Everything about Luwian Language totally explained
Luwian (sometimes spelled
Luvian) is an extinct language of the
Anatolian branch of the
Indo-European language family. Luwian is closely related to
Hittite, and was among the languages spoken by population groups in
Arzawa, to the west or southwest of the core
Hittite area. In the oldest texts, eg. the
Hittite Code, the Luwian-speaking areas including Arzawa and
Kizzuwatna were called
Luwia. In the post-Hittite era, the region of Arzawa came to be known as
Lydia (Assyrian
Luddu, Greek Λυδία).
Luwian is either the direct ancestor of
Lycian, or a close relative of the ancestor of Lycian. Luwian is also one of the likely candidates for the language spoken by the
Trojans, alongside a possible
Tyrrhenian language related to
Lemnian.
From this homeland, Luwian speakers gradually spread through Anatolia and became a contributing factor to the downfall, after circa 1180 BC, of the
Hittite Empire, where it was already widely spoken. Luwian was also the language spoken in the
Neo-Hittite states of
Syria, such as
Milid and
Carchemish, as well as in the central Anatolian kingdom of
Tabal that flourished around 900 BC.
Luwian has been preserved in two forms, named after the writing systems used to represent them: Cuneiform Luwian, and Hieroglyphic Luwian.
Cuneiform Luwian
Cuneiform Luwian is the form of the Luwian language attested in the tablet archives of
Hattusa; it's essentially the same
cuneiform writing system used in
Hittite. In Laroche's Catalog of Hittite Texts, its corpus runs from CTH 757-773, mostly comprising rituals.
Hieroglyphic Luwian
Hieroglyphic Luwian is a form of Luwian written in a native script, known as
Anatolian hieroglyphs. Once thought to be a variety of the
Hittite language,
"Hieroglyphic Hittite" was formerly used to refer to the language of the same inscriptions, but this term is now obsolete. The first report of a monumental inscription dates to 1850, when an inhabitant of
Nevşehir reported the relief at
Fratkin. In 1870, antiquarian travellers in
Aleppo found another inscription built into the south wall of the el-Qiqan Mosque. In 1884 Polish scholar Maryan Sokolowski discovered an inscription near
Köylütolu, western
Turkey. The largest known inscription was excavated in 1970 in Yalburt, northwest of
Konya. Luwian in its hieroglyphic stage could have been influenced from Hittite and perhaps also
Greek, which had spread to Late Minoan II Crete by the 15th century BC.
Relationship to preceding languages
Luwian has numerous archaisms, and so is important both to
Indo-European linguists and to students of the Bronze Age Aegean.
Craig Melchert in
Studies in Memory of Warren Cowgill (1987; pp 182–204) used Luwian to propose that the
Proto-Indo-European language had three distinct sets of
velar consonants:
Luwian has also been enlisted for its verb
kaluti, which means "turn" or "circle". Many linguists claim that this derives from a proto-Anatolian word for "
wheel", which in turn would have derived from the common word for "wheel" found in all other Indo-European families. The wheel was invented in the 5th millennium BCE and, if
kaluti does derive from it, then the Anatolian branch left PIE after its invention (so validating the
Kurgan hypothesis as applicable to Anatolian). However
kaluti need not imply a concrete wheel, and so need not have derived from a PIE word with that meaning. The IE words for a wheel may well have arisen in those other IE languages after the Anatolian split.
Non-Indo-European survivals in Luwian
In addition, Luwian and its descendants in general reflect survivals of a non-
Indo-European type in western Anatolia. Where Hittite, with some Hieroglyphic Luwian and
Palaic texts, allow for the classically Indo-European suffix
-as for the singular genitive and
-an for the plural genitive, the "canonical" Luwian as used in cuneiform (with some Palaic rituals) employed instead an adjectival suffix
-assa. Given the prevalence of
-assa place-names and words scattered around all sides of the
Aegean Sea, this suffix is considered evidence of a shared non-Indo-European language or at the very least an Aegean
Sprachbund preceding the arrivals of Luwians and
Greeks. This feature of Cuneiform Luwian may have been a deliberate archaism, to emphasise their roots in that land; or else the Luwians may have genuinely forgotten the Indo-European genitive only to pick it up later for Hieroglyphic Luwian.
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