4 posts tagged “anatolian”

So, I had my Hittite 2 test today. It included Hittite, Hieroglyphic Luwian and Lycian. It went fine, but as I was busy working with it, I stumbled upon the last question of the test which went as follows: What can you tell about the genitive in Anatolian languages?

The answer was easy enough, and I'll give it as an introduction that is to come.

Anatolian languages seem to have two separate ways of creating a genitive construction. One is by the typical genitive ending suffixed to the possesor. This is Proto-Anatolian *-as (Hitt. -aš, Luw. -as, Lyc. -eh). This just goes back to the typical Indo-European genitive suffix *-ós (although some might argue it's the other way around).

What is interesting about the *-ós suffix though, is that it is also seen in the Anatolian a-stems (PIE o-stems), while in the later PIE languages we tend to find the pronominal *-eso, or even a *-esio (and maybe *-eio).

The other way of creating a genitive construction is the -ssi- suffix (Luw. -esi, Lyc. -ehi), oddly enough this formation seems to be absent in Hittite, while it is dominant in Hieroglyphic Luwian and Lycian, and the only formation in Cuneiform Luwian. This formation is typically Anatolian and works quite different from what you're used to.

I'll give an example of both the traditional genitive construction, and the Anatolian genitive.

Both forms can be found in a Lycian trilingual on the founding of Xanthos (a Lycian city). The *-as genitive is used as a so called onomastic genitive (a genitive used for names), while the *-ssi- genitive is used for nouns.

ẽke Trm̃isñ χssaϑrapazate Pigesere Katamlah tideimi 
'When Pigesere son of Katamla became Xadrape of Lycia....'
The Genitive construction here is Katamlah tideimi. where -ah goes back to *-as (though we would expect **-eh, but there's still many things we don't fully understand about the *a>e shift in Lycian.)

se-t-ahñtãi χñtawatehi χbidẽñnehi sey-ArKKazumahi
'and to be of the king of Kaunos, and of Arkesima'
And there we have, not one, not two, but three -ssi-genitives!
χñtawatehi, χbidẽñnehi, ArKKazumahi. What's interesting (though not particularly visible in this example), about the -ssi- suffix, is that it makes it a new noun, which afterwards, just conjugates like any normal noun. So *-ssi-s is the Nominative, *-ssi-n is the accusative, etc.

So here is approximately where I ended my answer, and, my answer had less cool examples and diachronic notes, but you get the point.

So, now that we have an overview of Anatolian genitives. Let's look at some other Indo-European languages.
First Greek:
Standard for all consonant stems is the -ος genitive. For example:
πατηρ > πατρος
o-stems though, work differently. they end in -ου. For example:
ἱππος > ἱππου
This ending could come from a variety of sources.
Some idea's are: *eso, *eo, *ejo but definitely not *esio. The first *e could also be an *o, and technically the final *o could be an *e if the first letter is an *o. *eo is dismissable if we're to assume it's from an Indo-European origin.

*eso is the most likely, since this is what we see in the pronouns, which in most cases seem to work the same as the o-stems.

Gothic has -is, which should be safely derrived from *eso as well.

But then comes Sanskrit to screw it all up!
Taking the same examples (etymologically) as Greek:
pitā > pituḥ पिता > पितुः
This formation is rather weird, I believe it points to a *-r-s ending, and thus proterodynamic rather than hysterodynamic as seen in Greek. It's not that relevent though, the word for horse (an a-stem (PIE *o-stem)) shows a very odd genitive:

aśvaḥ > aśvasya  अश्वः > अश्वस्य

An -asya suffix. This could be from a variety of sources, the likeliest ones are *esio or *osio. It might just be me, but I think the -sy- part looks an awful lot like the Anatolian *-ssi- suffix e-si-o. An *e thematic vowel, *-si- suffix, and an *-o ending. What exactly this *o-ending would be is unclear. Maybe it's an *-e, and then it would be an old vocative suffix. Maybe it's based on the pronominal ending *-eso which might have sounded enough like *-esi to start influencing each other.

When I presented this idea to a fellow student of mine, he pointed out the rather odd dative plural of consonant stems in Greek, which is made with a -σι(ν) suffix as well!

It's hard to explain how a genitive *-si- ended up in a dative plural. But the current explanation isn't too satisfying either. People generally compare it with the Sanskrit locative suffix -su सु/षु. But an ablaut of i/u isn't what we like to see in Indo-European.

So to conclude. There's two types of genitive constructions in Anatolian languages. The true genitive *-as and the genitival stem extension *-ssi-. There are some indications, especially in Sanskrit, that this suffix may have already existed in Indo-European itself, but only ended up being productive as a separate category in the Anatolian languages.

