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The e-Perfect in Hittite

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

E. H. Sturtevant
E. H. Sturtevant*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

The Hittite documents show many instances of an interchange of the vowels e and a. Since the variation is not uniform, and neither vowel of the pair is restricted to any phonetic surroundings or morphological categories, we must apparently assume several causes, and sound method requires the separate treatment of groups of words which show parallel phenomena. In this paper I propose to discuss the variation in monosyllabic verbal roots which end in a consonant.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , September 1927 , pp. 161 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © 1927 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 Die Sprache der Hethiter 169, 170f. (1917).

2 Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft NF 1.213f. (1922).

3 Ein Hethitischer Annalentext des Königs Mursilis II 18f. (Leipzig, 1926).

4 Language 2. 33f. (1926).

5 See Weidner, Archiv für Keilschriftforschung 1.10 (1923); Sommer and Ehelolf, BoSt. 10. 99.

6 Friedrich, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie NF 3. 198 and fn. 7 (1926).

7 Friedrich, Staatsverträge des Hattireiches in Hethitischer Sprache 35f. (1926). This is Friedrich's transcription of the word; a better transcription is suggested below.

8 For further connections in IE, see Walde-Pokorny, Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen 2. 477–80 (1927).

9 Sommer, Boghazköi-Studien 7. 45.

10 Journal of the American Oriental Society 47. 182–4 (1927).

11 Hrozný, BoSt. 3. 1397; Sommer and Ehelolf, BoSt. 10. 47.

12 Sommer and Ehelolf, BoSt. 10. 7.

13 Götze, Hattusilis 99.

14 Friedrich, ZA NF 2.2942.

15 See Sommer, Handbuch der Lateinischen Laut- und Formenlehre 2 551, Brugmann, Grundriss der Vergleichenden Grammatik der Indogermanischen Sprachen 22. 3. 27, 4271.

16 ZA NF 2.41–5; cf. Götze, ib. 2.18. The meanings in the text are not precisely those given by either of these authors, but accord with my own observation.

17 Sommer (BoSt. 4.132, 10.21f.) holds that the Hittite sk-formations have an ‘iterative-durative’ function. Many of them certainly have; but it is a mistake to attempt to force them all into that category. The verb cited above is one of a considerable group whose use cannot be distinguished from the corresponding presents in the Indo-European languages. Apparently the Hittite ‘iterativeduratives’ represent a secondary development analogous to the Latin inceptives in -scō.