Classical Armenian
Classical Armenian is the oldest attested form of the Armenian language. It was first written down at the beginning of the 5th century, all Armenian literature from through the 18th century is in Classical Armenian. Many ancient manuscripts written in Ancient Greek, Hebrew and Latin survive only in Armenian translation. Classical Armenian continues to be the liturgical language of the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Armenian Catholic Church and is learned by Biblical and Patristic scholars dedicated to textual studies. Classical Armenian is important for the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language. There are seven monophthongs: /a/, /i/, /ə/ or schwa, /ɛ/ or open e, /e/ or closed e, /o/, /u/; the vowel transcribed u is spelled using the Armenian letters for ow but it is not a diphthong. There are traditionally six diphthongs: ay, aw, ea, ew, iw, oy. In the following table is the Classical Armenian consonantal system; the stops and affricate consonants have, in addition to the more common voiced and unvoiced series a separate aspirated series, transcribed with the notation used for Ancient Greek rough breathing after the letter: p῾, t῾, c῾, č῾, k῾.
Each phoneme has three symbols in the table. The leftmost indicates the pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet; the letter f was introduced in the Medieval Period to represent the foreign sound /f/, the voiceless labiodental fricative. List of Armenian writers Proto-Armenian language Armenian alphabet Adjarian, Hrachia. Etymological Root Dictionary of the Armenian Language. Vol. I – IV. Yerevan: Yerevan State University. Meillet, Antoine. Esquisse d’une grammaire comparée de l’arménien classique. Thomson, Robert W. An Introduction to Classical Armenian. Caravan Books. Godel, Robert. An Introduction to the Study of Classical Armenian. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag Classical Armenian Online New Dictionary of the Armenian Language, Venice 1836-1837; the seminal dictionary of Classical Armenian. Includes Armenian to Latin, Armenian to Greek. Pocket Dictionary of the Armenian Language, Venice 1865. New Dictionary Armenian-English, Venice, 1875-9. Grabar Dictionary, Ruben Ghazarian, Yerevan, 2000.
Grabar Thesaurus, Ruben Ghazarian, Yerevan, 2006. A grammar and English by Paschal Aucher and Lord Byron. Venice 1873
Johann Christoph Gottsched
Johann Christoph Gottsched was a German philosopher and critic. For about thirty years, he exercised an undisputed literary dictatorship in Germany, but by his years, his name had become a by-word for foolish pedantry. He was born at Juditten near Königsberg, Brandenburg-Prussia, the son of a Lutheran clergyman, was baptised in St. Mary's Church, he studied philosophy and history at the University of Königsberg, but on taking the degree of Magister in 1723, he fled to Leipzig in order to avoid being drafted into the Prussian army. In Leipzig, he enjoyed the protection of J. B. Mencke, under the name of "Philander von der Linde," was a well-known poet and president of the Deutschübende poetische Gesellschaft in Leipzig. Of this society, Gottsched was elected "Senior" in 1726, in the next year reorganized it under the title of the Deutsche Gesellschaft; as editor of the weeklies Die vernünftigen Tadlerinnen and Der Biedermann, Gottsched started on his career of untiring critical activity, continued in other literary journals.
Directing his criticism at first chiefly against the bombast and absurd affectations of the Second Silesian School, he proceeded to lay down strict laws for the composition of poetry. He insisted on German literature being subordinated to the laws of French classicism, he enunciated rules by which the playwright must be bound, abolished bombast and buffoonery from the serious stage. He insisted on the observance of the dramatic unities. In his efforts toward the reformation of the German drama, Gottsched was aided by his wife, Luise, a prolific writer and translator, had the cooperation of the theatrical manager Johann Neuber and his wife, Caroline, they succeeded indeed in bringing about a considerable change in the condition of the German stage by substituting for the prevailing operatic performances translations of French dramas and original plays, by banishing from it forever the coarse buffooneries of Hanswurst. In 1730, Gottsched was appointed an extraordinary professor of poetry, and, in 1734, ordinary professor of logic and metaphysics at the University of Leipzig.
