The Carian language is an extinct language of the Luwic subgroup of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family , spoken by the Carians . The known corpus is small, and the majority comes from Egypt . Circa 170 Carian inscriptions from Egypt are known, whilst only circa 30 are known from Caria itself.
31-471: Caria is a region of western Anatolia between the ancient regions of Lycia and Lydia , a name possibly first mentioned in Hittite sources. Carian is closely related to Lycian and Milyan (Lycian B), and both are closely related to, though not direct descendants of, Luwian . Whether the correspondences between Luwian, Carian, and Lycian are due to direct descent (i.e. a language family as represented by
62-513: A non-trivial evolution in Carian from * -onto into -n, -ñ (and possibly -ne ?). Virtually nothing is known of Carian syntax. This is chiefly due to two factors: first, uncertainty as to which words are verbs; second, the longer Carian inscriptions hardly show word dividers. Both factors seriously hamper the analysis of longer Carian texts. The only texts for which the structure is well understood, are funeral inscriptions from Egypt. Their nucleus
93-502: A similar sound. A few candidates have been proposed: ýbt , 'he offered', not , 'he brings / brought', ait , 'they made', but these are not well established. In a Carian-Greek bilingual from Kaunos the first two words in Carian are kbidn uiomλn , corresponding to Greek ἔδοξε Καυνίοις, 'Kaunos decided' (literally: 'it seemed right to the Kaunians'). The first word, kbidn , is Carian for 'Kaunos' (or, 'the Kaunians'), so one would expect
124-516: A tree-model), or are due to the effects of a sprachbund , is disputed. Carian is known from these sources: Text in Carian: Kaunusa tiñ árdajós martaša arpandab tarśñpi mašina xrá́m za Prior to the late 20th century the language remained a total mystery even though many characters of the script seemed to be from the Greek alphabet . Using Greek phonetic values of letters investigators of
155-645: Is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages . The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ ə ⟩, a rotated lowercase letter e , which is called a "schwa". While the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association does not define the roundedness of [ə] , it is more often unrounded than rounded. The phonetician Jane Setter describes
186-451: Is frequently written with the symbol [ə] . If greater precision is desired, the symbol for the close-mid central unrounded vowel may be used with a lowering diacritic , [ɘ̞] . Another possibility is using the symbol for the open-mid central unrounded vowel with a raising diacritic , [ɜ̝] . Languages may have a mid central rounded vowel (a rounded [ə] ), distinct from both the close-mid and open-mid vowels. However, since no language
217-441: Is known to distinguish all three, there is no separate IPA symbol for the mid vowel, and the symbol [ɵ] for the close-mid central rounded vowel is generally used instead. If precision is desired, the lowering diacritic can be used: [ɵ̞] . This vowel can also be represented by adding the more rounded diacritic to the schwa symbol, or by combining the raising diacritic with the open-mid central rounded vowel symbol, although it
248-494: Is not very stable, and many speakers use an unrounded vowel in both cases. Danish and Luxembourgish have a mid central vowel that is variably rounded. In other languages, the change in rounding is accompanied with the change in height and/or backness. For instance, in Dutch , the unrounded allophone of /ə/ is mid central unrounded [ə] , but its word-final rounded allophone is close-mid front rounded [ ø̜ ] , close to
279-403: Is the name of the deceased. Personal names in Carian were usually written as "A, [son] of B" (where B is in the genitive, formally recognizable from its genitival ending -ś). For example: In funeral inscriptions the father's name is often accompanied by the relative pronoun k̂i , "who, who is": The formula may then be extended by a substantive like 'grave', ' stele ', 'monument'; by the name of
310-543: Is the same. The reason for this might be that the Carians originally developed an alphabet consisting of consonants only (like the Phoenician and Hieroglyphic alphabets before them), and later added the vowel signs, borrowed from a Greek alphabet . The Carian alphabet consisted of about 34 characters: In Caria inscriptions are usually written from left to right, but most texts from Egypt are written right-to-left; in
