A historical grammar of Phrygian

Sorgo, A. (2026)

Doctoral Thesis

This dissertation serves as the first full comprehensive grammar of the Phrygian language, which was spoken in central Anatolia from the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE to the middle of the 1st millennium CE and is attested in a total of about 500 inscriptions. The language as attested is divided into two stages; Old Phrygian, which was written in a native alphabet, spans from the earliest Phrygian inscriptions to about 300 BCE, whereas New Phrygian, which was written in the Greek alphabet, encompasses about 120 inscriptions from the beginning of the first millennium CE. Previous scholarship has for the most part focused on interpreting Phrygian inscriptions, the lexicon of the language, or tackled individual issues of grammar; this work aims to produce a full synchronic and diachronic grammar of the language, focusing prominently on the dialectal position of Phrygian within the Indo-European group of languages.

• Phrygian language
• Iron Age Anatolia
• Graeco-Phrygian branch
• Indo-European dialectology
• Historical grammar
• Historical morphology
• Historical phonology

• All authors: Sorgo, A.
• Supervisor: Kloekhorst, A.; Lubotsky, A.
• Committee: Peyrot, M.; Waal, W.J.I.; Jonge, C.C. de; Obrador-Cursach, B; Kölligan, D.
• Qualification: Doctor (dr.)
• Awarding Institution: Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University
• Date: 2026-03-24
• DOI: doi:10.60602/1887-4297594
• Sponsorship: NWO