Hurro-Urartean languages
With Hurro-Urartian refers to a language family consisting of the two genetically closely related languages Hurrian and Urartian there. Both languages are extinct. Hurricane was until the 12th century BC. Spoken in Eastern Anatolia , Northern Syria and Northern Mesopotamia , Urartian is spoken from the 9th century to the 7th century BC. In the area of today's East Turkey and today's Armenia . It has been suggested that the Kassite language , which was spoken between the 18th and 4th centuries in the Zagros Mountains and in southern Mesopotamia, but of which little information and no related texts are available, belongs to the same family or is related to it.
Allocation to a larger language family has not yet been successful. A relationship with the Northeast Caucasian languages, also known as post-Dagestani languages, has been suggested.
Characteristic properties
Hurrian and Urartian are agglutinating ergative languages . In an ergative language, a fixed case is not used for the subject and for the object, as is the case in accusative languages such as German, but it is between the subject of a transitive verb (is in the ergative case ) and the subject of an intransitive verb Verbes (stands in the case absolute ) differentiated. The direct object is usually also in the absolute. Another characteristic feature of Hurro-Urartian is occurring in some agglutinative languages Suffixaufnahme group; a word dependent on a reference word (for example genitive attribute) also includes the suffixes of the reference word.
The languages were mainly written with syllables in cuneiform , Hurrian in Sumerian cuneiform, Urartian in Neo-Assyrian cuneiform. A complete reconstruction of the pronunciation and the phoneme inventory is not possible, since the cuneiform script was not originally designed for these languages and is therefore not suitable for reproducing the pronunciation correctly.
Comparison of Hurrian and Urartian
vocabulary
Most of the traditional Hurrian texts come from the religious or diplomatic fields. From the Urartian one knows above all monumental inscriptions which report on campaigns. This results in the situation that, despite the relationship between the two languages, only a fifth of the Urartian verbs have an equivalent in Hurrian. In these cases the forms for this are practically completely identical; they usually only differ due to the different orthography and phonology - Urartian has no double consonance in writing and, due to the written evidence, there is no evidence for the vowel -o-, instead -u is used.
| Hurrian | Urartian | meaning | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hurrian | Urartian | ||
| ag- | ag- | pick up | lead, direct |
| ale- | al- | say | |
| at the- | at the- | burn | |
| ar- | ar- | give | |
| ašḫ- | ašḫ- | to make a sacrifice | |
| tor (u) bi | durb- | enemy | become hostile |
| Ha- | Ha- | to take | |
| ḫaž- | ḫaš- | Listen | |
| ḫud- | ḫut + i (y) | to raise | pray |
| col- | cul- | to let | |
| man- | man- | be | |
| naḫḫ- | close- | dismount | |
| U.N- | now- | come | |
| pic- | piṣuše | rejoice | joy |
| Fed up- | šat- | to take | |
| tan- | tan- | do, do | |
| tive | ti- | word | speak |
| urb- | urb- | beat | |
| uštanni | ušt- | warrior | go out to war |
| atta (i) | ate- | father | |
| p / faba | babani | Mountains | Mountain region |
| edi | edi- | Person, body | |
| evri | euri | Mr | |
| evrišše | euriše | Domination | |
| ḫari | ḫari | Way, street | |
| ḫuradi | ḫuradi | warrior | |
| e / išave | išani | opposite side | |
| ištani | ištini | inside, in the middle, there | |
| ugri | kuri | Foot | |
| pilli / a | pili | channel | |
| purame | p / bura | slave | |
| kargarni | qarqarani | (Military item) | Chain mail |
| šawala | šali | year | |
| še / ugurni | šeḫ (i) ri | Life | lively |
| šuge | šuḫi | New | |
| šauri | šuri | weapon | |
| tarmani | tarmani- | Source, good | |
| taržu (w) ani | taršuani | human | |
| tižni | tišnu / i | heart | (Body part), heart? |
| oli | uli | another | |
| marianni | mari- | (Warrior caste in Mittani) | |
| wandan (n) i | andani | right | |
| sapḫali | salmatḫi | Left | |
Nominal morphology
In the nominal morphology there is a large correspondence of the forms in Hurrian and Urartian. The table below provides a comparison of the case suffixes. The Hurrian forms are regularly formed in such a way that a plural marker - (a) š- comes before the case ending of the singular. This plural marker is no longer productive in Urartian and can only be found in frozen forms such as the plural -šte directive and the plural -štane ablative .