He was a corresponding member of the first learned society of the Habsburg monarchy, the Societas eruditorum incognitorum in Olmütz, was published in the Society's journal, the first scientific journal in the Habsburg monarchy. Gottsched went too far in his criticism, he refused to recognize the work of Lessing. In 1740, he came into conflict with the Swiss writers Johann Jakob Bodmer and Johann Jakob Breitinger. Under the influence of Addison and contemporary Italian critics, they demanded that the poetic imagination should not be hampered by artificial rules; as examples, they pointed to English poets Milton. Gottsched, although not blind to the beauties of the English writers, clung the more tenaciously to his principle that poetry must be the product of rules, and, in the fierce controversy which for a time raged between Leipzig and Zürich, he was defeated. In 1741, he fell out with Caroline Neuber regarding practical stage matters, placed himself in opposition to his wife, his influence speedily declined, before his death his name became proverbial for pedantic folly.
He died in Leipzig at the age of 66. Gottsched's chief work was his Versuch einer kritischen Dichtkunst für die Deutschen, the first systematic treatise in German on the art of poetry from the standpoint of Boileau, his Ausführliche Redekunst and his Grundlegung einer deutschen Sprachkunst were of importance for the development of German style and the purification of the language. He wrote several plays, of which Der sterbende Cato, an adaptation of Joseph Addison's tragedy and a French play on the same theme, was long popular on the stage, his Deutsche Schaubühne contained translations from the French, but some works written by himself, his wife, others. With this, he provided the German stage with a classical repertory, his bibliography of the German drama, Nötiger Vorrat zur Geschichte der deutschen dramatischen Dichtkunst, intended to contain an account of all previous German plays, though not complete is still valuable. He was the editor of several journals devoted to literary criticism.
Gottsched wrote the texts of two secular cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach: Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl and Willkommen! Ihr herrschenden Götter der Erden, his first wife, Luise Kulmus was a prominent author. She died in 1762. After a three-year mourning period, in 1765 in Camburg Saale, Gottsched married his 19-year-old second wife, Ernestine Susanne Katharina Neunes; this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Gottsched, Johann Christoph". Encyclopædia Britannica. Cambridge University Press. Works by or about Johann Christoph Gottsched at Internet Archive Gottsched, Johann Christoph. Biedermann. 1. Berlin: Gottsched-Verlag. Gottsched, Johann Christoph. Biedermann. 2. Berlin: Gottsched-Verlag. Gottsched, Johann Christoph. Gedichte. Berlin: Gottsched-Verlag. Gottsched, Johann Christoph. Gesammelte Reden. Berlin: Gottsched-Verlag
Vowel harmony
Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. A vowel or vowels in a word must be members of the same class. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints. Suffixes and prefixes will follow vowel harmony rules. Many agglutinative languages have vowel harmony; the term vowel harmony is used in two different senses. In the first sense, it refers to any type of long distance assimilatory process of vowels, either progressive or regressive; when used in this sense, the term vowel harmony is synonymous with the term metaphony. In the second sense, vowel harmony refers only to progressive vowel harmony. For regressive harmony, the term umlaut is used. In this sense, metaphony is the general term while vowel harmony and umlaut are both sub-types of metaphony; the term umlaut is used in a different sense to refer to a type of vowel gradation. This article will use "vowel harmony" for both regressive harmony. Harmony processes are "long-distance" in the sense that the assimilation involves sounds that are separated by intervening segments.
In other words, harmony refers to the assimilation of sounds. For example, a vowel at the beginning of a word can trigger assimilation in a vowel at the end of a word; the assimilation occurs across the entire word in many languages. This is represented schematically in the following diagram: In the diagram above, the Va causes the following Vb to assimilate and become the same type of vowel; the vowel that causes the vowel assimilation is termed the trigger while the vowels that assimilate are termed targets. When the vowel triggers lie within the root or stem of a word and the affixes contain the targets, this is called stem-controlled vowel harmony; this is common among languages with vowel harmony and may be seen in the Hungarian dative suffix: The dative suffix has two different forms -nak/-nek. The -nak form appears after the root with back vowels; the -nek form appears after the root with front vowels. Vowel harmony involves dimensions such as Nasalization In many languages, vowels can be said to belong to particular sets or classes, such as back vowels or rounded vowels.
