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11 - Classical Armenian
- Edited by Roger D. Woodard, State University of New York, Buffalo
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- Book:
- The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
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- 10 April 2008, pp 124-144
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Summary
HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS
Armenian forms an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. Although Armenian was spoken in areas adjacent to those inhabited by speakers of Anatolian languages, it shares few significant linguistic features with the Anatolian subgroup of Indo-European. Its closest linguistic relatives are Greek and the Indo-Iranian subgroup. These three branches of Indo-European show shared developments in their morphology and vocabulary which are not found in other Indo-European languages: for example, the use of the augment *e- to mark past tense verb forms; the use of a marker *-bhi (s) for the instrumental case; and the prohibitive particle *mē.
Some scholars have thought that the agreements between Armenian and Greek are sufficient to allow the reconstruction of a Helleno-Armenian subgroup of Indo-European, but their arguments are not conclusive, since it cannot be clearly proved that the agreements represent shared common innovations. Others, relying on an ancient tradition that the Armenians were a “colony of the Phrygians” (Herodotus 7.73) have tried to identify developments shared by Armenian and Phrygian, but have met with little success. Some of the phonetic developments which have been claimed for Phrygian also took place in Armenian, but all too often these sound changes rest upon very uncertain etymologies, and the close link between the languages is called into question by several well-established Phrygian forms. For example, the Phrygian form matar is generally taken to be a nominative singular meaning “mother,” from Proto-Indo-European *mātēr; the cognate Armenian form is mayr.
Appendix 1 - Indo-European
- Edited by Roger D. Woodard, State University of New York, Buffalo
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- Book:
- The Ancient Languages of Europe
- Published online:
- 01 September 2010
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- 10 April 2008, pp 230-246
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Summary
THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXTS
The comparative method
The parent language of the Indo-European linguistic family is an “ancient” language in a special sense: it is a protolanguage, not attested but reconstructed. Since a protolanguage is, broadly speaking, the collection of all retentions in the daughter languages, the ability to segregate innovation from retention in the latter is crucial for the reconstruction of the former. The “comparative” method (in the narrow, phonological sense of the term) accomplishes that segregation to a large extent (on the comparative method of historical linguistics, see also WAL Ch. 45). Those innovations which we classify as sound-changes are capable of producing homophony among morphs; they are phonemic mergers, with the algebraic form /a/ > /m/, /b/ > /m/ (further elaboration is needed for conditioned sound-changes). Owing to the “Polivanov” property of sound changes (“no split without merger”), which follows from their definition as replacements statable in purely phonological terms (without reference, that is, to particular morphs), it is the case that if one phoneme, or one phonemic component (distinctive feature specification), or one phoneme combination (diphthong, cluster, syllable, etc.) in language A corresponds to one phoneme or phonemic component or phoneme combination in a related language B in one set of morphs, and to some other phoneme (etc.) in another set of morphs, then language A has in this detail innovated.
4 - Latin
- Edited by Roger D. Woodard, State University of New York, Buffalo
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- Book:
- The Ancient Languages of Europe
- Published online:
- 01 September 2010
- Print publication:
- 10 April 2008, pp 73-95
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Summary
HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS
Latin – the language of Ancient Rome – takes its name from Latium, a region encompassing Rome on the west coast of Italy and bordered by the river Tiber to the northwest, the Apennines to the northeast and the Pontine marshes to the south. The Roman antiquarian Varro dated the founding of Rome to 753 BC, but there is archeological evidence for settlement much earlier than this, and it was only later, in the sixth century BC, that Rome became an organized and sophisticated city-state. Latium itself did not achieve political unity until it came under Rome's dominance in the fourth century BC, but the Latini – as the inhabitants of Latium are termed – appear to have shared cultural and religious practice, as well as their language, from well before the period of the first city-states.
The increasing control over Latium was the first stage of Rome's rise to power throughout the Italian peninsula a dominance achieved through conquest, alliance, and colonization. By the second century BC, Rome's military power was great enough to make possible the conquest and annexation of territory outside Italy, including North Africa, Spain, Southern France and Greece. Civil wars throughout much of the first century BC led to the end of the Roman Republic and the foundation of the Roman Empire under Augustus.