I am quite sure there's other Indo-European languages that have evidence for a -si- genitive like Sanskrit does, maybe Slavic languages? I'm not sure, but if you know, please leave a message.

So, in two weeks times we got 'all the grammar' there is to know of Lycian. That's 4 whole pages. This is both saddening, as fun. Picking up 'a little language' in two weeks gives a nice addition to your inventory. But naturally, languages that require but 4 pages to explain everything there is are filled with question marks.

Lycian is a language which is almost exclusively written on grave stones inscriptions, giving us a very limited vocabulary, also because the gravestones were written in an extremely formulaic fashion. Nevertheless I thought it'd be fun to show you all a small 'semi bilingual' of a Lycian-Greek gravestone text. Unicode 5.1 in fact has Lycian encoded, but due to the very few people that actually have support on their computer for Unicode 5.1, I'll make a little picture using the (Unicode 5.1 compliant) Aegean font. But just for kicks, I'll add the Unicode text, so all of those nuts like me who collect all fonts so they can have the whole Unicode can have a little benchmark (it's working for me!).

I'm sorry that I don't have the real inscription. But I guess that is one of the curses of the internet and obsucre languges

The Inscription:
𐊁𐊂𐊚𐊑𐊏𐊚:𐊑𐊗𐊀𐊗𐊀:𐊎𐊚𐊏𐊁𐊓𐊕𐊑𐊏𐊀𐊇𐊙𐊗𐊚:𐊓𐊒𐊍𐊁𐊊𐊏𐊅𐊀:𐊎𐊒𐊍𐊍𐊆𐊊𐊁𐊖𐊁𐊛:𐊖𐊁:𐊅𐊀𐊓𐊀𐊕𐊀:𐊓𐊒𐊍𐊁𐊊𐊏𐊅𐊀𐊛:𐊓𐊒𐊕𐊆𐊛𐊆𐊎𐊁𐊗𐊁𐊛
𐊓𐊀𐊑𐊏𐊁𐊈[𐊆]𐊊𐊁𐊛𐊆:𐊛𐊕𐊓𐊓𐊆:𐊍𐊀𐊅𐊀:𐊁𐊓𐊗𐊗𐊁𐊛𐊁:𐊖𐊁𐊗𐊆𐊅𐊁𐊆𐊎𐊁:𐊖𐊁𐊆𐊊𐊁:𐊗𐊆(𐊁)𐊖𐊁𐊕𐊆:𐊗𐊀𐊅𐊆
𐊗𐊆𐊋𐊁:𐊑𐊗𐊀𐊗[𐊀]:𐊁𐊂𐊁𐊛𐊆:𐊎𐊁𐊆𐊊𐊁:[𐊗𐊒𐊂𐊁𐊆𐊗]𐊆:𐊓𐊒𐊏𐊀𐊎𐊀𐊉𐊉𐊆:𐊀𐊍𐊀𐊅𐊀𐊛𐊀𐊍𐊆:𐊀𐊅𐊀<
ΤΟΥΤΟ:ΤΟ:ΜΝΗΜΑ:ΕΡΓΑΣΑΤΟ:ΑΠΟΛΛΩΝΙΔΗΣ:ΜΟΛΛΙΣΙΟΣ:ΚΑΙ:ΛΑΠΑΡΑΣ
ΑΠΟΛΛ[Ω]ΝΙΔΟΥ:ΠΥΡΙΜΑΤΙΟΣ:ΟΙΚΕΙΟΙ ΕΠΙ:ΤΑΙΣ:ΓΥΝΑΙΞΙΝ:ΤΑΙΣ:ΕΑΟΤΩΝ
[ΚΑ]Ι:ΤΟΙ[Σ]:ΕΓΓΟΝΟΙΣ:ΚΑΙ ΑΝ:ΤΙΣ:ΑΔΙΚΗΣΗΙ:ΤΟ:ΜΝΗΜΑ:ΤΟΥΤΟ
ΕΞΩΛΕΑ:[Κ]ΑΙ:ΠΑΝΩΛΕΑ:ΕΙΗ:ΑΟΤΩΙ:ΠΑΝΤΩΝ

Source:

http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/etcs/anatol/lycian/lycco006.htm
There is a certain different in the transcription I use, and the website. The one I use is of what I got in class, the difference is the way the last line is filled in for the part in between brackets (unrecoverable/hard to read text.)
I have: [tubeit]i
TITUS has this: [httẽm]i
Those are two radically different bits of text. I honestly wouldn't know what httẽmi means, so I have absolutely no idea which of the two is more plausible

