Area where the 2nd millennium BC Luwian language was spoken

Luwic languages attested in the first millennium BC

The Anatolian languages are a family of extinct Indo-European languages that were spoken in Asia Minor (ancient Anatolia), the best attested of them being the Hittite language. The term Anatolian is also used to mean any language spoken in Anatolia, whether it belonged to the Anatolian family or not. Phrygian, for example, was an early form of Armenian, a different group.

Languages[link]

The leaf languages attested in the family, and one node, or branch point, (Luwic), are described briefly below. The arrangement is mainly the one summarized by Robert Beekes, representing one version of the tree below Proto-Anatolian up to 2010.^[1] Modifications and updates presenting variations of the branch continue, however. A second version opposes Hittite to Western Anatolian, and divides the latter into Lydian, Palaic and the Luwian Group (instead of Luwic).^[2]

Hittite[link]

Hittite (nešili) was the official language of the Hittite Empire, dated approximately 1650 to 1200 BC, which ruled over nearly all of Anatolia during that time. The earliest sources of Hittite are the 19th century BC Kültepe texts, the Assyrian records of the kârum kaneš, or "port of Kanesh," an Assyrian enclave of merchants within the city of kaneš (Kültepe). This collection records Hittite names and words loaned into Assyrian from Hittite. The Hittite name for the city was Neša, from which the Hittite endonym for the language, Nešili, was derived. The facts that the enclave was Assyrian, rather than Hittite, and that the city name became the language name, suggest that the Hittites were already in a position of influence, perhaps dominance, in central Anatolia.

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 show a gradual rise to power of the Anatolian language speakers over the native Hattians, until at last the kingship became an Anatolian privilege. From then on, little is heard of the Hattians, but the Hittites kept the name. The records include rituals, medical writings, letters, laws and other public documents, making possible an in-depth knowledge of many aspects of the civilization.

Most of the records are dated to the 13th century BC (Late Bronze Age). They are written in cuneiform script borrowing heavily from the Mesopotamian system of writing. The script is a syllabary. This fact, combined with frequent use of Akkadian and Sumerian words, as well as logograms, or signs representing whole words, to represent lexical items, often introduces considerable uncertainty as to the form of the original. However, phonetic syllable signs are present also, representing syllables of the form V, CV, VC, CVC, where V is "vowel" and C is "consonant."^[3]

Hittite is divided into Old, Middle, and New (or Neo-). The dates are somewhat variable. They are based on an approximate coincidence of historical periods and variants of the writing system: the Old Kingdom and the Old Script, the Middle Kingdom and the Middle Script, and the New Kingdom and the New Script. Fortson gives the dates, which come from the reigns of the relevant kings, as 1570-1450, 1450-1380 and 1350-1200 BC respectively. These are not glottochronologic. The earliest date of attestation must be pushed back to the 19th century. All cuneiform Hittite came to an end at 1200 with the destruction of Hattusas and the end of the empire.^[4]

Palaic[link]

Palaic, spoken in the north-central Anatolian region of Pala, extinct around the 13th century BC, is known only from fragments of quoted prayers in Old Hittite texts. It was extinguished by the replacement of the culture, if not the population, as a result of an invasion by the Kaskas, which the Hittites could not prevent.

Luwic branch[link]

The term, Luwic, was proposed by Melchert as the root of a branch to include several languages that seem more closely related than the other Anatolian languages.^[5] This is not a neologism, as Luvic had been used in the early 20th century to mean the Anatolian language group, or languages identified as Luvian by the Hittite texts. The name comes from Hittite luwili. The earlier use of Luvic fell into disuse in favor of Luvian. Meanwhile, most of the languages now termed Luvian, or Luvic, were not known to be so until the latter 20th century. Even more might be discovered in the future in fragmentary form.

Luvian and Luvic have other meanings in English, so currently Luwian and Luwic are preferred. Luwian does not always have the same meaning. For example, Luraghi's Luwian branch begins with a root language, "Luwian Group", which logically is in the place of Common Luwian or Proto-Luwian. Its three offsprings are Milyan, Proto-Luwian, and Lycian. Proto-Luwian descends to Cuneiform and Hieroglyphic Luwian.^[6] The tree uses two meanings for Luwian, the whole group, and just Cuneiform and Hieroglyphic, and this ambiguity is endemic to the history of the word.

