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The Anatolian “Ergative” 0. Abstract 1. Introduction

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The Anatolian “Ergative” 0. Abstract 1. Introduction The Anatolian “ergative” Milan Lopuhaä1 October 17, 2017 0. Abstract The Anatolian languages are unique among the Indo-European languages in having a suffix for neuter nouns in the agent position, hereafter referred to as the agentive suffix. There exist several theories concerning the grammatical analysis of this suffix (Melchert 2007). In this article I expand on research by Goedebuure (2013) by testing these theories for all languages in which this construction is attested. It turns out that the agentive was originally a personifying suffix *-ont-, a function still present in Old Hittite and Luwian. This suffix was grammaticalised into a grammatical suffix already in Proto-Anatolian. This suffix could only occur in the common gender nominative. In Neo- Hittite, the construction -ant-s/-ant-es was reanalysed as case endings -anza/-anteš of a new ergative case appearing only in the neuter gender. A similar reanalysis was happening in Lycian. The suffix *-ont- was grammaticalised in order to be able to form neuter agents, which was impossible in Proto-Indo-European. The non-Anatolian Indo-European languages filled this gap by extending the function of the neutral subject/patient ending *-Ø and *-om to the agent function. This shared innovation constitutes an argument in favour of the Indo-Hittite hypothesis. 1. Introduction One of the characteristic features of the Anatolian languages that sets them apart from the other Indo-European languages is the fact that neuter nouns that are the subject of transitive sentences (the Agent position) do not appear in their nominative/accusative form. Instead they receive a suffix, for example Hittite sg. -anza, pl. -anteš, that is traditionally called the ergative suffix. Such a terminology implicitly presupposes that Anatolian has an actual ergative case, as has been argued for by Garrett (1990). This is, however, not the only theory on the place of the suffix - anza/-anteš within the grammatical system of the Anatolian languages. Laroche (1962) and Benveniste (1962) segment the suffixes into -anza = /-ant-s/ and -anteš = /-ant-es/, so that they consist of a suffix -ant- and a common nominative ending -š/-eš. Thus, under this analysis, there exists a suffix -ant- that transforms a neuter word into a common gender one. Patri (2007), on the other hand, considers the ergative construction to be a special instance of the ablative case,2 which in Hittite has an allomorph -anza. Since there is no concensus whether the “ergative” actually is a separate case in the grammar of the Anatolian languages, in this article I will use the more neutral term agentive3 and reserve the term ergative for a proper morphological case. The discussion on the function of the Anatolian agentive is primarily a synchronic one. As such, the function of the agentive is to be decided in every Anatolian language separately. The discussion has mostly centered on Hittite, as this is the Anatolian language of which the most textual material has survived. Recently Goedegebuure (2013) has given a diachronic description of the agentive in Hittite. She shows that the agentive was a syntactic suffix -ant- in Middle Hittite, whose nominative singular -anza and plural -anteš became fossilised in Neo-Hittite as endings of a new ergative case. The aim of this article is to expand upon Goedegebuure’s research by determining the synchronic role of the agentive construction in the grammar of the Anatolian languages in which it 1 This paper is based on a term paper for a course on Hieroglyphic Luwian taught at Leiden University in 2013 by Alwin Kloekhorst, to whom I am greatful for helpful commentary. 2 Garrett (1990) considers the ablative to be the origin of the ergative case in Anatolian, but in his analysis the ablative and ergative are two separate cases in synchronic Anatolian. 3 Not to be confused, of course, with agentive nouns such as those formed by the suffix -er in English, e.g. walk → walker. is attested, namely Hittite, Cuneiform Luwian, Hieroglyphic Luwian and Lycian.4 After this is established, I will determine the Proto-Anatolian origins of these ergative constructions. Finally, I will consider its implications for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European and for the Indo- Hittite hypothesis. 2. Proposals for analyses of the agentive As was mentioned before there have been several proposals for the analysis of the Anatolian agentive, all of which are neatly summarised by Melchert (2007). One can distinguish between the following four analyses, presented here for the Hittite agentive suffix -anza/-anteš: 1. The semantical or derivational analysis. Under this analysis, proposed by Benveniste (1962), the agentive suffix -anza/-anteš consists of a suffix -ant- and the nominative endings of the common gender. The suffix -ant- is a derivational suffix that creates an animate noun from an inanimate noun by means of personification. Hence, under this analysis, one cannot use the word lingāi ‘oath’ in the agent position, and one has to resort to using lin iianteš ‘oath gods’, which has a different but similar meaning. 