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The e-Perfect in Hittite Author(s): E. H. Sturtevant Reviewed work(s): Source: Language, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Sep., 1927), pp. 161-168 Published by: Linguistic Society of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/409318 . Accessed: 29/12/2011 05:14
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THE e-PERFECT IN HITTITE

E. H.

STURTEVANT

YALE UNIVERSITY

The Hittite documents show many instances of an interchange of the vowels e and a. Since the variation is not uniform, and neither vowel of the pair is restricted to any phonetic surroundings or morphological categories, we must apparently assume several causes, and sound method requires the separate treatment of groups of words which show parallel phenomena. In this paper I propose to discuss the variation in monosyllabic verbal roots which end in a consonant. That the matter needs elucidation appears from these typical examples: eizi 'he is' a'anzi 'they are' egir 'they were' ari 'he has arrived' erir 'they had arrived' aranzi 'they have arrived' Hrozn~' discussed the variation in the radical syllable of verbs, but without coming to any satisfactory conclusion. Forrer2 groups together paradigms of a number of verbs which exhibit the phenomenon, under the captions: 'Umlaut von Verben der mi-Konjugation' and 'Umlaut von Verben der hi-Konjugation'. Tenner3 supplements the forms given by Forrer, and remarks quite justly: 'Mit dem nur vor i eintretenden germanischen Umlaut hat dieser hethitische Vokalwechsel jedenfalls nichts zu tun'. Tenner confines his attention to three verbs of the hi-conjugation, and precisely these verbs, I think, suggest the true source of the variation in most of the words discussed by Hrozn' and Forrer. The verbs are citable as follows: 'know' 'die' 'have arrived' 1 Aaggahhi Pres. arhi aggahhi 2 akti akti 3 akki aki ari
1 2

Die Sprache der Hethiter 169, 170f. (1917).

Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlindischen Gesellschaft NF 1.213f. (1922). 3Ein Hethitischer Annalentext des Konigs Mursilis II 18f. (Leipzig, 1926).
161

162

E.H. STURTEVANT

P1.

1 Aekkweni 2 ekteni 3 1 Aaggahhun 2 akta 3 akkig,lekta 1 Aekkwen 2 ekten 3 ekkir

akkanzi akun akkig,akta akten ekir, akir ak

erteni aranzi arahhun arag erwen erir

Pret. P1.

Imperat. 2 Aak 3 akdu 2 P1. 3 Part. Kekkanza

erten arantu akkanza aranza

With the exception of the forms printedin italics, these verbs show the vowel a in the singular,the third person plural present and imperative, and in the participle,while the vowel e appears throughout the plural, except the third person present and imperative. The few forms which vary from this scheme are of course to be explainedby analogy. I have pointed out4that some of the personalendingsof the Hittite hi-conjugationare remarkablysimilar to those of the Indo-European
perfect tense (2nd sing. ti = tha, 3rd sing. i = e, 3rd pl. pret. ir beside

our documents; e-eg-zi = kar 'he is' and e-Id-ri =

Skt. ur, Lat. are, s frequently inserted before second personalendings as in Lat. vidisti, vidistis, etc.). If, then, the hi-conjugation is in part identified with the Indo-Europeanperfect, the stem-vowel e in the plural of our three verbs is to be equated with Germanicpluralslike Gothic berum'we bore' beside bar 'he bore'. The fact that there is usually no indicationof length in the e-formscited above does not constitute an objection. If the original vowel quantities survived in Hittite, at any rate they cannot be inferredfrom the orthographyof
arac 'he sits' are

typical examples. The correctness of our equation becomes obvious upon a closer scrutiny of the three verbs. Other Hittite words clearly related with
'LANGUAGE

2. 33f. (1926).

THE e-PERFECT IN HITTITE

163

'eyes'7. It follows that the original meaning of the word was 'see', and so we have a preterito-present like Greekolia, Skt. veda,Gothic wait 'I know' beside Lat. vidi 'I have seen'. We must thereforeconnect Hittite ?akk- with Gothic sailvan, Anglo-Saxonseon 'see', from
IE *seqg-8.

