The Hittite Language
many successive corrections. Under such circumstances even the most conscientious interpreter, who has arrived at a settled theory as to the character of the language, is thereafter sure to be under the influence of that theory. Let us pick at random one or two sentences whose writing is quite clear. P. 168, ll. 16 and 17 of the Hittite texts, we read:
A. BU. IA-ma-kan I. NA. MÂT ALUMi-it-ta-an-ni ku-it an-da a-ša-an-du-li-eš-ki-it na-aš-kan a-ša-an-du-li an-da iš-ta-an-da-a-it.
Hrozný translates this: ‘When (kuit) my father further in the land Mittani dwelled, he in dwelling therein was hesitating.’ The capitals are Akkadian. In the Hittite itself the word ašanduleškit, ‘dwelled,’ is explained as a preterite from a šk-stem based upon a present participle ašand, extended by a an agent suffix ul, the participle ašand being from the root eš ‘to be’. The second occurrence ašanduli is explained as an action noun ‘in dwelling’ from part of the same materials. That is, going about the other way, the root eš ‘to be’, which appears here as aš, a by no means agreeable change,[1] makes a participle ašand, ‘being’; this is extended by a suffix ul which makes out of it an action noun, ‘act of being’; and to this is added the present system ending šk. I presume that few students of I. E. speech will think that the term ‘monstrous’ is too strong for such a bit of formative history. But what is more important is, that everything concerning the word is really guess-work: word-form and meaning— and consequent sense of the entire passage. The verb iš-ta-an-da-a-it, which reminds Professor Kretschmer of ‘stand’, is entirely too glib in its pretense.
One's attention is arrested by p. 180, lines 8 and 9:
Nu-za ANŠU-KUR-RApl ni-ni-in-ku-un nam-ma a-pi-e-da-ni MU-ti I. NAMÂT Arzawwa i-ia-an-ni-ia-nu-un-mit
‘Now warriors and horses I gathered. Thereupon in this year to the land Arzawa I went’. The two verbs in -un mark high water in the assumed I. E. morfology of Hittite, for -un is supposed to be I. E. -om, first person sing. pret. active, as in Gr. ἔφερον = Skt. ábharam. But the lexical matter shows just about how Hittite looks: yanniyanun is supposed to be an extension of a verb yannai (i-ia-an-na-i) ‘he goes’, whereas nininkun ‘I gathered’, supported elsewhere by forms niniktat and niniktari in the sense of ‘it collected itself’, or ‘it was collected’, is interpreted
- ↑ This interchange between e and a is, however, not uncommon.
