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Hittite u Before Vowels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

E. H. Sturtevant  and
George L. Trager
E. H. Sturtevant
Affiliation:
Yale University
George L. Trager
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

Nearly all scholars who have worked with the cuneiform Hittite texts have assumed that the language has consonantal u (transcribed w or ṷ) as well as syllabic u, and consonantal i (transcribed y, j, or ḽ) as well as syllabic i. Although there have been few explicit statements to that effect, it appears that the difference between w and u and between y and i has usually been considered phonemic. At any rate that is the opinion underlying Sturtevant's treatment. Nevertheless there has been a tendency to recognize only w and y before vowels and only u and i before consonants, and such a distribution raises the question whether w and u, y and i are not rather positional variants of the phonemes u and i. The purpose of this discussion is to examine and classify a large enough body of material to settle the question.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 18 , Issue 4: October-December , December 1942 , pp. 259 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © 1942 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 See especially HG 57–60.

2 This suggestion is Trager's, and he has contributed the larger share of the systematic and theoretic side of this paper. The material discussed here is, in the main, from the collections made for HG (see HG 6), supplemented by Sturtevant where that seemed desirable. Sturtevant wrote the first draft of the article, but both authors have agreed upon its final form.

3 Lang. 18.220–3.

4 Lang. 18.181–92.

5 Sturtevant, Lang. 18.181 fn. 2, has argued against the suggestion that the vowel signs may denote a glottal stop in Hittite.

6 It is possible that ku in such a word as ku-na-an-zi ‘they strike’, beside Skt. ghnánti, represents a labio-velar, and that the Hittite word was a dissyllable. That is an important problem, but it is quite independent of the one we propose to consider here.

7 We have disregarded such abnormalities as pa-i-ú-u-en (KBo. 3.60.3.11) beside pa-a-i-ú-en (KBo. 3.45.1.8), ḫa-at-ra-a-u-ni (KUB 14.1.2.36) beside i-ya-u-e-ni, an-na-ú-li-iš (KUB 14.3.2.14) beside an-na-wa-li-iš (KUB 14.3.4.56), ša-ú-di-iš-za (KBo. 6.2.3.23, etc.) beside ša-ú-i-ti-iš-za, and u-ur-ri-ir (KBo. 3.60.2.7) beside war- ‘burn’.

8 See HG fn. 30 and references; Sommer, Bil. 221.

9 See HG 53 f. and references.

10 Goetze has clearly shown (AOr. 5.16 fn. 1; cf. Pedersen, MS 73) that this verb contains the verb IE ei- ‘go’ presumably with the preverb IE áu-: u-. IH '.u-‘éiti should give Hitt. u-ezi, and no doubt this gave rise to an analogical pl. u-anzi; I see no possibility of deriving the Hitt. pl. form from IH '.u-‘yénti.