' dakk- 'know' are lagaid 'omen'6, akiya- 'give an omen'6, and ?akuwa

Hittite ?akuwa 'eyes' preserves the labializationof the qy, as do

'murder'. The inconsistent representationof the sound-groupkw is due to the limitations of the cuneiformwriting. Since there was only one available sign containingthe consonantw, namely wa, the groups we, wi, etc., had to be written otherwise. Hence we find ku-en-zi for kwenzi'he strikes', ku-is for kwi"'who', etc. On the other hand it was impossibleto write two consonantstogether at the beginningof a
word, and so we find ku-wa-da-ki-nu-un for kwa.kinun 'I frequently

kuid = Lat. quis 'who', and kuen- 'strike': Gk. Oeivw'strike', ~obvos

struck' (preterit of the iterative stem from kwen- 'strike'), ku-wa-at for kwat 'why', and ku-wa-pifor kwapi 'when', 'where'. To be sure, it would have been easy to write the group kwa in the interior of a word (*`d-ak-vua); but a clumsy orthography which is sometimes necessary is frequently used where it could be avoided. For sanhzi or ad-an-ha-zi;hence 'petit' it was necessaryto write either?d-an-ah-zi An extra vowel had to be written in kar-ap-zifor karpzi'he musters', but not in kar-ap-an-zifor karpanzi'they muster'. We should therefore. write the Hittite word for eyes ?akwa, and derive it from PreIndo-European**soqyd. Quite possibly it is the same as IE *oqy(Greek caae, Church Slavonic oko-, etc.) 'eye' with an initial s from contaminationwith *sequ-'see'. The labializationwas, no doubt, regularlylost before consonantsas
in Latin. Hence we have the verb-forms: akti, sekteni, sakta, sekta, lekten, lakdu (cf. also sak, sekkweni, 8ekkwen). Analogy carried the k and into the the rest of the beside the accurate ?d-an-hu-un 'petii' we find also sd-an-ah-hu-un9.

simple through paradigmn ?agail 'omen', and lakiya- 'give an omen'.

derivatives,

6 See Weidner, Archivfiir Keilschriftforschung1. 10 (1923); Sommer and Ehelolf, BoSt. 10. 99. 6 Friedrich, Zeitschrift fiir Assyriologie NF 3. 198 and fn. 7 (1926). 7 Friedrich, Staatsvertrdgedes Hattireiches in Hethitischer Sprache 35f. (1926). This is Friedrich's transcription of the word; a better transcription is suggested below. 8 For further connections in IE, see Walde-Pokorny, VergleichendesWorterbuch der IndogermanischenSprachen 2. 477-80 (1927). 1 Sommer, Boghazkdi-Studien7. 45.

164

E.H. STURTEVANT

The preterit of Goth. sailvanis salv 'he saw', s8lvun 'they saw', the stem-vowel of the singular representingIE o, and that of the plural IE 9. It follows that in our Hittite verb also gakkicorresponds to IE
*soqye, while 9ekkiris equivalent to IE *s8qyre,*s8qyr, or the like. We

have, then, fairly clear evidence of qualitativeablaut in Hittite. This harmonizeswith my suggestion1'that the Hittite ablative ending ts (az, za, etc.) is the nil-gradeof the suffix *tos, which forms ablatival adverbs in the IE languages;we may now conclude that Hittite did not break away from the parent stock until after the ablaut changes. The verb ak- 'die' does not usually have the meaning of the IE perfect. Ekamplesfrom the law code are these: A. SAG II GUD pa-a-i, 'If an ox dies in anyone's field, the owner of the field gives two oxen'. ?197 (Hr.): (6) tdkr-kuLY-dg SAL-an HAR.SAG-i e-ip-zi LCna-dg wa-dg-tul na-dg a-ki (7) tdk-ku e-ip-zi SAL-na-da wae_,-ri-ma a woman on a mountain, dg-ta-ig SAL-za (8) a-ki, 'If a man siezes ?72 (Hrozn'): tdk-ku GUD-d? A. SAGHI.A -ni ku-el-qa a-ki BE.EL