Some languages have more than one system of harmony. For instance, Altaic languages are proposed to have a rounding harmony superimposed over a backness harmony. Among languages with vowel harmony, not all vowels need to participate in the vowel conversions. Neutral vowels may be opaque and block harmonic processes or they may be transparent and not affect them. Intervening consonants are often transparent. Languages that do have vowel harmony allow for lexical disharmony, or words with mixed sets of vowels when an opaque neutral vowel is not involved. Point to two such situations: polysyllabic trigger morphemes may contain non-neutral vowels from opposite harmonic sets and certain target morphemes fail to harmonize. Many loanwords exhibit disharmony. For example, Turkish vakit,. There are three classes of vowels in Korean: positive and neutral; these categories loosely follow mid vowels. Traditionally, Korean had strong vowel harmony. In modern Korean, it is only applied in certain cases such as onomatopoeia, adverbs and interjections.
The vowel ㅡ is considered a neutral and a negative vowel. There are other traces of vowel harmony in modern Korean: many native Korean words tend to follow vowel harmony such as 사람, 부엌. Mongolian exhibits a rounding harmony. In particular, the pharyngeal harmony involves the vowels: /a, ʊ, ɔ/ and /i, u, e, o/. Rounding harmony only affects the open vowels, /e, o, a, ɔ/. Turkic languages inherit their systems of vowel harmony from Proto-Turkic, which had a developed system. Azerbaijani's system of vowel harmony has rounded/unrounded vowels. Tatar has no neutral vowels; the vowel é is found only in loanwords. Other vowels could be found in loanwords, but they are seen as Back vowels. Tatar language has a rounding harmony, but it is not represented in writing. O and ö could be written only in the first syllable, but vowels they mark could be pronounced in the place where ı and e are written. Kazakh's system of vowel harmony is a front/back system, but there is a system of rounding harmony, not represented by the orthography, which resembles the system in Kyrgyz.
Kyrgyz's system of vowel harmony is a front/back system, but there is a system of rounding harmony, which resembles that of Kazakh. Turkish has a 2-dimensional vowel harmony system, where vowels are characterised by two features: and. There are two sets of vocal harmony systems: a complex one; the simple one is concerned with the low vowels e, a and has only the feature. The complex one has both and features; the close-mid vowels ö, o are not involved
Classical Greece
Classical Greece was a period of around 200 years in Greek culture. This Classical period saw the annexation of much of modern-day Greece by the Persian Empire and its subsequent independence. Classical Greece had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire and on the foundations of Western civilization. Much of modern Western politics, artistic thought, scientific thought, theatre and philosophy derives from this period of Greek history. In the context of the art and culture of Ancient Greece, the Classical period corresponds to most of the 5th and 4th centuries BC; the Classical period in this sense follows the Greek Dark Ages and Archaic period and is in turn succeeded by the Hellenistic period. This century is studied from the Athenian outlook because Athens has left us more narratives and other written works than the other ancient Greek states. From the perspective of Athenian culture in Classical Greece, the period referred to as the 5th century BC extends into the 4th century BC. In this context, one might consider that the first significant event of this century occurs in 508 BC, with the fall of the last Athenian tyrant and Cleisthenes' reforms.
However, a broader view of the whole Greek world might place its beginning at the Ionian Revolt of 500 BC, the event that provoked the Persian invasion of 492 BC. The Persians were defeated in 490 BC. A second Persian attempt, in 481–479 BC, failed as well, despite having overrun much of modern-day Greece at a crucial point during the war following the Battle of Thermopylae and the Battle of Artemisium; the Delian League formed, under Athenian hegemony and as Athens' instrument. Athens' excesses caused several revolts among the allied cities, all of which were put down by force, but Athenian dynamism awoke Sparta and brought about the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC. After both forces were spent, a brief peace came about. Athens was definitively defeated in 404 BC, internal Athenian agitations mark the end of the 5th century BC in Greece. Since its beginning, Sparta had been ruled by a diarchy; this meant. The two kingships were both hereditary, vested in the Eurypontid dynasty. According to legend, the respective hereditary lines of these two dynasties sprang from Eurysthenes and Procles, twin descendants of Hercules.
