Syntax or Phonology? Proclitics, Enclitics, and Stress in Hittite

Andrej Sideltsev (Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, acidelcev@gmail.com); Maria Molina (Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, maria.molina@me.com); Alexius Belov (Moscow State University, indogermanica@yandex.ru)

Journal of Language Relationship, № 13/1-2, 2015 - p.139-168

Abstract: The paper deals with the syntax of mān “if”, namma “then”, našma “or”, perfectivising kāša/kāšma, relative and indefinite pronouns as well as some subordinators in Hittite against the background of other Indo-European languages, particularly Latin and Greek. It has been recently proposed that their position in the clause and syntactic behaviour are either partially or fully determined by their being either proclitics or enclitics. We review the proposals and argue that purely phonological rules are highly unlikely for any of the constituents. A purely syntactic account is put forward to fully capture the data. It is particularly noteworthy that from the IE perspective Hittite is radically different from Narrow IE languages (like Old Greek) where indefinite pronouns are normally unstressed: all the Hittite data which are at first sight similar to Narrow IE turn out to be secondary independent innovations of Hittite and cannot serve as the basis of Indo-Hittite reconstruction.

Keywords: syntax, second position, enclitics, proclitics, stress, relative pronouns, indefinite pronouns

PDF