Transcription:
ebẽñnẽ ñtata me ne prñnawãtẽ pulejnda mullijeseh se dapara pulejndah purihimeteh
prñnezijehi hrppi lada epttehe se tideimeseije tiseri tadi
tike ñtata ebehi me ije tubeiti punamaθθi aladahali ada5
τοῦτο τὸ μνῆμα ἐργάσατο Ἀπολλωνίδης Μολλίσιος καὶ Λαπάρας
Ἀπολλωνίδου Πυριμάτιος οἰκεῖοι ἐπι ταῖς γυναιξίν ταῖς ἑαυτῶν
καὶ τοῖς ἐγγόνοις. καὶ ἄν ἀδικήσῃ τὸ μνῆμα τοῦτο ἐξώλεα καὶ πανώλεα εἴη ἀυτῳ πάντων

Translation:

ebẽñnẽ ñtata me-ne prñnawãtẽ pulejnda mullijeseh se dapara pulejndah purihimeteh prñnezijehi
this.acc-encl.3sg.pron.acc burial chamber.sg.acc ptcl. encl.3sg.pron.acc build.prt.3pl-encl.3sg.pron.acc Apolonides.nom.sg Mullis.gen.sg and Laparas.nom Apolonides.gen Pyrimatis.gen house.gen-adj.pl.nom
' Apolonides of Mullis(might be a patronym or an ethnonym) and Laparas of the house of Apolonides of Pyrimatis built this burial chamber.'
(Note the massive amounts of encl-3sg pronomen. This was originally the enclitic shown by nasalisation, but it seems that it started spreading as part of several paradigms.)

hrppi lada epttehe se tideime
on behalf of wife.pl.dat his./theirpl.dat and child.pl.dat
'for their wives, and their children'

seije tise-ri tadi tike ñtata ebehi me-ije tubeiti punamaθθi aladahali ada5
and-encl.prn.3sg.dat indef.prn.nom.sg-rel.pron.nom.sg place.prs.3sg indef.prn.sg.acc burial chamber.sg.dat this.sg.dat ptcl.-prn.3sg.dat punish.prs.3sg P. Care of the grave.sg.dat 5 ada(currency)
'and he who will place something in this burial chamber, now him Punamaththi will punish. For the care of the grave: 5 ada.'
(note tise-ri < tise-ti with rhotacism, typical for Luwian, not as commonly seen in Lycian.)

In the last sentence we have difficult with the word punamaθθi. We're not sure how to translate it, maybe it's a personal name. Also the last part aladahali ada 5 Is a difficult sequence. It's translated as 'for the care of the grave (the fee is) 5 ada.' Because we see it more often, also when not warning grave robbers. So it's possibly not part of the curse, but just a note on how much it cost to make the grave, or to have it cleaned, or something like that.

Now the Greek text is much easier to understand:
τοῦτο τὸ μνῆμα ἐργάσατο Ἀπολλωνίδης Μολλίσιος καὶ Λαπάρας Ἀπολλωνίδου Πυριμάτιος οἰκεῖοι
this.n.sg.acc the.n.sg.acc gravestone.n.sg.acc build.aor.med.3sg Apollonides.m.sg.nom Mollisis.m.sg.gen and Laparas.m.sg.nom Apollonides.m.sg.gen Pyrimatis.m.sg.nom Relatives.pl.nom
'Apollonides of Mollisis and Laparas Relatives of Apollonides of Purimatis built this gravestone,'
(Puzzling is the 3sg aorist, rather than 3pl)

ἐπι ταῖς γυναιξίν ταῖς ἑαυτῶν καὶ τοῖς ἐγγόνοις.
for the.f.pl.dat wife.f.pl.dat the.f.pl.dat poss. himself.m.pl.gen and the.n.pl.dat children.n.pl.dat.
'for their own wives, and children'

καὶ ἄν ἀδικήσῃ τὸ μνῆμα τοῦτο ἐξώλεα καὶ πανώλεα εἴη ἀυτῳ πάντων
and modal.ptcl dishonour.aor.conj.3sg the.n.sg.acc gravestone.n.sg.acc this.n.sg.acc complete destruction.f.sg.nom and  complete destruction.f.sg.nom be.opt.3sg him.sg.dat all.pl.gen.
'And may complete and utter destruction be upon he who dishonours this grave.'

Definitely a lot more terrifying than the Lycian version and also absolutely no mention of 5 ada, therefore not a true bilingual text.

I hope you all found this as fun as I did ;)
 

I'm currently busy picking up some Hieroglyphic Luwian. Interesting language, quite significantly different from the Hittite language. One thing that's really interesting, though odd about the language, is the way the Luwians wrote their letters. They would actually tell the letter to tell the reciptient what they said.

