Indo-European Origins of Anatolian Morphology and Semantics
Innovations and Archaisms in Hittite, Luwian and Lycian
Anatolian is an extraordinary branch of the Indo-European language family. Attested in cuneiform, hieroglyphic and alphabetic texts dating back to the first two millennia BCE, it is intriguing already by itself. But Anatolian is also of central importance for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, the last common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Not only is it the earliest attested branch, it has also long been suspected that Anatolian reflects an earlier stage of the proto-language than that underlying the other members of the family.
Focusing on the three best-attested Anatolian languages, Hittite, Luwian and Lycian, this book aims to further our knowledge and understanding of Anatolian, and by extension Proto-Indo-European, by offering in-depth analyses of essential issues in Anatolian historical morphology and semantics. Various well-known debated issues as well as several newly adduced topics are scrutinized in detail to determine whether the innovations leading to the discrepancies with the rest of Indo-European took place on the Anatolian or on the non-Anatolian side.
The present study suggests that Anatolian is in many respects closer to the ancestor of the other Indo-European languages than it is often claimed to be. Nevertheless, the investigation has also led to new evidence in favor of the hypothesis that Anatolian was the first branch to split off from the family.
