The origin of the Hittite ḫi-conjugation [2018] (original) (raw)
Related papers
Once more on Hittite ā/e-ablauting ḫi-verbs [2014]
Indogermanische Forschungen 119 (2014), 55-77.
Abstract: The theory that Proto-Indo-European knew a “h₂e-conjugation” with an *o/e-ablauting acrostatic paradigm (Jasanoff 1979, 2003) relies heavily on the existence of Hittite ā/e-ablauting ḫi-verbs. In Kloekhorst 2012 I have argued that none of these ā/e-ablauting verbs can be original. In a reaction to this article, Melchert (2013) raises objections to a number of my arguments and concludes that some of the ā/e-ablauting verbs must be original and that therefore the Hittite material does support the “h₂e-conjugation” theory. In the following article I will discuss in detail all points on which Melchert and I disagree, and argue that his objections do not hold, and that the Hittite ā/e-ablauting ḫi-verbs cannot be used as evidence in favor of the “h₂e-conjugation” theory.
Hittite Historical Phonology after 100 Years (and after 20 Years)
Hrozný and Hittite
On the centennial of Hrozný's identification of Hittite as an Indo-European language I review the major issues in Hittite historical phonology, in comparison not only with his sketch of 1917 but also with my own treatment of 1994. After some methodological preliminaries and an overview of major revisions required by the last two decades of scholarship, I focus on the PIE syllabic sonorants. Hrozný (1917: 187) already tentatively concluded that their regular outcome in Hittite was aR, and this has become the standard view, but he also entertained that syllabic nasals before stops could appear as simply a The demonstration by Goedegebuure (2010) that CLuvian zanta is the cognate of Hittite katta 'down' has renewed the question of the development of the syllabic nasals before stops. Confirmation that in Hittite spells /o/, including in the result of *w , also casts doubt on the alleged direct change of *w > uR by resyllabification (Melchert 1994a: 126-127). I reexamine the entire question of the development of syllabic sonorants in Hittite in the light of these new findings.
Journal of Historical Linguistics, 2013
Starting from the analysis of constructions employed to express the category of reflexive in Hittite, encoded both by the verbal ending set of the middle and by the pronominal marker -za with both active and middle verbal forms, we present a typological parallelism with the Baltic languages that has consistently developed, from a pronominal, a verbal strategy to mark reflexivity. It is also shown that a development regarding the ways of encoding reflexivity involve other Indo-European languages as well. The Anatolian languages attest the reflexes of the original set of endings referring to the semantic categories of Reflexive, Middle and “Resultative”, while the other Indo-European languages attest an innovated “mixed morphology” for the category of Middle and Reflexive as opposed to the proper endings of the historical perfect. Within such a theoretical framework, the development of alternative strategies, using pronominal devices or particles, aims to disambiguate a wide polysemou...
The Hittite suffix -ške/a- between verbal aspect and pluractionality: a typological approach
The Hittite verbal system notoriously lacks the morphological distinction between perfective and imperfective stems common to most ancient Indo-European languages (Melchert 1997: 83), and in this language aspectual distinctions remain at a low degree of grammaticalization, as “[a]ny basic verbal stem in Hittite may be read as perfective or imperfective, provided that its inherent meaning and the context are appropriate” (Hoffner & Melchert 2008: 317). The overt encoding of imperfectivity is partly taken over by a number of derivational suffixes, whose function, in spite of the sizable number of studies devoted to them, remain controversial. In particular, scholars have long debated over the function of the suffix -ške/a-, with some authors interpreting it as a full-fledged marker of imperfective aspect (cf. Cambi 2007), or as a marker of different actional nuances including, among other things, iterativity, habituality, and distributivity (Bechtel 1936, Dressler 1968, Hoffner & Melchert 2008: 317-323). The connection of the suffix with imperfectivity is reflected by the fact that it is largely incompatible with stative verbs (Hoffner & Melchert 2008: 318), and by its occurrence with temporal adverbs meaning ‘in/for X time’ (Bertinetto & Cambi 2006). In this paper, we aim to review the traditional analysis of the -ške/a- suffix by grounding its interpretation on recent typological insights on aspect and verbal number. Drawing from a complete survey of verbs showing the -ške/a- suffix in Old Hittite texts, we investigate the aspectual construal of these forms according to Croft’s (2012) cognitive approach to verbal aspect, and show that they are by no means limited to the encoding of imperfectivity as defined by Cambi (2007). Moreover, we argue that -ške/a- can be better explained in terms of pluractionality, as the different functions that this suffix encodes are basically the same covered cross-linguistically by the so-called pluractional constructions (cf. Newman 1990). Specifically, we investigate to what extent the functions associated to the suffix -ške/a- can be arranged in a network that complies with the conceptual space of pluractional constructions put forward by Mattiola (2017). Finally, by also taking into account comparative evidence from cognate suffixes in other IE languages, as e.g. Latin -sc- (cf. Haverling 2000), we also set out to establish the original function of the Hittite suffix and explain the diachronic processes whereby the different functions developed out of this core meaning.
The Reflexes of IE Initial Clusters in Hittite
The article examines the reflexes of the initial consonant combinations in Hittite and their graphical manifestation. Using etymological analysis, internal reconstruction, synchronic graphical analysis and typological arguments, the authors show that 1) etymological clusters like *s + obstruent yield Hitt. /sC/ = graphical iš-CV... 2) etymological clusters like obstruent + resonant yield Hitt. /CǝC/ = graphical CV-CV... A part of the paper was previously published as: A. Kassian, I. Yakubovich. The Reflexes of Indo-European *#CR Clusters in Hittite // Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. Washington: Institute for the Study of Man, 2001. P. 29—49.