Hellenic Migrations and Katadesmos: The Macedonian dialect

Nov 08 2009

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Hellenic Migrations and Katadesmos: A Paradigm of Macedonian Speech

Hellenic Migrations and Katadesmos: Historical Background

Hellenic Migrations and Katadesmos: The Macedonian dialect

Hellenic Migrations and Katadesmos: The language of Katadesmos

Hellenic Migrations and Katadesmos: Remarks on Katadesmos and Conclusion

Hellenic Migrations and Katadesmos: Bibliography

The Macedonian Dialect

Ancient grammarians divided the Greek language into four dialects (five if one adds the Attic Koine) based only on the number of literary dialects. However, the fact is that literary dialects of ancient Greece represent only a few of the spoken Greek dialects; a plethora of other dialects come to us through a wealth of inscriptions and, in some cases, from scattered glosses and a number of lexica. ⁷¹

Non-Hellenic glosses found in lexica referring to the Macedonian dialect can be explained by the geographic location of Macedonia, the ethnicity of the people living in the land of Macedonia before the Macedonian migration to what later became the Macedonian homeland (this is especially true for toponyms), and the expansion of Macedonia with the conquest of lands in the Middle East and Central and South Asia. More inscriptions categorized as Aeolic and Northwest Doric written in theMacedonian dialect are now available than at the time of Hoffmann, Buck and Meillet. The remaining inscriptions found in Macedonia are in either Classical Attic or Attic koine and belong to the late Macedonian or even Roman period. Hoffmann’s view that the Macedonian dialect had “some notable points of agreement” with Thessalian is not clear as to which Thessalian he is referring to, since Thessalian included two dialects, one of Thessaliotis which was a mixture of Northwest Doric and the other of Pelasgiotis which was almost pure Aeolic. ⁷⁷He probably meant the one of Thessaliotis.

In addition, the sixty three glosses attributed to unidentified Macedonians found in the lexicon of Hesychius include erroneous copyist spellings. Besides, Hesychius always states Macedonians;does not state it belonged to a Macedonian dialect. This means that the dialect itself did not necessarily include those glosses, but certain unidentified Macedonians living anywhere in Macedonian conquered lands uttered them. The 51,035 lemmata of the lexicon of Hesychius do not constitute, philologically speaking, part of the mainstream speech, but only localisms, colloquialisms, slang, jargon, or individual preference.

In his attempt to classify the Macedonian dialect, Buck observed that from the scanty remains found by his time that the Macedonian dialect was a form of Greek, which was “detached in such an early period that it is best not classed as one of the Greek dialects in the ordinary sense.” ⁷² However, he accepted Hoffmann’s conclusion that the Macedonian dialect showed notable points of agreement with Thessalian. ⁷³ This statement echoes that of Wilcken’s on the Macedonians as a group:⁷⁴

Buck’s contention that theMacedonian dialect cannot be classified as one of the Greek dialects is based on the argument that it was separated very early from the Greek corpus. However, the Macedonian dialect had separated from the Greek linguistic corpus after the Arcado-Cyprian (1350 BC). But if the Arcado-Cyprian has been classified as one of the Greek dialects, there is no scientific reason not to consider Macedonian as also being a Greek dialect. Statements made by Buck and Wilcken ignore Heurtley’s discoveries in Macedonia which dates the existence of Dorian/Macedonian settlements just north of Thessaly between 1150-1050 BC.⁷⁵

The material from Histiaiotis and Perrhaebia is very scanty and the archaic inscriptions from Magnesia are limited to few fragmented specimens. The inscription IG IX.ii.199 from Phthiotis conclusively shows that the dialect was Thessalian. Most of the Magnesian inscriptions are of the late period it possible for one to conclude from scanty fragmentary inscriptions that the Magnesian dialect is Greek and accept it as such, but for the Macedonian, having more than a few inscriptions (more than 6,000) the result is inconclusive? ⁷⁶

In his review of Hoffmann’s book, Buck explains that theMacedonian dialect was not readily understood by other Greeks as it appears in various historical documents, such as in the case of Philotas in Q. Curtius VI. 9.35, is not strange because “the same must have been true of several of the Greek dialects. A speech as delivered in Thessalian, Elean, etc., in their earlier form, before they were and belong to the late Macedonian or even7 tempered by κοινή influence, would not have been readily followed, we may be sure.” 78