341-461: Is the tomb of Tur..." [Ἀ]ριστοκλε̂ς ἐπ[οίε̄] Greek: Aristokles epoie — "Made by Aristocles." The word 𐊰𐊠𐊵 san is equivalent to τόδε and evidences the Anatolian language assibilation , parallel to Luwian za-, "this". If 𐊸𐋅𐊠𐊰 śjas is not exactly the same as Σε̂μα Sēma it is roughly equivalent. The Achaean Greeks arriving in small numbers on the coasts of Anatolia in
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#1732772927943372-640: The Late Bronze Age found them occupied by a population that did not speak Greek and were generally involved in political relationships with the Hittite Empire . After the fall of the latter the region became the target of heavy immigration by Ionian and Dorian Greeks who enhanced Greek settlements and founded or refounded major cities. They assumed for purposes of collaboration new regional names based on their previous locations: Ionia , Doris . The writers born in these new cities reported that
403-497: The 19th and 20th centuries were unable to make headway and erroneously classified the language as non- Indo-European . A breakthrough was reached in the 1980s, using bilingual funerary inscriptions (Carian-Egyptian) from Egypt ( Memphis and Sais ). By matching personal names in Carian characters with their counterparts in Egyptian hieroglyphs, John D. Ray , Diether Schürr , and Ignacio J. Adiego were able to unambiguously derive
434-529: The Greek equivalent in parentheses. An epenthetic schwa to break up clusters may have been unwritten. Carian nouns are inflected for at least three cases: nominative, accusative, and genitive. The dative case is assumed to be present also, based on related Anatolian languages and the frequency of dedicatory inscriptions, but its form is quite unclear. All Anatolian languages also distinguish between animate and inanimate noun genders. Features that help identify
465-527: The Greeks, some of whom attempted to give etymologies in words they said were Carian. For the most part they still remain a mystery. Writing disappeared in the Greek Dark Ages but no earlier Carian writing has survived. When inscriptions, some bilingual, began to appear in the 7th century BCE it was already some hundreds of years after the city-naming phase. The earlier Carian may not have been exactly
496-403: The environment. The French vowel transcribed that way is closer to [ ø ] . If a mid-central vowel of a language is not a reduced vowel , or if it may be stressed, it may be more unambiguous to transcribe it with one of the other mid-central vowel letters: ⟨ ɘ ɜ ⟩ for an unrounded vowel or ⟨ ɵ ɞ ⟩ for a rounded vowel. The mid central unrounded vowel
527-481: The grandfather ("A, [son] of B, [son] of C"); other familial relations ("mother of ..., son of ...", etc.); profession ("astrologer, interpreter"); or ethnicity or city of origin. Example: The Athenian Bilingual Inscription Σε̂μα τόδε : Τυρ[ Greek: Sema tode Tyr — "This is the tomb of Tur...," Καρὸς τô Σκύλ[ακος] Greek: Karos to Skylakos — "the Carian, the son of Scylax" () 𐊸𐋅𐊠𐊰 : 𐊰𐊠𐊵 𐊭𐊲𐊥[ Carian: Śjas: san Tur[ "This
558-532: The language as Anatolian include the asigmatic nominative (without the Indo-European nominative ending *-s) but -s for a genitive ending: 𐊿𐊸𐊫𐊦 wśoλ , 𐊿𐊸𐊫𐊦𐊰 wśoλ-s . The similarity of the basic vocabulary to other Anatolian languages also confirms this e.g. 𐊭𐊺𐊢 ted "father"; 𐊺𐊵 en "mother". A variety of dative singular endings have been proposed, including zero-marked and -i/-e suffixation. No inanimate stem has been securely identified but
589-847: The latter case each character is written mirrorwise. Some, mostly short, inscriptions have word dividers: vertical strokes, dots, spaces or linefeeds. In the chart below, the Carian letter is given, followed by the transcription. Where the transcription differs from IPA, the phonetic value is given in brackets. Many Carian phonemes were represented by multiple letter forms in various locations. The Egypto-Carian dialect seems to have preserved semivowels w, j, and ý lost or left unwritten in other varieties . Two Carian letters have unknown phonetic values: 𐊱 and 𐋆. The letter 𐊶 τ 2 may have been equivalent to 𐋇 τ. 𐊳 ñ [n̩, n̚] 𐊰 s 𐊶 τ 2 [t͡ʃ]? 𐊦, 𐊣 λ [l:, ld] 𐋃, 𐋉 ĺ [l]? Phonemes attested in Egypto-Carian only. Across
620-419: The main allophone of /ʏ/ . "Mid central vowel" and "schwa" do not always mean the same thing, and the symbol ⟨ ə ⟩ is often used for any obscure vowel, regardless of its precise quality. For instance, the unstressed English vowel transcribed ⟨ ə ⟩ and called "schwa" is a central unrounded vowel that can be close-mid [ ɘ ] , mid [ə] or open-mid [ ɜ ] , depending on