| case | Hurrian | Urartian | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |
| Absolutely | -O | -Ø, -lla | -O | -li, -Ø |
| Ergative | -š | - (a) šuš | -še | |
| Genitive | -ve | - (a) še | -i, -ie, -ei | -we |
| dative | -va | - (a) ša | -e | -we |
| Directive | -there | - (a) šta | -edi | -edi, -šte |
| Essive / Locative | -a | -a, - (a) ša | -a | |
| ablative | -Dan | - (aštan) | -tane | -štane |
| instrumental ablative | -ni, -ne | - (a) šani / e | -ni, -ne | |
| Comitative | -ra | - (a) šuna | -rani | |
| Associative | -nni | |||
| Equative I. | -oš | |||
| Equative II | -nna | - (a) šonna | ||
| Instrumental | -ae | |||
| e casus | -e | |||
A certain article, an enclitic possessive pronoun , then the case suffix may appear as suffixes to a noun - in this order - and, in the case of suffix inclusion, the recorded suffixes follow. The definite article and the possessive pronoun are largely the same in the two languages of Hurro-Urartian.
Verbal morphology
In verb morphology, there are greater differences between Hurrian and Urartian, although the structure of the verb is not so clear in the latter language. Basically, however, the morphology is presented in such a way that a number of root extensions can occur at the verb root, some of which are the same in both languages, but their meaning has not yet been clarified. A distinction is made between the transitive verb (marking -o - / - u- ) and the intransitive verb (marking -a- ). A number of other suffixes denote tense and mode , although the modal forms are not yet well understood. In Urartian, negations are expressed by independent negation particles, a tense distinction is not known, at most some modal forms have a futural nuance. Finally, at the end, there are ergative and absolute suffixes, which establish congruence with the corresponding clauses.
The specified additive endings denote the agent of a transitive verb in the indicative. In the case of modal forms, other agent markings are used instead of the ergative suffix. Absolute suffixes denote the direct object of the transitive verb or the subject of the intransitive verb.
| root | Root expansion | Tense | ? | valence | negation | mode | Ergative suffix | Absolute suffix | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hurrian | (Root) | -ol- (change in valence) | -Ø- (present tense) | -t- | -a- (intrans.) |
|
-O- |
|
|
||||||
| -ill-, -Všt-, -uva- (action type) | -ož - ( simple past) | -i- (trans.-nonerg.) | -l- | ||||||||||||
| -ešḫ- -imd- -ošk-, -už-, -upp- (unclear) | -ed- (future tense ) | -o- (trans.) | -i- | ||||||||||||
| Urartian | (Root) | -an-, -ar-, -Vd-, -il-, -ul-, -Všt- (unclear) | ? | - | -a- (intrans.) | - | -O- | -Ø, -a, -itu | -di, -ni, -bi, -li | ||||||
| -u- (trans.) | -la-, -li- |
Relationship with the post-Dagestani languages
The only comprehensive attempt to date to present the languages Hurrian and Urartian as part of the Nautical-Dagestani language family can be found in the work of Igor Djakonow and Sergei Starostin from 1986. Although the work received a lot of attention and recognition in the professional world, there is still no consensus as to whether Hurro-Urartian is actually a sub-unit of the post-Dagestan languages. This is partly due to the fact that Djakonow and Starostin base their work on their own reconstruction of a Proto-Hurricane-Urartian and a Proto-Nautical-Dagestani language without going into competing other reconstructions or explaining theirs in detail. Many linguists also see the cited similarities in morphology as insufficient and attribute matches in vocabulary not to genetic relationships but to loanwords and explain the similarities through mutual influence due to geographical proximity.
vocabulary
Djakonow and Starostin give a total of 168 different words with their equivalents in the Hurro-Urartian and post-Dagestani languages, although they themselves describe the correspondence as unclear in a third of the cases. The number of correspondences is relatively high if one takes into account that the vocabulary of Hurrian and even more so that of Urartian has only been handed down in gaps and the meaning is only known of about 300 Urartian word stems.
