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47-533: The Graeco-Armenian hypothesis originated in 1924 with Holger Pedersen , who noted that agreements between Armenian and Greek lexical cognates are more common than between Armenian and any other Indo-European language . During the mid-to-late 1920s, Antoine Meillet further investigated morphological and phonological agreements and postulated that the parent languages of Greek and Armenian were dialects in immediate geographical proximity to their parent language, Proto-Indo-European. Meillet's hypothesis became popular in

94-479: A 2013 study, Martirosyan made a preliminarily conclusion that "Armenian, Greek, (Phrygian) and Indo-Iranian were dialectally close to each other. Within this hypothetical dialect group, Proto-Armenian was situated between Proto-Greek (to the west) and Proto-Indo-Iranian (to the east). The Indo-Iranians then moved eastwards, while the Proto-Armenians and Proto-Greeks remained in a common geographical region for

141-660: A Graeco-Armenian proto-language). James Clackson is more reserved, considers the evidence of a Graeco-Armenian subgroup to be inconclusive and believes Armenian to be in a larger Graeco-Armeno-Aryan family. Hrach Martirosyan argues that the case for a common Graeco-Armenian language is not as strong as it is for Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic by citing Clackson's "thorough, albeit somewhat hypercritical treatment". Martirosyan suggests that "[t]he contact relations between Proto-Greek and Proto-Armenian may have been intense, but these similarities are considered insufficient to be viewed as evidence for discrete Proto-Graeco-Armenian." In

188-533: A Graeco-Armenian subgroup was supported by five procedures: maximum parsimony, weighted versus unweighted maximum compatibility, neighbor-joining, and the widely-criticized binary lexical coding technique (devised by Russell Gray and Quentin D. Atkinson ). An interrelated problem is whether a " Balkan Indo-European " subgroup of Indo-European exists, which would consist not only of Greek and Armenian but also Albanian and possibly dead languages, such as Ancient Macedonian and Phrygian. The Balkan subgroup, in turn,

235-554: A consequence of the Macedonians' role in the formation of the Koine, Macedonian contributed considerable elements, unsurprisingly including some military terminology (διμοιρίτης, ταξίαρχος, ὑπασπισταί, etc.). Among the many contributions were the general use of the first declension grammar for male and female nouns with an -as ending, attested in the genitive of Macedonian coinage from the early 4th century BC of Amyntas III (ΑΜΥΝΤΑ in

282-470: A detailed argument in favor of the kinship of Indo-European and Uralic in 1933. In effect, the three pillars of the Nostratic hypothesis are Indo-Uralic , Ural–Altaic , and Indo-Semitic . Pedersen produced works on two of these three, so the impression is incorrect that he neglected this subject in his subsequent career. His interest in the Nostratic idea remained constant amid his many other activities as

329-429: A dialectal form of Greek. There are, however, a number of words that are not easily identifiable as Greek and reveal, for example, voiced stops where Greek shows voiceless aspirates. ⟨†⟩ marked words which have been corrupted. A number of Hesychius words are listed orphan; some of them have been proposed as Macedonian Among the references that have been discussed as possibly bearing some witness to

376-734: A linguist. English "Nostratic" is the normal equivalent of German nostratisch , the form used by Pedersen in 1903, and Danish nostratisk (compare French nostratique ). His 1931 American translator rendered nostratisk by "Nostratian," but this form did not catch on. In his 1924 book, Pedersen defined Nostratic as follows (1931:338): In his view, Indo-European was most clearly related to Uralic , with "similar, though fainter, resemblances" to Turkish , Mongolian , and Manchu ; to Yukaghir ; and to Eskimo (1931:338). He also considered Indo-European might be related to Semitic and that, if so, it must be related to Hamitic and possibly to Basque (ib.). In his abovementioned 1903 article he expressed

423-533: A long period and developed numerous shared innovations." Evaluation of the hypothesis is tied up with the analysis of Indo-European languages, such as Phrygian and languages within the Anatolian subgroup (such as Hittite ), many of which are poorly attested, but which were geographically located between the Greek and Armenian-speaking areas, and which would therefore be expected to have traits intermediate between

