Pamphylian was a little-attested dialect of
Ancient Greek that was spoken in
Pamphylia, on the southern coast of
Asia Minor. Its origins and relation to other Greek dialects are uncertain, though a number of scholars have proposed
isoglosses with
Arcadocypriot. It is the sole
classical era dialect which did not use
articles, suggesting that it split off from other dialects early. Some of its distinctive characteristics reflect potential
language contact with
Anatolian languages spoken nearby.
Text corpus
Pamphylian is known from about 300 inscriptions,[1] most of them from the Pamphylian city of
Aspendos. Nearly all of them are short and funeral and consist of names only. Pamphylian
graffiti giving single names have also been found abroad, in Egypt (
Abydos) and
Delos. The longest inscription is a 36 line decree from Aspendos, first analyzed in detail in 1880 by
William M. Ramsay.[2] Inscriptions are dated from the fifth century BCE to the Roman period, most of them being from the second century BCE.
Pamphylia had a variant
local alphabet, which was probably borrowed from other Greek alphabets. According to Selvi & Santamaria (2023) the Pamphylian alphabet stems from the 'dark blue' alphabets of North Eastern Peloponnese.[3]
The Pamphylian alphabet made use both of the original
Pamphylian digamma (Ͷ) and a standard
digamma (Ϝ). It has been surmised that the original sound /
w/ in some environments (after vowels) was represented by Ͷ; where the sound had changed to labiodental /
v/ in the Pamphylian dialect, it was represented by Ϝ. Sometimes Ͷ also stood in the place of
beta. It was found by Selvi & Santamaria (2023) that the Pamphylian alphabet originated from a process of selection, adaptation, and refunctionalization of a Northeast Peloponnesian model. This region, closely linked to Pamphylia by mythological and historical ties, used dark blue alphabets from Corinth to Argos, influenced by other Peloponnesian centers like Sparta. The use of <Ͷ> declined in the 4th century but persisted until the end of the Hellenistic period for sociocultural reasons. The Northeast Peloponnesian corpus doctrinae, encompassing the alphabets of the region, already had features of the Pamphylian alphabet. <Ϝ> represented the posterior approximant, and <Ͷ> was linked to the letter for /b/ in Corinth, possibly also representing /w/. When this system reached Anatolia, it became the Pamphylian alphabet through interaction with Anatolian alphabets and the phonetic changes in the Pamphylian dialect. This resulted in the variable use of <Ͷ>, <Ϝ>, and <B> during both Classical and Hellenistic periods, leading to their overlapping phonetic values.[4]
There is also a psi-like
sampi (), used probably to represent the sounds /s/, /ss/, or /ps/.
[5]
A conspicuous element in Pamphylian texts are double
iotas, where the first iota denotes an /i/-sound and the second a
glide /j/.
The Η sign usually represents a /h/-sound (
rough breathing); only rarely, in a few late inscriptions, it is apparently used to represent the classical Greek
eta vowel (/ɛ:/ or /i:/).
Eustathius, quoting
Heraclides, says that the Pamphylians "liked the /b/-sound so much that they often put b's in"; for example, instead of aëlios ('Sun'), they said babelios. And the Etymologicum Magnum says that they tended to swallow /s/-sounds and pronounce them as a 'hairy' (δασύς) sound, i.e., a rough breathing: instead of mousika they said mōˁika.[6] (One may compare a similar phenomenon in the
Anatolian languages, where, for example,
Milyanmasa, 'god', is an older counterpart of
Lycianmaha.)
An inscription from
Perge dated to around 400 BC reads: Ͷανάαι Πρειίαι Κλεμύτας Λϝαράμυ Ͷασιρϝο̄τας ἀνέθε̄κε (Wanassāi Preiiāi Klemutas Lvaramu Wasirvōtas anethēke, 'Klemutas the wasirvotas, son of Lvaramus, dedicated this to the Queen of Perge').[7]
In eastern Pamphylia, the Pamphylian cities
Side and
Lyrbe-Seleukia used another language and script, called
Sidetic.
The phonological influence of Anatolian on Pamphylic has been characterized as "massive structural interference", affecting both the consonant and vowel repertoire.[9]Aspirates gave way to
fricatives, as did
stop consonants.
In syntax three specific peculiarities stand out: absence of the article "the", use of the
dative with pre- and postpositions where other Greeks would use a
genitive, and the use of a special expression και νι +
imperative.
All of these features can be explained as an adaption of the Greek language by imperfect second-language speakers: if a small group of colonizing Greek immigrants remained a minority in an area inhabited by Anatolian speaking people, the heavily accented Greek spoken as a second language by the local population, coloured by their native Anatolian language, would become the norm in the area. Because Pamphylia was an isolated region ("a backwater, relatively inaccessible"), there were few external stimuli to later change this situation.[10]
^"PHI Greek Inscriptions". Regions : Asia Minor : Pamphylia.
Archived from the original on 2021-11-10. Retrieved 2021-11-11. Based on Claude Brixhe (1976), Le dialecte grec de Pamphylie, documents et grammaire (Bibliothèque de l'Institut français d'études anatoliennes d'Istambul, XXVI, 19). Paris, Lib. d'Amérique et d'Orient Adrien Maisonneuve; with supplements.
^Ramsay, William M.; Sayce, A. H. (1880).
"On some Pamphylian inscriptions". The Journal of Hellenic Studies. 1: 242–259. Retrieved 2021-11-11. (Archive.org)
^Nick Nicholas:
Proposal to add Greek epigraphical letters to the UCSArchived 2016-08-07 at the
Wayback Machine. Technical report, Unicode Consortium, 2005. Citing C. Brixhe, Le dialecte grec de Pamphylie. Documents et grammaire. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1976; and L.H. Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
^
abEustahius Od.1654; Richard Valpy and Charles Anthon. The Elements of Greek Grammar (12th Edition). New York: W.E. Dean, Printer and Publisher, 1831, p. 297.
Brixhe, Claude. Le Dialecte Grec de Pamphylie. Paris/Istanbul, 1976.
Panayotou, A. "Pamphylian" (Maria Chritē and Maria Arapopoulou. A History of Ancient Greek: From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity. Cambridge University Press, 2007
ISBN0-521-83307-8, pp. 427–432). Article in Greek:
Παμφυλιακή.
Selvi, Eleonora and Santamaria, Andrea. "Shaping the Pamphylian alphabet: the puzzle of the two digammas" Kadmos, vol. 62, no. 1-2, 2023, pp. 95-114. https://doi.org/10.1515/kadmos-2023-0005
Tekoğlu, Recai; Köse, Veli (2022). "Le dialecte grec de Pamphylie, supplément VII". Kadmos (in French). 61 (1–2): 183–198.
doi:
10.1515/kadmos-2022-0011.