Cuneiform Luwian[link]

Cuneiform Luwian (Melchert's CLuwian) is recorded glosses and short passages in Hittite texts, mainly from Boğazkale, written in Cuneiform script. About 200 tablet fragments of the approximately 30,000 are dedicated to giving Hittite rituals in CLuwian. The dates are generally the Middle and New Hittite periods. None is found from after 1200 BC. Fortson hypothesizes that "Luvian was employed in rituals adopted by the Hittites."^[7] The circumstances of their doing so remain obscure, whether they were Hittites writing in Luwian, or Luwians writing in Hittite, or bilinguals, has not been established. It is clear, however, that Hittite and Luwian were distinct languages by the middle of the 2nd millennium BC.

Hieroglyphic Luwian[link]

Hieroglyphic Luwian (Melchert's HLuwian) is a slightly less senior form of Luwian written in a native script, the Anatolian hieroglyphs. The script had a range overlapping on that of Hittite and CLuwian: southern and western Anatolia. Some of it was found at Boğazkale, on which account it was formerly thought to have been "Hieroglyphic Hittite." The contexts in which CLuwian and HLuwian have been found are essentially distinct. Payne asserts:^[8] "With the exception of digraphic seals, the two scripts were never used together." There are some differences of language. Whether the two varieties are one language or two has not been finally established. They can both have been part of the same dialect continuum.

HLuwian instances are found on clay, shell, potsherds, pottery, metal, natural rock surfaces, building stone and sculpture, mainly carved lions. The images are in relief or counter-relief. In addition to the texts are seals and sealings. A sealing is a counter-relief impression of a relief signature placed on a seal. The signature can be stamped or rolled onto a soft material, such as sealing wax, but the insignias also can be carved or painted. The HLuwian writing system contains about 500 signs, 225 of which are logograms, and the rest determinatives and syllabograms. Syllables are of the form V, CV, or rarely CVCV.^[9]

HLuwian appears as early as the 14th century BC, but only in names and titles from seals and sealings at Hattusas. Texts appear in the 13th century. Payne refers to the Bronze Age HLuwian as Empire Luwian. All Hittite and CLuwian came to an end at 1200, but the concept of a "fall" of the Hittite Empire must be tempered for the south. The civilization of a number of city-states went on uninterrupted, using HLuwian, which Payne calls Iron Age Luwian, and dates 1000-700 BC. Presumably the heads of state no longer needed to report to Hattusas. These states are called "Neo-Hittite," even though the languages were HLuwian, and New Hittite disappeared at 1200 with the end of the Neo-Empire. 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.^[10]

Lycian[link]

Lycian, or Lycian A, was spoken in classical Lycia. It is attested from 172 inscriptions,^[11] mainly on stone, from about 150 funerary monuments, and 32 public documents. The writing system is the Lycian alphabet, which the Lycians modified from the Greek alphabet. The letters do not always stand for the same sounds as in Greek. A specious transliteration based on the Greek correlations results in an incomprehensible pseudo-language. In addition to the 172 other inscriptions are 200 or more coins stamped with Lycian names. Of the texts, some are bilingual in Lycian and Greek, and one, the Létôon trilingual, is trilingual in Lycian, Greek, and Aramaic. The longest, the Xanthus stele, has about 250 lines. The latter was originally believed to be bilingial in Greek and Lycian, but the perception of a verse in another, closely related language, termed Lycian 2, later Lycian B, changed the perception to trilingual. The previous Lycian became by contrast Lycian 1, or later Lycian A.

The earliest of the coins are before 500 BC;^[12] however, the writing system must have required even more time for its development and implementation. The name of the country appears in Homeric Lycia, but even more historically, in Hittite and as an Egyptian-recorded sea people, the Lukka, dwelling in the Lukka lands. No language survives from those Late Bronze Age times, but the names offer a basis for postulating its existence.

Lycia was completely Hellenized by the end of the 4th century,^[13] after which Lycian is not to be found. Colvin goes so far as to term this, and the other scantily attested Luwic languages, Late Luwian,^[14] although they probably did not begin late.

