Anatolian languages
Undiscovered until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they are often believed to be the earliest branch to have split from the Proto Indo-European family.
While Hittite attestation ends after the Bronze Age, hieroglyphic Luwian survived until the conquest of the Neo-Hittite kingdoms by the Semitic Assyrian Empire, and alphabetic inscriptions in Anatolian languages are fragmentarily attested until the early first millennium AD, eventually succumbing to the Hellenization of Anatolia as a result of Greek colonisation.
Under the Kurgan hypothesis, there are two possibilities for how the early Anatolian speakers could have reached Anatolia: from the north via the Caucasus, or from the west, via the Balkans;[1] the latter is considered somewhat more likely by Mallory (1989), Steiner (1990), and Anthony (2007).
Statistical research by Quentin Atkinson and others using Bayesian inference and glottochronological markers favors an Indo-European origin in Anatolia, though the method's validity and accuracy are subject to debate, and this is a minority view concerning the urheimat of PIE.
Ancient Greek ὄρνῑς, Lithuanian eręlis, Old Norse ǫrn, PIE *h₃éron-) and Lycian 𐊜𐊒𐊄𐊀 χuga (cf.
The three dorsal consonant series of PIE also remained distinct in Proto-Anatolian and have different reflexes in the Luwic languages, e.g. Luwian where *kʷ > ku-, *k > k-, and *ḱ > z-.
[12] The Proto-Anatolian laryngeal consonant *H patterned with the stops in fortition and lenition and appears as geminated -ḫḫ- or plain -ḫ- in cuneiform.
[11] The Anatolian gender system is based on two classes: animate and inanimate (also termed common and neuter).
However the discovery of a group of inherited nouns with suffix *-eh2 in Lycian and therefore Proto-Anatolian raised doubts about the existence of a feminine gender in PIE.
The feminine gender typically marked with -ā in non-Anatolian Indo-European languages may be connected to a derivational suffix *-h2, attested for abstract nouns and collectives in Anatolian.
[15] This suggests the Anatolian gender system is the original for IE, while the feminine-masculine-neuter classification of Tocharian + Core IE languages may have arisen following a sex-based split within the class of topical nouns to provide more precise reference tracking for male and female humans.
The Anatolian branch also has a split-ergative system based on gender, with inanimate nouns being marked in the ergative case when the subject of a transitive verb.
[18] The basic word order in Anatolian is subject-object-verb except for Lycian, where verbs typically precede objects.
Clause-initial particles are a striking feature of Anatolian syntax; in a given sentence, a connective or the first accented word usually hosts a chain of clitics in Wackernagel's position.
Enclitic pronouns, discourse markers, conjunctions, and local or modal particles appear in rigidly ordered slots.
A second version opposes Hittite to Western Anatolian, and divides the latter node into Lydian, Palaic, and a Luwian group (instead of Luwic).
The main cache of Hittite texts is the approximately 30,000 clay tablet fragments, of which only some have been studied, from the records of the royal city of Hattuša, located on a ridge near what is now Boğazkale, Turkey (formerly named Boğazköy).
The records include rituals, medical writings, letters, laws and other public documents, making possible an in-depth knowledge of many aspects of the civilization.
[23] Palaic, spoken in the north-central Anatolian region of Palā (later Paphlagonia), extinct around the 13th century BC, is known only from fragments of quoted prayers in Old Hittite texts.
[26] The cuneiform corpus (Melchert's CLuwian) is recorded in glosses and short passages in Hittite texts, mainly from Boğazkale.
[29] The Hittite language of the respective tablets sometimes displays interference features, which suggests that they were recorded by Luwian native speakers.
"[31] HLuwian texts are found on clay, shell, potsherds, pottery, metal, natural rock surfaces, building stone and sculpture, mainly carved lions.
The HLuwian writing system contains about 500 signs, 225 of which are logograms, and the rest purely functional determinatives and syllabograms, representing syllables of the form V, CV, or rarely CVCV.
All Hittite and CLuwian came to an end at 1200 BC as part of the Late Bronze Age collapse, but the concept of a "fall" of the Hittite Empire must be tempered in regard to the south, where the civilization of a number of Syro-Hittite states went on uninterrupted, using HLuwian, which Payne calls Iron-Age Luwian and dates 1000–700 BC.
HLuwian caches come from ten city states in northern Syria and southern Anatolia: Cilicia, Charchamesh, Tell Akhmar, Maras, Malatya, Commagene, Amuq, Aleppo, Hama, and Tabal.
No Lycian text survives from Late Bronze Age times, but the names offer a basis for postulating its continued existence.
[citation needed] Anatolia was heavily Hellenized following the conquests of Alexander the Great, as well as the previous Greek colonisation, and the native languages of the area ceased to be spoken as a result of assimilation in the subsequent centuries, making Anatolian the first well-attested branch of Indo-European to become extinct.
The only other well-known major branch with no living descendants is Tocharian, whose attestation ceases in the 8th century AD.
Examples include Cilician Ταρκυνδβερρας Tarku-ndberras "assistance of Tarḫunz", Isaurian Ουαξαμοας Ouaxamoas < *Waksa-muwa "power of blessing(?
