Phoenician-Punic: The view backward - Phonology versus Palaeography

In: Bartomeu Obrador-Cursach – Ignasi-Xavier Adiego (eds.): Phrygian linguistics and epigraphy: new insights. Barcino Monographica Orientalia 20. Series Anatolica et Indogermanica 3. Barcelona, Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 2022, 155-171.

Babelao 1, 2012

in G. Giannakis–E. Crespo–P. Filos (eds.), Studies in Ancient Greek Dialects. From Central Greece to the Black Sea, Berlin-Boston, 2018

This is a review article on Alwin Kloekhorst, Etymological Dictionary of the Hittite Inherited Lexicon (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 5. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008. $199. ISBN 978 90 04 16092 7). The article addresses issues arising from Kloekhorst's depiction of Hittite cuneiform spelling conventions in the context of the wider cuneiform world (Mesopotamia and Northern Syria). In particular the representation of a glottal stop in Hittite and relevant cuneiform writing is addressed. The second part of the article addresses further individual graphic and lexical issues arising throughout the etymological dictionary.

Kadmos, 2022

The Anatolian hieroglyphic script represents a logosyllabic system, which gradually evolved in Asia Minor in the course of the second millennium BCE. Although the first syllabic values of Anatolian hieroglyphs are attested about 1400 BCE, there have been recent attempts to demonstrate that linguistic considerations prompt the projection of the development of the syllabic script further back in time. The present paper addresses the arguments advanced in favour of such a hypothesis and shows their inconclusive character. A collateral result of the present investigation is the segmentation of the set of earliest syllabic signs for which logographic readings are also attested. The comparison between the logographic and syllabic values within this set is conducive to a conclusion that the Hittite language, as opposed to Luwian, played a decisive role in assigning the syllabic values to Anatolian hieroglyphs in Hattusa between 1400 and 1250 BCE.

2000

International Linguistics Research, 1(1): 32-48, 2018

This paper presents a set of eighteen signs of the Minoan scripts, used for syllables of the Consonant-Vowel (CV) type. What these eighteen syllabograms have in common is their vowel, which is a kind of “schwa”, treated here as the “sixth vowel” of the Minoan scripts, counted after the usual five vowels: “a”, “e”, “i”, “o” and “u”. Most of these syllabograms are considered to be of unknown phonetic value, while a few are known to be used for the Mycenaean Greek “αι” ([əj]). The presented approach is conducted according to the theory of the Protolinear script, being the script that all the Minoan scripts evolved from, including Linear A, Linear B and Cretan Hieroglyphics. A detailed study on the nature of that “schwa” and its evolution from - and to - related vowels precedes the presentation of the syllabograms. In conclusion, it is demonstrated that the phonetic value of each syllabogram corresponds to the Sumerian name (in a conservative dialect) of the object depicted by the syllabogram, thus more light is shed on the linguistic ancestry of the Minoan scripts, the practice followed for their creation and the phonetic values of eighteen hitherto un-transliterated syllabograms.

Version April 2023. These are synchronic entries. Reconstructions, if available, can be found under the same URL but written by my colleagues. ‒ This is a continuously updated list. Updates will be uploaded approx. at the beginning of every month. New entries are marked by red. ‒ Note the distinction between “Cuneiform Luwian” (i.e. Luwian in Luwian clauses) and “Luwian in Hittite Transmission” (i.e. alleged Luwian in Hittite clauses) as well as “Glossenkeilwörter” (any word marked in this way at least once in Hittite texts). ‒ To open directly the entries you need to use the URL given in the file, where X should be replaced by the ID number of the entry as shown below in the file.

Kadmos 58, 33-48, 2019

Following Rieken’s 2008 establishment that the Anatolian hieroglyphic sign *41 (CAPERE/tà) denoted the syllable /da/, with lenis /d/, Yakubovich (2008) argued that the sign’s phonetic value was acrophonically derived from the Hittite verb dā-ⁱ /d- ‘to take’. In the present article it is argued that this view can no longer be upheld in view of new proposals regarding the phonetic value of sign *41 (rather [ða]) and the interpretation of Hitt. dā-ⁱ /d- (rather [tˀā-]). It is proposed that the value of sign *41 has instead been derived from the Luwian verb ‘to take’, lā-ⁱ /l-, which from a historical linguistic perspective must go back to earlier *ðā-ⁱ / *ð-. This acrophonic assignment of the value [ða] to sign *41 must then be dated to the beginning of the 18th century BCE at the latest, which implies that already by that time the Anatolian hieroglyphs were in use as a real script that made use of phonetic signs.