Pisidian language
| Pisidian | |
|---|---|
| Region | Pisidia, ancient southwestern Anatolia |
| Era | attested 1st-2nd century |
Early forms | |
| Pisidian script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | xps |
xps | |
| Glottolog | pisi1234 |
The Pisidian language is a member of the extinct Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family spoken in Pisidia, a region of ancient Asia Minor. Known from some fifty short inscriptions from the first to second centuries AD, it appears to be closely related to Lycian, Milyan, and Sidetic.
Sources
[edit]
Pisidian is known from about fifty funeral inscriptions, most of them from Sofular (classical Tymbrias). The first were discovered in 1890; five years later sixteen of them were published and analyzed by Scottish archaeologist William Mitchell Ramsay.[1] The texts are basically of a genealogical character (strings of names) and are usually accompanied by a relief picturing the deceased. Recently inscriptions have also been found at Selge, Kesme (near Yeşilbağ), and Deḡirmenözü.[2] Four inscriptions from the Kesme region seem to offer regular text, not merely names. By far the longest of them consists of thirteen lines.[3]
Pisidian script
[edit]Pisidian is written left to right in a script that closely resembles the Greek alphabet. A few letters are missing (phi, chi, psi, and possibly theta), and two others were added (characters F and И, both denoting a /w/- or /v/-sound). In recently discovered inscriptions two new signs 𐋌 and ╪ have turned up; they are rare and it is not clear whether they are variants of other signs or entirely different characters (maybe rare sibilants).[4] Texts are written without word dividers.
A typical example (the accompanying relief shows two men and a veiled woman):
- ΔΩΤΑΡΙΜΟΣΗΤΩΣΕΙΗΔΩΤ / ΡΙΣΔΩΤΑΡΙΕΝΕΙΣ
- Δωταρι Μοσητωσ Ειη Δωτ<α>ρισ Δωταρι Ενεισ
- [Here lie] Dotari, [son] of Moseto; Eie [daughter] of Dotari; [and] Dotari [son] of Enei.
Alternatively, the end of the line may (with a different word division) be read as Δωταριε Νεισ, with dative Dotarie, meaning (...) to Dotari [the son] of Nei. In addition, Ειη may also be a dative (= Ειε-ε). The whole line would then mean:
- Dotari, [son] of Moseto, [has made this tomb] for Eie [daughter] of Dotari [and] for Dotari [son] of Enei.
Grammar
[edit]Due to the one-sided character of the inscriptions, little is known about the grammar. Two cases are assured: nominative and genitive; the presence of a dative is disputed:
| case | ending | example | meaning | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -Ø | ΔΩΤΑΡΙ | Dotari | (Dotari is a man's name) |
| Dative | -e (??) | ΔΩΤΑΡΙΕ (?) | to Dotari | |
| Genitive | -s | ΔΩΤΑΡΙΣ | Dotari's |
About the verb nothing can be said: Pisidian verbal forms have not yet been found.
Vocabulary
[edit]Pisidian personal name Δωτάρι Dotari may reflect the Indo-European root for "daughter".[5] However, as Dotari is documented as a man's name this etymology is not assured.[6]
See also
[edit]
References
[edit]- ^ Ramsay, W.M. (1895). "Inscriptions en langue Pisidienne". Revue des universités du Midi. Nouvelle Série. 1 (2): 353–362. Retrieved 15 April 2021. Archived at BnF Gallica.
- ^ "List of Pisidian texts currently in Trismegistos". Trismegistos. Retrieved 15 April 2021.
- ^ Adiego, Ignasi-Xavier (2017). "The longest Pisidian inscription (Kesme 2)". Journal of Language Relationship. 15 (1): 1–18. doi:10.31826/jlr-2017-151-205. Retrieved 15 April 2021.
- ^ Brixhe, Claude; Özsait, Mehmet (2013). "Cours moyen de l'Eurymédon: apparition du pisidien [Pisidian texts emerge at the middle course of the Eurymedon River]". Collection de l'Institut des Sciences et Techniques de l'Antiquité. 1277 (2): 231–250. Retrieved 7 November 2021. (In French.)
- ^ Blažek, Václav. “Indo-European kinship terms in *-ə̯2TER.” (2001). In: Grammaticvs: studia linguistica Adolfo Erharto quinque et septuagenario oblata. Šefčík, Ondřej (editor); Vykypěl, Bohumil (editor). Vyd. 1. V Brně: Masarykova univerzita, 2001. p. 25. http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/123188
- ^ Simon, Zsolt (2017). "Selected Pisidian problems and the position of Pisidian within the Anatolian languages" (PDF). Journal of Language Relationship. 15 (1): 37. doi:10.31826/jlr-2017-151-207. S2CID 212688432. Retrieved 15 April 2021.
Bibliography
[edit]- Simon, Zsolt (2017). "Selected Pisidian problems and the position of Pisidian within the Anatolian languages" (PDF). Journal of Language Relationship. 15 (1): 31–42. doi:10.31826/jlr-2017-151-207. S2CID 212688432. Retrieved 15 April 2021.
Further reading
[edit]- Bean, G. E. “Notes and Inscriptions from Pisidia. Part I”. In: Anatolian Studies 9 (1959): 67–117. https://doi.org/10.2307/3642333.
- Bean, G. E. “Notes and Inscriptions from Pisidia. Part II”. In: Anatolian Studies 10 (1960): 43–82. https://doi.org/10.2307/3642429.
- Shafer, Robert. “‘Pisidian’.” In: The American Journal of Philology 71, no. 3 (1950): 239–70. https://doi.org/10.2307/292155.
External links
[edit]- Pisidic language, Indo-European Database
- "Digital etymological-philological Dictionary of the Ancient Anatolian Corpus Languages (eDiAna)". Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
- Касьян, А.С. (Alexei S. Kassian) (2013). Писидийский Язык (The Pisidian language), in: Языки Мира : Реликтовые индоевропейские языки Передней и Центральной Азии (Languages of the World : Relict Indo-European languages of Near and Central Asia). Moscow. pp. 177–179. Retrieved 15 April 2021.
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