| Group | Anatolian (with Hittite, Luwian etc.), Late Anatolian (with Lydian, Carian, and Sidetian) |
| Geography | Was spread in Lycia, the region today's Turkey where Antalya is situated. |
| History | Lycia was a south-western part of the former Hittite region. The country was originally called Milyas and was inhabited by the tribes of Solymae and the Termilae, who were subjugated by the invading Lycians. Lycians and Greeks first came into contact before the Trojan War in the 12st century BC, and the remains of Lycian tombs, temples, and theaters show a marked Greek influence. Lycia and Cilicia were the only two regions of Asia Minor that were not conquered in the 6th century BC by Croesus, king of Lydia. In the same century, however, the Lycians were defeated by the Persians under King Cyrus the Great despite heroic resistance. Under the Persians, Lycia remained prosperous and virtually autonomous. Along with the rest of Asia Minor, Lycia was conquered by Alexander the Great of Macedonia in the 4th century BC and incorporated into the Greco-Macedonian Empire. |
| Phonetics | Lycian language, being the late offspring of Luwian, nevertheless developed some new features in its structure. Nasal vowels doubled the number of vocals in the language, and this number was about thrice more than in Luwian which had only 3 vowels. That is why most endings of nouns and verbs have nasal vowels instead of the "vowel + -n". Two original Anatolian laryngeal sounds were preserved in Lycian - the only such case in the group. Two varieties of the language - Lycian A and B - are different in the reflection of the letter s which was preserved in B but turned into h in A. |
| Nominal Morphology | Though the number of analytical forms in increased in Lycian, the general structure of Luwian morphology remained the same, including the nominal declension. There are five cases, of them nominative and accusative forms are also declined in gender (common or neuter). |
| Verbal Morphology | An interesting feature of Lycian B is the opposition between reduplicated verb stems in the present and single stems of the past tense. The personal endings include -wi and -m for the 1st person singular which can be traced back to Hittite. There are two tenses, two moods (indicative and imperative). The infinitive ends in -ana. |
| Lexicon | The lexicon was influenced by autochthonic languages much, but still preserved a lot of Indo-European words. Sometimes words of Lycian are not met in any other Anatolian tongues, though being Indo-European by origin (like sla- 'to propitiate' < IE *selH- 'to favour'). |
| Writing | Lycian alphabet |
| Close Contacts | A direct descendant of Luwian, contacted with Lydian, later Greek. |
| Sample | ka herikle se haxlaza pabrati xbide hri-xtawa-tahi
ese tabna ter ijn ijaeusas krzz[]nase
htahe.
When Ahilles and Heracles push the very army of Ionians in Iasos and Khersonnes with their own himiliation. |
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