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 Expressing Agency and Point of View: The Core Cases in the Ancient Anatolian Languages, 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 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, the semantics of noun classes, and voice alternations. 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.

OUTPUT

Articles

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. ‘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 10^th International Congress of Hittitology 2017 [revised version]
6. ‘The Fat and the Furious. *w(o)rǵ-‘fat, furious, strong’ and derivatives in Hittite and Luwian’. To be published in: David M. Goldstein, Stephanie W. Jamison, and Brent Vine (eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. [final 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, 225^th 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, 10^th International Congress of Hittitology, Chicago
7. Keynote lecture: The Universal Packagers -ant- and -a-, and Split-Ergativity in the Anatolian Languages, November 4, 2017, 29^th 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, 31^th 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.)