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
The article points out a number of problems with the traditional scenario in which the Tocharian verbal pair meaning ‘to see, look’, B ləka-, A läkā- < PT *ləka- and B pəlka-, A pälkā- < PT *pəlka-... Show moreThe article points out a number of problems with the traditional scenario in which the Tocharian verbal pair meaning ‘to see, look’, B ləka-, A läkā- < PT *ləka- and B pəlka-, A pälkā- < PT *pəlka-, started out as two separate lexemes that became associated with each other. It is proposed that *pəlka- rather developed from *ləka- by a reanalysis of its imperative. This can better account not only for several morphological details, but also for the large semantic and formal overlap, as well as for the specific way in which the semantics are here argued to differ: an analysis of both verbs in Tocharian B suggests that in those categories in which both verbs are found, ləka- refers to perception with the eyes (‘to see’), pəlka- to fixing one’s gaze (‘to look (at)’). 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