They were said to have conquered Sparta two generations after the Trojan War. In 510 BC, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow their king, the tyrant Hippias, son of Peisistratos. Cleomenes I, king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy headed by Isagoras, but his rival Cleisthenes, with the support of the middle class and aided by democrats, took over. Cleomenes intervened in 508 and 506 BC, but could not stop Cleisthenes, now supported by the Athenians. Through Cleisthenes' reforms, the people endowed their city with isonomic institutions — equal rights for all citizens —and established ostracism; the isonomic and isegoric democracy was first organized into about 130 demes, which became the basic civic element. The 10,000 citizens exercised their power as members of the assembly, headed by a council of 500 citizens chosen at random; the city's administrative geography was reworked, in order to create mixed political groups: not federated by local interests linked to the sea, to the city, or to farming, whose decisions would depend on their geographical position.
The territory of the city was divided into thirty trittyes as follows: ten trittyes in the coastal region ten trittyes in the ἄστυ, the urban centre ten trittyes in the rural interior. A tribe consisted of three trittyes, selected at one from each of the three groups; each tribe therefore always acted in the interest of all three sectors. It was this corpus of reforms that allowed the emergence of a wider democracy in the 460s and 450s BC. In Ionia, the Greek cities, which included great centres such as Miletus and Halicarnassus, were unable to maintain their independence and came under the rule of the Persian Empire in the mid-6th century BC. In 499 BC that region's Greeks rose in the Ionian Revolt, Athens and some other Greek cities sent aid, but were forced to back down after defeat in 494 BC at the Battle of Lade. Asia Minor returned to Persian control. In 492 BC, the Persian general Mardonius led a campaign through Macedonia, he was victorious and again subjugated the former and conquered the latter, but he was wounded and forced to retreat back into Asia Minor.
In addition, a fleet of around 1,200 ships that accompanied Mardonius on the expedition was wrecked by a storm off the coast of Mount Athos. The generals Artaphernes and Datis led a successful naval expedition against the Aegean islands. In 490 BC, Darius the Great, having suppressed the Ionian cities, sent a Persian fleet to punish the Greeks, they landed in Attica intending to take Athens, but were defeated at the Battle of Marathon by a Greek army of 9,000 Athenian hoplites and 1,000 Plataeans led by the Athenian general Miltiades. The Persian fleet continued to Athens but, seeing it garrisoned, decided not to attempt an assault. In 480 BC, Darius' successor Xerxes I sent a much more powerful force of 300,000 by land, with 1,207 ships in supp
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules governing the composition of clauses and words in any given natural language. The term refers to the study of such rules, this field includes phonology and syntax complemented by phonetics and pragmatics. Speakers of a language have a set of internalized rules for using that language, these rules constitute that language's grammar; the vast majority of the information in the grammar is – at least in the case of one's native language – acquired not by conscious study or instruction, but by observing other speakers. Much of this work is done during early childhood. Thus, grammar is the cognitive information underlying language use; the term "grammar" can be used to describe the rules that govern the linguistic behavior of a group of speakers. The term "English grammar", may have several meanings, it may refer to the whole of English grammar, that is, to the grammars of all the speakers of the language, in which case, the term encompasses a great deal of variation.
Alternatively, it may refer only to what is common to the grammars of all, or of the vast majority of English speakers. Or it may refer to the rules of a particular well-defined variety of English. A specific description, study or analysis of such rules may be referred to as a grammar. A reference book describing the grammar of a language is called a "reference grammar" or "a grammar". A explicit grammar that exhaustively describes the grammatical constructions of a particular lect is called a descriptive grammar; this kind of linguistic description contrasts with linguistic prescription, an attempt to discourage or suppress some grammatical constructions, while codifying and promoting others, either in an absolute sense, or in reference to a standard variety. For example, preposition stranding occurs in Germanic languages, has a long history in English, is considered standard usage. John Dryden, objected to it, leading other English speakers to avoid the construction and discourage its use. Outside linguistics, the term grammar is used in a rather different sense.
