The aim of this paper is to gather together certain relevant features of Phrygian based on our current knowledge of the language in order to determine its dialectal position inside the Indo-European family. The relatively large number of features shared with Greek is consistent with prior views about the close relation between the two languages, which may have formed a common proto-language. The relations proposed with certain other languages, such as Armenian, are not so strong despite sharing some features.

Introduction to Old Phrygian, Winter School in Indo-European Linguistics, Feb 10-14, Belgrade (Serbia). Feat. grammatical overview of Old and New Phrygian and a selection of texts from Midas City (M) and West Phrygia (W).

We can think of Thracian as an early dialect of Proto-Armenian. Both languages shared the devoicing of the PIE glottalic stops *b, *d, *g to *p, *t, *k. The alleged voiced aspirates appear as plain voiced stops. The voiceless stops remained unchanged. The Thracians evidently did not perceive the aspiration of the Greeks. The Thraco-Armenian consonant shift affected Phrygian as well and was a dialectal Indo-European innovation cutting through the division between centum and satǝm languages. In view of its geographical distribution, I suspect that the devoicing of the glottalic stops can be attributed to the influence of a Proto-Anatolian substratum because the Anatolians passed through future Thracian and Phrygian territory on their way from the Indo-European homeland north of the Black Sea to Anatolia. The development of the laryngeals in Phrygian was evidently the same as in Greek. The inflection of nominal o-stems in Phrygian is virtually identical to that in Greek and Armenian. As far as we can reconstruct the Phrygian verbal system, it is largely identical to that of Greek and Armenian. It appears that there are reflexes of the present, imperfect, aorist, perfect, future, subjunctive, optative, imperative, active and transitive middle. I conclude that Greek, Phrygian and Thraco-Armenian reflect a single Indo-European dialect area that was divided by two major isoglosses, viz. the devoicing of the glottalic stops which separated Phrygian from Greek and the satǝmization of the palatovelars which separated it from Thraco-Armenian. Phrygian provides in several respects the missing link between Greek and Armenian. In particular, the paradigms of the middle voice appear to have been more extensive than what we find in the separate languages. The archaic character of the Phrygian language is corroborated by the Indo-Iranian and Italo-Celtic evidence.

Not only does the Phrygian language have a particularly close kinship with Greek, but its testimonies in Hellenistic and Roman times must be contextualised with regard to its contact with this language and alphabet. My intention here is to approach Phrygian from the point of view of the Greek language, and in the context of the Greek–Phrygian bilingualism attested in inscriptions in Asia Minor during Roman times. This approach, which is largely sociolinguistic in nature, has already been dealt with in particular by Brixhe, whose work is an essential starting point for any analysis of this subject. Some observations will be made along these lines, which I believe support the idea that Phrygian was still a spoken language in Roman times. Some of them are of a historical nature, and others deal with literacy and linguistic matters.