striking innovation
in agreement with Attic-Ionic
against Cypriot , agreeing with Aeolic. This common innovation, implying contact, must have developed before
the Dorians isolated the Arcadians. Thus the linguistic evidence is compatible with the archaeological thesis that a
considerable time elapsed between the destruction of the Mycenaean palaces and the intrusion of the Dorians (see
below).
The linguistic and archaeological evidence bearing on the Mycenaean settlement of Cyprus is also in broad
agreement with the traditions preserved in Greek literature. Paphos is said to have been founded by the Arcadian
Agapenor (Hdt. VII. 90, Paus. VIII, 5. 2), while Kurion, Golgoi and Lapethos were settled
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by colonists from Argos, Sicyon and Laconia respectively (Hdt. V 113, Steph. Byz., s.v.
, Strabo XIV. 682).
Place-names also point in the same direction: on Cyprus we find
, while the town-name has a
counterpart in Achaia (town and mountain). If the promontory name (Strabo XIV 682) is ancient,
then it follows that the colonists brought their national name with them, and it would be correct to speak of the
'Achaean' settlement of Cyprus.
In Homer
is the name for the Greeks generally, and it may be reflected in Hittite records. References to
the country of Ahhiyawa begin in the reign of Suppiluliumas ( 1380-1340 B.C.) and continue with Mursilis II
(1339-1306) and it is evident that friendly relations existed. Either Mursilis II or his son Muwatallis (1306-1282)
wrote a letter in connection with the operations by a Hittite renegade in the Lukka lands (see p. 20) from a base in
Millawanda (Miletus?) asking the king of Ahhiyawa to intervene, the impression being that the latter has merely
influence there but is not in control. Since the culprit escaped by ship, Millawanda will have been on or near the
sea. That Ahhiyawa was a considerable power is shown by a (deleted) reference in a treaty of the time of
Tudhaliyas IV (1250-1220), and during his reign we hear of operations by Attarisiya of Ahhiya, which included an
attack on Alasiya (Cyprus). The resemblance of Ahhiyawa to Akhaiwia is seductive, but even if the equation is
accepted there is uncertainty over its location, and guesses include the kingdom of Mycenae or some local
'Achaean' kingdom situated on one of the offshore islands, like Rhodes.
There is also the possibility that the Akhaiwoi called themselves after a locality which had a pre-Greek name (cf.
'British' for the English nation and its extensions). Quite a number of Anatolian place-names end in -wa and this
ending characterizes a large number of Linear B place-names.
Philologists use 'Achaean' in a narrower technical sense as a term embracing the two dialect groups Arcado-
Cypriot and Aeolic, which share a number of important isoglosses.
1. In the first place we have the potential particle
in Cypr., Thess. and Lesb. Arcadian has and this links up
with Attic-Ionic
. This isogloss is of primary importance in the classification of the Hellenic post-Mycenaean
dialects. It is
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