In some respects, it may be used more broadly, including rules of spelling and punctuation, which linguists would not consider to form part of grammar, but rather as a part of orthography, the set of conventions used for writing a language. In other respects, it may be used more narrowly, to refer to a set of prescriptive norms only and excluding those aspects of a language's grammar that are not subject to variation or debate on their normative acceptability. Jeremy Butterfield claimed that, for non-linguists, "Grammar is a generic way of referring to any aspect of English that people object to." The word grammar is derived from Greek γραμματικὴ τέχνη, which means "art of letters", from γράμμα, "letter", itself from γράφειν, "to draw, to write". The same Greek root appears in graphics and photograph. Vedic Sanskrit is the earliest language known to the world; the grammatical rules were formulated by Indra, etc. but the modern systematic grammar, of Sanskrit, originated in Iron Age India, with Yaska, Pāṇini and his commentators Pingala and Patanjali.
Tolkāppiyam, the earliest Tamil grammar, is dated to before the 5th century AD. The Babylonians made some early attempts at language description,In the West, grammar emerged as a discipline in Hellenism from the 3rd century BC forward with authors like Rhyanus and Aristarchus of Samothrace; the oldest known grammar handbook is the Art of Grammar, a succinct guide to speaking and writing and written by the ancient Greek scholar Dionysius Thrax, a student of Aristarchus of Samothrace who established a school on the Greek island of Rhodes. Dionysius Thrax's grammar book remained the primary grammar textbook for Greek schoolboys until as late as the twelfth century AD; the Romans based their grammatical writings on it and its basic format remains the basis for grammar guides in many languages today. Latin grammar developed by following Greek models from the 1st century BC, due to the work of authors such as Orbilius Pupillus, Remmius Palaemon, Marcus Valerius Probus, Verrius Flaccus, Aemilius Asper.
A grammar of Irish originated in the 7th century with the Auraicept na n-Éces. Arabic grammar emerged with Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali in the 7th century; the first treatises on Hebrew grammar appeared in the context of Mishnah. The Karaite tradition originated in Abbasid Baghdad; the Diqduq is one of the earliest grammatical commentaries on the Hebrew Bible. Ibn Barun in the 12th century compares the Hebrew language with Arabic in the Islamic grammatical tradition. Belonging to the trivium of the seven liberal arts, grammar was taught as a core discipline throughout the Middle Ages, following the influence of authors from Late Antiquity, such as Priscian. Treatment of vernaculars began during the High Middle Ages, with isolated works such as the First Grammatical Treatise, but became influential only in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. In 1486, Antonio de Nebrija published Las introduciones Latinas contrapuesto el romance al Latin, the first Spanish grammar, Gramática de la lengua castellana, in 1492.
During the 16th-century Italian Ren
Justus Georg Schottelius
Justus Georg Schottelius was a leading figure of the German Baroque, best known for his publications on German grammar, language theory and poetics. Justus-Georg Schottelius was born in Einbeck, he was the son of a Lutheran pastor. Justus-Georg styled himself Schottelius, this must be regarded as the correct form of his name, though after his death the de-Latinized form Schottel long persisted in scholarly writings and is still sometimes used. Surmounting the many upheavals of the Thirty Years' War and the untimely death of his father, Schottelius managed to acquire a good education, notably at the Akademisches Gymnasium in Hamburg and at the universities of Groningen, Leiden and Wittenberg. In 1640 he found employment as tutor to the children of Duke August the Younger of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, including August's heir, Anton Ulrich. Schottelius wrote several plays for his pupils to perform, some with musical accompaniments composed by August's consort, Sophie Elisabeth, or in one case by Heinrich Schütz.
In 1646 he married Anna Margarete Eleonore Cleve. His second wife, whom he married in 1649, was Anna Margarete Sobbe. During the 1640s and 1650s Schottelius rose to prominent administrative positions at court, he had access to the magnificent ducal library at Wolfenbüttel, he continued to reside in that town until his death. Schottelius established himself in the early 1640s as a powerful protagonist of the German language. Admitted in 1642 to the leading patriotic language society, the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft or'Fructifying Society', Schottelius took as his society name Der Suchende, engaging vigorously in its controversies on fundamentals of grammar and lexical purity. In 1645 or 1646 he became a member of the Pegnesischer Blumenorden, headed in Nürnberg by Georg Philipp Harsdörffer and Sigmund von Birken. In 1646 he obtained a doctorate in laws at the University of Helmstedt. Though he distinguished himself in the fields of poetry, poetic theory and drama, Schottelius is chiefly memorable for his insights and achievements as a linguist.