651-454: The nominative and accusative are probably attested: The relative pronoun k̂j, k̂i , originally 'who, that, which', has in Carian usually developed into a particle introducing complements. Example: No undisputable verbal forms have yet been discovered in Carian. If verbal conjugation in Carian resembles the other Anatolian languages, one would expect 3rd person singular or plural forms, in both present and preterite , to end in -t or -d , or
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#1732772927943682-416: The other Anatolian languages like Lycian , Milyan , or Lydian . A striking feature of Carian is the presence of large consonant clusters, due to a tendency to not write short vowels. Examples: The sound values of the Carian alphabetic signs are very different from those in the usual Greek alphabets. Only four vowels signs are the same as in Greek (A = α, H = η, O = ο, Y = υ/ου), but not a single consonant
713-451: The people among whom they had settled were called Carians and spoke a language that was "barbarian", "barbaric" or "barbarian-sounding" (i.e. not Greek). No clue has survived from these writings as to what exactly the Greeks might mean by "barbarian". The reportedly Carian names of the Carian cities did not and do not appear to be Greek. Such names as Andanus, Myndus, Bybassia, Larymna, Chysaoris, Alabanda, Plarasa and Iassus were puzzling to
744-571: The phonetic value of most Carian signs. It turned out that not a single Carian consonant sign has the same phonetic value as signs of similar shape in the Greek alphabet. By 1993 the so-called "Ray-Schürr-Adiego System" was generally accepted, and its basic correctness was confirmed in 1996 when in Kaunos (Caria) a new Greek-Carian bilingual was discovered, where the Carian names nicely matched their Greek counterparts. The language turned out to be Indo-European, its vocabulary and grammar closely related to
775-543: The pirates mentioned in classical texts. The Carians who fought for Troy (if they did) were not classical Carians any more than the Greeks there were classical Greeks. Being penetrated by larger numbers of Greeks and under the domination from time to time of the Ionian League , Caria eventually Hellenized and Carian became a dead language . The interludes under the Persian Empire perhaps served only to delay
806-698: The process. Hellenization would lead to the extinction of the Carian language in the 1st century BCE or early in the Common Era . Caria Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.133 via cp1102 cp1102, Varnish XID 552508268 Upstream caches: cp1102 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 05:48:47 GMT Schwa Legend: unrounded • rounded The mid central vowel (also known as schwa )
837-400: The pronunciation of the unrounded variant as follows: "a sound which can be produced by basically relaxing the articulators in the oral cavity and vocalising." To produce the rounded variant, all that needs to be done in addition to that is to round the lips. Afrikaans contrasts unrounded and rounded mid central vowels; the latter is usually transcribed with ⟨ œ ⟩. The contrast
868-548: The same. The local development of Carian excludes some other theories as well: it was not widespread in the Aegean, is not related to Etruscan , was not written in any ancient Aegean scripts, and was not a substrate Aegean language. Its occurrence in various places of Classical Greece is due only to the travel habits of Carians, who apparently became co-travellers of the Ionians . The Carian cemetery of Delos probably represents
899-424: The second word, uiomλn , to be the verbal form, 'they decided'. Several more words ending in a nasal are suspected to be verbal forms, for example mδane , mlane , mλn (cf. uio-mλn ), 'they vowed, offered (?)', pisñ , 'they gave (?)'. However, to make such nasal endings fit in with the usual Anatolian verb paradigm (with 3rd person plural preterite endings in -(n)t/-(n)d , from * -onto ), one would have to assume
930-483: The suffix -n may be reconstructed based on the inherited pattern. Alternatively, a zero ending may be derived from the historical * -od . The ablative (or locative?) case is suspected in one phrase (𐊠𐊣𐊫𐊰𐊾 𐊴𐊠𐊥𐊵𐊫𐊰𐊾 alosδ k̂arnosδ "from/in Halicarnassus (?)"), perhaps originally a clitic derived from the preverb δ "in, into" < PIE *endo . Of the demonstrative pronouns s(a)- and a- , 'this',
961-471: The various sites where inscriptions have been found, the two lateral phonemes /l/ and /λ/ contrast but may be represented by different letters of the Carian script 𐊣/𐋎, 𐊦, and 𐋃/𐋉 depending on the location. The letter 𐋉 (formerly transcribed <ŕ>) is now seen as an Egyptian variant of 𐋃 <ĺ>. In the chart below, the Carian letter for each vowel is followed by the conventional transcription with