4 posts tagged “hittite”

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.

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.

You might not easily believe it, but the above words are phonemic transcriptions of the Irish word bean in it's nominative and genitive/plural form, namely bean and mna. And before you go 'Hey that's that suppletion stuff you've been telling us about!' I'll destroy that thought right away, in fact these words come from the same root!
namely *b(e)n- (This being a sort of arbitrary Proto-Irish reconstruction) Where when the vowel is lost b and n touched, and the n affected the b to also become a nasal. giving mn-a. Later on though, the Irish weren't exactly happy with this mn cluster and figured it may be a better idea to dissimilate it, and they started pronouncing the n as an r. This dissimilation by the way, is regular.

There once was a town called Limerick,
Which originally was written Luimneach
The Irish came round,
And changed the sound,
And that's why we now sing a Limerick

I'm a terrible poet, I know (For the people who don't know what the hell I'm talking about: Educate Thyself!)

But this incredible paradigm for woman is not the point of this blog entry. It's just an interesting step up to a little bit on Indo-European morphology, and a small theory I had on it.

In Indo-European nouns, there's a certain class known as the r/n-stems. The r/n-stems* have an *r in the nominative singular, and an *n in all the other forms. One of the better known paradigms of this group is that of water

Nom. sg. *uód-r
Gen. sg. *ud-n-ós

Most languages have generalised either the *r (Like west Germanic *watar), or the *n (Like Gothic wato <*watōn ). There's, as far as I know, one attested language that actually has this r/n-stem though, and that is of course, Hittite!

Nom. sg. u̯ātar
Gen. sg. u̯itenaš

Now I was wondering about this odd r/n-switch when I was suddenly reminded of that crazy Irish Paradigm bean-mna(mra)

Although that is actually the exact opposite of what happens in r/n-stems, I can't help but feel that this is somehow relevant. It seems like, also in some early Indo-European stage, some kind of dissimilation or assimilation took place. Although it's hard to believe that an /r/ becomes an /n/ after a stop. That would imply that *r had some kind of nasal quality.

I'm open to any suggestions that you are willing to throw at me!

*There's also l/n-stems, although very rare. They are the reason why Latin has Sol  and English has Sun. With that I have also depleted my full knowledge of existing l/n-stems.

First of all, sorry for the small delay, but I was on skiing holiday. Anyway, I'm back now, and I'll continue with my weekly updates.

Today I wanted to discuss the Hittite language, and in particular, it's rather odd script.

History
The first Hittite texts are attested around 1600 BC, making it the earliest attested Indo-European language. It was spoken in Anatolia, what we today would call Turkey. The capital of the Hittite state was Ḫattuša which is situated in the place today known as Boğazkale.

Script
Hittite was written in a cuneiform script similar to that the Akkadians used. This script is not exactly well suited for Hittite, since it write in syllables of the type CV, CVC (only a few) and VC. It is not uncommon for Hittite to have consonant clusters bigger than 3 consonants, since it's an Indo-European language. As one may have noticed, it is actually impossible to write a cluster of more than 2 consonants, And it's even impossible to make an initial cluster of more than one consonant. Besides that one could only write 4 vowels; a, e, i and u. While even some syllable signs did not distinguish between e and i. The vowel system of Hettite was much bigger than this.

Besides using their own script, the also used Akkadian and Sumerian words (called Akkadograms and Sumerograms respectively).
An Akkadogram that is commonly used is for example Ú-UL a word that means `not'. Although they'd write Ú-UL, it was meant to be read as the Hittite word 'natta'. The reason why they used the Akkadian word was probably because natta needs to be written with 3 cuneiform symbols (na-at-ta).
Akkadograms would also commonly be given the Akkadian markers of case and number, rather than the Hittite words.

Besides that they also use Sumerograms. Sumerian had a cuneiform script derived from a hieroglyphic script. Thus one symbol would mean one word. A commonly used word is LUGAL which is the Sumerian word for 'King'. This word is used more often than not as a replacement for the Hittite word for king; ḫaššuš. These Sumerograms would often be suffixed with the Hittite case endings rather than Sumerian.

Besides all this, they'd use Determinatives (which are usually Sumerograms). These were cuneiform symbols prefixed to a word. They were not meant to be read, but rather inform the reader what kind of word would follow. The Sumerogram for 'God' was put in front of the name of a god for example.

Translation

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