Acting like many of his contemporaries in a spirit of linguistic patriotism. He sought to raise the lowly status of German, to celebrate its high antiquity, to defend it against latter-day foreign influences, to re-examine it in the light of current linguistic theory, to promote its refinement and use as a communicative medium, to inaugurate a new, prestigious epoch in the language; this process was known among contemporaries as Spracharbeit. For his début as a language reformer, Schottelius chose a poetic medium, his Lamentatio Germaniae exspirantis attacked in stately alexandrines and lurid metaphors the corrupt state of the language, in particular the burgeoning over-use of foreign words. In a dying lament, the once fair nymph Germania presents herself as a grotesque hag. Venerated down the ages, meriting the crown of Europe, she now prostitutes herself, begging words from French, Spanish and English. For all his potent rhetoric, Schottelius's linguistic purism was of a somewhat moderate kind, when compared with his contemporary Philipp von Zesen.
But his championship of the German language was without equal. Schottelius's magnum opus, his Ausführliche Arbeit Von der Teutschen HaubtSprache, appeared in 1663. Running to over 1,500 pages, it incorporated substantial amounts of material that had appeared earlier, notably in his Teutsche Sprachkunst of 1641. Aimed at a learned, international readership, with much use of Latin alongside German, the Ausführliche Arbeit is a compendium of remarkable range and depth. Combining many discourse traditions, it embraces language history, accidence, word-formation, proverbs, versification and other features, including a dictionary of more than 10,000 German root-words. Heading the work are ten so-called eulogies: these are massively documented, programmatic statements characterising many aspects of the German language and present, claiming for it the status of a'cardinal' language alongside Latin and Hebrew. One key argument here was the German language's rich lexical productivity, its ability to combine root-words and affixes in ways which gave it unique and infinite powers of expression.
To depict nature in all her variety, it had, for example, the means to name hundreds of different colours, as Schottelius showed in some detail. Seeking to demonstrate that the German language had a rational basis, Schottelius based his grammar on the Classical principle of analogy, identifying patterns of regularity or similarity in spelling and grammatical inflection, but as a grammarian he acknowledged countless anomalies or irregularities in the language, he respected written usage in what he regarded as its most exemplary forms. In the 17th century, German was still in the long and difficult process of becoming standardized or codified. Influential here was Schottelius's own conception of High German as a language transcending the many dialects, as used in writing by'learned and experienced men'. Schottelius argued distinctively that this idealized, supra-regional form of German could not be acquired spontaneously, not from speech: it had to be'learnt through much diligence and toil' (durch viel Fleis und Arbeit
Ancient Greek
The Ancient Greek language includes the forms of Greek used in Ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BCE to the 6th century CE. It is roughly divided into the Archaic period, Classical period, Hellenistic period, it is succeeded by medieval Greek. Koine is regarded as a separate historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it resembled Attic Greek and in its latest form it approaches Medieval Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects. Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians and philosophers, it has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects; the main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic and Doric, many of them with several subdivisions.
Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are several historical forms. Homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the "Iliad" and "Odyssey", in poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects; the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period, they differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek, but its relationship to the historical dialects and the historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not than 1120 BCE, at the time of the Dorian invasion—and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BCE.
The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians; the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, Cypriot, far from the center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-west Greek is the strongest marked and earliest division, with non-west in subsets of Ionic-Attic and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Non-west is called East Greek. Arcadocypriot descended more from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age.
Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect. Thessalian had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek, spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, Northern Peloponnesus Doric; the Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek. All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, these colonies developed local characteristics under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects; the dialects outside the Ionic group are known from inscriptions, notable exceptions being: fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos, in Aeolian, the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar and other lyric poets in Doric.
After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BCE, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed based on Attic Greek, but with influence from other dialects. This dialect replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek. By about the 6th century CE, the Koine had metamorphosized into Medieval Greek. Ancient Macedonian was an Indo-European language at least related to Greek, but its exact relationship is unclear because of insufficient data: a dialect of Greek; the Macedonian dialect (or l
