Hittite (natively "[in the
language] of Neša
") is the
extinct language once spoken by the
Hittites, a people who created an empire
centered on Hattusa
in
north-central Anatolia
. The
language is attested in
cuneiform,
in records from the 16th (
Anitta text)
down to the 13th century BC, with isolated Hittite loanwords or
names appearing in an
Old
Assyrian context from as early as the 20th century
BC.
Dialects derived from Hittite may have been spoken after the
Bronze Age collapse in various
parts of Anatolia and northern Syria, in the so-called
Neo-Hittite states of the Early Iron
Age.
Hittite is the earliest attested
Indo-European language, rediscovered
only more than a century after the
Proto-Indo-European hypothesis
had been formulated. Because of marked differences in its structure
and phonology, some
linguists, most
notably
Edgar H. Sturtevant and
Warren Cowgill, argued that it should be
classified as a sister language to the Indo-European languages,
rather than a daughter language, formulating the
Indo-Hittite hypothesis. Other linguists,
however, continue to accept the traditional 19th century view of
the primacy of Proto-Indo-European and interpret the unusual
features of Hittite as mainly due to later innovations. Still
others claim Hittite, as well as its
Anatolian cousins, split off from
Proto-Indo-European at
an early stage, thereby preserving archaisms that were later lost
in the other Indo-European languages.
Name
"Hittite" is a modern name, chosen after the (still disputed)
identification of the Hatti kingdom with the Hittites mentioned in
the
Hebrew Bible.
In
multi-lingual texts found in Hittite locations, passages written in
the Hittite language are preceded by the adverb nesili (or
nasili, nisili), "in the [speech] of Neša
(Kaneš)", an
important city before the rise of the Empire. In one case,
the label is
Kanisumnili, "in the [speech] of the people
of Kaneš".
Although the Hittite empire was composed of people from many
diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, the Hittite language was
used in most of their secular written texts. In spite of various
arguments over the appropriateness of the term,
Hittite remains the most current term by
convention, although some authors make a point of using
Nesite.
Decipherment
The first substantive claim as to the affiliation of the
Hittitelanguage was made by
Jørgen Alexander Knudtzon
(1902)in a book devoted to two letters between the king
of
Egypt
and a Hittite ruler, found at El-Amarna
in Egypt
.Knudtzon argued that Hittite was
Indo-European, largely on the basis of the
morphology. Although he had no
bilingual texts, he was able to give a partialinterpretation to the
two letters because of the formulaic nature of the
diplomaticcorrespondence of the period. His argument was not
generally accepted, partly because the morphological similarities
he observed between Hittite and Indo-European can be found outside
of Indo-European, and partly because the interpretation of the
letters was justifiably regarded as uncertain.
Knudtzon
was shown definitively to have been correct when a large quantity
of tablets written in the familiar Akkadian cuneiform script but in an unknown language
was discovered by Hugo Winckler at the
modern village of Boğazköy
, the former site of Hattusas
, the capital
of the Hittite Empire.Based on a study of this extensive
material,
Bedřich Hrozný
succeeded in analyzing the language. He presented his argument that
the language is Indo-European in a paper published in 1915 (Hrozný
1915), which was soon followed by a grammar of the language (Hrozný
1917).Hrozný's argument for the Indo-European affiliation of
Hittite was thoroughly modern, though poorly substantiated. He
focused on the striking similarities in idiosyncratic aspects of
the morphology, unlikely to occur independently by chance and
unlikely to be borrowed. These included the r/n
alternation (see
rhotacism) in some noun stems and vocalic
ablaut, both seen in the alternation in the word for
water between nominative singular,
wadar and
genitive singular,
wedenas.He also presented a set of
regular sound correspondences. After a brief initial delay due to
the disruption caused by the
First World
War, Hrozný's decipherment, tentative grammatical analysis, and
demonstration of the Indo-European affiliation of Hittite were
rapidly accepted and more broadly substantiated by contemporary
scholars such as
Edgar H.
Sturtevant who authored the
first scientifically acceptable Hittite grammar with a
chrestomathy and a glossary. The 1951 revised
edition of the Sturtevant grammar is still authoritative
today.
Classification
Hittite is one of the
Anatolian
languages. Hittite proper is known from
cuneiform tablets and inscriptions
erected by the Hittite kings. The script known as "Hieroglyphic
Hittite" has now been shown to have been used for writing the
closely related
Luwian language,
rather than Hittite proper. The later languages
Lycian and
Lydian are
also attested in Hittite territory.
Palaic, also spoken in Hittite territory, is
attested only in ritual texts quoted in Hittite documents. The
Anatolian branch also includes
Carian,
Pisidian, and
Sidetic.
In the Hittite and Luwian languages there are many loan words,
particularly religious vocabulary, from the non-Indo-European
Hurrian and
Hattic languages.