470-481: A major work by Gamkrelidze and Ivanov published in 1984 (English translation 1995), that the Indo-European b d g series had originally been a glottalized series, p' t' k'. Under this form, the theory has attracted wide interest; however, since the original claim of typological oddity has been falsified, no direct evidence for glottalized stops has been found, in the last few years publications in support of

517-601: A standard Greek unvoiced aspirate: κεβ(α)λή keb(a)lē versus κεφαλή kephalē ('head'). Emilio Crespo, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Madrid , wrote that "the voicing of voiceless stops and the development of aspirates into voiced fricatives turns out to be the outcome of an internal development of Macedonian as a dialect of Greek" without excluding "the presence of interference from other languages or of any linguistic substrate or adstrate", as also argued by M. Hatzopoulos. A number of

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564-655: A vernacular local variety comes from onomastic evidence , ancient glossaries and recent epigraphic discoveries in the Greek region of Macedonia , such as the Pella curse tablet . This local variety is usually classified by scholars as a dialect of Northwest Doric Greek , and occasionally as an Aeolic Greek dialect or a distinct sister language of Greek . Due to the fragmentary attestation of this dialect or language, various interpretations are possible. Suggested classifications of ancient Macedonian include: Because of

611-586: A volume of Albanian texts collected on this journey (1895). The publication was due to the recommendation of Brugmann and Leskien (Koerner 1983:x). He continued to publish work on Albanian for many years thereafter. Pedersen's work on Albanian is often cited in Vladimir Orel 's Albanian Etymological Dictionary (1995). Among students of the Celtic languages Pedersen is best known for his Vergleichende Grammatik der keltischen Sprachen , 'Comparative Grammar of

658-501: Is a satem language . Also, although Armenian and Attic (Ancient) Greek share a voiceless aspirate series, they originate from different PIE series (in Armenian from voiceless consonants and in Greek from the voiced aspirates). In a 2005 publication, a group of linguists and statisticians, comprising Luay Nakhleh , Tandy Warnow , Donald Ringe and Steven N. Evans , compared quantitative phylogenetic linguistic methods and found that

705-455: Is a passage from Livy (lived 59 BC-14 AD) in his Ab urbe condita (31.29). Describing political negotiations between Macedonians and Aetolians in the late 3rd century BC, Livy has a Macedonian ambassador argue that Aetolians, Acarnanians and Macedonians were "men of the same language". This has been interpreted as referring to a shared North-West Greek speech (as opposed to Attic Koiné). In another passage, Livy states that an announcement

752-597: Is also shared with Thessalian (e.g. Epitaph for Pyrrhiadas, Kierion ). M. Hatzopoulos and Johannes Engels summarize the Macedonian anthroponymy (that is names borne by people from Macedonia before the expansion beyond the Axios or people undoubtedly hailing from this area after the expansion) as follows: Common in the creation of ethnics is the use of -έστης, -εστός especially when derived from sigmatic nouns (ὄρος > Ὀρέστης but also Δῖον > Διασταί). Per Engels,

799-832: Is related to Proto-Hellenic noun *gʷous , and hence to PIE noun *gʷṓws ('cattle'), this would indicate that the labiovelars were either intact, or merged with the velars, unlike the usual Greek treatment (Attic βοῦς boûs ). Such deviations, however, are not unknown in Greek dialects; compare Laconian Doric (the dialect of Sparta) γλεπ- glep- for common Greek βλεπ- blep- , as well as Doric γλάχων gláchōn and Ionic γλήχων glēchōn for common Greek βλήχων blēchōn . A number of examples suggest that voiced velar stops were devoiced, especially word-initially: κάναδοι kánadoi , 'jaws' (< PIE * genu- ); κόμβους kómbous , 'molars' (< PIE * gombh- ); within words: ἀρκόν arkón (Attic ἀργός argós );