<it is> the man's crime,and he dies. If he seizes <her> in a house, <it is> the woman'scrime,and the woman dies.' The participle of ak- does, to be sure, fall into line with the IE
is parallel to Greek ot

perfect; for D.MESakkantes 'Di

Manes"'1 the verb 'the dead'. In general, however, correspondsto rTEOV77Koes

ation as in a largeproportionof the verbs of the hi-conjugation. There is no lack of hi-verbs denoting a state or condition of the subject
(9uppi 'he is [ceremonially] pure'12,zinir 'man ist fertig"', Galli a'egar

&roevO Kwrather than to v WVfKa. We have, in short, the same situ-

appai 'der grosse Gottesdienstist aus'14), but a majority of them have the meaning of the IE present tense formations (e.g. arri 'he washes', of Hittite we must continueto speak of the hi-conjugation, ratherthan of the perfect tense; for in generalit is parallelin meaningto the miconjugation. I would therefore see in the participle akkantel 'the dead'a survivalof the originalforceof the verb, whilethe morecommon aki 'he dies' is a part of the far reaching Hittite assimilationof the original perfect to the present.
10 Journal of the American Oriental Society 47. 182-4 (1927). 11Hroznk, BoSt. 3. 1397; Sommer and Ehelolf, BoSt. 10. 47. 12 Sommer and Ehelolf, BoSt. 10. 7.

peddai 'he hastens, flees', ?pjanti 'airvbet'). From the point of view

13 G6tze,
14

Hattusilis 99. Friedrich, ZA NF 2.2942.

THE e-PERFECTIN HITTITE

165

If we may assume that Hittite aki once meant 'he is dead', there is no difficultyin connectingit with Latinegit, perfect of ago 'drive,pass, do'. The connectinglink is suggestedby Latin phrasessuch as aetatem agere 'pass one's life' and qui tum agebant'who were alive at that time'. If we put the verb into the perfect in this meaning we get somethingparallelto vixit 'he has lived'; i.e. 'he is dead' (cf. Plautus
Bacchides 151: vixisse nimio satiust iam quam vivere). Possibly, how-

ever, we should start from the meaning 'do, perform';in which case
the development of meaning was similar to that seen in Greek
KEA770Tes

'those who have finishedtheir work; the dead'. Latin aggre 'they have done' may, then, be the precise phonetic equivalent of Hittite ekir 'they died'. That the stem-vowele was IE is shown by Greek ixa, Skt. ija 'I drov&e. Icelandic5k must be analogical; possibly the 5 is due to a contaminationof o in the singular and 8 in the plural (comparebelow). The vowel a of this and similar and widely divergentsources Latin perfectshas often been discussed16, have been suggested. It has not usuallybeen connectedwith Germanic 9 in plural preterits beside a in the singular,partly because Germanic showsthe alternationof a and 9 only in roots with an initial consonant, and partly because the a which thus alternates with 9 representsIE o. It is, however, possible that the Germanicrestrictionto one type of root is a secondary development, and it is also possible that in Latin ?gi, etc., the 9 which intruded from the plural supplanted an the identity of the latter pair with Goth. salv:s9Ivun makes some such developmentplausible. At any rate there is little doubt that ekir is to be identifiedwith Lat. aggre. There are several different verbs from the Hittite root ar-, whose forms and meanings must be kept apart. Friedrich"6 distinguishes between arnuzi 'he brings' (originally'causesto come'), artari 'he rises, comes, takes his stand, stands', arai (also araizzi) '<the wind, the enemy> rises', and our verb ari. This last Friedrichtakes to mean 'he arrives',but as far as my observationsgo it always permitsa perfect are these: meaning, 'he has arrived, is come'. Typical edxamples
nu-mu KI. KAL. BAD Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazkoi nu-za A.NA KI.KAL.BAD I.NA unRHar-ra-na an-da a-ar-da 4.4.3.27. (28) ekkir and earlier o. The parallelism of Hittite aki: ekir with s'akki: A

der Indogermanischen Grammatik Sprachen mann, Grundris8 der Vergleichenden

22. 3. 27, 4271.
16 ZA NF 2.41-5; cf. G6tze, ib. 2.18. The meanings in the text are not precisely those given by either of these authors, but accord with my own observation.