2. The syntactical or inflectional analysis. This analysis, first proposed by Laroche (1962), also considers the agentive suffix -anza/-anteš to consist of an inflectional suffix -ant- and the nominative common gender endings. The difference between this analysis and the previous one is that under this analysis the suffix -ant- does not have any semantic value. Instead this analysis posits that neuter nouns, as a rule, cannot be syntactic agents. To express a situation in which a neuter noun is the actor of an action with a patient, the suffix -ant- must be used to change the morphological gender of the neuter noun into the common gender, without affecting the semantics of the noun. 3. The ergative analysis. This analysis has been argued for by Garrett (1990). Under this analysis the suffixes -anza and -anteš cannot be decomposed. Instead, these suffixes are endings of a distinct morphological case, the ergative, which only occurs in neuter nouns. 4. The ablative analysis. This analysis, proposed by Patri (2007), considers the agentive suffix -anza to be a special use of the ablative case. In Hittite, this case is indifferent to number. It occurs mostly as -az, but it has an allomorph -anza. According to this analysis, neuter nouns with the suffix -anteš are actually not agentives, but nominative plurals of derived nouns. Before I try to fit the Anatolian data on these four analyses it is useful to discuss how one can determine which of the analyses is correct for each Anatolian language; this will streamline the discussion in the later sections. First, as was shown by Melchert (2007: 163-164), the ablative analysis cannot hold in Hittite for a number of reasons. First, if the agentive construction is a special use of the ablative case, one would expect some attestations of the agentive construction with the more common ablative allomorph -az.5 Furthermore, the Hittite ablative is indifferent to number, whereas the agentive construction has a distinct plural. Finally, if the agentive 4 Valério (2009) raises the possibility that Palaic fulāsinanza is a possible example of the agentive construction of a Hattic loan fulāsina ‘bread’, although he prefers an interpretation fulāsin-ant-s ‘having bread’. At any rate the context is too scarce to provide enough information about the role of the agentive in Palaic. 5 As Melchert notes, although there are some neuter nouns in which the agentive appears as -az, this is due to “nasal reduction” and the suffix is underlyingly still /-ants/ rather than the ablative ending /-ats/. construction featured an ablative case, one would expect accompanying adjectives and demonstratives to be in the ablative case as well. As Melchert shows this does not happen in Hittite; the agreement relations of the agentive construction will be discussed shortly. In the Luwic languages the same reasons hold. In fact, in these languages the ablative ending is different from the agentive suffix, as can be seen from the following table: Agentive Ablative Singular Plural Hieroglyphic Luwian -antis ? -adi Cuneiform Luwian -antiš -antinzi -adi Lycian ? -ẽti -edi, -adi Thus in all Anatolian languages the agentive construction does not feature the ablative case. From this point onwards I will not include the ablative analysis in my discussion. If the suffix -ant- is a semantical derivation, one expects its usage to be determined semantically rather than syntactically. As such, one expects a derivation X-ant- derived from a noun X to have a different meaning. Since their distribution is determined semantically, one also expects the derived noun X-ant- to appear in other cases than the nominative, and one also expects some instances of X in the agent position. Also, the usage of the suffix would not be determined by morphological gender, but by some semantic property. This property would most likely be inanimacy, as is argued for by Benveniste (1962). The correlation between the neuter gender and semantic inanimacy is not perfect, however, and we would expect a semantic derivation -ant- to appear on inanimate common gender words as well. It should be noted that there is a semantic suffix -ant- in Hittite with many different uses, such as a singulative use and an abundative use; these uses have been described by Josephson (2004). It is a priori possible that the agentive is one of the functions of this suffix; this is especially attractive since one of the functions of the suffix -ant- is to form agent nouns. It is very well possible that this suffix is the historical origin of the agentive construction in Anatolian (Oettinger, 2001). Before investigating this possibility, however, it is necessary to determine the synchronic function of the agentive contruction.
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