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The Sources of Hittite z

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

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

Of the four sibilants which the cuneiform symbols are capable of expressing, Hittite evidently had no use for two; s and ṣ occur so rarely in Hittite words that we are justified in explaining away such instances as are found (e.g. one should read zé rather than ṣe). The commonest Hittite sibilant is ordinarily written by the symbols which most Assyriologists transcribe áš, šá, iš, ši, uš, šú, etc. It corresponds etymologically to Indo-European s (šagg- ‘see’ = Gothic saíhwan, šipand- ‘pour a libation’ = Greek σπέvδω, šittar ‘star’ = Sanskrit star-, ešun ‘I was’ = Skt. āsam, ešhar ‘blood’ = Skt asr̥k, kwiš ‘who’ = Latin guis, etc.). The simplest interpretation of the facts would lead us to pronounce these words with s, and there is nothing in the history of the cuneiform writing to conflict with such an interpretapretation.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 4 , Issue 4-Part1 , December 1928 , pp. 227 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © 1928 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 See Sommer and Ehelolf, Boghazköi-Studien 10. 70.

2 See Friedrich, Staatsverträge des Hatti-Reiches in hethitischer Sprache 81 f.

3 See Gōtze, Madduwattas 105.

4 See Friedrich, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie NF 3. 203 (1927).

5 See Sommer and Ehelolf, BoSt. 10. 41 f.

6 See Sommer and Ehelolf, ib. I owe the meaning of the word to Kellogg, Hittite Numerals 52 ff.; but he is mistaken in considering the word an s-stem.

7 See Friedrich, Kleinasiatische Forschungen 1. 991 (1927).

8 See Sommer and Ehelolf, BoSt. 10. 2.

9 See Ungnad, ZA NF 2. 1022 (1925).

10 So Hrozný, Die Sprache der Hethiter 154 f.

11 See Götze, Madd. 78.

12 See Hrozný, SH 94; Götze, Hattuššiliš 91.

13 See Sturtevant, Language 4. 163; and Kurylowicz ap. Pedersen, Litteris 5. 159 (1928).

14 See Friedrich, Staatsvert. 158.

15 See Sturtevant, Language 4. 1.

16 See Ehelolf, KF 1. 144–160, especially 156.

17 See Friedrich, ZA NF 3. 191 and footnote 2.

18 I do not mean to imply the existence of the feminine gender in PIE. The suffix ī may originally have had a very different force.

19 See Forrer, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 76. 262, and cf. Keilschrifturkunden aus Boghazköi 8. 57. 8 f.

20 See Sommer and Ehelolf, BoSt. 10. 20.