Pamphylian
Pamphylian was an ‘aberrant’ ancient Greek dialect or, more accurately, a distinctive linguistic
variety of Greek spoken for the largest part of the first millennium BCE in the southern coastal area
of Pamphylia in Asia Minor. The small corpus of written evidence (short inscriptions, especially
funerary, coin legends, few glosses, etc.) points to a special form of Greek: on the one hand, there
was some degree of indigenous Anatolian influence and on the other, some remarkable novelties
notwithstanding, a rather archaic Greek linguistic basis with multi-dialectal affinities, which
echoed the varied makeup of the first waves of Greek colonizers (Arcado-Cypriot, Aeolic, Doric).
1. Introduction
Pamphylian has traditionally been labeled as an ‘aberrant’ ancient Greek dialect (cf. also
→Macedonian), but has equally been deemed part of the ‘→
→Achaean’ group of ancient
→South-East Greek), alongside →Arcadian and →Cypriot. It may be more
Greek dialects (→
accurate though, to describe Pamphylian as the language of the Greek colonies of
Pamphylia, particularly Aspendos, Perge, Sillyon and Side. In fact, Pamphylian was a rather
idiosyncratic, non-standard linguistic variety of Greek spoken for the largest part of the
first millennium BCE in the central southern coastal area of Pamphylia in Asia Minor, a
fertile horseshoe-shaped strip extending from Lycia (south-west Asia Minor) to ‘Rugged’
Cilicia (south-east Asia Minor), while to its north lay the Pisidian hinterland.
The name Pamphylía ‘land of all tribes/mingled populations’ (cf. Gk. pám-phulos ‘from/of all
tribes’ from pan ‘all’ + phulḗ ‘race, tribe’) is obviously a reflection of the population makeup
on the ground. Αncient Greek mythology related the name to Pámphyloi, one of the three
Doric tribes (Dymânes/-âtai, Hylleîs, Pámphyloi) or to the homonymous daughter/sister/wife
of the seer Mopsus, who in another myth had led alongside Amphilochus and Calchas the
first wave of Greek colonizers into Pamphylia in the aftermath of the Trojan War. But
ultimately, Pamphylia may be the Greek adaptation of some Anatolian place name.
Historical evidence points to a two- or even multi-stage colonization process: first, a small
post-Mycenaean population of ‘Achaeans’, i.e., colonizers akin to later Arcado-Cypriot
Greeks; second, waves of essentially Doric (e.g. Argos, Laconia, Rhodes) and Aeolic (e.g.
Aeolic Kyme, Lesbos) colonizers in the early Archaic period (ca. 8th c. BCE or slightly later).
The multi-dialectal Greek group of newcomers found themselves next to a
substrate/adstrate population of south Anatolian ((post-)Luwian?) aboriginals. Pamphylia
retained a degree of patchwork linguistic character until the very late centuries BCE when
the ongoing Hellenization process was accelerated significantly; nevertheless, this
development only reached completion in the Roman period, i.e., in the first centuries CE
(Brixhe 2002; García Ramón 2007; Mitchell 2012; Meier-Brügger forthcoming).
2. The Pamphylian Dialect
However difficult it may be to allocate Pamphylian firmly to a particular dialect group,
Pamphylian shares important isoglosses with →Arcado-Cypriot, and to a lesser extent with
the →Aeolic dialects and →Doric; hence, it is often grouped together with Arcadian and
Cypriot as an ‘Achaean’ dialect, i.e., within a major South/Eastern Greek dialectal group.
But Pamphylian ought to be co-examined with Cypriot in the framework of contact
linguistics too by virtue of their geographic proximity.
Pamphylian is poorly documented in comparison with many other ancient Greek dialects,
even though the available evidence has increased considerably since Brixhe’s major study
of the dialect (1976a), followed by numerous publications by himself and others
(inscriptions nos. 1-178 in Brixhe 1976a and nos. 179-291 in Supplements I-VI in Brixhe (&
others) 1976b, 1988, 1991b, 1996, 2000, 2007). The available corpus of texts dates almost
exclusively to the Hellenistic period (second half of 4th c. BCE onwards) and includes scanty
epigraphical evidence, especially short funerary inscriptions with personal names (e.g.
Aspendus, Sillyon), coin legends, a few glosses (ca. 30), etc.
The idiosyncrasy of Pamphylian, which occasionally led some ancient authors to regard its
speakers as ‘barbarians’ (e.g. Ephorus apud Strabo 14.5.23), can be attributed to the
following factors (see 3.b.-3.e. for details): (a) a local Anatolian (post-Luwian?) substratum /
adstratum (cf. Sidetic in particular): e.g. personal names, disappearance of initial *a-,
raising of *e and *o (possibly, but see (c) too), weakening of nasalization, etc.; (b) long-term
isolation (until ca. 2nd c. BCE), which ensured some degree of linguistic conservatism: e.g.
