Hittite and Indo-European: Revolution and Counterrevolution
H. Craig Melchert
University of California, Los Angeles
Abstract: Hrozný’s identification of Hittite as an Indo-European language
challenged nearly every major tenet of the widespread, though by no means
universal, consensus regarding Proto-Indo-European as reconstructed in 1915.
Two broad approaches to the problem had appeared by the 1930s: one saw Hittite
as descended from an archaic proto-language radically different from PIE: “Proto-
Indo-Hittite”. The other claimed that Hittite was effectively derivable from PIE as
reconstructed. These opposing conceptions were challenged in the 1960s by a
third: PIE itself required radical revision, especially in the reconstruction of the
verbal system—a veritable “revolution”. By the early 1990s there was a new
broad consensus that some significant revisions to PIE were required, with
lingering disagreement about just how many and how radical. While this debate
continues, the general tendency over the past two decades has been one of
retrenchment, with Hittite appearing ever less radically different from the rest of
Indo-European (a partial “counterrevolution”).
Keywords: Anatolian, Core Indo-European, Hittite, Indo-European, Indo-Hittite,
Schwundhypothese, Stammbaum,
2
Bedřich Hrozný in 1915 identified Hittite, a language attested in cuneiform
documents from Central Anatolia from the middle of the second millennium BCE,
as a member of the Indo-European family. He fully elaborated the demonstration
in his 1917 book, Die Sprache der Hethiter. In order to appreciate fully just how
strong the impact of his identification has been on Indo-European studies, we
must remind ourselves of the state of the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European
in 1915.
Contrary to a widespread myth (see e.g. Nichols apud Gamkrelidze and
Ivanov 1995: xi), there has always been in Indo-European studies vigorous dissent
from the majority or “standard” view, and controversies regarding virtually every
aspect of reconstructed PIE grammar. I cite among many examples only three,
two involving phonology, the third morphosyntax. There has been fierce debate
since the late nineteenth century whether Proto-Indo-European had two or three
contrastive sets of dorsal stops and whether there was in PIE a fourth series of
voiceless aspirated stops contrasting with the voiceless, voiced, and voiced
aspirated sets. Furthermore, the typological problem that arises if one reconstructs
only the last three was already recognized and discussed by Prokosch (1918–
1919). There has been an even longer running dispute about the function of the
PIE verbal category traditionally labeled the “perfect”: against the dominant view
that it expresses an “attained state” (see among many Delbrück 1897: 177ff., with
references to Buttmann and Kohlmann) there have been repeated claims for an
3
“intensive” value (e.g., Bréal 1899–1900: 277 and Hirt 1928: 279–280, citing
Curtius and Bopp!).
Nevertheless, by the early twentieth century, there had developed a broad
consensus on the major features of Proto-Indo-European. I may cite the following
points as common to the otherwise often strikingly different conceptions of
Brugmann (1897–1916) and Meillet (1912)—they are mostly also shared by the
famously idiosyncratic grammar of Hirt (1927–1937). In terms of phonology,
none of them reconstructs “laryngeals” or “sonants coefficients” for PIE. They
also largely agree on the distinctive features of the stop series: *T, *T
h
, *D, *D
h
(but Hirt does not reconstruct *T
h
). In the nominal system all assume three
genders, three numbers (singular, dual, and plural), and eight cases in the singular
(and there is broad agreement on the formal exponents of these functional
categories). For the verbal system all reconstruct an aspectual contrast of
“present”/“aorist” (really imperfective/perfective), an opposition in diathesis
between active and medio-passive, and four moods (indicative, imperative,
subjunctive, and optative). Brugmann and Meillet also follow the standard view
of the “perfect” as expressing “an attained state” and of the “pluperfect” as its
preterite (but for Hirt see above). Finally, all three scholars posit a contrast of
athematic versus thematic inflection in both the nominal and verbal systems.
The wholly unexpected demonstration by Hrozný in 1915 that Hittite was an
Indo-European language immediately made it the most ancient directly attested
4
member of the entire family. The fact that despite its antiquity it showed striking
discrepancies (especially missing categories) vis-à-vis the other most ancient
representatives (most notably Indo-Iranian and Greek) along with the undeniable
commonalities eventually came to cast doubt on virtually every point of the above
consensus (except for the indicative and imperative moods).
This “special status” of Hittite also seriously affected the reception of the
contemporaneously discovered Tocharian in Central Asia. I personally am firmly
convinced that, had Hittite never been discovered, the current widespread
judgment that Tocharian also preserves some archaic features versus “Core Indo-
European” would hardly exist. Although the impact of the other languages on the
reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European would remain negligible for many
decades, one should also not overlook that several scholars soon confirmed that
Hittite was not alone in Asia Minor, but was part of an entire new subfamily of
Indo-European that has subsequently come to be labeled “Anatolian”. See
especially Forrer 1919, Hrozný 1920, and Meriggi 1936ab.
External events, above all World Wars I and II, seriously delayed the full
impact of Hittite on the reconstruction of Indo-European. Although there were
some isolated early responses, such as those by Marstrander (1919), Kellogg
(1925), and Kuryłowicz (1927), Hittite textual material only became available in
significant quantity and in philologically reliable editions in the 1930s (due to the
5
efforts of the Hittitologists Johannes Friedrich and Albrecht Götze and to a lesser
extent of the Indo-Europeanist Ferdinand Sommer).