Meillet indicates that theMacedonian dialect shows voiced stops where Greek has voiceless aspirated as δώραξ for θώραξ. He furthermore accepts ABΡΟΥTΕΣ corresponding to ΟΦΡΥΕΣ as the copyist error where T renders F voiced stops because of the weakness of their articulation. Moreover, by passing through a stage of spirant pronunciation, voiceless aspirated sounds may voice; thus, Germ. b is represented by d in German, and certain Bantu dialects present analogous occurrences.” ⁷⁹

Hatzopoulos offers an example from the German word German gloss ‘ Mutter stating, “the sound /t/ in the Mutter‘ is not the direct heir of the same sound in the Indo-European gloss *mater, but has evolved from the common Germanic form *moδer, which was the reflex of Indo-European *mater.” He continues, “one must be wary of short-cuts and simplifications in linguistics.”⁸⁰ As we saw above his views are supported by Meillet’s statement above.

Each dialect developed in its own pace and manner and that was true for the Macedonian dialect. The only reason that I see in the disruption of a development of the Macedonian dialect, unlike other Greek dialects, is the fact that the process was interrupted by the codification of the Attic κοινή or koinē dialect. Sapir feels that the Macedonian dialect could have been between Illyrian and Greek based on the likelihood of Macedonian maintaining the prevocalic S. However, if that is the case, how would we account for glosses such as ΣΕΛΗΝΗ (Attic/Ionic), ΣΕΛΑΝΝΑ (Lesbian), ΣΕΛΑΝΑ (all other dialects) or the gloss ΣΕΛΑΣ that every Greek dialect maintains? 81How could we account for the ethnic ΣΕΛΛΟΙ , another name for Hellenes or Greeks?

Accentuation

Although inscriptions tell us about the dialects they are written in, they mention nothing about the accentuation, their mechanism, and the rules that apply. We do know the accentuation of the Attic and through the Lesbian the Aeolic which was recessive as in πόταμος σόφος βασίλευς as it compares to the Attic ποταμός σοφός βασιλεύς Similarly, we have scanty evidence that the Doric accentuation was processive as is ἐλάβον, ἐνδοῖ ἐνταυθοῖ τουτῷ instead of the Attic ἒλαβον, ἒνδω, ἐνταῦθα, τοῦτῳ. 82 We do not have such evidence from Northwest Greek dialectal text as it is the present Macedonian text and thus I will accentuate the words using the well-known Attic manner.

71 Carl D. Buck, 1910),, 1.

72 Carl D. Buck,

73 Carl D. Buck,

74 Urlich Wilcken, Introduction to the Study of the Greek Dialects: Grammar, Selected Inscriptions, Glossary(Chicago: Ginn,Introduction, 9 and 288. Introduction, 9 and 288.Alexander the Great, (London: Norton, 1967), 22.

75 W. A. Heurtley,

76 Carl D. Buck,

77 Carl D. Buck,

78 Carl Darling Buck, review of Die Makedonen: ihre Sprache und ihr Volkstum by Otto Von Hoffmann, Classical Philology, III, (January – October, 1908): 102-3.

79 Antoine Meillet, Prehistoric Site, 190.The Greek Dialects, Ed. John H. Betts (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1955), 151.Introduction, 135, ff 1.The Indo-European Dialects, trans. Samuel N. Rosenberg (University of Alabama Press, 2006), 99.

80 Miltiades Hatzopoulos, VI International Symposion on Ancient Macedonia.

81 Edward Sapir, “Indo-European Pre-vocalic S in Macedonian,” The American Journal of Philology, 60, 4 (1939), 463-465.

82 Buck, Greek Dialects, 85.

Hellenic Migrations and Katadesmos:

A Paradigm of Macedonian Speech

Marcus A. Tempar

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Tags: attic koine, buck, glosses, Greek Language, Hatzopoulos, hellenic, hesychius, hoffmann, illyrians, inscriptions, ionic, lexicon, macedonian dialect, Macedonian language, macedonians

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