551, Brug16See Sommer, Handbuch der Lateinischen Laut- und Formenlehre2

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E.H.

STURTEVANT

2-wa-a-tar a-pi-yu i-ya-nu-un, 'The army had reached me at Har= Hrozn?, BoSt. 3.182.15: nu GIM-an KBo. 3.4.2.15 I.NA HAR.SAGLa-wa-sd a-ar-hu-un, 'And when I was come to Mt. Lawasa .... ' KBo. 4.10.1.5: nu-ut-ta UDUM SI.IM.TI.KA a-ri, 'And for you

ranas,and I there took commandof the army.'

the day of your fate is (will be?) here.'

Law-Cpde ?31 (Hr.): tdk-ku L1t-dg EL.LUM GIM-d-Id wa (??i?)e-li-eg na-at an-da a-ra-an-zi na-an-za A.NA DAM.SU da-a-i, 'If a

free man and a slave woman are in love (?) and they have come together, and he takes her for his wife Friedrich(loc. cit.) cites ar'kizzias the iterativefrom ari 'he arrives'; bu?tin fact ari retains its original perfect meaning 'he has arrived', while argkizzi is the correspondingpresent 'he arrives'17. Typical examples follow: Hattusilis2.10-13 (pp. 14-17 G6tze): 'The enemy from Turmittas began continually to assail the country Tuhhuppiyas; and because Suwataras.' Ippassanas was devastated, he reached (a-ar-di'-ki-it) KBo. 3.4.3.70: 'He reached (a-ar-dS-ki-it) Zazzisas, and took the Upper Country'. The IE languages present a series of forms parallel to those just cited from Hittite. The causative arnuzi correspondsto Skt. rndti, Gk. artari, with its preterit artat, comes as close as a Hittite is parallelwith Skt. rcchdti; and ari findsits analoguein the Skt. perfect drur. arai alone remainswithout an IE formation Hittite dra, plural to match it, unless this is furnished by the to-stem of Latin orior. That is a possibility which I'plan to discuss at length on another occasion. The meaningsalso of the Hittite root are nearly all found in the IE languages,but they are not so neatly parcelledout among the several formations. Hittite has evidently preservedseveral distinctionswhich have faded out in the IE languages, although it is possible to find is causative passageswhich illustrate the original values. Thus rnp6ti
17 Sommer (BoSt. 4.132, 10.21f.) holds that the Hittite sk-formations have an 'iterative-durative' function. Many of them certainly have; but it is a mistake to attempt to force them all into that category. The verb cited above is one of a considerable group whose use cannot be distinguished from the corresponding presents in the Indo-European languages. Apparently the Hittite 'iterativeduratives' represent a secondary development analogous to the Latin inceptives in -sco.

could to the Skt. aorist drta, and Gk. 5cpro;the sk-formation arikizzi verb 6ppvvr;