Milyan[link]

Previously considered a variety of Lycian.

Carian[link]

Carian, spoken in Caria (possibly Karkija), fragmentarily attested from graffiti by Carian mercenaries in Egypt from ca. the 7th century BC, extinct ca. in the 3rd century BC.

Sidetic[link]

Pisidian[link]

Lydian[link]

Lydian, spoken in Lydia, extinct in ca. the 1st century BC, fragmentary.

Other possibles[link]

There were likely other languages of the family that have left no records; these include the languages of Lycaonia and Isauria, as well as languages such as Lutescan and Pamphylian, which are too poorly attested to construe a relationship with Anatolian.

Origins[link]

The Anatolian branch is generally considered the earliest to split from the Proto-Indo-European language, from a stage referred to either as Indo-Hittite or "Middle PIE"; typically a date in the mid-4th millennium BC is assumed. Under the Kurgan hypothesis, there are two possibilities for how the early Anatolian speakers could have reached Anatolia: from the north via the Caucasus, and from the west, via the Balkans,^[15] the latter of which is considered somewhat more likely by Mallory (1989) and Steiner (1990).

Extinction[link]

Anatolia was heavily Hellenized following the conquests of Alexander the Great, and it is generally thought that, by the 1st century BCE, the native languages of the area were extinct. This makes Anatolian the first known branch of Indo-European to become extinct. The only other known branch that has no living descendants is Tocharian, which ceased to be spoken around the 8th century CE.

Features[link]

Hittite morphology is simpler than other older Indo-European languages. Some Indo-European characteristics seem to have disappeared in Hittite, and other IE language branches had developed different innovations. Hittite contains a number of archaisms that have disappeared from other IE languages. Notably, Hittite has no gender system which distinguishes masculine and feminine; instead, it exhibits a noun-class system that is based upon an older animate /inanimate distinction. It should be noted, however, that the masculine/feminine distinction is still a matter of dispute, since there are some, such Robert S. P. Beekes, who doubt that the feminine gender originated in PIE languages. ("Indo-European Linguistics" 13.2.3).)

See also[link]

Ancient Near East portal

• Indo-Hittite
• Tree model
• Urheimat

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Fortson, Benjamin W (2010). Indo-european language and culture: an introduction. Blackwell textbooks in linguistics, 19 (2nd ed.). Chichester, U.K.; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 
• Keen, Anthony G. (1998) [1992]. Dynastic Lycia: A Political History of the Lycians & Their Relations with Foreign Powers, c. 545-362 BC. Mnemosyne: bibliotheca classica Batavia. Supplementum. Leiden; Boston; Köln: Brill. 
• Luraghi, Silvia (1998) [1993], "The Anatolian Languages", in Ramat, Anna Giacalone; Ramat, Paolo, The Indo-European Languages, Routledge Language Family Descriptions, London; New York: Routledge . Originally published as Le Lingue Indoeuropee.
• Mallory, J.P. (1989). In Search of the Indo-Europeans. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd. 
• Melchert, H. Craig (2012). "The Position of Anatolian". http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/Melchert/The%20Position%20of%20Anatolian.pdf. 
• Patri, Sylvain (2007). L'alignement syntaxique dans les langues indo-européennes d'Anatolie. Studien zu den Bogazkoy-Texten 49. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. ISBN 978-3-447-05612-0. 
• Payne, Annick (2010). Hieroglyphic Luwian: An Introduction with original Texts. SILO: Subsidia et Instrumenta Linguarum Orientis (2nd revised ed.). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 
• Steiner, G. (1990). "The immigration of the first Indo-Europeans into Anatolia reconsidered". Journal of Indo-European Studies 18: 185–214. 

