Anatolian Languages

This article proposes a new formal reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) nouns containing the suffix *–oi–. I argue that both primary and non-primary derivatives in this class had stress alternating between the derivational suffix and the following inflectional ending (e.g., ACC.SG *[-óy-ṃ] vs. GEN *[-y-ós]) rather than the "amphikinetic" alternation between root and inflectional ending (ACC.SG *[´-oy-ṃ] vs. GEN *[-y-ós]) that is traditionally assumed for all primary nominals with suffixal *[o]-vocalism under the widely accepted “Erlangen Model” (Schindler 1975a,b, Rix 1992) of Indo-European morphophonology. Support for this alternative reconstruction comes from Hittite, which confirms that the suffixal stress seen in the Greek reflex of this noun class was inherited from PIE rather than root stress as in Vedic Sanskrit. More broadly, I contend that an adequate account of the prosodic behavior of PIE *–oi-stems requires (i) abandoning the traditional connection between suffixal *[o]-grade and "amphikinetic" word stress; and (ii) adopting a framework (such as the one articulated by Kiparsky 2010) in which the suffix's capacity to attract stress in both primary and non-primary derivation can be modeled in a unified way.

This Excel file is a WORK IN PROGRESS on Indo-European basic lexicon, aligning PIE reconstructions from IEW, LIV and Mallory-Adams with intermediate reconstructions of IE sub-families found in several other sources (mainly Brill / Leiden etymological dictionaries): see dedicated sheet for details on sources.
Reconstructions with a green background have more complete data than those with a white background.
This DRAFT database is intended as a stepping stone for researchers who want to explore external genetic relationships between Indo-European languages and other language families.

Grammar sketch of the Palaic language for the Russian linguistic encyclopaedia: Languages of the World: Relict Indo-European languages of Western and Central Asia. Yuri B. Koryakov and Andrej A. Kibrik (eds.). ― Moscow: Academia, 2013. ― 512 pp.
In Russian

I have tried to apply three criteria so far: 1) Genesis' proto-history contains allusions to historical peoples, shrouded by some well-known mythology in a period identifiable with the second half of the sixth century B.C. and Homeric Lycians comply to this description, because their myth goes back to Iron Age at least. 2) The second criterion is to give a paradigmatic value for Genesis to the Lycian myths in which the fight with a serpentine mythological enemy is involved. Certainly, if the "gestation period" for Genesis was late sixth century, then at that time Homeric epic cycles are a proof that certain themes were already circulating. Leto's mythical fight against Python fulfils this criterion, because she is a mother-goddess that might have provided a mirror for the "the mother of all living" Eve (Gn 3:20). With the due proportions, this parallelism between Eve and Leto comes to rescue the so-called "prophecy" of Gn 3:15 from nonsense. Eve and her seed are bound to fight the snake's seed in a narrative which has allowed the future enemies to talk to each other friendly. Among the Lycian myths which may be consistent with this original pattern of a "talkative monster", we should have a look at what is said about the Lycian warrior Amisodarus (or Isaras, LLES 243, 246; HE 41, 118, 164, 553), who fed the Chimera according to Homer (Il. 16.28). Besides, the Lycian adopted hero, Bellerophon, who slays the Chimera, a serpentiform monster, offspring of Echidna (Hesiod, Theogony 295-308), is available to represent the "seed of the woman" engaged in the mysterious fight described in Gn 3:15. From Bellerephon's myth we might draw inspiration to discover who is the people bound to challenge the celestial sphere in which Cain seems to inhabit. The Gygean Lake, not far from Sardis, the capital of Lydia, was home to Echidna and the birthplace of the Lydian royal lineage (Robert 1982 [1]: 334-352). 3) The third criterion is to check whether the application of a certain mythological framework is motivated by a historical background where to find the underlying ideological reasons. Lydia is the last great Anatolian empire before the arrival of the Persians and also the protagonist of an epoch-making betrayal, according to Herodotus, because Lydians revolt after the conquest, triggering the Persian plan to make a nation of merchants out of a race of warriors. At this point, another work hypothesis can be advanced: the clash between the two brothers Cain and Abel would represent the conflict between two eponymous heroes.

