Hittite h Initial = Indo-European bh

Abstract

The relationship of Hittite and Indo-European has been recognized chiefly on the basis of certain correspondences in inflectional terminations, suffixes, and pronouns. Indo-European etymologies have, to be sure, been suggested for a considerable number of Hittite words, but a large proportion of these etymologies are clearly unsound and even those which are most plausible have never been worked into the sort of consistent system which could bring conviction to those who understand sound etymological method. Nevertheless our knowledge of the Hittite vocabulary has reached a point where it ought to be possible to discover Indo-European etymologies even if they are obscured by phonetic change. In this paper I hope to connect several words with their Indo-European etymons, and to establish at least one phonetic law. The Hittite verb which appears sometimes with the stem huwaand sometimes with the stem hui-1 shows a rather bewildering range of meaning. The first to be established2 was the meaning 'flee', as in the phrase in the law code,3 tak-ku IR-il hu-u-wa-i 'if a slave runs away'. The causative huinuseems to carry the same force in the annals of the first ten years of the reign of Mursilis II = Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazk6i 3. 4. 2. 69 = Hrozn2, Boghazkii-Studien 3. 194. The text is incomplete at this point, but it seems fairly clear that when Dapalazunawalis fled (kattan huwai?) from Puranda he 'caused his [infantry] and cavalry to flee before him' (piran huinut).