846-438: Is supported by the lexico-statistical method of Hans J. Holm. However, Donald Ringe has stated and reiterated a finding, which surprised him, to the effect that Albanian was descended from a language that formed a clade with Proto-Germanic (rather than the other Balkan languages). The authors of a 2022 genetic study argued that Armenian and Greek are related by "their shared Yamnaya heritage." Many modern scholars have rejected

893-409: The Greek gods . Most of them combine a Macedonian dialectal form with a clear Greek etymology (e.g Δῐός from Zeus ; Περίτιος from Heracles Peritas (“Guardian”) ; Ξανδικός/Ξανθικός from Xanthos, “the blond” (probably a reference to Heracles); Άρτεμίσιος from Artemis etc.) with the possible exception of one, which is attested in other Greek calendars as well. According to Martin P. Nilsson ,

940-834: The ruki law, an important sound change in Indo-Iranian , Baltic , and Slavic . He is also known for the description of Pedersen's Law , a type of accentual shift occurring in Baltic and Slavic languages (1933a). Pedersen endorsed the laryngeal theory (1893:292) at a time when it "was regarded as an eccentric fancy of outsiders" (Szemerényi 1996:123). In his classic exposition of the theory, Émile Benveniste (1935:148) credits Pedersen as one of those who contributed most to its development, along with Ferdinand de Saussure , Hermann Möller , and Albert Cuny . Two of Pedersen's theories have been receiving considerable attention in recent times after decades of neglect, often known today under

987-466: The 4th century BC bearing mostly names. About 99% of the roughly 6,300 inscriptions discovered by archaeologists within the confines of ancient Macedonia were written in the Greek language, using the Greek alphabet . The legends in all currently discovered coins also in Greek. The Pella curse tablet , a text written in a distinct Doric Greek dialect, found in 1986 and dated to between mid to early 4th century BC, has been forwarded as an argument that

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1034-808: The 4th century BC, marginalized by the use of Attic Greek by the Macedonian aristocracy, the Ancient Greek dialect that became the basis of Koine Greek , the lingua franca of the Hellenistic period . It became extinct during either the Hellenistic or Roman imperial period, and was entirely replaced by Koine Greek. While the bulk of surviving public and private inscriptions found in ancient Macedonia were written in Attic Greek (and later in Koine Greek), fragmentary documentation of

1081-737: The Celtic Languages', which is still regarded as the principal reference work in Celtic historical linguistics . His Hittitisch und die anderen indoeuropäischen Sprachen , 'Hittite and the Other Indo-European Languages', represented a significant step forward in Hittite studies, and is often relied on in Friedrich's Hethitisches Elementarbuch (2d ed. 1960), the standard handbook of Hittite . Also influential

1128-492: The Graeco-Armenian hypothesis, arguing that the linguistic proximity between the two languages has been overstated. Clackson asserts that the Armenian language is as close to Indo-Iranian as it is to Greek and Phrygian. Ronald I. Kim has noted unique morphological developments connecting Armenian to Balto-Slavic . In sum, Clackson and Kim argue that the Armenian language is closest to Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic, and

1175-512: The Macedonian toponym Akesamenai , from the Pierian name Akesamenos (if Akesa- is cognate to Greek agassomai , agamai , "to astonish"; cf. the Thracian name Agassamenos ). In Aristophanes ' The Birds , the form κεβλήπυρις keblēpyris ('red head', the name of a bird, perhaps the goldfinch or redpoll) is found, showing a Macedonian-style voiced stop in place of

1222-400: The Macedonian calendar is formed like a regular Greek one and the names of the months attest the Greek nationality of the Macedonians. Macedonian onomastics: the earliest epigraphical documents attesting substantial numbers of Macedonian proper names are the second Athenian alliance decree with Perdiccas II (~417–413 BC), the decree of Kalindoia (~335–300 BC) and seven curse tablets of

1269-467: The Macedonian words, particularly in Hesychius of Alexandria ' lexicon, are disputed (i.e., some do not consider them actual Macedonian words) and some may have been corrupted in the transmission. Thus abroutes , may be read as abrouwes ( αβρουϝες ), with tau ( Τ ) replacing a digamma . If so, this word would perhaps be encompassable within a Greek dialect; however, others (e.g. A. Meillet ) see