Editors: Taciser Tüfekçi Sivas-Hakan Sivas
Coordinators: Şennur Şentürk-Nihat Tekdemir

A large majority of the present population of Central Anatolian Region lives in rural areas. They live on agriculture and animal husbandry. The destiny of the large part of the population of the region has remained unchanged.  Central Anatolia with its wide agricultural fields is still the grain silo of the country. The geometric motifs particular to Phrygians on the Phrygian kilims called "tapetes" among the popular goods of the Ancient World, still live on Sivrihisar kilims. Today, as in the past, the angora wool of Central Anatolia is still very valuable.  This book brings readers the latest research into the remarkable  civilizaiton of the Phrygians, writen by world authorities in the field. To memory of Prof. Taciser Tüfekçi Sivas.

This article presents a new reading and interpretation of the beginning of the Carian inscription of Euromos C.Eu 2. This new reading allows us to find a new example of the Carian word for priest, qmoλ. The beginning of the inscription is analysed as a dating formula by means of the name of an eponymous priest.

This book provides an updated view of our knowledge about Phrygian, an Indo-European language attested to have been spoken in Anatolia between the 8th century BC and the Roman Imperial period. Although a linguistic and epigraphic approach is the core of the book, it covers all major topics of research on Phrygian: the historical and archaeological contexts in which the Phrygian texts were found, a comprehensive grammar with diachronic and comparative remarks, an overview of the linguistic contacts attested for Phrygian, a discussion about its position within the Indo-European language family, a complete lexicon and index of the Phrygian inscriptions, a study of the Phrygian glosses and a complete, critical catalogue of the Phrygian inscriptions with new readings and interpretations.

Grammar sketch of the Sidetic language for the Russian linguistic encyclopaedia: Languages of the World: Relict Indo-European languages of Western and Central Asia. Yuri B. Koryakov and Andrej A. Kibrik (eds.). ― Moscow: Academia, 2013. ― 512 pp.
In Russian

In 'The Precursors of Proto-Indo-European' some of the world’s leading experts in historical linguistics shed new light on two hypotheses about the prehistory of the Indo-European language family, the so-called Indo-Anatolian and Indo-Uralic hypotheses. The Indo-Anatolian hypothesis states that the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European family should be viewed as a sister language of ‘classical’ Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of all the other, non-Anatolian branches. The common ancestor of all Indo-European languages, including Anatolian, can then be called Proto-Indo-Anatolian. The Indo-Uralic hypothesis states that the closest genetic relative of Indo-European is the Uralic language family, and that both derive from a common ancestor called Proto-Indo-Uralic. The book unravels the history of these hypotheses and scrutinizes the evidence for and against them.

Editör: Nihat Tekdemir


Hazırlayanlar: Kaan İren-Çiçek Atay-Özgün Kasar

Redaksiyon: Derya Önder-Merete Çakmak

Koordinatör: Şennur Şentürk-Nihat Tekdemir

In three occasions Egyptian texts give us extracts of the language of the Keftiw: a school writing tablet with personal names, an inscription with place names, and a papyrus with two magical spells! The information that we can extract, although puny, could help us in our attempt to approach the Keftiw language and its nature. All difficulties of interpretation
have to be analysed and each step has to be taken cautiously.

