Methodological and theoretical issues

In this section we assess the claim whereby word order and other related syntactic properties, as briefly mentioned in Section 3.3, constitute a common diasystem or not. In doing so, we point out various methodological, empirical and theoretical issues as to why this does not seem to be the case or at least cannot be taken for what it seems to be.

Table 21.2 Discourse particles in Western Anatolian languages

A pan-Anatolian word order?

Possibly the most discussed topic in the literature is word order. In fact, its consideration has reignited the discussion about a new Anatolian Sprachbund (see Section 1) because of a seemingly emerging isogrammatism. Indeed, prima facie, such a claim seems to hold true for the languages of Araxes-Iran, as argued by Stilo, 2015 - consider (12):

12. Apparent isogrammatism in a range of Araxes-Iran languages (a. Georgian, b. Colloquial Armenian, c. Colloquial Azerbaijani, d. Northern Talyshi):

a. sen ginda sami (chali) vasli o-iqid-o

II I I I I

b. du uzumes yerekli hat xsnjor o-afn-es

II I I I I

c. saen istirsaen tic dana alma al-a-san

II I I I I

d. t'r peday se g'r'la sef bi'-san-is

you want.PRS.2s three grain apple.sg buy-suBj-2sG

‘You want to buy three apples’

(Stilo, 2015, p. 345)

Moreover, word order isogrammatism may even seem to hold true of Western Anatolian languages - consider (13):

13. Limited isogrammatism in a range of Western Anatolian languages (a. Laz, b. Western Armenian c. Turkish of Trabzon, d. Kurmanji e. Zazaki, f. Rorneyka, g. Turoyo (Midin, near Mardin), h. Lower Tyare (western Hakkari)):

a. sum uskuri ecopinu ginon

three apple buy want.2sG

I III

b. yerek^h (hat) xsnjor afn-el g’uzes (also possible: g’uzes

afn-elj)

three (class) apple buy.iNFiN want.2sG

I III

c. uc elma aimak istiysun

three apple buy.iNFiN want.2sG

d. tu dixwazr se Sevan bikini

you want.2sG three apples buy.iNFiN

I I I I I

e. ti wazene hiri sa biherrne

you want three apples buy.suBj.2sG

I I I I I

f. esi thelis tria mila n’ eperis

you want.2sG three apples sub take.2sG

g. ko-Ni-st zon-st tie habuse

iND-want.rPFv-2MS buy.iRR-2MS two apples

I III

h. bayst zon-st tie xabuse

want.iPF'-2MS buy.iRR-2MS two apples

‘You want to buy three apples’

Leaving aside a major methodological issue, namely that sometimes languages are compared with dialects and/or registers of different periods, the pertinent question is whether we should consider this apparent isogrammatism in (12) (SOV) and (13) (SO-4vant’-V) as evidence for a Sprachbund or not. The answer to this question is subject to both definition and interpretation, as already discussed in Section 2.2: (a) Anatolia, where Altaic, Indo-European. Kartvelian, Semitic and North-Western Caucasian language families have symbiosed for millennia, carmot constitute anything other than a Sprachbund in the original Trubetzkoy (1928) sense (see also Thomason, 2001, p. 99); (b) if however, Anatolian Sprachbund implies the emergence of a mixed language or morpho-syntactic isogrammatism, i.e., the same grammar for all the languages concerned through contact rather than inheritance, the answer is by no means straightforward. For many authors including Haig (2001), Stilo (2015) and Tzitzilis (to appear) (among others), full isogrammatism (for an elaboration on the term vis-a-vis other equivalence relations, see Heine and Kuteva, 2005), the most extreme manifestation of convergence, would probably be needed in order to legitimize the use of the term Anatolian Sprachbund. However, as we will show next in Section 4.2, such isogrammatism does not exist.