Hittite and Hieroglyphic Luvian arha ‘away’: Common Inheritance or Borrowing?

Abstract

Yakubovich (2010), in arguing convincingly that Hittite borrowed its enclitic reflexive particle from Luvian, emphasizes that this contact-induced change in the pronominal system was due not only to close and prolonged contact between speakers of the two languages, but also to the structural (in this case genetic) similarity of the respective systems (2010: 197ff.). Most discussion by Yakubovich and others has focused on Luvian influence on Hittite, prehistoric and in the Middle and New Hittite period. While a few lexical borrowings from Hittite into Luvian have been acknowledged, the question of Hittite-induced changes in Luvian grammatical morphemes has received little or no attention. I will argue that the likewise very similar systems of “local adverbs” and “preverbs” in the two languages led to a borrowing from Hittite into Luvian in this set of grammatical morphemes. While fine details assure a borrowing in this case, overall facts make borrowing far less likely in a second case to be considered. The very similarity of the respective systems makes it hard to determine whether the latter represents common inheritance or parallel independent developments possibly made more convergent by contact.