Ancient Macedonian language: Encyclopedia II - Ancient Macedonian language - Classification

Ancient Macedonian language - Classification

Due to the fragmentary attestation widely diverging interpretations are possible. The suggested historical interpretations of Macedonian include (Mallory and Adams (1997), p. 361):

• a Greek dialect mixed with Illyrian languages or the Thracian language, suggested by Kretschmer (1896) and E. Schwyzer (1959)
• a Greek dialect with a non-Indo-European substratal influence, suggested by M .Sakellariou (1983)
• an Illyrian dialect mixed with Greek (suggested by K. O. Müller (1825) and by G. Bonfante 1987)
• an independent Indo-European language close to Greek, Thracian and Phrygian languages, suggested by I. I. Russu (1938) and A. Meillet (1965)

The discussion is closely related to the reconstruction of the Proto-Greek language.

Ancient Macedonian language - Graeco-Macedonian Group

Some linguists consider that the Macedonian tongue was a sibling language to all the Ancient Greek dialects, and not simply a Greek dialect. If this view is correct, then Macedonian and Greek would be the two subbranches of a group within Indo-European, forming a Graeco-Macedonian group, sometimes also referred to as Hellenic group. This terminology may lead to misunderstandings, since the "Hellenic branch of Indo-European" is also used synonymously with the Greek branch (which contains all ancient and modern Greek dialects) in a narrower sense ( Linguist List being a proponent of this theory.)

A number of the Macedonian words, particularly in Hesychius' 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 abrouϜes (αβρουϝες) , with tau (t) replacing a digamma (ϝ). If so, this word would perhaps be encompassable within a Greek dialect; however, others (notably, Antoine Meillet) see the dental as authentic and think that the word belongs to an Indo-European language different from Greek.

Ancient Macedonian language - Ancient Greek dialect

Another school of thought maintains that Macedonian was a Greek dialect. Those who favour a purely Greek nature of Macedonian as a northern Greek dialect are numerous and include early scholars like Franz Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens (1843) and O. Hoffmann (1906). A recent proponent of this school was Professor Olivier Masson, who in his article on the ancient Macedonian language in the third edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (1996) tentatively suggested that Macedonian was related to North-Western Greek dialects:

The slender evidence is open to different interpretations, and no definitive answer is yet possible to the question of whether ancient Macedonian was in fact a Greek dialect. It is plausible that Macedonian was not an ancient Greek dialect on a par with Attic or Ionic, hence the designation that is sometimes used, calling it a "deviant Greek dialect."

Ancient Macedonian language - Independent Palaeo-Balkan language

Some linguists consider that the Macedonian tongue was not only a separate language, but that it pertained to a different Indo-European branch rather than to a Hellenic (or Graeco-Macedonian) branch, and they propose that it was not especially close to Greek. They reject the strong Greek correspondances found in Macedonian and prefer to treat it as an Indo-European language of the Balkans, located geographically between Illyrian in the west and Thracian in the east.

Some hypothesize that linguistically Macedonian was between Illyrian and Thracian, a kind of intermediary language linking the two; but this presumes that Illyrian and Thracian were close branches. A Thraco-Illyrian language group is no longer favored due to a lack of evidence.

The ancient Macedonian lexical stock reveals some words that do not have cognates in Greek, but do have in other Indo-European languages. There are also some words that do not have cognates in any other language, and may be of pre-Indo-European origin.

Ancient Macedonian language - Classical sources

See main article Macedon.

There are some classical references that have led a number of scholars to believe that some ancient Greeks viewed the ancient Macedonians as a non-Hellenic tribe, though other scholars maintain that the Macedonians were a Hellenic tribe. Among the references that may indicate that Macedonian was a Greek dialect, there is the dialogue between an Athenian and a Macedonian in an extant fragment of the 5th century BC comedy 'Macedonians' by the Athenian poet Strattis, where the Macedonian speech is presented as a form of Greek.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Classification", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki