Template talk:hit-decl-aš

Is there a reason you omitted the vocatives?

@Tom 144, for the aš-stem it's -a/-i. —*i̯óh₁nC^[5] 02:06, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

@JohnC5, I made them optional in the base template, mainly for semantic reasons. I forgot to add it to the a-stems. Should it be optional here too? --Tom 144 (talk) 02:19, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

@Tom 144: I'm not sure it should be optional at all. There are always going to be cases that don't make semantic sense in a declension (allative of attaš is a bit weird). How do we feel about ergatives as well? —*i̯óh₁nC^[5] 02:28, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Also, the second vocative form is only currently appearing in the broad transcription table. Could we get it in the others? —*i̯óh₁nC^[5] 02:32, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

@JohnC5:, well as far as I know the ergative was exclusive to neuter nouns and the vocative to common gender nouns. So i fixed the template (hit-decl) so if you type gender=Common or gender=Neuter, it'll show the declension cases for each gender. About the missing vocatives, the issue should be fixed now. --Tom 144 (talk) 02:37, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

@JohnC5:, apparetly I was wrong about the ergative, there is at least one case of it on a common gender noun. Might be due to secondary animacy, who knows. Do you happen to know whether neuter a-stems could be declined in the ergative? Hoffner and Melchert don't show them on their book, neither on adjectives nor on nouns. --Tom 144 (talk) 21:09, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

@Tom 144: So, to be fair, the ergative usage was seemingly emergent in Anatolian and may not have applied to all neuters. It's ergative usage seems to have to do with universal packagers in Hittite. So, we have to decide whether we think they were a real, synchronic case. —*i̯óh₁nC^[5] 04:21, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, after reading what kloekhorst has to say about it:

"Although the suffix in some literature is regarded as a real case-ending, it clearly is not as can be seen by the fact that forms displaying an "erg.pl." in "-anteš" occur as well. This means that and have to be analysed as nom.sg.c. and nom.pl.c. respectively of a suffix ."

I guess the c in nom.sg.c means collective. Hoffner & Melchert explicitly said that they weren't commenting on the nature of the suffix, but they would treat is as a real case ending.

Given the fact that the etymological origin is evidently a derivational suffix I would have to lean towards Kloekhorst. I think the best thing would be to make it optional, since it cannot be treated as lemmas of their own, but cannot be called strictly a case-ending. What do you think? --Tom 144 (talk) 05:47, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

c is the normal abbreviation for common. I'm not sire that changes much. —*i̯óh₁nC^[5] 05:52, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

I see we have four options here. Either we ignore their existance compleatly and erase them from the tables, we treat them as case-endings and add it to all neuter nouns regardless of attestations, we only add them whenever they are attested, or we treat them as derived nouns, and therefore lemmas of their own.

The fist one is simple for us but I wouldn't agree. I already explained why I dissagreed with the second one. The third one is the one I proposed, and I don't think the fourth is a very good idea. --Tom 144 (talk) 06:23, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Transcription and IPA

@Tom 144, so a few things:

• ⟨š⟩ is pronounced /s/, not /ʃ/. The use of ⟨š⟩ is left over from the Akkadian syllabary.
• We use ⟨w⟩ and ⟨y⟩, not ⟨u̯⟩ and ⟨i̯⟩.
• I think the IPA stuff is ill-advised given how speculative our knowledge of Hittite phonology is. For instance, there is much debate about whether ⟨tt⟩/⟨dd⟩ vs. ⟨t⟩/⟨d⟩ represents ⟨t⟩ vs. ⟨d⟩ (the older view) or ⟨tː⟩ vs. ⟨t⟩ (the newer view). Also, at 𒆠𒅕 (“ker”), what is leading to your determination that ⟨i(y)⟩ represents ⟨iː⟩? To my knowledge, this is only a homorganic glide insertion.

—*i̯óh₁nC^[5] 22:44, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

@JohnC5: Addressing the first point. I don't really have an issue using /s/. I chose /ʃ/ because of Ugaritic borrowings mentioned on the page 38 of a grammar of Hittite. They conclude there that ⟨š⟩ was likely not pronounced /s/. But of course we cannot make any claims about the specific pronunciation with confidence, any phoneme is going to be a somewhat arbitrary, but I had to choose one, so I picked /ʃ/.

Concerning my preference for /iː/. PIE *e was weakened to i when not accented and not post-tonic position. Given that the i-stem genitive ending was remodeled to *-ei̯-ós this would have developed to pre-hitt. *-ii̯-ós. Then, intervocalic i̯'s are deleted causing compensatory lengthening on the previous vowel (e.g. *CV́C-ei-ēs > pre-hitt. */CV́Caies/ > hitt. /CV́C-āes/ nom.pl.c.-ending of i-stem adjectives). Therefore pre-hitt. *-ii̯-ós > hitt. -īaš.

