In 2005 I was awarded a VENI fellowship in the Netherlands with Exploring the Outer Limits: from Sentence to Discourse in Hittite, a project on the intersection of discourse and sentence structure with a special focus on connectives and clause initial position. My move to Chicago in 2006 brought the project to a premature end, although I have been chipping away at the topic ever since.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Original project summary: This project aims to give an account of the Hittite[1] coordinating and subordinating conjunctions based on their interaction with clause-level Information Structure (IS) and Discourse Structure (DS). To achieve a unified account of the conjunctions in relation to IS and DS a multiple-level analysis will be used based on the layered model of the discourse as formalized in Functional Discourse Grammar. The use of a corpus that contains all securely datable Hittite texts, covering 500 years, will allow a diachronic evaluation of the results thus obtained.
IS and DS interact especially in clause-initial position (P1), the site of communicatively important constituents. For example, the function of a ‘contrastive Topic’, often occurring in P1 together with a conjunction, can only be explained by integrating IS and DS. The relationship between IS and DS has become one of the major issues in current linguistics.
By including many different text-genres, this proposal will widen the scope of the investigation of the relationship between IS and DS. By covering a large time span it will also serve as a basis for its diachronic study, something which has not been attempted before.
Furthermore, a systematic analysis of the conjunctions is a desideratum of Hittite grammar, as the exact nature of several of these conjunctions is unclear. This ultimately results in lack of understanding of the rhetorical structure of Hittite discourse. Secondly, the study of IS in Hittite is in its infancy, leading to diminished insight in the intention of the Speaker/Writer. A combined approach will enhance our knowledge of the oldest attested Indo-European language by adding an important dimension: instead of being confronted with rhetorically bleak texts, we will be able to discover the means a Hittite had to play his audience.
[1] Hittite was spoken in Anatolia (Turkey), from at least 1900BC until 1200BC.
PROJECT OUTCOMES
The Hittite conjunction s(u)=
In 1963 Watkins famously compared the Old Irish preverbal elements no, se and to with the semantically empty Hittite connectives nu, s(u)- and ta. Almost 30 years later Weitenberg (1992) established the complementary distribution of su and ta, based on verb tense: su occurs in the past, and ta in the non-past. This understanding of the Hittite conjunctions is generally accepted and has found its way into the major works of reference.
Nevertheless, over the years several studies have attempted to revive the original view that the connective s- is in fact a third person pronoun, directly continuing the PIE demonstrative *so (masc.), *seh1 (fem.) (and *to (neut.)) (Carruba 1969, 1985 and Boley 2003). The most important argument is the alleged absence of neuter forms for s(u)-. Currently the Hittite corpus contains a few neuter forms (sa-at) but with Carruba this could be the result of a reanalysis of the pronoun sas, san etc. in analogy with nu. I argue, however, that the absence of neuter forms in original Old Hittite compositions cannot be adduced as evidence for pronominal status of sas etc.
I also argue that s(u)- is not semantically empty. Its main function is to indicate a cause-effect relation between the contents of two conjoined clauses and can often be translated as ‘so (that), consequently, in order to, German damit’. It shares this function with nu, although nu also expresses mere sequentiality and concurrent action. In cause-effect sequences in the past tense, s= and nu are in complementary distribution:
- In the absence of clitics we find nu
- Dative clitics are only found with nu
- In all other environments we find s- (with very few exceptions)
OUTPUT
Coordinatie in het Hettitisch (Coordination in Hittite). March 3, 2000, Functional Grammar seminar, University of Amsterdam
The interpersonal level in Hittite, February 13, 2004, Functional Discourse Grammar Colloquium, University of Amsterdam
De zekerheid van de toekomst in het Hettitisch: relatieve bijzinnen en onvoorwaardelijkheid (Certainty of the future in Hittite: relative clauses and unconditionality). February 7, 2006, Hettitologen-convent, University of Amsterdam
On Linguistics and Hittite. Exploring the Outer Limits: from Sentence to Discourse in Hittite. January 17, 2007, Franke Institute, University of Chicago
The Hittite Conjunction su. March 15, 2014, Memorial session for Calvert Watkins, 224th Annual Meeting of the American Oriental Society 2014, Phoenix, Arizona
