Palaic language

      one of the ancient Anatolian languages, Palaic was spoken in Palā, a land located to the northwest of Hittite territory and across the Halys (now the Kızıl (Kızıl River)) River. The resemblance of Palā to the later place-names Blaëne (Greek) and Paphlagonia (Roman) is surely not coincidental. Evidence for Palaic consists of scarcely more than a dozen ritual fragments preserved in the cuneiform archives at the Hittite capital of Hattusa (near the modern town of Boğazkale, formerly Boğazköy, Tur.) that appear as palaumnili ‘in Palaic.' Palaic texts are contemporary with Hittite texts, including one or two manuscripts from the Old Hittite period (1650–1580 BCE). The meagre evidence limits scholarly understanding of the texts and makes all generalizations about the language provisional, but the grammatical features and lexicon (vocabulary) of Palaic assure that it is an Indo-European language (Indo-European languages) of the Hittite (Hittite language) and Luwian (Luwian language) subgroup. A unique feature is the apparent borrowing from Hattian (Hattian language) of the /f/ sound in several loanwords.

H. Craig Melchert

 

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