External links[link]

• "Luwian". ancientscripts.com. http://www.ancientscripts.com/luwian.html. Retrieved 7 February 2012. 
• "The Cuneiform Luwian Language". Multitree. http://multitree.org/codes/xlu. Retrieved 7 February 2012. 
• "The Luwian, Cuneiform Language". The Linguist List. http://linguistlist.org/forms/langs/LLDescription.cfm?code=xlu. Retrieved 7 February 2012. 
• Justus, Carol; Slocum, Jonathan. "Indo-European Languages: Anatolian Family". University of Texas. http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/iedocctr/ie-lg/Anatolian.html. Retrieved 7 February 2012. 
• Melchert, H. Craig. "Anatolian Databases". UCLA. http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/Melchert/webpage/AnatolianDatabases.htm. Retrieved 7 February 2012.  Luwian, Lycian and Lydian.
• Lauffenburger, Olivier (2006). "The Hittite Grammar Homepage". http://www.premiumwanadoo.com/cuneiform.languages/index_en.php?page=accueil. 

John White Hughes Bassett, PC CC OOnt (August 25, 1915 – April 27, 1998) was a Canadian publisher and media baron.

Born in Ottawa, Ontario, he was the son of John Bassett (1886–1958), publisher of the Montreal Gazette, and Margaret Avery. Bassett attended Ashbury College and graduated from Bishop's University with a BA in 1936. He became a reporter for the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Politics[link]

After fighting with the Army in World War II, Bassett ran unsuccessfully for the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, in the 1945 Canadian election in the riding of Sherbrooke. He lost to the Liberal candidate, Maurice Gingues. He also ran in the 1962 election in the riding of Spadina. He lost again to the Liberal candidate, Perry Ryan.

Publishing and broadcasting[link]

His first experience in newspaper ownership was with the Sherbrooke Daily Record, which he bought from his father. In 1952, Bassett purchased part ownership of the Toronto Telegram. In 1960, he founded Baton Broadcasting to run Toronto's first commercial television station, CFTO-TV. A few months later, he won the television rights to the Eastern Conference of the Canadian Football League. He needed a network in order to broadcast the games. The result was the Canadian Television Network, later to become CTV, with CFTO as the flagship station. Starting in the 1980s, Bassett began a drive to take over CTV by buying as many stations as possible. He succeeded in 1997, a year before his death.

Sports[link]

From 1957 until 1979, Bassett was the owner of the Toronto Argonauts, a team in the Canadian Football League.

In 1957, he was named to the "Silver Seven," a committee that oversaw hockey operations for the Toronto Maple Leafs. In 1961, longtime Maple Leafs owner Conn Smythe sold most of his shares in Maple Leaf Gardens Ltd. (which owned the Maple Leafs and Maple Leaf Gardens) to a partnership of his son Stafford, Toronto Marlboros president Harold Ballard and Bassett for $2.3 million Conn later claimed that he thought he was selling only to his son, but it is very unlikely that Stafford would have been able to raise the money on his own. Bassett became chairman of the Gardens' board of directors, when Smythe resigned shorty after Toronto won the Stanley Cup in 1962. Bassett name appears on the Stanley Cup 4 times 1962, 1963, 1964, 1967.

In 1969, Ballard and Stafford Smythe were charged with tax evasion and accused of using Maple Leaf Gardens Ltd. to pay for their personal expenses. Bassett persuaded the board to fire Smythe as president and Ballard as executive vice president. The board elected Bassett as the new president.

However, Bassett did not force Smythe and Ballard to sell their shares, and they both remained on the board. This was a serious strategic blunder on Bassett's part; Smythe was still the largest shareholder, and he and Ballard controlled almost half the shares between them. A year later, Ballard and Smythe staged a proxy war to win back control. Faced with an untenable situation, Bassett resigned and sold his shares to Smythe and Ballard.

Bassett should not be confused with his son John F. Basset, who was a part owner of the United States Football League's Tampa Bay Bandits.

Government[link]

In 1989, he was appointed for a three-year term as chairman of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, an independent body that reports to the Parliament of Canada on the operations of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Due to the requirements under the Official Secrets Act, Bassett was sworn into the Queen's Privy Council for Canada.

Family[link]

Bassett married Isabel Bassett in 1970. He had six children: John F., Doug and David from an earlier marriage and Avery, Sarah and Matthew Bassett from his marriage to Isabel. In the 1970s, son John F. Bassett was also the owner of the Toronto Toros, a hockey team in the World Hockey Association. Former tennis star Carling Bassett-Seguso is the daughter of John F. Bassett.