In the case of cultural, geographical and military terms, it is easily possible that they found their way into the language as loan words. In the case of words in the basic vocabulary, a coincidental match is rather unlikely, which in this case indicates a relationship between the Hurro-Urartian and the post-Dagestani languages. Critics (including Smeets) point out, however, that the number of terms that definitely belong to the basic vocabulary, which are attested in both Hurrian and Urartian and in at least two post-Dagestani languages, is relatively small, namely only 12 out of 168 However, if the vocabulary is still insufficiently known, this is not a fundamental obstacle, but is not sufficient to prove the relationship.
The table below gives some examples of these correspondences. In the upper part of the table there are words from the basic vocabulary, in the lower part, separated by a dashed line, words which could have found their way into the language as loan words. In the post-Dagestani languages, only the two languages Chechen and Avar are listed as examples . When reconstructing the proto languages, unknown vowels are marked with V.
| Hurray-Urartian | Post-Dagestani | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Proto- | Hurrian | Urartian | meaning | Proto- | Chechen | Avar | meaning |
| * sawal- | sawale | šali | year | * swyrHo | šo Gen. šera-n | -asra-y-ab- | Year old |
| * un (-un) - | U.N- | now- | come | * ʔV-ʔwVn | - | ʔine | come Go |
| *hen | hen | ḫeni | now | * hVnV | there-approx | - | now |
| * as- | as- | aš- | sit | * ʔV (r) swV | -is- | - | stay / sit |
| * ag- | ag- | ag- | lead, bring | * ʔVrkʔV | -ig-a | - | away / lead |
| * qawr- | ḫawr | qiura | earth | * qwyʔrV | qa | ḫur | field |
| * iṭ- | it- | - | go | * ʔiṭ (-Vr) - | id- | ṭ-ur-ize | going running |
| * sêr- | sere | - | Evening, west | * swVrV | süjr-ē | sor-do | Evening night |
| - | šukko | šwuši (ord.) | 1 | * cə (hə) | cḥa | co | 1 |
| * šin- | šini | šiši | 2 | - | ši- | - | 2 |
| * qi- | kike | - | 3 | - | qo- | - | 3 |
| * pîl- | pala | pili | channel | * ʔī-pīl 1 V. | apari | - | Line / gutter |
| * aqarq- | - | aqarqi | (Measure of capacity) | * qqwV (r) qV | pḫēɤa | - | Vessel, jug |
Typology and morphology
All known post-Dagestan languages are ergative languages, and this also applies to Hurrian and Urartian. This correspondence alone does not justify kinship, of course, but it is a practically necessary criterion. Hurrian and Urartian only use suffixes for word formation and to identify grammatical properties. In the post-Dagestani languages, class and gender prefixes are also used. On the other hand, nothing of the principle of differentiating between different classes can be found in the Hurro-Urartian. In the event of a split from Proto-Nakh-Dagestani, which dates to the 4th millennium BC, Hurrian would have to be BC is estimated to have lost this typical feature within a millennium, i.e. a relatively short time. Typical of the Hurro-Urartian is the so-called suffix inclusion, which can also be found in some - but not in the majority - after Dagestani languages.
