Project “Ergativity and nominal aspect”

OVERVIEW

As one of the senior editors of the Chicago Hittite Dictionary Project I study the meaning of individual words. By contrast, my current book project Ergativity and nominal aspect in the Indo-European Languages of Anatolia, 1700-300 BCE focuses on discovering how formal categories like the core cases (nominative, accusative, ergative, absolutive) create meaning beyond the dictionary definitions of individual words. Whereas the other cases all have been treated in monographs, the core cases have mainly been covered in articles or as part of larger overviews and grammars. With my project I intend to partially fill this gap in the linguistic description of not only Hittite but of all Indo-European Anatolian languages. Among the topics that the individual chapters will cover are the rise of ergativity in Hittite and Lycian and the semantics of noun classes. Since the study is based on more than 1000 years of textual evidence, I will also investigate whether any observed language change correlates with known changes in society, such as population movements or extensive contact with other cultures.

The project has currently the following outcomes:

(1) One of the most controversial topics in Anatolian linguistics is whether the Anatolian languages show split-ergativity based on nominal type. The debate revolves around the analysis of Hittite ‑ants, Luwian ‑antis, and Lycian ‑ẽti as either ergative endings in the neuter paradigms of these languages, or as a morpheme –ant- that derives common gender nouns from neuters, followed by the nominative endings. While in both views the morpheme has the effect that it allows the referents of neuters to occur as transitive subject, the linguistic analysis is vastly different, with repercussions for both the semantics of noun phrases and the origins of split NP ergativity. I show that among the Anatolian languages only Hittite fully developed an ergative case ending for neuter nouns, while Lycian was in the process of developing one. In both cases the source of the ergative case ending was the common gender derivational morpheme –ant-. This morpheme originally served to individuate common and neuter gender non-count nouns such as masses, collectives, and abstract notions, but was replaced in Hittite by thematization by means of ‑a-. –ant- itself became a marker of agency for neuters, and then grammaticalized into the ergative case ending –ants for neuters. This process was completed after the reign of Mursili II (1321-1295 BCE). This novel synchronic and diachronic analysis of individuating –ant- and ergative ‑ants both exposes finer differences in meaning that have thus far eluded us and provides a unique insight in how NP split-ergativity might arise (# 2, 3).

(2) Grammatical gender in Hittite is not a fixed property. Count nouns assigned common gender may take neuter endings. Non-count nouns such as collectives are typically assigned neuter gender, but when the individuals in the collective are referenced, case endings that are typically reserved for common gender nouns may be used. For example, the genitive plural ending –an is used with singular neuter collectives, but only when individual members of the collective need to be invoked. In other words, it is used in reference to the sum of the individual members of the collective (#4).

(3) The investigation into when referents are marked as nominative led to the discovery of a formal distinction between Hanging Topics and Left-Dislocation in Old Hittite. Left-Dislocation is marked as kuid⸗a NP ‘but as for NP’, with the NP assigned the case it occupies in the following matrix clause. Hanging Topics, on the other hand, are always assigned nominative case, irrespective of their function in the matrix clause. (#6, 7). The lexical study on warkuess- ‘to become angry’ is also an outcome of the research into the nominative (#5).

OUTPUT

Articles (ask me for offprints!)

  1. ‘The alignment of Hattian: An Active Language with an Ergative Base’. Babel und Bibel 4-5 (2007-2008) [2010] (= Proceedings of the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale 53, Moscow), 949-981
  2. ‘Split-ergativity in Hittite.’ Review article of Patri, Sylvain (2007), L’alignement syntaxique dans les langues indo-européennes d’Anatolie (StBoT 49). Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 102/2 (2012), 270-303 [final submitted version]
  3. ‘The Packagers -ant- and -a-, and the Origin of Split-Ergativity in Hittite (and Lycian)’ In: David M. Goldstein, Stephanie W. Jamison, and Brent Vine (eds.), Proceedings of the 29th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. Bremen: Hempen 2018, 77–115 [final submitted version]
  4. ‘The Old Hittite Plural Genitive -an.’ In: Ronald Kim (ed.), QAZZU warrai: Anatolian and Indo-European Studies in Honor of Kazuhiko Yoshida, Ann Arbor and New York: Beech Stave Press 2019, 59-72 [proofs]
  5. ‘The Fat and the Furious. *w(o)rǵ-‘fat, furious, strong’ and derivatives in Hittite and Luwian’. In: David M. Goldstein, Stephanie W. Jamison, and Brent Vine (eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. Hamburg: Buske 2021, 121-37 [reviewed and revised version]
  6. ‘Old Hittite kuid⸗a ‘but as for’, introducing contrastive topics in left-dislocation’. In: Petra Goedegebuure and Theo van den Hout (eds.), Acts of the 10th International Congress of Hittitology 2017 [revised version]
  7. ‘Zalpa self-destructs: A new ending for Zalpa and the Zalpa text’. For a Gedenkschrift. [submitted version]

 

Talks

  1. The Use and Non-use of the Enclitic Subject Pronoun in Old Hittite, October 7, 1999, IVth International Congress of Hittitology, Würzburg, Germany
  2. Frames in Hittite. March 10, 2006, Functional Discourse Grammar Colloquium, University of Amsterdam
  3. The syntactic alignment of Hattian. July 25, 2007, Workshop Limited Corpus Languages, Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale 53, Moscow
  4. The rise of split-ergativity in Hittite. March 17, 2015, 225th Annual Meeting of the American Oriental Society 2015, New Orleans, Louisiana (20 min.)
  5. The rise of split-ergativity in Hittite. February 22, 2017, guest lecture Seminar Case in Diachronic Perspective, the Department of Linguistics, Chicago (50 min.)
  6. Left-Dislocation in Old Hittite. August 31, 2017, 10th International Congress of Hittitology, Chicago
  7. Keynote lecture: The Universal Packagers -ant- and -a-, and Split-Ergativity in the Anatolian Languages, November 4, 2017, 29th West Coast Indo-European Conference, UCLA, Los Angeles (45 min.)
  8. Nominal Aspect and Individuation in Hittite and Luwian. October 30, 2018, Ancient Languages Reading Group, Chicago (1.5 hours)
  9. The Fat and the Furious. Word Play in Hittite. November 9, 2019, 31th West Coast Indo-European Conference, UCLA, Los Angeles (20 min.)
  10. Hittite Individuating -a-: Thematization or Free-standing Genitive? June 14, 2020. Virtual East Coast Indo-European Conference XXXIX, June 12-14, 2020 (20 min.)
  11. Hittite Elliptic Genitives. Special Panel: New Linguistic Approaches to Texts in Ancient Indo-European Languages. March 22, 2024, 234th Annual meeting of the American Oriental Society, Chicago (15 min.)
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