Book 1 of several books. These documents are developed from the Chicago Oriental Institute Akkadian dictionary which is alphabetized as Akkadian-English. I needed an English-Akkadian document, and – finding nothing readily available—decided to convert the Akkadian-English files to an abbreviated English-Akkadian version.  The oi.chicago.edu volumes are amazingly detailed, showing the specific usages and texts where each word in the dictionary is used. The individual volumes range in size from about 200 pages to 600+ pages, and as one will see in reviewing this complex oi.chicago work, the work is massive (Akk. “eŝqu”).
    My need to prepare the English-Akkadian version has to do with my work in preparation of the “Etruscan Phrases Indo-European Table.”  This table began as a table that showed Indo-European leximes/cognates that coincided with the 2,500 words vocabulary I developed from examination and translation of over 600 Etruscan texts. Later, in preparation of this table it became apparent that there was a greater mission involved with the table, of reconciling Indo-European languages with other language groups, first Baltic, Uralic and Kartvelian, then finding a need to expand the listing of concording lexemes to Hurrian/Urartian and subsequently Akkadian.  I refer those who are interested to begin with our Indo-European Table, Part 1, available at academia.edu or at maravot.com Etruscan Phrases, which is at:
http://www.maravot.com/Indo-European_Table.html or http://www.maravot.com/Indo-European_Table.html.
    Included in this dictionary is an Index to the Indo-European Table (English alphabetical). The Indo-European Table is organized alphabetically to the Etruscan words, and thus, with reference to its extended mission of producing a Concordance for the above cited languages we produced the Index. Words that are in smaller type (Times-Roman 10pt) have been incorporated in our Indo-European Table.

Current consensus among Etruscologists includes 43 glosses for basic lexicon, 20 glosses for non-basic lexicon and 24 glosses for bound morphemes.
51% of basic lexicon, 40% of non basic-lexicon and 42% of bound morphemes from such consensus glosses have solid Indo-European etymologies with regular and simple sound correspondences. This evidence is well above the statistical threshold for chance resemblances plus loans, and therefore proves that Etruscan has an extremely high probability of being an Indo-European language.
Specific evidence (incl. e.g. possessive adjectives used as genitives) further points to an Anatolian origin of Etruscan.

""Etruscan is an Indo-European language, probably belonging to a sub-branch of Anatolian which does not include Hittite. This claim is based on the following evidence:
• only lexical items for which Etruscologists have proposed a gloss have been used in this research (no attempt has been made at proposing new glosses for currently obscure or highly controversial Etruscan terms);
• 138 of the glosses put forth by Etruscologists belong to basic lexicon, and 97% of such basic lexicon has an IE etymology;
• 19 grammar morphemes have also been assigned a value by Etruscologists: 95% of them have an IE etymology;
• all such etymologies are based on regular sound laws;
• a few notable innovations are shared by Etruscan and Anatolian languages (often excluding Hittite).""

UPDATED, because published.

The Hieroglyphic Luwian sign AVIS (= *128) usually appears in the divine name Kubaba, typically written as (DEUS)Ku+AVIS-pa-pa or Ku-AVIS, but once in while it also occurs as a syllabogram. The strongest piece of evidence for a syllabic reading wax for AVIS (*128) is provided by the word (“MALLEUS”)AVIS-la-i ‘he erases/removes’ (TELL AHMAR 6, § 27). Combining Hawkins’s suggestion that *71 is the cursive form of AVIS with Laroche’s suggestion that *71 should be read as wa, I proposed to read syllabographic AVIS as wa as well. Although this does not apply to all words containing the sign AVIS, we can now provide the full readings of four lexemes:

ARHA “MALLEUS” AVIS-la- = ARHA “MALLEUS” wa(x)-la- /arha walla-/ ‘to remove, lift off’
(DEUS)AVIS-ti- = (DEUS) wa(x)-ti- c. /watti-/ ‘divine mountain’
(DEUS)AVIS-ta-ni- = (DEUS) wa(x)-ta-ni(-ia)- c. /wattani(ya)-/ ‘(sacred) holding’
UPDATED: AVIS-sà- = wa(x)-sà- /wasa-/ = u-sa- /usa-/ ‘to lead here’

As a corollary of reading (DEUS)AVIS-ti-zi as /wattinzi/ ‘divine mountains’ in TELL AHMAR 6, the lexeme (DEUS)*30(-)da-ti-zi in the same text might represent /habadantinzi/ ‘divine riverlands’, suggesting that *30 should be read as HAPA. This in turn leads to a contextually acceptable reading of “*30”(-)ri+i-nu-wa/i- in KARKAMIŠ A12 § 13 as “HAPA”-ri+i-nu-wa/i- /haparinuwa-/ ‘to deliver’. We may thus add two more lexemes with full phonetic readings to the Luwian lexicon:

(DEUS)*30-da-ti- = (DEUS) HAPA-da-ti- c. /habadanti-/ ‘divine river valley’
“*30”-ri+i-nu-wa/i- = “HAPA”-ri+i-nu-wa/i- /haparinuwa-/ ‘to deliver’.

