The Trilingual Inscription from Letôon of Xanthos and the Present State of Study of the Lycian Language, with special reference to its syntactic structure

Abstract

The discovery of the trilingual inscription from Letôon by H. Metzger, 1973, has made a new epoch in the long history of the study of the Lycian language. This paper aims to clarify the main characteristics of Lycian and its position among the Anatolian languages chiefly through a syntactic analysis of the Lycian text. Lycian shares with the other Anatolian languages such features as paratactic constructions and the use of sentence introductory particles but shows, on the other hand, a striking contrast with them in word order and the use of preposition: it is the only VOS and prepositional language among the Indo-European Anatolian languages. This syntactic type of Lycian seems to correlate with its case system, which is characterized by the loss of morphological distinctions of many case endings through phonetic changes and thus is functionally the least effective among the Anatolian case systems. This fact well agrees with the general constatation that in the Indo-European history of syntactic development the languages with the VO word order tend to weaken or lose their case systems whereas those with the OV word order usually keep or strengthen them. With regard to the case endings themselves, especially in plural, however, Lycian shows a quite archaic and conservative character compared with the other Luwian languages, which radically restructured their systems by creating new endings on the basis of acc. pl. -nz. Hence we can infer that Lycian separated very early from the other south Anatolian languages and went its own way in the peculiar development toward VOS order. The writer also suggests that this development was probably caused by the influence from an unknown substratum language which seems also to have exerted a similar influence upon the Greek language.