<Y> [u], near-absence of the definite article, -n-ti (verbal ending); (c) the composite, interdialectal makeup of the Greek population: Arc.-Cypr.: raising of *e and *o, -si- (proper
names), terms/names reminiscent of Mycenaean (→
→Mycenaean Script and Language), ex +
dat. ‘from’, ath. inf. -enai; NW. Greek / Doric: consonantal metathesis, preservation of
digamma and -(n)-ti (in verbs), forms like hiiaru ‘holy’, p.n. Apeloniius, part. ka,*en-s > is ‘in’;
Aeolic, especially Lesbian: p- for t- < *kʷ-, verbal endings -du (Attic -ntōn), -sdu (Attic -sthōn),
dat. pl. endings -aisi, -oisi, -essi; (d) early (quasi)-similar developments with Koine Greek
(→
→Koine, Features of): p. 8 || p. 9 thematic nom. sg. -iiu(s/n) > -i(s/n), early loss of vowel
quantity and change *ei ̯ → ẹ̄, (quasi)-stress accent quality, lenition/loss of intervocalic *g,
*d; etc. (Thumb & Scherer 1959:176-179; Brixhe 1976a:145-146; Garcίa Ramόn 2007; MeierBrügger forthcoming).
3. Basic Features
Pamphylian displays a number of distinctive features, particularly in phonology and
morphology; note however several correspondences with individual dialects, especially
Arcado-Cypriot. It is noticeable that some phonological phenomena resemble later
→Koine, Origins of) and Medieval/Modern Greek (e.g. weakening
developments in Koine (→
of nasalization + plosive voicing, lenition of plosives, glide development, (/-egV-/ >) /-eγV/ > /-e/i(j)V-/ -ioC > -iC, etc.) (→
→Developments in Medieval and Modern Greek).
3.a. Alphabet
Until about the 2nd century BCE, when the post-Euclidean Attic alphabet was employed in
→Adoption of the Ionic alphabet in Attica; →Transition from the Local Alphabets
parallel (→
to the Ionic Script), Pamphylian was written in a form of the Greek alphabet which
normally lacked special graphemes for long /e/ - /o/, whereas <Υ> continued to render the
back rounded vowel /u/ rather than the front rounded vowel /y/ (< /u/), as was already
the case in the Koine (and much earlier in →Attic), e.g. Aphordisiiu. The Pamphylian
alphabet also included a few special graphemes: (1) a special trident-like grapheme
resembling a square-shaped capital ‘psi’ <Ψ> for affricate /ts/ (< *k(h)j,*tw(?)) initially, and
later for a (single/geminate) sibilant /ss/-/s/, e.g. ИanaΨas (= Wanassas ‘of the goddess’); (2)
a grapheme <И>, which alongside <F> (digamma) and <B>, and later <Φ> (: spirant /v/ ?) too
(from 3rd-2nd c. BCE), was used for the semivowel /w/, e.g. Иanaxionus (Brixhe 1976a:3-9;
2005; Panayotou 2007:428).
3.b. Phonology
Many distinctive Pamphylian phonemic/phonetic features look common with ArcadoCypriot and other Greek dialects. (NB: Pamphylian →accentuation obviously followed the
most basic Greek rules, but accent marks are omitted here due to lack of specific
information):
(1) →vowels: (i) front vowel raising, i.e., /e/ → /i/, usually next to a nasal sound or in a
prevocalic position; in the latter case, /i/ is often followed by a glide [j], e.g. prep. i(n) ‘in’
(cf. also Arc.-Cypr. in, but Att. en), diia (= Att. diá) ‘through, by, because of’, fem. name
Artimisia (cf. Att. Ártemis), etc.; (ii) back vowel raising, i.e., /o/ → /u/ in ]nal syllables,
usually before -s/-m (note exceptions), e.g. u ‘the’ (= Att. ho), neut. hiiaru (= Att. hierón)
‘holy’, Wekhidamus (= [W]ekhédamos); (iii) unlike classical Attic and the Koine, /u/ did not
develop into a rounded front vowel /y/ and continued being spelled <Y> (or <OY>), e.g.
gouna ‘woman’ (cf. Dor. gouná, but Att. gunḗ), etc.; (iv) dropping of initial *a-, e.g.
Thanadōrus (= Athanádōros); (v) lowering of /e/ → /a/ before /r/, e.g. hiiarus (= Att. hierós)
‘priest’, (h)upar (= Att. hupér) ‘over, for’; (vi) early loss of vowel quantity perhaps; (vii) early
change *ei ̯ → ẹ̄ (long mid-close), e.g. kẹ̄sthai (= Att. keîsthai) ‘to lie’.
