Acta Ant. Hung. 44, 2004, 143–150 0044-5975 / 20.00 © Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest MÁTÉ ITTZÉS THE AUGMENT IN MYCENAEAN GREEK 1 GREEK TT Summary: This paper is meant to show that the widely accepted theory of the augment being completely absent in Mycenaean Greek is untenable. There is one example in the linear B documents in which the presence of the syllabic augment is undoubtful and two more in which it is probable. The lack or pres- ence of the augment cannot be regarded as a dialectal feature in the sense of E. Risch’s distinction be- tween mycénien normal and mycénien spécial. The augment is a morphological innovation of a group of Indo-European languages, which was still spreading at the time of the documents and its rare occurrence can be regarded as one of the features that characterize Mycenaean as “a milestone between Indo-Euro- pean and Historical Greek” (O. Szemerényi). Key words: Mycenaean Greek, linear B documents, augment, dialectal differences in Mycenaean. The decipherment of the linear B documents dating from the 14–13th centuries B.C. at the beginning of the 1950s put new life and vigour into Greek historical lin- guistics. For, in many respects, the Greek dialect of these documents, Mycenaean Greek, constitutes a transitional phase between Proto-Indo-European and the Ancient Greek of the first millennium B.C. This holds true in spite of the fact that Mycenaean can neither be considered as a kind of Proto-Greek language, from which all the his- torical dialects of the first millennium originated, nor is it the ancestor of any par- ticular dialect, though it is clear that it has the most in common with Arcadian and Cyprian. 2 The transitional character of Mycenaean 3 can be illustrated with the example of the labiovelars. While these sounds had formed a separate group in the Proto-Indo- European phoneme inventory, they disappeared in Ancient Greek and changed to 1 Abbreviations used in the text: LIV 2 : Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben. Die Wurzeln und ihre Primärstammbildungen. Ed. H. RIX et al. Zweite, erweiterte und verbesserte Auflage. Wiesbaden 2001 2 ; GEW: FRISK, H.: Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch I–III. Heidelberg 1960–1972; DELG: CHANTRAINE, P.: Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque I–IV. Paris 1968–1980. 2 On the dialectal position of Mycenaean see A. BARTONĚK’s recently published Handbuch des mykenischen Griechisch. Heidelberg 2003, 446–497 (with bibliographical references to the latest litera- ture on the subject). 3 Cf. also SZEMERÉNYI, O.: Mycenaean: A milestone between Indo-European and Historical Greek. In Atti e memorie del 1º Congresso Internazionale di Micenologia, Roma 27 Settembre – 3 Ot- tobre 1967, II. Roma, 715–725 [Incunabula Graeca vol. XXV, 2].