Contact Studies

OVERVIEW AND OUTCOMES

Languages in contact and the way they interact can tell us much about the socio-cultural organization of contemporaneous society. I am working or have worked on Hattian-Anatolian (publications #1, 2, 4; talks #1, 2, 4) and Hattian-Akkadian language contact (talks #6, 7). But this type of work is also helpful in understanding the prehistory of cultures in contact. My main results are currently:

(1) Before 1800BCE, but probably already around 2000BCE Luwian structurally interfered with Hattian in Central Anatolia. I argue that this can only be caused by movement of a large number of speakers of a form of Luwian in a socio-politically subordinate position (publ. #2).

(2) The Hattian word for ‘wine’ is karam/karan, clearly a borrowing from Elamite/Akkadian karānu. Since viticulture was introduced to the piedmont of the Taurus mountains in the mid-third mill. BCE, this is the earliest possible moment of borrowing. But that means that the Anatolians, who used the Indo-European roots for ‘wine’ (Hitt. wiyan-, Luw. maddu-), were not living south of the Hattians yet, because otherwise their word(s) would have been borrowed into Hattian. Around 2500BCE the speakers of the Anatolian languages were either living in western or eastern Anatolia (or both areas if we speculate that proto-Hittite and proto-Luwic arrived in Anatolia using different routes). (talks #6, 7)

(3) I am currently working on Hattian influence on Palaic. I believe I have detected borrowings of Hattian grammar words in Palaic that point at elite dominance of Hattian speakers. This would suggest that Hattians did not only rule over speakers of Luwian, but also over speakers of Palaic.

OUTPUT

Publications

  1. ‘Hattian origins of Hittite religious concepts: the syntax of ‘to drink (to) a deity’ (again) and other phrases.’ Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 8/1 (2008), 67-73
  2. ‘Central Anatolian languages and language communities in the Colony period: A Luwian-Hattian symbiosis and the independent Hittites.’ In Anatolia and the Jazira during the Old Assyrian period. (Old Assyrian Archives, Studies, Volume 3. (PIHANS 111)), edited by J.G. Dercksen, The Netherlands Institute for the Near East: Leiden 2008, 137-180
  3. ‘Hittite Iconoclasm. Disconnecting the icon, disempowering the referent’. In Natalie Naomi May (ed.), Iconoclasm and Text Destruction in the Ancient Near East and Beyond, OIS 8. Chicago: Oriental Institute 2012, 407-452
  4. ‘Hittite Anatolia: Cornucopia of Cultures in Contact’. News & Notes Quarterly Newsletter 234 (2017):4-9

Talks

  1. The languages and peoples of Central Anatolia. December 15, 2005. The Third Leiden Symposium ‘Anatolia and the Jazira during the Old Assyrian Period’, (Organized by the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO) and the Department of Languages and Cultures of Mesopotamia and Anatolia (TCMA), Leiden University)
  2. Hittite-Hattian contacts. March 23, 2007, Historical Linguistics Discussion Group, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  3. Exerting power on the crossroads of three cultures: the steward of the king in Luwian, Phoenician and Assyrian society. July 25, 2008. Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale 54, Würzburg
  4. The intricate dance of Hittite and Hattian. November 13, 2009, Workshop Language Variation and Change, University of Chicago
  5. Concluding remarks, February 20, 2017, Workshop Talking to Others: Ancient Inscriptions in Multicultural or Multilingual Contexts, University of Chicago
  6. Wine in the ancient Near East: from Origins to Anatolia. Plenary talk, March 17, 2019, American Oriental Society Annual Meeting Chicago.
  7. Anatolians on the Move: From Kurgans to Kanesh. The Marija Gimbutas Memorial Lecture, February 5, 2020, Oriental Institute
  8. Dictionaries. In Search of the City: a Study in lexicography. Seminar Approaches to the Study of the Ancient Near East, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Chicago, November 29, 2022 (80 min.)
  9. “The people of Hatti often speak about my match!” A Queen’s code-switching from Hittite to Luwian and its implications for the linguistic landscape of 13th century BCE Anatolia. Workshop Language Variation and Change, University of Chicago, November 4, 2022 (90 min.)
  10. The Luwian word for ‘city’ and the a5-la-nu oaks from Armi. March 10, 2023, 233rd Annual meeting of the American Oriental Society, Los Angeles
  11. Bad Hittite, Good Hattian. Linguistic interference in the Old Hittite Oracle KBo 18.151. 35th West Coast Indo-European Conference, October 25, 2024, UCLA, Los Angeles
  12. Hattian, Luwian, Palaic, and Hittite in Interaction: Contact-linguistic Support for MBA-LBA Cultural Continuity in Anatolia. November 22, 2024, ASOR Annual Meeting 2024, Boston
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