(2) →consonants: (i) as in Cypriot, Pamphylian nasals weakened and dropped before a
plosive, either in word-medial position or even across a word boundary (co-articulation);
the following plosive became voiced beforehand while the preceding vowel may have
become nasalized: e.g. pede [peⁿde/pẽde] (= Att. pénte) ‘five’, genōdai (= Att. génōntai) ‘they
become’ (subj.), i polii [ĩboli(j)i] ‘at/in the city’ (= Att. en pólei); (ii) in addition, intervocalic
/g/ and /d/ are normally spelled as <i> ([j]) and <r> respectively (→
→Spirantization, i.e.,
lenition), but disappeared in an inter-vocalic position later (after an /e(:)/ and probably
after an /i(:)/), e.g. M(h)e(i)alē, (= Att. Megálē), Lukomitiras (= Lukomētídas); (iii) p- for t- < *kʷ(cf. Aeol.), e.g. petrakis ‘four times’; (iv) ti > -si-, especially in names (e.g. Phordisis) vs.
retention of -ti in verbal endings and numerals, e.g. -di [-ⁿdi] <*-nti, phikati ‘twenty’ (= Att.
eíkosi)-cf. Argeian Doric too; (v) (probably) th > t, e.g. dat. pl. atrōpoisi (= Att. anthrṓpois(i))
‘men’; (vi) →metathesis phenomena reminiscent of →Cretan, e.g. prep. perti (< *preti) ‘in
the direction of’, Phordisis (= Att. Aphrodísios);
(3) →semivowels: both /j/ and /w/ are attested (but /w/ became a fricative perhaps, and
merged with /v/ < /*b/), while often developing as inter-vocalic →glides as well to prevent
→hiatus (cf. Arcado-Cypriot, but also Mycenaean, e.g. i-je-re-u ‘priest’), i.e., /j/ (spelled <I>)
after an /i/ and /w/ (spelled <B>, <F>, <И>) after an /u/: e.g. Aphordisiiu (=Aphrodisíou), DiWia
[Diwja/ p. 9 || p. 10 Diwia] (female deity (dat. sg.), from the ‘Zeus’ stem DiW-; cf. Myc. di-wi-ja/diu-ja), p.n. Sbaluwas, [Wanassa] ‘goddess’, phikati (= Att. eíkosi) ‘twenty’. Note that /w/ is
maintained, in writing at least, until the very last centuries BCE (cf. also Cypriot), e.g. Wetia
(= Wétea, Αtt. étē) ‘year’ (pl.), DiWidōra, Wanaxandrus (= Wanáxandros) (2nd c. BCE).
(Thumb-Scherer 1959:179-187; Brixhe 1976a:11-95; 1985:312, n. 141; García Ramón 2007;
Panayotou 2007:428-429; Meier-Brügger forthcoming).
3.c. Morpho(phono)logy
The most important features of Pamphylian morphology, which often resemble ArcadoCypriot, basically concern nominal and verbal endings:
(1) Nouns:
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
masc. gen. sg. (a-stem nouns) -au < *-ā(h)o < *-ās(j)o, e.g. , Kouwau (morphologydependent back vowel raising, /o/ → /u/ (see 3.b.); cf. Arcado-Cypriot
dat. pl. endings -oisi, -aisi, -essi (cf. Aeol.), e.g. atrōpoisi (= Att. anthrṓpois(i)) ‘to/for
men’, aw-/autaîsi (= Att. autaîs) ‘to/for them’, dịḳastēresṣ[i] (< dikastēr, but Att. dikastḗs
‘judge’; cf. Cypr. iatḗr ‘priest’, Arg. telestḗr ‘an official’, etc.)
athematic i-stem paradigm: nom. sg. -is/-eis (e.g. Theopoleis), gen. sg. -ijos/-(e)is (later;
cf. (iv) below) (e.g. NeWokharis), dat. sg. -ii (e.g. polii ‘city’), acc. sg -i(n) (depending on
the following sound, i.e., vowel/consonant) (e.g. poli(n))
thematic nom. sg. -iiu(s/n) > -i(s/n) (cf. Koine -io(s/n) > -i(s/n) too, e.g. kúrios > kûris
‘lord, master’), e.g. Phordisis (= Att. Aphrodísios).
(2) Verbs:
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.
vi.
3rd pl. act. pres. ending -di [-ⁿdi] <*-nti (see 3.b.), e.g. me exagōdi (= Att. mḕ exágōsin)
‘are not to release’ (subj.)
