Subordination and Sentence Connectives in Old Hittite

Subordination and Sentence Connectives in Old Hittite
A Corpus-based Study of Clause Linkage Strategies in Hittite

Guglielmo Inglese
Università di Pavia


This monograph offers a new investigation of the Old Hittite sentence connectives nu, šu, and ta, with a focus on their occurrence after subordinate clauses. Although this phenomenon is well known to Hittitologists, a comprehensive account of the synchronic function and the origin of this peculiar construction is still missing. This work aims at partly fulfilling this gap. Based on a detailed corpus analysis of original Old Hittite texts, the occurrence of connectives after subordinate clauses is synchronically investigated in order to assess its syntactic, semantics, or pragmatic motivations. Both quantitative and qualitative data are taken into account, and the discussion is framed within current trends in general and typological linguistics. This study also takes a closer look at the origin of this syntactic pattern, and discusses how the occurrence of connectives in different syntactic environments can be diachronically motivated, taking into consideration the diachronic typology of clause linkage strategies. Building on evidence collected throughout the work, it is argued that a correct understanding of the occurrence of connectives after subordinate clauses in Old Hittite leads to useful insights explaining post-Old Hittite developments in clause linkage, notably the expansion of nu and the eventual disappearance of šu and ta.

ISBN 9783862887347 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 49. 242pp. 2016.