The
Proto-Greek language is the assumed last common ancestor of all known varieties of
Greek, including
Mycenaean, the
classical Greek dialects (
Attic-
Ionic,
Aeolic,
Doric and
Northwest Greek), and ultimately
Koine,
Byzantine and
modern Greek. Most scholars would include the fragmentary
ancient Macedonian language, either as descended from an earlier "
Proto-Hellenic" language, or by definition including it among the descendants of Proto-Greek as a
Hellenic language and/or a Greek dialect.
Proto-Greek would have been spoken in the late
3rd millennium BC, most probably in the
Balkans. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as
Hellenic migrants, speaking the predecessor of the
Mycenaean language, entered the Greek peninsula either around the
21st century BC, or in the
17th century BC at the latest.
The evolution of Proto-Greek should be considered with the background of an early
Palaeo-Balkan sprachbund that makes it difficult to delineate exact boundaries between individual languages. The characteristically Greek representation of word-initial
laryngeals by prothetic vowels is shared by the
Armenian language, which also shares other phonological and morphological peculiarities of Greek. The
close relatedness of Armenian and Greek sheds light on the
paraphyletic nature of the
Centum-Satem isogloss.
Close similarities between
Ancient Greek and
Vedic Sanskrit suggest that both Proto-Greek and
Proto-Indo-Iranian were still quite similar to either late
Proto-Indo-European, which would place the latter somewhere in the late
4th millennium BC, or a post-PIE
Graeco-Aryan proto-language. Graeco-Aryan has little support among linguists, since both geographical and temporal distribution of Greek and Indo-Iranian fit well with the
Kurgan hypothesis of Proto-Indo-European.
Phonology
Greek is a
Centum language, which would place a possible Graeco-Aryan protolanguage before
Satemization, making it identical to late PIE. Proto-Greek does appear to have been affected by the general trend of
palatalization characteristic of the Satem group, evidenced for example by the (post-Mycenaean) change of labiovelars into dentals before
e (e.g.
kʷe >
te "and"), but the Satemizing influence appears to have reached Greek only after it had lost the palatovelars (i.e. after it had already become a Centum language).
The primary sound changes separating Proto-Greek from the
Proto-Indo-European language included:
- Aspiration of /s/ -> /h/ intervocalically
- De-voicing of voiced aspirates.
- word-initial y- (not Hy-) is strengthened to dy- (later ζ-)
The loss of prevocalic
*s was not completed entirely, famously evidenced by
sus "sow",
dasus "dense";
sun "with" is another example, contaminated with PIE
*kom (Latin
cum, Proto-Greek
*kon) to Homeric / Old Attic
ksun.
Sound changes between Proto-Greek and Mycenaean include:
- Loss of final stop consonants; final /m/ -> /n/.
- Syllabic /m/ and /n/ -> /am/, /an/ before resonants; otherwise /a/.
- Vocalization of laryngeals between vowels and initially before consonants to /e/, /a/, /o/ from h₁, h₂, h₃ respectively.
- The sequence CRHC (C = consonant, R = resonant, H = laryngeal) becomes CRēC, CRāC, CRōC from H = h₁, h₂, h₃ respectively.
- The sequence CRHV (C = consonant, R = resonant, H = laryngeal, V = vowel) becomes CaRV.
- loss of s in consonant clusters, with supplementary lengthening of the preceding vowel: esmi -> ēmi
- creation of secondary s from clusters, ntia -> nsa. Assibilation ti -> si only in southern dialects.
These sound changes are already complete in Mycenaean.
For changes affecting most or all later dialects see
Ancient Greek.
Morphology
Noun
The PIE dative, instrumental and locative cases are syncretized into a single dative case. Some desinences are innovated (dative plural
-si from locative plural -
su).
Nominative plural
-oi,
-ai replaces late PIE
-ōs,
-ās.
The superlative on
-tatos becomes productive.
The peculiar oblique stem
gunaik- "women", attested from the
Thebes tablets is probably Proto-Greek; it appears, at least as
gunai- also in
Armenian.
Pronoun
The pronouns
houtos,
ekeinos and
autos are created. Use of
ho, hā, ton as articles is post-Mycenaean.
Verb
An isogloss between Greek and the closely related
Phrygian is the absence of
r-endings in the
Middle Voice in Greek, apparently already lost in Proto-Greek.
Proto-Greek inherited the augment, a prefix
é- to verbal forms expressing past tense. This feature it shares only with Indo-Iranian and Phrygian (and to some extent,
Armenian), lending some support to an "Graeco-Aryan" or "Inner PIE" proto-dialect. However, the augment down to the time of Homer remained optional, and was probably little more than a free sentence particle meaning "previously" in the proto-language, that may easily have been lost by most other branches.
The first person middle verbal desinences
-mai,
-mān replace
-ai,
-a. The third singular
pherei is an innovation by analogy, replacing the expected Doric
*phereti, Ionic
*pheresi (from PIE *).
The future tense is created, including a future passive, as well as an aorist passive.
The suffix
-ka- is attached to some perfects and aorists.
Infinitives in
-ehen,
-enai and
-men are created.
Numerals
- "one": nominative *hens, genitive *hemos; feminine *mʰiā (> Myc. e-me /hemei/(dative); Att./Ion. , heis (henos), mia).
- "two": *duwō (> Myc. du-wo /duwō/; Hom. , dyō; Att.-Ion. , dyo)
- "three": nominative *trees, accusative trins (> Myc. ti-ri /trins/; Att./Ion. , treis; Lesb. , trēs; Cret. , trees)
- "four": nominative *kʷetwores, genitive *kʷeturōn (> Myc. qe-to-ro-we /kʷetrōwes/ "four-eared"; Att. , tettares; Ion. , tesseres; Boeot. , pettares; Thess. , pittares; Lesb. , pisyres; Dor. , tetores)
- "five": *penkʷe (> Att.-Ion. , pente; Lesb., Thess. , pempe)
Example text
Eduard Schwyzer in his
Griechische Grammatik (1939, I.74-75) has translated famous lines of Classical Greek into Proto-Greek. His reconstruction was ignorant of
Mycenaean and assumes Proto-Greek loss of labiovelars and syllabic resonants, among other things. Thus, Schwyzer's reconstruction corresponds to an archaic but post-Mycenaean dialect rather than actual Proto-Greek.
Notes: The reconstruction assumes that the old combinations of
sonorants +
s in either sequence ( ) were pronounced as unvoiced sonorants () before they were simplified as short voiced sonorants with compensatory lengthening in most dialects or as long voiced sonorants in Aeolic. It is also assumed that the PIE syllabic
nasals () was pronounced as
nasal , before it split into in most dialects and as a variant in some dialects (Mycenaean, Arcadian, Aeolic).
See also