1316-721: The University of Berlin, where he studied with Johannes Schmidt . The following year he studied Celtic languages and Sanskrit with Heinrich Zimmer at the University of Greifswald . In 1895 he spent several months in the Aran Islands in Ireland to study the conservative form of Irish spoken there. Pedersen submitted his doctoral dissertation to the University of Copenhagen in 1896. It dealt with aspiration in Irish . It

1363-520: The University of Copenhagen to establish an extraordinary professorship for him (Koerner 1983:xii). Pedersen also turned down the offer in 1908 of a professorship at the University of Strassburg (ib.). Following the retirement of Vilhelm Thomsen in 1912, Pedersen acceded to Thomsen's chair at the University of Copenhagen. He remained at the University of Copenhagen for the rest of his life. In 1893, Pedersen traveled to Corfu with Karl Brugmann to study Albanian in place. Subsequently, Pedersen published

1410-440: The above material supports that Macedonian anthroponymy was predominantly Greek in character. The toponyms of Macedonia proper are generally Greek, though some of them show a particular phonology and a few others are non-Greek. The Macedonian calendar's origins go back to Greek prehistory . The names of the Macedonian months, just like most of the names of Greek months, are derived from feasts and related celebrations in honor of

1457-557: The ancient Macedonian language was a dialect of North-Western Greek, part of the Doric dialect group. A body of idiomatic words has been assembled from ancient sources, mainly from coin inscriptions, and from the 5th century lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria , amounting to about 150 words and 200 proper names, though the number of considered words sometimes differs from scholar to scholar. The majority of these words can be confidently assigned to Greek albeit some words would appear to reflect

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1504-507: The article he was writing, not the rest of his career. Although he defined the Nostratic family, he himself never produced the work of synthesis the concept seemed to call for. That would await the work of the Russian scholars Illich-Svitych and Dolgopolsky in the 1960s for its first iteration. Nevertheless, Pedersen did not abandon the subject. He produced a substantial (if overlooked) article on Indo-European and Semitic in 1908. He produced

1551-416: The dental as authentic and think that this specific word would perhaps belong to an Indo-European language different from Greek. A. Panayotou summarizes some features generally identified through ancient texts and epigraphy: Ancient Macedonian morphology is shared with ancient Epirus , including some of the oldest inscriptions from Dodona . The morphology of the first declension nouns with an -ας ending

1598-473: The fragmentary sources of Ancient Macedonian, only a little is understood about the special features of the language. A notable sound-law is that the Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirates (/bʰ, dʰ, gʰ/) sometimes appear as voiced stops /b, d, g/, (written β, δ, γ ), whereas they were generally unvoiced as /pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/ ( φ, θ, χ ) elsewhere in Ancient Greek. If γοτάν gotán ('pig')

1645-490: The languages listed did not exhaust the possibilities for Nostratic (ib.): Ancient Macedonian language Ancient Macedonian was the language of the ancient Macedonians which was either a dialect of Ancient Greek or a separate Hellenic language . It was spoken in the kingdom of Macedonia during the 1st millennium BC and belonged to the Indo-European language family . It gradually fell out of use during

1692-794: The linguistic situation in Macedonia, there is a sentence from a fragmentary dialogue, apparently between an Athenian and a Macedonian, in an extant fragment of the 5th century BC comedy 'Macedonians' by the Athenian poet Strattis (fr. 28), where a stranger is portrayed as speaking in a rural Greek dialect. His language contains expressions such as ὕμμες ὡττικοί for ὑμεὶς ἀττικοί "you Athenians", ὕμμες being also attested in Homer , Sappho ( Lesbian ) and Theocritus ( Doric ), while ὡττικοί appears only in "funny country bumpkin" contexts of Attic comedy. Another text that has been quoted as evidence