The creation of a genuine Hittite philology led to the first major pre-World
War II assessments of the meaning of Hittite for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-
European, those of Edgar Sturtevant (1933) and Holger Pedersen (1938). These
studies largely set the agenda on the topic for the next three decades, and the very
wide divergence in their findings led to two radically opposing viewpoints that
dominated the field (though in a quite unequal fashion).
Sturtevant concluded that the generally less elaborate Hittite grammatical
system (with only two grammatical genders in the nominal system and a
monothematic verb that had only indicative and imperative moods and no
category matching the “perfect”) largely represents an archaic state inherited from
a proto-language radically different from the Proto-Indo-European reconstructed
principally on the basis of Indo-Iranian and Greek. In Stammbaum terms Hittite is
thus a “sister” of PIE, both reflecting a very archaic parent “Proto-Indo-Hittite”
(thus the shorthand label “Indo-Hittite” for this model). While one should not
understate the degree of archaicity that Sturtevant assumed is preserved in Hittite,
one should also avoid attributing to him the simplistic notion that Hittite is almost
unchanged Proto-Indo-Hittite. He certainly acknowledged that Hittite had made
some innovations of its own. What was crucial to his thesis was the claim that the
6
rest of the Indo-European languages had undergone massive shared innovations
that included the creation of some major grammatical categories.
Pedersen argued in response that Hittite is effectively derivable from Proto-
Indo-European as it had already been reconstructed, displaying the usual mixture
of archaisms and innovations found in any language. Since for Pedersen (and
others who share his fundamental view) many of the Hittite innovations consist in
the loss of major grammatical categories, this approach is widely referred to in the
field as the “Schwundhypothese”. While it is a convenient enough label, one
should again not be misled into attributing to Pedersen or any other serious
proponent of this model the simplistic claim that all Hittite innovations involve
losses from the proto-language.
The “Indo-Hittite” and “Schwundhypothese” models dominated Indo-
European studies for three decades, with the latter by far the more prevalent view,
especially in Europe (though one should note the early works of Francisco
Adrados 1961 and 1963).
1
The 1960s and 1970s saw the appearance of a new
third approach: according to its proponents the facts of Hittite (and Tocharian)
1
That Adrados casts his views in a model very different from the Stammbaum in
no way alters the fact that his overall picture of Proto-Indo-European is fully as
radical and archaic as Sturtevant’s Proto-Indo-Hittite. Naturally, their conceptions
of the archaic nature of the earliest reconstructable stage differ markedly.
7
required a radical revision of Proto-Indo-European itself, and they thus rejected
both “Indo-Hittite” and the “Schwundhypothese”. They advocated especially for
the verb a new model with a focus on Anatolian and Italo-Celtic against the
standard model based chiefly on Indo-Iranian and Greek (see in particular
Wolfgang Meid 1963 and 1975 and Calvert Watkins 1969). One should also
acknowledge the entirely independent but equally radical new reconstruction of
the medio-passive by Erich Neu (1968). Having entered the field during this
period of ferment at one of the centers promoting the new, more radical
conception, I believe it is fully justified to characterize these developments as a
“revolution”.
All three viewpoints just described were well represented by multiple and
vigorous advocates at the VIIIth Fachtagung of the Indogermanische Gesellschaft
held in Leiden in 1987, and the profound differences in some of the premises of
the respective models seemed to leave little room for compromise. However, only
five years later at the IXth Fachtagung in Zürich in 1992, the first two approaches
had clearly lost ground. Most participants in the concluding round-table
discussion of plenary speakers appeared to take for granted that some serious
revisions in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European were necessary, wishing to
begin the debate about just what these should be.
Since Zürich there does appear to exist a broad consensus for the need for
serious revision of Proto-Indo-European, but I must stress that this “consensus”
8
consists of a very wide continuum of opinion from conservative to radical on just
how many revisions need to be made and just which ones those are! One must
also acknowledge that the so-called “Schwundhypothese” and “Indo-Hittite”
models remain as minority views (see e.g. respectively Eichner 2015 and Adrados
2007).
While not wishing to deny the broad spectrum of opinion just cited regarding
the degree to which Hittite requires revision of the received model of Proto-Indo-
European, I must call attention to the fact that the last two decades have seen a
significant retrenchment among some specialists in Hittite (respectively
Anatolian) on this issue. If one reads the recent survey articles by Rieken (2009)
and Oettinger (2013-14) on the “position of Hittite/Anatolian”, one finds a
characterization of Anatolian that is far less different from the rest of Indo-
European than one typically met with in works of the early 1980s. Similar
remarks apply to the picture I present in Melchert forthcoming.
2
I have dared to
refer to this development in my title as a “counterrevolution”, on the grounds that
the conception of Proto-Indo-European found in these works is far removed from
some of the more radical models of the 1960s and 1970s.
Counterrevolutions typically do not succeed in entirely turning back the clock
and in undoing all of the changes wrought by preceding revolutions, and that is
2
I must emphasize that the version currently available was last revised in 2012!
9
also the case here. First of all, the three works cited in the preceding paragraph
tend to fall at the conservative end of the spectrum of opinion described earlier. I
do not wish to downplay that there are other conceptions to be found farther
towards the radical end: see among others Jasanoff forthcoming and in this
volume and Kloekhorst 2008: 13–155 and passim. Furthermore, some very recent
research argues for new differences in morphosyntax between Anatolian and
“Core Indo-European”: see Goedegebuure 2000 and Huggard 2011 and 2015.
Hrozný’s groundbreaking achievement thus retains its full innovative impact on
Indo-European linguistics unabated after a full century.
10
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