In
Indo-European linguistics
Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical pro ...
, the term Indo-Hittite (also Indo-Anatolian) refers to
Edgar Howard Sturtevant
Edgar Howard Sturtevant (March 7, 1875 – July 1, 1952) was an American linguist.
Biography
Sturtevant was born in Jacksonville, Illinois, the older brother of Alfred Sturtevant and grandson of educator Julian Monson Sturtevant. He studied at Il ...
's 1926 hypothesis that the
Anatolian languages may have split off a Pre-
Proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...
considerably earlier than the separation of the remaining
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
. The term may be somewhat confusing, as the prefix ''Indo-'' does not refer to the
Indo-Aryan branch in particular, but is iconic for ''Indo-European'', and the ''-Hittite'' part refers to the Anatolian language family as a whole.
Proponents of the Indo-Hittite hypothesis claim the separation may have preceded the spread of the remaining branches by several millennia, possibly as early as 7000 BC. In this context, the
proto-language
In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattes ...
before the split of Anatolian would be called ''Proto-Indo-Hittite'', and the proto-language of the remaining branches, before the next split, presumably of
Tocharian, would be called ''Proto-Indo-European'' (PIE). This is a matter of terminology, though, as the hypothesis does not dispute the ultimate genetic relation of Anatolian with Indo-European; it just means to emphasize the assumed magnitude of temporal separation.
According to
Craig Melchert, the current tendency is to suppose that Proto-Indo-European evolved, and that the "prehistoric speakers" of Anatolian became isolated "from the rest of the PIE speech community, so as not to share in some common innovations." Hittite, as well as its Anatolian cousins, split off from Proto-Indo-European at an early stage, thereby preserving archaisms that were later lost in the other Indo-European languages.
Linguistics
Traditionally there has been a strong notion among Indo-European linguistics that the Anatolian branch was separated earlier than other branches. Within the framework of the
Kurgan hypothesis
The Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory, Kurgan model, or steppe theory) is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and par ...
, the split is estimated to have occurred in roughly 4000 BC.
Some fundamental shared features, such as the
aorist category of the verb (which denotes action without reference to duration or completion), with the perfect active particle -s fixed to the stem, link the Anatolian languages closer to the southeastern languages such as Greek and Armenian, and to
Tocharian.
Features such as the lack of feminine gender in the declensions of nominals, a division between an "animate" common gender and an "inanimate" neuter gender, a reduced vowel system, a tendency towards a greater simplicity of the case system, a less typical
Indo-European vocabulary, and other striking features have been interpreted alternately as archaic retentions, which means that the common Indo-European structural features observed in the non-Anatolian branches evolved at a later stage, or just as later innovations being caused by prolonged contacts in typologically alien surroundings "en route" or after their arrival in
Anatolia
Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The ...
. In favor of the Indo-Hittite hypothesis are the very Indo-European agricultural terminology conserved in Anatolia, otherwise considered the cradle of agriculture, and the
laryngeal theory
The laryngeal theory is a theory in the historical linguistics of the Indo-European languages positing that:
* The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) had a series of phonemes beyond those reconstructable by the comparative method. That is, th ...
that hypothesizes the existence of one or more additional spirant or
stop consonants in the Indo-European parent language that has only been attested in
Hittite and of which only traces are left outside Anatolian.
However, in general this hypothesis is considered to attribute too much weight to the Anatolian evidence and as early as 1938 it was demonstrated that the Anatolian group should be placed on the same level as other Indo-European subgroups and not as equal with Indo-European. According to another view the Anatolian subgroup left the Indo-European parent language comparatively late, approximately at the same time as
Indo-Iranian and later than the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
or
Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
divisions. A third view, especially prevalent in the so-called French school of Indo-European studies, holds that extant similarities in
non-satem languages in general—including Anatolian—might be due to their peripheral location in the Indo-European language area and early separation, rather than indicating a special ancestral relationship.
Genetics
Recent paleogenetic studies of population migration reportedly give new credence to Proto-Indo-Anatolian theories, but several linguists have disputed this and believe that genetics cannot accurately describe historical language change.
Investigation
Although most recent studies support the hypothesis that Anatolian split from the remaining PIE languages at an early date, yet the independent researcher Hans Holm (2008) argues for a later split. Using a method that accounts for the distribution of PIE verbs (SLR-D) he rejects an early separation of Anatolian languages altogether and places a genealogical split of Anatolian (and Tocharian) within a more recent grouping together with Greek, Albanian and Armenian, in a single branch together with Indo-Iranian but at a distance from the genealogical splits of Balto-Slavic, Italo-Celtic and Germanic that are included within another branch, thus supporting proponents of an IE expansion that roughly parallels the adoption of the bronze metallurgy.
Hence, a crucial question is whether the Anatolian branch split off before the beginning of the
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...
or even the
Chalcolithic
The Copper Age, also called the Chalcolithic (; from grc-gre, χαλκός ''khalkós'', "copper" and ''líthos'', "stone") or (A)eneolithic (from Latin '' aeneus'' "of copper"), is an archaeological period characterized by regular ...
. A Bronze Age society is usually reconstructed from PIE vocabulary, but it is unclear whether this necessarily holds for inherited vocabulary in Anatolian. The
Early Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...
starts in Anatolia at least with the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. In the Caucasus, the Bronze Age begins roughly 3300 BC. It is possible that the Proto-Anatolians were involved with the earliest development of Bronze metallurgy. In any case, while evidence that Anatolian shares common terminology of metallurgy with other branches would speak against Indo-Hittite, discarding the value of this evidence does not automatically favour the concept of Indo-Hittite, since even a 'moderate Indo-Hittite' split around 4000 BC would clearly predate the Bronze Age.
See also
*
Anatolian hypothesis
The Anatolian hypothesis, also known as the Anatolian theory or the sedentary farmer theory, first developed by British archaeologist Colin Renfrew in 1987, proposes that the dispersal of Proto-Indo-Europeans originated in Neolithic Anatolia. ...
Notes
References
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Further reading
* Bonfante, Giuliano. “‘Indo-Hittite’ and Areal Linguistics”. In: ''The American Journal of Philology'' 67, no. 4 (1946): 289–310. https://doi.org/10.2307/290681.
* BROSMAN, PAUL. "EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF PROTO-INDO-HITTITE". In: ''Folia Linguistica Historica'' 36, no. Historica-vol-23-1-2 (2002): 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1515/flih.2002.23.1-2.1
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Kloekhorst, Alwin. "The Anatolian stop system and the Indo-Hittite hypothesis". In: ''Indogermanische Forschungen'' 121, no. 1 (2016): 213-248. https://doi.org/10.1515/if-2016-0013
* Kloekhorst, Alwin, and
Tijmen Pronk. "Chapter 1. Introduction: Reconstructing Proto-Indo-Anatolian and Proto-Indo-Uralic". In: ''The Precursors of Proto-Indo-European''. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2019. pp. 1-14. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004409354_002
* . Discusses the Indo-Anatolian hypothesis in the context of the paleogenetics of the region.
* Peyrot, Michaël. "Chapter 13. Indo-Uralic, Indo-Anatolian, Indo-Tocharian". In: ''The Precursors of Proto-Indo-European''. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2019. pp. 186–202. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004409354_014
* Sturtevant, E. H. “The Indo-Hittite Hypothesis.” Language 38, no. 2 (1962): 105–10. https://doi.org/10.2307/410871.
{{Eurasian languages
Anatolian languages
Indo-European languages
Indo-European linguistics
Indo-European language histories
Proposed language families