This work on the Piacenza Liver (previously published May 9, 2006 on Etruscan Phrases, maravot.com) is based upon three different photos – showing different angles – and a common transliteration found on the internet. Through the three different views I was able to correct the common transliteration seen on most sites on the Piacenza Liver. There are parts of the liver that are still hard to read, and a better photo of the bronze would be helpful in this regard. Piacenza liver rendition by Mel Copeland, correcting some errors from renderings found on the internet

The paper shows that the pseudo-decipherment claimed by Adiego (2007) is entirely bogus and that Carian actually is a dialect of Hurrian, written with a Semitic-like consonantal alphabet.
For that matter, the six first lines the Kaunos bilingual are translated on the basis of Hurrian and compared to the Greek version.

Grammar sketch of the Hittite language for the Russian linguistic encyclopaedia: Languages of the World: Relict Indo-European languages of Western and Central Asia. Yuri B. Koryakov and Andrej A. Kibrik (eds.). ― Moscow: Academia, 2013. ― 512 pp.
In Russian

The paper aims to provide a comprehensive description of Hittite clause structure. The picture that emerges is quite different from both the view of Hittite clause architecture as codified in (Hoffner, Melchert 2008) and as documented in the parallel line of research (Luraghi 1990; 2012; forthcoming).
The paper focuses on two key features of Hittite clause architecture: (a) preverbal vs clause initial vs clause second positions; (b) verb’s positions in the clause, although in-depth study of these aspects involves examination of virtually every significant feature of Hittite syntax.
Preverbal position is constituted by wh-words, subordinators, negation markers, negative, indefinite and relative pronouns as well as some adverbs, only part of these constituents can alternatively be clause initial or second. Contrastive focus is normally preverbal, contrastive topic is clause initial. Two focus positions are distinguished in a Hittite clause – high (subjects and objects) and low (adverbs, adverbials). Wh-words, subordinators and relative / indefinite pronouns can also be optionally postverbal. It is significant that only lower focus can be postverbal, never high focus, even though in the canonical word order both high and low focus is preverbal. No information structure difference is detectible between the preverbal and postverbal positions.
It is shown that non-canonical positions of the verb can be described by two movements to the left from the canonical clause final position: (a) to the clause internal position which follows subject and object, both topical and focal, on the one hand, and precedes what is in the canonical word order the preverbal position5, on the other, producing V-wh/Neg/Rel, S-O-V- wh/Neg/Rel word orders; (b) to the clause leftmost position, producing V-S-O word order. *V- wh/Neg/Rel-S-O or *wh/Neg/Rel-V-S-O word orders are not attested in my ‘diplomatic’ corpus.
The last point raises an important question of sociolinguistics of the Hittite language, namely evidence for (idio)lects.

This is part 3 of 11 parts of a table that contains a reconciliation of Indo-European, Hurrian, Hittite, Georgian (Kartvelian), Finnish (Uralic) words, including a confirmation of Etruscan words. The latest update of this table Is 6.12.21 and can be accessed through the link below.

Hittite dictionary update includes Concordance. This work includes Hittite words gleaned from internet sources, including the University of Texas  but predominately from Lia Liberian (aka Pema), an undergraduate of VU University Amsterdam who uploaded her Hittite-English Dictionary to academia.edu on March 6, 2018. I, myself, have been building a table of Indo-European words that reconciles to Uralic, Baltic, Georgian, Hurrian, Akkadian and others that may show light on the development and migration of the Indo-European languages. To fold Liberian's work and other dictionaries into Indo-European Table1, it was essential to convert them into this English-Hittite Dictionary. Just as the Copeland-Akkadian-English Dictionary grew into a Concordance, so too has the Copeland-English-Hittite Dictionary. The Concordances were made possible through the works of Etruscan Phrases Indo-European Table 1.