20c - Linguistic Problems of the Balkan Area in Late Prehistoric and Early Classical Periods

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Description or reconstruction of the linguistic situation in a region in a given period is not in itself of primary interest to the historian. Its importance for him is that it may lead to conclusions about the social stratification of a population, its homogeneity or polyethnic character, the external cultural or political influences to which it was exposed, and similar matters. When the languages and dialects of an area under study are amply recorded the documents written in them should provide extensive and direct information about the society of the area and often about its ethnology too. Even in such a case the documents should ideally be subjected in the first place to a purely linguistic analysis, which will produce a statement of the linguistic position in the area unprejudiced by deductions from what may already be known or believed about the division of its population into ethnic groups or social classes, or about other developments which might have affected linguistic behaviour. Deductions about those characteristics should then be based on the results of the statement and analysis of the linguistic data.

It will hardly be possible to be so strict in method when the linguistic data available are so sparse as they are in the Balkans, north of areas which were certainly Greek-speaking, in the period under study here. Information other than observed linguistic data from the area itself may then justifiably be used to provide an initial frame of reference or guidance. For the Balkans in this sense, in the first millennium B.C., that frame will come mainly from statements in Greek authors and from general information which they record about the peoples of relevant areas.