Pre-Classical Anatolian Languages in Contact

2026-07-22

The aim of the PALaC project is to provide a systematic and complete study of language-contact in pre-classical Anatolia, from the XVIII century BCE up the Anatolian and Syro-Anatolian cultures of the Iron ages. Language contact is a specific phenomenon present in all phases of modern and historical languages, and requires to be investigated using the language-internal methodologies of contact-linguistics. The project will provide a rigorous and complete description of the linguistic interactions in ancient Anatolia, a unique historical and geographical gateway where Indo-European, Semitic and isolated languages interacted with each other, on the ideal boundary between the East and the West. PALaC will deal with the analysis of the textual data from the different Ancient Anatolian corpora, that will be assessed both from a linguistic and from philological perspective. The final results will also be integrated in the general framework of historical and cultural contact in the Ancient Mediterranean world by a dedicated work-package. The project will take advantage of the methodological expertise of a team of researchers who are well trained both in the philological study of the Ancient Near Eastern texts and in the linguistic study of languages in contact.

Italy

2025-10-01