The Prehistory of Mediopassive Verbs in Indo-European: New Evidence from Hittite

Abstract

The morphological changes in 3 sg. mediopassive endings, -a → -ta and -a → -atta, were still operating during attested Hittite history. This fact, together with the nonexistence of -atta in Old Hittite manuscripts and the retention of original a-class status in 3 sg. imperatives of many ta-class mediopassives, shows that 3 sg. mediopassive verbs in -ta do not go back to a very early period. Contrary to the generally accepted view that both *-to and *-o must be reconstructed as 3 sg. mediopassive endings in the parent language, *-to cannot have been created when the Anatolian branch split off from the rest of the Indo-European family. The remodeled ending *-to was undoubtedly due to the influence of the corresponding active 3 sg. *-ti (primary ending) and *-t (secondary ending). The fact that -ta (< *-to) is overwhelmingly favored by preterite mediopassives in Hittite provides us with decisive evidence that many ta-class mediopassives were created after the affrication which occurred in pre-Hittite and applied to 3 sg active primary (i.e., present) *-ti (> *-tsi), but not to 3 sg. active secondary (i.e., preterite) *-t. The morphological history of Hittite mediopassive verbs clarified in this paper shows that Hittite still preserves an archaism of remarkable antiquity which plays an important role in reconstructing the Proto-Indo-European verbal system.