1739-574: The names of the glottalic theory and the Nostratic theory. In a work published in 1951, Pedersen pointed out that the frequency of b in Indo-European is abnormally low. Comparison of languages, however, shows that it would be normal if it had once been the equivalent voiceless stop p , which is infrequent or absent in many languages. He also posited that the Indo-European voiced aspirates, bh dh gh , could be better understood as voiceless aspirates, ph th kh . Pedersen therefore proposed that

1786-404: The similarities in the development of Armenian with Greek and Phrygian are random and independent of each other. Holger Pedersen (linguist) Holger Pedersen ( Danish: [ˈhʌlˀkɐ ˈpʰe̝ðˀɐsn̩] ; 7 April 1867 – 25 October 1953) was a Danish linguist who made significant contributions to language science and wrote about 30 authoritative works concerning several languages. He

1833-423: The so-called glottalic model have been steadily declining, and "the traditional paradigm remains absolutely in place". Pedersen seems to have first used the term "Nostratic" in an article on Turkish phonology published in 1903. The kernel of Pedersen's argument for Nostratic in that article was as follows (1903:560-561; "Indo-Germanic" = Indo-European): Pedersen's last sentence should be understood as referring to

1880-475: The three stop series of Indo-European, p t k , bh dh gh , and b d g , had at an earlier time been b d g , ph th kh , and (p) t k , with the voiceless and voiced non-aspirates reversed. This theory attracted relatively little attention until the American linguist Paul Hopper (1973) and the two Soviet scholars Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav V. Ivanov proposed, in a series of articles culminating in

1927-415: The two. While Greek is attested from very early times, allowing a secure reconstruction of a Proto-Greek language dating to about the 3rd millennium BC, the history of Armenian is opaque, with its earliest attestation being the 5th-century Bible translation of Mesrop Mashtots . Armenian has many loanwords showing traces of long language contact with Greek and Indo-Iranian languages ; in particular, it

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1974-570: The view that the "Semitic-Hamitic" languages were "indubitably" included in Nostratic (1903:560). In modern terms, we would say he was positing genetic relationship between Indo-European and the Uralic , Altaic , Yukaghir, Eskimo, and Afro-Asiatic language families. (The existence of the Altaic family is controversial, and few would now assign Basque to Afro-Asiatic.) However, in Pedersen's view

2021-421: The wake of his Esquisse d'une grammaire comparée de l'arménien classique . G. R. Solta does not go as far as postulating a Proto-Graeco-Armenian stage but concludes that the lexicon and the morphology clearly make Greek the language that is the most closely related to Armenian. Eric Hamp supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis and even anticipates a time that "we should speak of Helleno-Armenian" (the postulate of

2068-408: Was accepted and published in 1897. The dissertation committee included Vilhelm Thomsen and Otto Jespersen . Also in 1897, Pedersen took a position as a lecturer on Celtic languages at the University of Copenhagen. In 1900 he became a reader in comparative grammar there. In 1902 he was offered a professorship at the University of Basel , which he declined, but was able at the same time to persuade

2115-517: Was born in Gelballe, Denmark, and died in Hellerup , next to Copenhagen . (Principal source: Koerner 1983) Pedersen studied at the University of Copenhagen with Karl Verner , Vilhelm Thomsen , and Hermann Möller . He subsequently studied at the University of Leipzig with Karl Brugmann , Eduard Sievers , Ernst Windisch , and August Leskien . In the fall of 1893, Pedersen enrolled at

2162-523: Was his Tocharisch vom Gesichtspunkt der indoeuropäischen Sprachvergleichung , 'Tocharian from the Viewpoint of Indo-European Language Comparison'. For example, André Martinet (2005:179n) states that his discussion of sound changes in Tocharian is " fondé sur la présentation du tokharien par Holger Pedersen ," 'based on the presentation of Tocharian by Holger Pedersen'. It was Pedersen who formulated

2209-488: Was translated from Latin to Greek for Macedonians to understand. Quintus Curtius Rufus , Philotas 's trial and the statement that the Greek-speaking Branchidae had common language with the Macedonians. Over time, "Macedonian" (μακεδονικός), when referring to language (and related expressions such as μακεδονίζειν ; to speak in the Macedonian fashion) acquired the meaning of Koine Greek . As

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