THE e-PERFECTIN HITTITE

167

in Rigveda 9. 10.6: dpa dvd'rd matina'm pratnd' r~wanti kardvahthe ancient poets open the doors of worship'; and Greek 6pvvpyp is regularly causative in the active voice. The meaning of artari appears in Gk. cpro 'he started up'. The Old Persian sk-imperfect arasam corresponds in use precisely with Hittite arskit; e.g. Behistan 2.6: yata adam arasam Madam, 'until I reached Media'. The Skt. perfect shows the force of Hittite ari in Rigveda 2.9.3: ydsmdd y6ner udd'ritha, 'from what womb thou art sprung'. Latin orior, whether or not it is connected in form, has the same meaning as Hittite arai, 'rise up'; even the suggestion of hostility is contained in the compound adorior. The IE languages nowhere present clear evidence for the vowel 9 in the perfect of the root *er-; but in view of the Hittite forms, Skt. dra, drur probably contain IE E; the Greek perfect 6pwpais analogical in any case. As we have more than once assumed, the third pl. perf. of the IE languages (Skt. drur, Lat. ?gare, Tocharian wenidre 'they have said') appears in Hittite as the third pl. pret. (sekkir, ekir, erir), although the corresponding third sing. perfect (Skt. dra, Greek 'xe, Lat. ?git) must be identified with the Hittite third sing. present (lakki, aki, ari). This distribution of forms undoubtedly stands in some relation to the fact that in the mi-conjugation also the third pl. preterit ends in ir (e.g. eSzi 'he is', esdir'they were'). In view of Skt. third pl. aorists like ddur 'they gave', it may be that the ending ir was present from the beginning in the mi-conjugation, but on the whole it is more likely that in prehistoric Hittite, as in Vedic Sanskrit, the perfect came to be used sometimes as a preterit, so that it was in a position to contribute an ending to the preterit tense (which, on any theory, is of composite origin). Once the ending ir had established itself as a preterit, its place was taken in the present (originally perfect) by the ending anzi of the miconjugation. This alien origin explains the fact that in our verbs the third pl. present differed in vocalism from the other plural forms (ak-anzi, aranzi). The third pl. imperative also came from the miconjugation, and differed in vocalism from most of the plural forms (arantu). Another form from the mi-conjugation is clearly the participle, and this also follows the vocalism of the singular. The contrast thus established between the vocalism of the third pl. preterit on the one hand, and the third pl. present and imperative, and the participle, on the other, reacted upon certain verbs which originally had the stem-vowel e throughout. Thus from es- 'inhabit,

168

E. H. STURTEVANT

dwell; be' we have the singular forms elmi, eszi, e un, efta, es, eldu,

as well as the pluralforms estenand esir; but the analogicalproportion,

erir:aranzi = elir:x, yielded alanzi 'they are,' and similarly we get

alandu 'let them be', and asanza 'being'. Just so epmi 'I take' (:Lat. adipiscor,coapi,etc.) always shows the stem-vowele, except in appanzi 'they take', appandu'let them take', appanza'taking', and the verbal noun appatar'taking, dwelling'. All the forms of ed- 'eat' have radical e, except adanzi 'they eat', adandu 'let them eat', adanna 'to eat' (infin.), adanzi 'to eat' (supine), and the iterative stem azk- (e.g. azzi-ik-kdn-zi 'they eat').

That these forms with secondarya are analogicaland not due to a phonetic development(say, anticipationof the a of the followingsyllable), is shown by the fairly numerousthird pl. presents which retain radical e; e.g. essanzi 'they use, treat', sesanzi 'they sleep', memanzi 'they say', wekanzi'they ask, demand'. Since two, at least, of the verbs which changede to a in the third pl. present (e?- and ed-) must have had short radical vowels, it seems necessaryto conclude that the inducing forms (lekkir, egir, erir) also had short vowels in the radical syllable. This is an additionalreason for thinking that Hittite had lost the originaldistinctionbetween long and short vowels. The frequent double writing of a vowel (e-e?-zi, a-ar-d?,ar-ha-a-ri)should therefore not be interpretedas evidence of long quantity. The variation between e and a in the consonantalverbs is therefore to be traced to the same source as the variation between o and ? in IE perfect. We have found three verbs which show traces of the peculiar formation both in Hittite and in the IE languages. Very likely others will be discovered. Many Hittite verbs, however, owe to analogy an a in the radical syllable of the third plural present and imperative, the participle,and certain other forms. Scarcelyless importantthan our main conclusionis the demonstrais of compositeorigin. Whilesome tion than the Hittite hi-conjugation of its salientfeaturesare of the same originas the IE perfect,it usually carriesthe meaningof the IE present (or aorist), and some of its forms (i.e. third pluralpresent and imperative,and the participle)come from the original inflection of the present. It will not be surprising if traces of aorist inflectionare found in the hi-conjugation.