Since the so-called “Ancient DNA Revolution” of the past decade, which has yielded many new insights into the genetic prehistory of Europe and large parts of Asia, it can no longer be doubted that... Show moreSince the so-called “Ancient DNA Revolution” of the past decade, which has yielded many new insights into the genetic prehistory of Europe and large parts of Asia, it can no longer be doubted that the Indo-European languages spoken in Europe and Central and South Asia were brought there from the late fourth millennium BCE onward by population groups from the Pontic–Caspian steppes who had belonged to the archaeologically defined Yamnaya culture.1 We may therefore assume that the population groups bearing the Yamnaya culture can practically be equated with the speakers of Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European languages of Europe and Asia, and that the spread of the Indo-European language family is a direct consequence of these migrations of Yamnaya individuals into Europe and Asia. Show less
My postulation of a phonemic glottal stop in Hittite as the outcome of PIE *h1 (Kloekhorst 2006, 2008, 2014) has been criticized by several colleagues. In the present paper I will reassess the... Show moreMy postulation of a phonemic glottal stop in Hittite as the outcome of PIE *h1 (Kloekhorst 2006, 2008, 2014) has been criticized by several colleagues. In the present paper I will reassess the evidence and argue that most of the points of criticism cannot withstand scrutiny, and that Hittite did indeed contain a phonemic glottal stop in the environments /°VʔV°/ and /ʔV°/. Moreover, it will be argued that the spelling practices employed by the Hittite scribes to note down the glottal stop in these environments perfectly match the Old Babylonian scribal practice for indicating an ’aleph (= [ʔ]) in these positions. Show less
Attested in cuneiform, hieroglyphic and alphabetic texts dating to the first two millennia BCE, the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family is intriguing already by itself. But... Show moreAttested in cuneiform, hieroglyphic and alphabetic texts dating to the first two millennia BCE, the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family is intriguing already by itself. But Anatolian is also of central importance for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, the last common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Not only is it the earliest attested branch, it has also long been suspected that Anatolian reflects an earlier stage of the proto-language than that underlying the rest of the family.Focusing on the three best-attested Anatolian languages, Hittite, Luwian and Lycian, this book aims to further our understanding of Anatolian, and by extension Proto-Indo-European, by offering in-depth analyses of essential issues in Anatolian historical morphology and semantics. Various well-known as well as several newly adduced topics are scrutinized to determine whether the innovations leading to the discrepancies with the rest of Indo-European took place on the Anatolian or on the non-Anatolian side.The present study suggests that Anatolian is in many respects closer to the ancestor of the other Indo-European languages than is often claimed. Nevertheless, the investigation has also led to new evidence in favor of the hypothesis that Anatolian was the first branch to split off from the family. Show less
This article discusses one of the main problems of the Zalpa-text, namely that its mythological part deals with the relations between Zalpa and Nēša, but leaves Ḫattuša unmentioned, whereas its... Show moreThis article discusses one of the main problems of the Zalpa-text, namely that its mythological part deals with the relations between Zalpa and Nēša, but leaves Ḫattuša unmentioned, whereas its historical part deals with the relations between Zalpa and Ḫattuša, but contains no reference to Nēša. Following Martínez’ 2016 suggestion that in the text’s historical part Ḫattuša does not have the function of capital of the kings who feature in this story, but is merely used as a military base for the campaigns against Zalpa, it will be argued that during the historical events described in the Zalpa-text these kings in fact ruled from Nēša. A major consequence of this interpretation is that Nēša was the capital during the reigns of the early Hittite kings Ḫuzzii̯a I and Labarna I and also that Ḫattušili I ascended the throne there before he moved his court to Ḫattuša. Show less
This article starts with the observation that the Hittite 3sg.pret.act. form šipantaš, šipandaš (OH/MS) ‘(s)he libated’ can hardly be analysed as consisting of a tarna-class inflected stem šipant... Show moreThis article starts with the observation that the Hittite 3sg.pret.act. form šipantaš, šipandaš (OH/MS) ‘(s)he libated’ can hardly be analysed as consisting of a tarna-class inflected stem šipant/da- + the 3sg.pret.act. ending -š, since the OH/MH verbal paradigm of ‘to libate’ contains no other tarna-class inflected forms. It is therefore argued that šipantaš, šipandaš should be analysed as consisting of the consonantal verbal stem šipant- + -š, which implies that the a in šipantaš, šipandaš is an empty vowel. In order to explain the spelling -ntaš, -ntaš vs. the spelling -nza, which is commonly used to note down the sequence /-nts/ < PIE *-nts, it is argued that -ntaš, -ndaš denotes /-ntːs/, the regular outcome of a PIE sequence *-nds. Show less
This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the phonetics and phonology of the Hittite dental stops, which is especially based on a detailed treatment of the usage of the cuneiform signs TA... Show moreThis article provides a comprehensive analysis of the phonetics and phonology of the Hittite dental stops, which is especially based on a detailed treatment of the usage of the cuneiform signs TA and DA in all positions in the word, and in all chronological stages of Hittite. Show less
Following Rieken’s 2008 establishment that the Anatolian hieroglyphic sign *41 (CAPERE/tà) denoted the syllable /da/, with lenis /d/, Yakubovich (2008) argued that the sign’s phonetic value was... Show moreFollowing Rieken’s 2008 establishment that the Anatolian hieroglyphic sign *41 (CAPERE/tà) denoted the syllable /da/, with lenis /d/, Yakubovich (2008) argued that the sign’s phonetic value was acrophonically derived from the Hittite verb dā-i /d- ‘to take’. In the present article it is argued that this view can no longer be upheld in view of new proposals regarding the phonetic value of sign *41 (rather [ða]) and the interpretation of Hitt. dā-i /d- (rather [tʔā-]). It is proposed that the value of sign *41 has instead been derived from the Luwian verb ‘to take’, lā-i /l-, which from a historical linguistic perspective must go back to earlier *ðā-i / *ð-. This acrophonic assignment of the value [ða] to sign *41 must then be dated to the beginning of the 18th century BCE at the latest, which implies that already by that time the Anatolian hieroglyphs were in use as a real script that made use of phonetic signs. Show less
In this article it is argued that the Hittite ts-sound spelled by z-signs was not a monophonemic affricate /ts /, as is often assumed, but that Hittite instead contained several clusters of dental... Show moreIn this article it is argued that the Hittite ts-sound spelled by z-signs was not a monophonemic affricate /ts /, as is often assumed, but that Hittite instead contained several clusters of dental stop + sibilant. We can distinguish four of such clusters in intervocalic position: (1) lenis /t/ + lenis /s/, which is spelled Vz-zV; (2) lenis /t/ + fortis /sː/, which is spelled Vz-šV; (3) fortis /tː/ + lenis /s/, which is spelled Vz-zV; and (4) fortis /tː/ + fortis /sː/, which is spelled Vt-šV. Show less
In this article it is argued that the Luwic paradigm known as ‘i-mutation’ originated in ablauting i-stems, which lost the oblique suffix by sound law and spread categorically, through the identity... Show moreIn this article it is argued that the Luwic paradigm known as ‘i-mutation’ originated in ablauting i-stems, which lost the oblique suffix by sound law and spread categorically, through the identity of the oblique cases, initially to the consonant stems, and later to the o-stems. The ā-stems, which are argued to survive as a class not only in Lycian but also in Luwian, escaped the spread because their oblique cases were not identical. The same goes for the u-stems, except in those cases where the stem vowel was consonantal. Show less
