Anatolian languages

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The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia, part of present-day Turkey. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European language.

Undiscovered until the late 19th and 20th centuries, they are often believed to be the earliest branch to have split from the Indo-European family. Once discovered, the presence of laryngeal consonants ḫ and ḫḫ in Hittite and Luwian provided support for the laryngeal theory of Proto-Indo-European linguistics. While Hittite attestation ends after the Bronze Age, hieroglyphic Luwian survived until the conquest of the Neo-Hittite kingdoms by Assyria, and alphabetic inscriptions in Anatolian languages are fragmentarily attested until the early first millennium AD, eventually succumbing to the Hellenization of Anatolia.

Origins[]

The Anatolian branch is often considered 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. Under the Kurgan hypothesis, there are two possibilities for how the early Anatolian speakers could have reached Anatolia: from the north via the Caucasus, and from the west, via the Balkans,^[1] the latter of which 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.^[2][3]

Classification[]

Melchert (2012) has proposed the following classification:^[4]

• Proto-Anatolian
  • Hittite
  • Palaic
  • Luwic
    • Luwian
    • Lycian
    • Milyan
    • Carian
    • Sidetic
    • Pisidian
  • Lydian

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 ḫāran- (cf. Greek ὄρνῑς, Lithuanian eręlis, Old Norse ǫrn, PIE *h₃éron-) and Lycian