Proto-Greek language

The Proto-Greek language, also known as Proto-Hellenic, is the Indo-European language which was the last common ancestor of all varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean Greek, the subsequent ancient Greek dialects (i.e., Attic, Ionic, Aeolic, Doric proper, Arcadocypriot, Northwest Greek, ancient Macedonian—either a dialect or a closely related Hellenic language) and, ultimately, Koine, Byzantine and Modern Greek (along with its variants). Proto-Greek speakers entered Greece sometime between 2200 and 1900 BC, with the diversification into a southern and a northern group beginning by approximately 1700 BC.

Proto-Greek emerged from the diversification of the late Proto-Indo-European language (PIE); a process whose last phase gave rise to the later language families and occurred c. 2500 BC. Pre-Proto-Greek, the Indo-European dialect from which Proto-Greek originated, emerged c. 2400 – c. 2200 BC, in an area which bordered pre-Proto-Indo-Iranian to the east and pre-Proto-Armenian and pre-Proto-Phrygian to the west, at the eastern borders of southeastern Europe; according to the Kurgan hypothesis. Speakers of what would become Proto-Greek, migrated from their homeland (which could have been northeast of the Black Sea), and reached Greece in a date set around the transition of the Early Bronze Age to the Middle Bronze Age. The evolution of Proto-Greek could be considered within the context of an early Paleo-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, for one, with the Armenian language, which also seems to share some other phonological and morphological peculiarities of Greek; this has led some linguists to propose a hypothetically closer relationship between Greek and Armenian, although evidence remains scant.

According to Filos (2014), the emergence of Proto-Greek was a long and continuous linguistic evolution, as the predecessors of Greek speakers were migrating towards the outskirts of Greece, somewhere to the north(-west) of the Greek peninsula proper, where they eventually merged with pre-Greek populations to form the Proto-Greek language. A. L. Katona (2000) places the beginning of the migration from Ukraine towards the south c. 2400 – c. 2300 BC. Their proposed route of migration passed through Romania and the eastern Balkans to the Evros river valley from where their main body moved west. As such Katona as well as M.V Sakellariou agree that the main body of Greek speakers settled in a region that included southwestern Illyria, Epirus, northwestern Thessaly and western Macedonia.

Older theories like those of Vladimir I. Georgiev placed Proto-Greek in northwestern Greece and adjacent areas (approximately up to the Aulon river to the north), including Parauaea, Tymphaia, Athamania, Dolopia, Amphilochia, and Acarnania, as well as west and north Thessaly (Histiaeotis, Perrhaibia, Tripolis), and Pieria in Macedonia, during the Late Neolithic. The boundaries are based on the high concentration of archaic Greek place-names in the region, in contrast to southern Greece which preserves many pre-Greek. Radoslav Katičić considered these findings highly significant, and agreed that due to the minimal traces of pre-Greek toponymy in the region, Epirus and western Thessaly must have formed the region of concentration of Proto-Greek speakers, before their spread southwards. However, the dating of proto-Greek in Bronze Age Greece is compatible with the inherited lexicon from the common Proto-Indo-European language, which excludes any possibility of it being present in Neolithic Greece.

In modern bibliography, models about the settlement and development of proto-Greek speakers in the Greek peninsula place it in the region at the earliest around 2200–2000 BC, during the Early Helladic III. Asko Parpola and Christian Carpelan (2005) date the arrival of Proto-Greek speakers into the Greek peninsula to 2200 BC, while Carl Blegen (1928) dates it to c. 1900 BC.

Ivo Hajnal dates the beginning of the diversification of Proto-Greek into the subsequent Greek dialects to a point not significantly earlier than 1700 BC. The conventional division of the Greek dialects prior to 1955 differentiated them between a West Greek (consisting of Doric and Northwest Greek) and an East Greek (consisting of Aeolic, Arcado-Cypriot, and Attic-Ionic) group. However, after the decipherment of the Linear B script, Walter Porzig and Ernst Risch argued for a division between a Northern (consisting of Doric, Northwest Greek, and Aeolic) and a Southern (consisting of Mycenaean, Arcado-Cypriot, and Attic-Ionic) group, which remains fundamental until today.

During this period of c. 1700 BC, South Greek-speaking tribes spread to Boeotia, Attica, and the Peloponnese, while North Greek was spoken in Epirus, Thessaly, parts of Central Greece, and perhaps also Macedonia.

Proto-Greek is reconstructed with the following phonemes: