| Graeco-Armenian | |
|---|---|
| (proposed) | |
| Geographic distribution | Southern Europe and theCaucasus |
| Linguistic classification | Indo-European
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| Proto-language | Proto-Graeco-Armenian |
| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| HypotheticalIndo-European phylogenetic clades |
|---|
| Balkan |
| Other |
Graeco-Armenian (orHelleno-Armenian)[1] is the hypothetical common ancestor ofGreek (orHellenic) andArmenian branches that postdates theProto-Indo-European language. Its status is somewhat similar to that of theItalo-Celtic grouping: each is widely considered plausible without being generally accepted. The hypothetical Proto-Graeco-Armenian stage would need to date to the 3rd millennium BC and would be only barely different from either late Proto-Indo-European orGraeco-Armeno-Aryan.
The Graeco-Armenian hypothesis originated in 1924 withHolger Pedersen, who noted that agreements between Armenian and Greek lexicalcognates are more common than between Armenian and any otherIndo-European language.[2] 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.[3] Meillet's hypothesis became popular in the wake of hisEsquisse d'une grammaire comparée de l'arménien classique.[4]
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.[5]Eric Hamp supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis and even anticipates a time that "we should speak of Helleno-Armenian" (the postulate of a Graeco-Armenian proto-language).[6]
James Clackson is more reserved, considers the evidence of a Graeco-Armenian subgroup to be inconclusive and believes Armenian to be in a largerGraeco-Armeno-Aryan family.[7]Hrach Martirosyan argues that the case for a common Graeco-Armenian language is not as strong as it is forIndo-Iranian andBalto-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."[8] In 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 a long period and developed numerous shared innovations."[9]
Evaluation of the hypothesis is tied up with the analysis of Indo-European languages, such asPhrygian and languages within theAnatolian subgroup (such asHittite), 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 the two. While Greek is attested from very early times, allowing a secure reconstruction of aProto-Greek language dating to the 3rd millennium BC,[10] or c. 2000 BC, the history of Armenian is opaque, with its earliest attestation being the 5th-centuryBible translation ofMesrop Mashtots. Armenian has manyloanwords showing traces of longlanguage contact with Greek andIndo-Iranian languages; in particular, it is asatem 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).[11]
In a 2005 publication, a group of linguists and statisticians, comprisingLuay Nakhleh,Tandy Warnow,Donald Ringe andSteven N. Evans, comparedquantitative phylogenetic linguistic methods and found that a Graeco-Armenian subgroup was supported by five procedures: maximum parsimony, weighted versus unweighted maximum compatibility, neighbor-joining, and the widely-criticizedbinary lexical coding technique (devised byRussell Gray andQuentin D. Atkinson).[12]
An interrelated problem is whether a "Balkan Indo-European" subgroup of Indo-European exists, which would consist not only ofHellenic and Armenian but alsoAlbanian and possibly also some extinct languages, such asPhrygian. The Balkan subgroup, in turn, is supported by the lexico-statistical method of Hans J. Holm.[13] However, Donald Ringe has stated and reiterated a finding to the effect that Albanian was descended from a language that formed a clade with Proto-Germanic (rather than the other Balkan languages), which surprised him.
The authors of a 2022 genetic study argued that Armenian and Greek are related by "their sharedYamnaya heritage."[14]
Many modern scholars have rejected the Graeco-Armenian hypothesis, arguing that the linguistic proximity between the two languages has been overstated.[15][16][17][18][19][20] Clackson asserts that the Armenian language is as close toIndo-Iranian as it is to Greek and Phrygian.[20] Ronald I. Kim has noted unique morphological developments connecting Armenian toBalto-Slavic.[15] In sum, Clackson and Kim argue that the Armenian language is closest to Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic, and the similarities in the development of Armenian with Greek and Phrygian are random and independent of each other.
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