Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Phrygia" in English language version.
Unquestionably, however, Phrygian is most closely linked with Greek.
This question is of course only just separable from the question of which languages within Indo-European are most closely related to Phrygian, which has also been hotly debated. A turning point in this debate was Kortlandt's (1988) demonstration on the basis of shared sound changes that Thraco-Armenian had separated from Phrygian and other originally Balkan languages at an early stage. The consensus has now returned to regarding Greek as the closest relative.
2.1.4. Phrygian belongs to the centum group of IE languages (Ligorio and Lubotsky 2018: 1824). Together with Greek, Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Hittite and Tocharian, Phrygian merged the old palatovelars with plain velars in a first step: NPhr. (τιτ-)τετικμενος 'condemned' < PIE *deiḱ-; NPhr. γεγαριτμενος 'devoted, at the mercy of' < PIE *ǵhr̥Hit-; NPhr. γλουρεος 'golden' < PIE *ǵhl̥h3-ro-. However, two shifts affected this language. Phrygian merged the old labiovelar with the plain velar (the etymological and the resulting ones): OPhr. ke(y), NPhr. κε (passim) 'and' < PIE *ku̯e; OPhr. knais (B-07), NPhr. κ̣ναικαν 'wife' (16.1 = 116) < *gu̯neh2i-. Secondly, in contact with palatal vowels (/e/ and /i/, see de Lamberterie 2013: 25–26), and especially in initial position, some consonants became palatalised:PIE *ǵhes-r- 'hand' > OPhr. ↑iray (B-05),7NPhr. ζειρα (40.1 = 12) 'id.' (Hämmig 2013: 150–151). It also occurs in glosses: *ǵheu̯-mn̻ >ζευμαν 'fount, source' (Hesychius ζ 128). These two secondary processes, as happened in Tocharian and the Romance languages, lend Phrygian the guise of a satəm language.
With the current state of our knowledge, we can affirm that Phrygian is closely related to Greek. This is not a surprising conclusion: ancient sources and modern scholars agree that Phrygians did not live far from Greece in pre-historic times. Moreover, the last half century of scientific study of Phrygian has approached both languages and developed the hypothesis of a Proto-Greco-Phrygian language, to the detriment to other theories like Phrygio-Armenian or Thraco-Phrygian.
To the best of our current knowledge, Phrygian was closely related to Greek. This affirmation is consistent with the vision offered by Neumann (1988: 23), Brixhe (2006) and Ligorio and Lubotsky (2018: 1816) and with many observations given by ancient authors. Both languages share 34 of the 36 features considered in this paper, some of them of great significance:…The available data suggest that Phrygian and Greek coexisted broadly from pre-historic to historic times, and both belong to a common linguistic area (Brixhe 2006: 39–44).
This question is of course only just separable from the question of which languages within Indo-European are most closely related to Phrygian, which has also been hotly debated. A turning point in this debate was Kortlandt's (1988) demonstration on the basis of shared sound changes that Thraco-Armenian had separated from Phrygian and other originally Balkan languages at an early stage. The consensus has now returned to regarding Greek as the closest relative.
Scholars have long debated the exact position of Phrygian in the Indo-European language family. Although this position is not a closed question because of the fragmentary nature of our current knowledge, Phrygian has many important features which show that it is somehow related to Greek and Armenian.…Indeed, between the 19th and the first half of the 20th c. BC Phrygian was mostly considered a satəm language (a feature once considered important to establishing the position of a language) and, especially after Alf Torp's study, closer to Armenian (and Thracian), whereas it is now commonly considered to be closer to Greek.…Brixhe (1968), Neumann (1988) and, through an accurate analysis, Matzinger (2005) showed the inconsistency of the Phrygo-Armenian assumption and argued that Phrygian was a language closely related to Greek.
Furthermore, if Phrygian were not so-poorly attested perhaps we could reconstruct a Proto-Greco-Phrygian stage of both languages.
This question is of course only just separable from the question of which languages within Indo-European are most closely related to Phrygian, which has also been hotly debated. A turning point in this debate was Kortlandt's (1988) demonstration on the basis of shared sound changes that Thraco-Armenian had separated from Phrygian and other originally Balkan languages at an early stage. The consensus has now returned to regarding Greek as the closest relative.
2.1.4. Phrygian belongs to the centum group of IE languages (Ligorio and Lubotsky 2018: 1824). Together with Greek, Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Hittite and Tocharian, Phrygian merged the old palatovelars with plain velars in a first step: NPhr. (τιτ-)τετικμενος 'condemned' < PIE *deiḱ-; NPhr. γεγαριτμενος 'devoted, at the mercy of' < PIE *ǵhr̥Hit-; NPhr. γλουρεος 'golden' < PIE *ǵhl̥h3-ro-. However, two shifts affected this language. Phrygian merged the old labiovelar with the plain velar (the etymological and the resulting ones): OPhr. ke(y), NPhr. κε (passim) 'and' < PIE *ku̯e; OPhr. knais (B-07), NPhr. κ̣ναικαν 'wife' (16.1 = 116) < *gu̯neh2i-. Secondly, in contact with palatal vowels (/e/ and /i/, see de Lamberterie 2013: 25–26), and especially in initial position, some consonants became palatalised:PIE *ǵhes-r- 'hand' > OPhr. ↑iray (B-05),7NPhr. ζειρα (40.1 = 12) 'id.' (Hämmig 2013: 150–151). It also occurs in glosses: *ǵheu̯-mn̻ >ζευμαν 'fount, source' (Hesychius ζ 128). These two secondary processes, as happened in Tocharian and the Romance languages, lend Phrygian the guise of a satəm language.
With the current state of our knowledge, we can affirm that Phrygian is closely related to Greek. This is not a surprising conclusion: ancient sources and modern scholars agree that Phrygians did not live far from Greece in pre-historic times. Moreover, the last half century of scientific study of Phrygian has approached both languages and developed the hypothesis of a Proto-Greco-Phrygian language, to the detriment to other theories like Phrygio-Armenian or Thraco-Phrygian.
To the best of our current knowledge, Phrygian was closely related to Greek. This affirmation is consistent with the vision offered by Neumann (1988: 23), Brixhe (2006) and Ligorio and Lubotsky (2018: 1816) and with many observations given by ancient authors. Both languages share 34 of the 36 features considered in this paper, some of them of great significance:…The available data suggest that Phrygian and Greek coexisted broadly from pre-historic to historic times, and both belong to a common linguistic area (Brixhe 2006: 39–44).