Hattic was the language of the
Hattians, the local inhabitants of the land of
Hatti before being absorbed or displaced by
the
Hittites. Sacred and magical Hittite
texts were often written in Hattic,
Hurrian,
and
Akkadian, even after Hittite
became the norm for other writings.
The Hittite language has traditionally been stratified into Old
Hittite (OH), Middle Hittite (MH) and New or Neo-Hittite (NH; not
to be confused with the "
Neo-Hittite"
period which is actually post-Hittite), corresponding to the Old,
Middle and New Kingdoms of the Hittite Empire (ca. 1750–1500 BC,
1500–1430 BC and 1430–1180 BC, respectively). These stages are
differentiated partly on linguistic and partly on paleographic
grounds. Just as the notion of a Middle Kingdom has been largely
discredited, Melchert (
Middle Hittite revisited) argues that MH as a
linguistic term is not clearly delineated and should be understood
as referring to a period of transition between OH and NH.
Orthography
Hittite was written in an adapted form of
Old Assyrian cuneiform
orthography. Owing to the predominantly syllabic nature of the
script, it is difficult to ascertain the precise phonetic qualities
of a portion of the Hittite sound inventory.
The syllabary distinguishes the following consonants (notably
dropping the Akkadian
s series),
- b, p, d, t, g, k, , r, l, m, n, š, z,
combined with the vowels
a, e, i, u. Additional
ya (=I.A ),
wa (=PI ) and
wi
(=
wi5=GEŠTIN ) signs are introduced.
The Assyrian voiced/unvoiced series (k/g, p/b, t/d) are not used to
express the voiced/unvoiced contrast in Hittite though double
spellings in intervocalic positions represent voiceless consonants
in Indo-European (Sturtevant's law).
Phonology
The limitations of the syllabic script have been more or less
overcome by means of comparative etymology and an examination of
Hittite spelling conventions, and accordingly, scholars have
surmised that Hittite possessed the following phonemes.
Vowels
- Long vowels appear as alternates to their corresponding short
vowels when they are so conditioned by the accent.
- Phonemically distinct long vowels occur infrequently.
- All vowels may occur word-initially and word-finally, except
/e/.
Consonants
- All voiceless obstruents and all sonorants except /r/ appear
word-initially. This is true of all Anatolian languages.
- Word-finally, the following tendencies emerge:
- Among the stops, only voiced appear word-finally. /-d/, /-g/
are common, /-b/ rare.
- /-s/ occurs frequently; /-h₂/, /-h₃/, /-r/, /-l/, /-n/ less
often; and /-m/ never.
- The glides /w/, /j/ appear in diphthongs with /a/, /aː/.
- The voiced/unvoiced series are inferred from the fact that
doubling consonants in intervocalic positions represents voiceless
consonants in Indo-European (Sturtevant's law, cf. Sturtevant 1932,
Puhvel 1974): i.e. voiced stops are represented by single
consonants (*yugom = i-ú-kán), voiceless stops with double
consonants (*k'eyto > ki-it-ta).
Laryngeals
Hittite preserves some very archaic features lost in other
Indo-European languages. For example, Hittite has retained two of
three
laryngeals (
h2 and
h3 word-initially). These sounds, whose existence had been
hypothesized by
Ferdinand de
Saussure on the basis of vowel quality in other Indo-European
languages in 1879, were not preserved as separate sounds in any
attested Indo-European language until the discovery of Hittite. In
Hittite, this phoneme is written as . Hittite, as well as most
other Anatolian languages, differs in this respect from any other
Indo-European language, and the discovery of laryngeals in Hittite
was a remarkable confirmation of Saussure's hypothesis.
The preservation of the laryngeals, and the lack of any evidence
that Hittite shared
grammatical features
possessed by the other early Indo-European languages, has led some
philologists to believe that the Anatolian languages split from the
rest of Proto-Indo-European much earlier than the other divisions
of the
proto-language. Some have
proposed an "
Indo-Hittite" language
family or superfamily, that includes the rest of Indo-European on
one side of a dividing line and Anatolian on the other. The vast
majority of scholars continue to reconstruct a Proto-Indo-European,
but all believe that Anatolian was the first branch of
Indo-European to leave the fold.
Diffusion of Satem features in Indo-European
Sturtevant (1940), the father of
the
Indo-Hittite hypothesis, was the
first scholar to note the lack of
u after
k
representing earlier IE palatal *
k or *
g.
Goetze (1954) and
Wittmann (1969) posited in these positions a
K to
S shift incipient of the later
Kentum-Satem shift distinctive of the
IE Satem group of languages. The diffusion hypothesis of the Satem
features (spirantization of palatal stops before
u as the
focal origin of the
Centum-Satem
isogloss) has the advantage to motivate the existence of
marginal Satem features in Greek and Tocharian, and of marginal
Kentum features in Armenian.