On the lenis and fortis issue. I based the table on what it seemed to me the most accepted theory. And since we do not subscribe to glottal theory I guessed I'd just follow Melchert. I haven't made my mind on it. Do you propose to change it? Or just remove IPA from the title? This issue was why I started a discussion on IPA pronunciation here, but it hasn't been very fructiferous. --Tom 144 (𒄩𒇻𒅗𒀸) 01:05, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

@Tom 144: Fair enough. Could I then request that you write an Appendix detailing the system you are using to reconstruct the pronunciation? If it looks good enough, I might even make it a module. —*i̯óh₁nC^[5] 01:13, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

@JohnC5: Could you give me an example of what this Appendix would have to look like? --Tom 144 (𒄩𒇻𒅗𒀸) 01:18, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

@Tom 144: An interesting question. Each of these tends to be unique given the differences between languages. It should probably be under WT:About Hittite (which we annoyingly do not yet possess). This page should be like this, this, this, or this. PS I noticed that sometimes you mess up the rules for pinging. For instance, adding a ping after you've signed it does nothing. Here are the rules. —*i̯óh₁nC^[5] 01:46, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

@JohnC5: Great. I'll start working on a draft in some subpage of mine. --Tom 144 (𒄩𒇻𒅗𒀸) 04:00, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Fortis and lenis

@JohnC5, I've been reevaluating the fortis and lenis issue. After thinking about it a while I've concluded that the long/short distinction is more accurate, but the voiceless/voiced distinction is somewhat convenient. Some of the drawbacks of the long/short distinction are:

• Hittite orthography does not allow us to distinguish between fortis and lenis in initial and final position. Kloekhorst argues that the initial stops might have been all lenited. Although there seem to be reasons to think that they might have become fortis instead. Final stops probably weren't merged. Although final consonants might not be that problematic since words rarely ever end in their stem.
• Geminate zz are an issue. In the voicing theory we can simply use d͡z and t͡s, but not on the geminate theory. Apparently Kloekhorst reconstructs them as always coming from an original PIE *TT sequence. In that case we should probably use /tst(ː)/ or /t͡st(ː)/.
• A phonological development from */t/ > */tː/ doesn't seem natural to me, specially given the principle of minimum effort. To accept the theory then the length of the fortis series should be extended to PIE, but that is just my opinion.

Some points against the voice theory are:

• Geminate spelling is used to show length in other consonants, including š, ḫ, and resonants. Lenition rules apply to both stops and š & ḫ (probably to resonants too, but I'm unsure). That means that lenition is more accurately described as de-lengthing instead of voicing, and therefore the distinction between the fortis and lenis series must have been one of length.
• The Akkadian syllabary had different signs for voiceness, it would be rather absurd to innovate the script, writing voiceless consonants with such an impractical system instead of simply borrowing the original of set voiced and voiceless characters.
• Fortition is sometimes caused by consonantal assimilation (e.g. Vsi̯V > VššV). There is no reason for the ‘’ i̯’’ to trigger devoicing, but it can assimilate to the ‘’s’’ and create a geminate.

Kloekhorst has the habit of not using the phonemic values he believes are correct. He transcribes u̯ātar as /ˈu̯aːdr̩/ even though he actually believes it was pronounced /ˈu̯aːtr̩/. Should we just go with Melchert anyway, or change to Kloekhorst views. Hoffner and Melchert didn't give any argumentation for their position. Btw, should we just do the same thing for PAnatolian? --Tom 144 (𒄩𒇻𒅗𒀸) 16:17, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

@JohnC5,I see we have two options, Melchert or Kloekhorst. Each complete consonantal inventory would look like this:

Melchert

stops	Fortis	/p/	/t/	/k/	/kʷ/
	Lenis	/b/	/d/	/g/	/gʷ/
affricate	Fortis	/t͡s/
	Lenis	/d͡z/
fricatives	Fortis	/sː/	/χ/	/χʷ/
	Lenis	/s/	/ʁ/	/ʁʷ/
resonants	Fortis	/rː/	/lː/	/nː/	/mː/
	Lenis	/r/	/l/	/n/	/m/
glotal stop	/ʔ/

Kloekhorst

stops	Fortis	/pː/	/tː/	/kː/	/kʷː/
	Lenis	/p/	/t/	/k/	/kʷ/
affricate	Geminate	/tst(ː)/, /t͡st(ː)/
	Simple	/t͡z/
fricatives	Fortis	/sː/	/χː/	/χʷː/
	Lenis	/s/	/χ/	/χʷ/
resonants	Fortis	/rː/	/lː/	/nː/	/mː/
	Lenis	/r/	/l/	/n/	/m/
glotal stop	/ʔ/

Kloekhorst shows more consistency, always attributing the distinction to length, although it has an issue with the geminate z, but this might be just a minor problem. Which do you think is better?--Tom 144 (𒄩𒇻𒅗𒀸) 04:11, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

@Tom 144: Sorry for the delay. I've had a lot of homework to do (including Hittite stuff). I think there's pretty good evidence against the voicing theory and as such we should adopt Kloekhorst's opinion. —*i̯óh₁nC^[5] 07:58, 31 January 2018 (UTC)