Honours[link]

• 1985 - Made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
• 1988 - Appointed to the Order of Ontario.
• 1989 - Appointed to the Queen's Privy Council for Canada.
• 1992 - Promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada.
• 2000 - Inducted into the Canadian Broadcast Hall of Fame.
• 2003 - Inducted into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame.

External links[link]

Office of the Governor General of Canada. Order of Canada citation. Queen's Printer for Canada. Retrieved 24 May 2010

This article's factual accuracy is disputed. Please help to ensure that disputed facts are reliably sourced. See the relevant discussion on the talk page. (February 2012)

Azerbaijanis
Azərbaycanlılar, Azərilər
آذربایجانلیلار ,آذری لر

Nasimi Ismail I Kazembek Qudsi Khoyski Alasgar Akhundov Nakhcivanski Mammadguluzadeh Javanshir Chamanzaminli Huseynzade 90x105px Mammadbeyova Garayev Kasravi Almaszadeh Ibragimbekov Shahriar Kerimov Hajibeyov Behrangi Pahlavi Magomayev Bahramov Alekperov Mustafazadeh Khamenei Aliyeva AySel Yusuf Lotfi A. Zadeh Mousavi
Total population
approx. 22–35 million[1][2]
Regions with significant populations
Iran 11.2 to 30 million [3][4][5]:28[6][7][8][9][10][11] [12]  Azerbaijan 8,172,800 [13]  Russia 621,800 to 1,500,000 [14][15]  Turkey 530,000 to 2,500,000 [16][15]  Georgia 284,761 to 500,000 [17][15]  Kazakhstan 78,295 [18]  Ukraine 45,176 [19]  Uzbekistan 44,400 [20]  Turkmenistan 33,365 [21]  Netherlands 18,000 [22]  Kyrgyzstan 17,823 [23]  Germany 15,219 [24]  United Kingdom 15,000 [25]  Belarus 6,362 [26]  United States 5,553 [27]  Canada 3,465 [28]  Latvia 1,697 [29]  Austria 1,000 [30]  Estonia 880 [31]  Lithuania 788 [18]
Languages
Azerbaijani
Religion
Predominantly Shia Islam; minorities practice Sunni Islam, Christianity, Bahá'í Faith, and Zoroastrianism
Related ethnic groups
Other Turkic peoples, Iranian peoples, peoples of the Caucasus

The Azerbaijanis ( /ˌæzərbaɪˈdʒɑːni/; Azerbaijani: Azərbaycanlılar, Азәрбајҹанлылар, آذربایجانلیلار ) or Azarbaijanis^[3] are Turkic-speaking people living mainly in northwestern Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan, as well as in the neighboring states, Georgia, Russia (Dagestan) and formerly Armenia. Also referred to as Azeris or Azaris (Azərilər, Азәриләр, آذریلر ) or Azerbaijani Turks^[32][33] (Azərbaycan türkləri), they also live in a wider area from the Caucasus to the Iranian plateau. The Azerbaijanis are predominantly Shi'a Muslim^[34][35] and have a mixed cultural heritage including Turkic, Iranic^[36] and Caucasian elements.

Following the Russo-Persian Wars of 1813 and 1828, the territories of the Qajar Persian Empire in the Caucasus were ceded to the Russian Empire and the treaties of Gulistan in 1813 and Turkmenchay in 1828 finalized the borders between Czarist Russia and Qajar Iran.^[37][38] The formation of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918 established the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Despite living on two sides of an international border, the Azeris form a single ethnic group.^[35] However, northerners and southerners differ due to nearly two centuries of separate social evolution in Iranian Azerbaijan and Russian/Soviet-influenced Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani language unifies Azerbaijanis, and is mutually intelligible with Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz and Anatolian Turkish (including the dialects spoken by the Iraqi Turkmen), all of which belong to the Oghuz, or Western, group of Turkic languages.^[39]:105

History[link]

Part of a series on
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Religion
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Persecution
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Azerbaijan is believed to be named after Atropates, a Persian^{[40][41][42][43]} satrap (governor) who ruled in Atropatene (modern Iranian Azerbaijan).^[44][45]:2 The name Atropates means "protected by fire". An alternative theory is that Azerbaijan is the combination of two Persian words, "Āzar" meaning "(holy) fire" and "pāygān" meaning "the place of".^[46]