3rd pl. act. pres. imp. -du [-ⁿdu] < *-nton (cf. Lesbian), e.g. ephielodu (= ephelóntōn, but
Att. helésthōn) ‘let them elect’
3rd pl. mid. pres. imp. -sdu, [-zdu] < *-(n)sthon, e.g. [z]amiiesdu (= zēmioústhōn) ‘let
them be fined’
3rd sg. act. -ti, medio-pass. -tu (< *to) (cf. 3.b.). The -t- consonantism in verbal
endings (& →numerals) is reminiscent of W. Greek (→
→Northwest Greek (and
Dodona)) despite the close relationship of Pamphylian with Arcado-Cypriot (cf. *ti >
-si-, e.g. Artimisia)
thematic endings (< imperfect) for sigmatic aorists (cf. Homeric dúseto ‘plunged in,
put on’), e.g. ebōlasetu ‘(he) decided’ (but ath. (?) ptc. (u) bōlēmenus ‘anyone who
wishes’)
ath. inf. ending -enai, e.g. a[ph]iienai ‘to release’.
(Thumb-Scherer 1959:188-191; Brixhe 1976a:97-124; 1994; Méndez Dosuna 1993:248; García
Ramón 2007; Panayotou 2007:429; Meier-Brügger forthcoming; Filos forthcoming).
3.d. Syntax
Pamphylian texts are normally very short and consist of short →sentences as well. The
most characteristic dialectal feature is the use of prep. + dat. instead of gen. (cf. ArcadoCypriot), for ‘departure/distance from’ (cf. ablative), e.g. ex e[pi]tēṛiiā (= ex epitēríai) ‘because
of [his] concern’; case substitution by means of an ‘unmarked’ dative-locative may have
been prompted by a possibly redundant →genitive case. Note also the rare appearance of
the →definite article (still a demonstrative →pronoun?), e.g. u bōlēmenus ‘anyone who
wishes’ (or a title). →Prepositions/→
→adverbs: temporal →conjunction hoka ‘when’ (< ho ka
= Att. hôi án (?)); cf. NW. Greek, but Att. hóte); prep. is (<*ens) ‘at, to’, perti (= Att. prós), e.g.
pertedōke ‘she donated’; pre-/post-position (h)upar (= Att. hupér/húper) ‘over, for’; part. ka
(cf. Cypr. ke, Att. án); emphatic part. (kai) ni (= Att. (kai) nu ?), etc.
(Thumb-Scherer 1959:192-193; Brixhe, 1976a:125-132; Brixhe et al. 1985:304, n. 88;
Panayotou 2007:429).
3.e. LexiconLexicon-Onomastics
The Pamphylian lexical stock includes a number of forms indicative of both its
idiosyncratic conservatism and the native Anatolian influence: e.g. abeliēn (= Att. hēliakḗn,
sc. períodon ‘solar year’, cf. Cret. abélios ‘sun’), agos (= hēgemṓn) ‘priestess (of Artemis in
Perge)’, wrumalia ‘protection, upkeep’ (?), etc. Pamphylian onomastics, especially religious
terminology, is occasionally reminiscent of Mycenaean, e.g. Diwia [Diwja] (fem. →theonym),
Wanassa [wanassa] ‘goddess’. Note also Warnopa- (< Warnopatas) ‘shepherd/sheep-faced’, and
compound proper names (→
→Personal Names), especially theophoric ones with (A)pel(l)a‘Apollo-’ or Diw(e)i- (dat.-abl.) ‘Jupiter’, p. 10 || p. 11 e.g. Apeladōrus, Diweidōrus, Diweiphilos; but
also with Ello-/Ella- (< esthlo- ‘good’): e.g. Ellaphilos (cf. Cypr. Eslo-/Esla-, e.g. Eslagóras). Proper
names of Anatolian provenance, often (semi-)Hellenized (e.g. endings) occur too; for
instance, names with the element mowau ‘force’ (gen. sg.), e.g. Koudramowau, Epimouwau,
etc.; note also Trokondau (cf. Tarḫunt-, the Luwian ‘Storm God’), etc. (cf. Brixhe 1976a:133143; 1991a; 1999; Panayotou 2007:430; Meier-Brügger forthcoming).
Pamphylian text specimen (no 276, l. 34): ...] Wetus petrakis (h)ok(a) arwas hiiaroisi [... (‘four
times a year when prayers/sacrifices by the priests/sacrifice officers [are...’).
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Keywords: Aeolic, Anatolian, Arcado-Cypriot, Cypriot, digamma, Doric, glide, Greek dialects, North-West
Greek, Pamphylian, spirantization, vowel raising
Panagiotis Filos