Grammar
As the oldest attested Indo-European language, Hittite is
interesting largely because it
lacks several grammatical
features exhibited by other "old" Indo-European languages such as
Sanskrit,
Latin, and
Ancient Greek. Notably, Hittite does
not have the IE gender system opposing masculine-feminine; instead
it has a rudimentary noun class system based on an older
animate-inanimate opposition reminiscent of noun class systems in
non-Bantu
Niger-Congo
languages.
Morphology
The Noun
The Hittite nominal system consists of the following
cases:
nominative,
accusative,
dative-
locative,
genitive,
allative,
ablative, and
instrumental, and distinguishes between
two
numbers (singular and plural)
and two
genders,
common (animate) and
neuter
(inanimate). The distinction between genders is fairly rudimentary,
with a distinction generally being made only in the nominative
case, and the same noun is sometimes attested in both
genders.
In its most basic form, the Hittite noun declension functions as
follows, using the examples of
pisna- ("man") for animate
and
pēda- ("place") for neuter.
|
Common |
Neuter |
|
Singular |
Plural |
Singular |
Plural |
| Nominative |
Pisnas |
Pisnēs |
Pēdan |
Pēda |
| Accusative |
Pisnan |
Pisnus |
Pēdan |
Pēda |
| Genitive |
Pisnas |
Pisnas |
Pēdas |
Pēdas |
| Dative/Locative |
Pisni |
Pisnas |
Pēdi |
Pēdas |
| Ablative |
Pisnats |
Pisnats |
Pēdats |
Pēdats |
| Allative |
Pisna |
- |
Pēda |
- |
| Instrumental |
Pisnit |
- |
Pēdit |
- |
As can be seen, there is a trend towards distinguishing fewer cases
in the plural than in the singular. A handful of nouns in earlier
text form a
vocative with
-u,
however, the vocative case was no longer productive even by the
time of our earliest sources, its function was subsumed by the
nominative in most documents. The allative also fell out of use in
the later stages of the language's development, its function
subsumed by the dative locative. An archaic genitive plural
-an is found irregularly in earlier texts, as is an
instrumental plural in
-it. A few nouns also form a
distinct
locative without any case ending
at all.
The Verb
When compared with other early-attested Indo-European languages,
such as Ancient Greek and Sanskrit, the verb system in Hittite is
relatively morphologically uncomplicated. There are two general
verbal classes according to
which verbs are inflected, the
mi-conjugation and the
hi-conjugation. There are two
voices (active and medio-passive), two
moods (indicative and imperative),
and two
tenses (present and
preterite). Additionally, the verbal
system displays two
infinitive forms, one
verbal substantive, a
supine, and a
participle.
Rose (2006) lists 132
hi-verbs and interprets the
hi/mi oppositions as vestiges of a system of grammatical
voice ("centripetal voice" vs. "centrifugal voice").
Mi Conjugation
The mi-conjugation is similar to the general verbal conjugation
paradigm in Sanskrit, and can also be compared to the class of
mi-verbs in Ancient Greek.
Active Voice
|
Indicative |
Imperative |
Infinitive |
Participle |
Supine |
| Present |
Suwāyemi
Suwāyesi
Suwāyetsi
Suwāyeweni
Suwāyetteni
Suwāyeantsi |
Suwāyeallut
Suwāyet
Suwāyettu
Suwāyetten
Suwāyentu |
|
|
|
| Preterite |
Suwāyeun
Suwāyes
Suwāyeta
Suwāyewen
Suwāyeten
Suwāyēr |
|
Syntax
Hittite syntax exhibits one noteworthy feature typical of Anatolian
languages. Commonly, the beginning of a sentence or clause is
composed of either a sentence connecting particle or otherwise a
fronted or topicalized form, to which a "chain" of fixed-order
clitics are appended.
Corpus
See also
References
- www.premiumwanadoo.com/cuneiform.../hittite_grammar.pdf
Literature
- Introductions and overviews
- Dictionaries
- Goetze, Albrecht (1954). Review of: Johannes Friedrich,
Hethitisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg: Winter).
Language 30.401-405.[44023]
- Sturtevant, Edgar H. (1931). Hittite glossary: words of
known or conjectured meaning, with Sumerian ideograms and Accadian
words common in Hittite texts. Language, Vol. 7, No.
2, pp. 3-82., Language Monograph No. 9.
- Puhvel, Jaan (1984-). Hittite Etymological Dictionary.
Berlin: Mouton.
- Grammar
- Sturtevant, Edgar H. A. (1933, 1951). Comparative Grammar
of the Hittite Language. Rev. ed. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1951. First edition: 1933.
- Sturtevant, Edgar H. A. (1940). The Indo-Hittite
laryngeals. Baltimore: Linguistic Society of America.
- Text editions
- Goetze, Albrecht & Edgar H. Sturtevant (1938). The
Hittite Ritual of Tunnawi. New Haven: American Oriental
Society.
- Sturtevant, Edgar H. A., & George Bechtel (1935). A
Hittite Chrestomathy. Baltimore: Linguistic Society of
America.
- Journal articles
External links
Top topics
Wikis
Map
Search