Here let me give you an example from the so called Assur letters:

|á-sa5-za [|]pi-ha-mi |hara/i-na-wa/i-za-sa-wa/i-' ("LOQUI"-')ha-ri+i-ti

asaza Pihami(n) Haranawizas hariti:
asaza = to say, with 2nd person imperative Ø-suffix.
Pihami(n) = Personal name in the Accusative, coda n was not written in Hieroglyphic Luwian and may have been lost.
Haranawizas = Personal name in the nominative (s-suffix)
hariti = to speak with the 3rd person indicative present ti-suffix.

So this translates like this:

Say to Pihami (that) Haranawizas speaks:

After that line the actual content of the letter begins. It's funny to see such a formulaic opening of a letter telling a tablet to say something. It's not precisely without precedent. Also in Hittite texts you often see the author telling a tablet to say what he says.

Nevertheless I thought I'd show it to you.

Lately I've had some questions from several friends what the Centum & Satem split is about. Mostly because I have fairly controversial theories on this. So whenever I talk about Centum vs. Satem language split, and my theories about it, people generally end up asking me what Centum and Satem languages are exactly. Therefore I thought I'd write a definitive post to once and for all end these questions.
I also figured it would be nice to have some slightly easier entries on this blog about Proto Indo-European (PIE) as well. It's not unlikely that I'll write more non-Indo-Europeanist friendly entries in the future.

This blog entry will be about the sound shifts that take place in Proto Indo-European, and the languages that sprout from these. I will especially focus on the so called Centum & Satem split. Which has to do with the `velar series' in PIE. First I'll explain what these `velar series are', after that I'll explain the definition of the Centum & Satem split, and to conclude I'll give practical examples of words in Centum and Satem languages.

In PIE you have the so called `velar series'. Groups of three types of consonants with a velar articulation.
In a row they are the:

• Palato-Velars ḱ ǵ ǵʰ
• Plain Velars k g gʰ
• Labio-Velars kʷ gʷ gʷʰ

What's special about these Velar series, is that every Indo-European language only retains two of them. The so called Centum languages retain the Plain Velars and Labio-velars, and the Satem languages retain the Palato-Velars and the Plain velars.

So in Satem languages Plain Velars and Labio-Velars merge to k sounds, while Palato-Velars stay distinct. And in Centum language Plain Velars and Palato-Velars merge while Labio-Velars stay distinct.

Centum is the Latin word for `Hundred' and `Satem' the Avestan word for hundred. These words  come from the Indo-European word *ḱmtom `Hundred'. This is especially illustrative, because Latin has the "K" sound here (although these days we would pronounce it as s, originally it was K) while Avestan retains the palatal articulation, and actually exaggerates it so much it becomes an s (which is the general tendency of Satem languages).

This split in how these velars are treated are generally thought to be a big split in two dialects of PIE, and this would mean a Centum language and a Satem language would never be able to form a subgroup in the Indo-European family tree together.

In the next few paragraphs I'll illustrate the difference between Centum and Satem. I'll do this by taking three words, with the three different types of velars. Then I'll show how they are reflected in a Centum (English) language and a Satem (Sanskrit) language respectively.

The three words I'll compare are the words for 'Hundred', 'Light' and 'What'.

Centum languages:
English (a Centum language) has hundred where the h comes from palatovelar ḱ (root is also *ḱmtom).
The English word light  comes from the PIE root *leuk- with a plain velar which also becomes h (and later gh, but Old English spelling still has leoht.)

Thus the Palatovelar and and Plain velar have merged into h.

The English word what comes from the Indo-European word *kʷod `what'. Here you can see how  kʷ  (a Labio-velar) became wh and not h as with the plain velars and palatovelars.

So clearly Labio-velars are distinguished from the other velars.

Satem languages:
Sanskrit (a Satem language) has śatám for hundred also the root is *ḱmtom  so the ś comes from ḱ.

The Sanskrit word for light though is roka from the root *leuk-, here you can see the ḱ stays clearly distinct from the k. as k stays k while  ḱ becomes ś.

The Sanskrit word for `what' is kád which comes from the Indo-europed word *kʷod. As you can see here the labiovelar became k, and through that merged with the plain velar.

So to sum it up. English has h for Indo-European ḱ and k. And it as wh for Indo-European kʷ.

Sanskrit has ś for ḱ. And it has k for k and kʷ.

I hope this illustrates the concept Centum and Satem languages. And how the split works. Interestingly enough, a few Anatolian language (not Hittite though, that's a Centum language) retain the full three series, so they can't be defined as Centum or Satem.

As said before the general consensus is that Centum vs Satem split is something dialectal in Indo-European itself, I personally am not very convinced of this theory, which I'll try to explain in later updates.