A Diachronic Study of the Hittite Enclitic Particle -ṷa(r)

Abstract

This paper is devoted to elucidating the prehistory of the Hittite quotative particle -ṷa(r) from its Proto-Indo-European preform *ṷerh₁-t ‘(s)he said’ with special attention to its vocalism. A detailed philological examination of the inner-Hittite data shows that the quotative particle is predominantly employed in word-final position in Old Hittite and later gradually comes to be more frequently used in word-internal position as the number of slots for clitics to be filled increases. Considering the general direction of this development, it would not be unreasonable to assume that -ṷa even more frequently occurred word-finally at the stage of pre-Hittite. The result of this analysis has an important consequence for clarifying the development of Hitt. -ṷa(r), ruling out the possibil ity that the a-vocalism of word-final -ṷa is a result of analogy from -ṷar-V and -ṷa-C. Analogical spread of the vocalism a from such slim bases to the preponderantly used word-final -ṷa is unlikely. Based on this result, we are naturally led to assume that a was introduced by a sound change, by which Proto-Anatolian word-final *e becomes *o due to the rounding effect of the preceding ṷ. Rounding influenced by a neighboring labial consonant is typologically quite unremarkable. After this round ing Hittite merges the vowels *o and *a to a. The development of Proto-Anatolian *e in Hittite is very complicated and the effect of neighboring consonants must be carefully considered. No serious student of historical linguistics doubts the importance of philology. This paper shows how detailed philologi cal analysis contributes to an accurate understanding of language history.