Nominal morphology
| position | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hurricane-Urartian | root | items | possessive pronouns | Plural markers | Case marker |
| Nachisch-Dagestani | - | - |
For the function of the definite article -n- in Hurro-Urartian there is no equivalent in Nakh-Dagestan; there are also no suffused possessive pronouns. The plural marker used in Hurrian -aš-, in Urartian mostly -li- (in frozen forms also - (a) š- ) is used. Possible reconstructed proto-nacho-Dagestani plural markers are * -rV-, * -pV- and * -tV-, which have no phonetic equivalent in Hurro-Urartian.
| Hurray-Urartian | Nachisch | Lesgic | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ergative | -š (e) | -sV | k. Ü. |
| Absolutely | -O | -O | k. Ü. |
| Directive | -da / -ta | k. Ü. | -di |
| locative | -a | k. Ü. | -a / -e |
| Comitative | -ra | k. Ü. | -ra |
For different case suffixes there are phonetically matching suffixes with comparable functions in different post-Dagestan languages. However, it makes no sense to compare case suffixes from the Hurro-Urartian with suffixes from different languages; the matches could then very easily be of a purely coincidental nature. For this reason, only Nachisch and Lesgisch , the two language subfamilies with the best overall equivalents, are listed here.
Overall, the comparison of the nominal morphology does not support a relationship.
Pronouns
Only a few Urartian pronouns are known, and not all forms of the Hurrian pronouns are known. Occasionally there are phonetic matches with pronouns in Proto-Nakh-Dagestani, but no functional match. The enclitic forms of Hurro-Urartian have no counterparts in the post-Dagestan languages.
Verb morphology
A comparison of the verb morphology is made difficult by the fact that there are already clear differences between the Hurrian and the Urartian verb. What is essential, however, is the lack of gender prefixes , which in the post-Dagestan languages indicate a grammatical match between the transitive verb and the direct object or the intransitive verb with the subject. In the Lesgic languages this marking has been lost, which is why this does not represent a fundamental obstacle to a relationship; However, it would then also mean that this innovation would have been introduced in Hurro-Urartian in a relatively short time compared to the other post-Dagestan languages.
Corresponding to morphemes are the tense markings for Hurrian -ed- the Avaro-Andean -d- (both past tense). In the negations, the Hurrian suffixes -va- and -k- and the Proto-Nacho-Dagestani * -ʕ (w) - and * -k (k) - are opposite. The conditional agent ending -ewa- in Hurrian has a match * -awa- in Proto-Andean . Overall, however, the agreement is not particularly great. If one also takes into account the different morphologies of the verb in Hurro-Urartian itself, this comparison of the verb morphology hardly allows any conclusions to be drawn as to whether there is a relationship or not. The correspondences mentioned can also be purely coincidental; overall, clear deviations predominate.
literature
Hurrian and Urartian
- Erlend Gehlken: A sketch sheet for the Urartian verb . In: NABU, Paris 2000: No. 29.
- Joost Hazenbos : Hurrian and Urartian . In: Michael P. Streck (Ed.): Languages of the Old Orient . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2005, ISBN 3-534-17996-X .
- Ernst Kausen: Hurrian and Urartian; Grammatical sketch of Hurrian; Grammatical sketch of Urartian . In: The Language Families of the World. Part 1: Europe and Asia . Buske, Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-87548-655-1 , p. 305-331 .
- Giorgi A. Melikischvili: The Urartean language . Studia Pohl 7, Rome 1971.
- Gernot Wilhelm : Urartian . In: R. Woodard (Ed.): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages. Cambridge 2004, ISBN 0-521-56256-2 .
- Gernot Wilhelm: Hurrian . In: R. Woodard (Ed.): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages. Cambridge 2004, ISBN 0-521-56256-2 .
Relationship with other languages
- Igor M. Diakonoff , Sergej A. Starostin : Hurro-Urartian as an Eastern Caucasian Language . Munich Studies in Linguistics. Supplement 12. Munich 1986.
- Walter Farber: Review of the Diakonoff Starostin 1986 . In: Journal of Assyriology and Allied Areas. Volume 78, Leipzig 1988
- Rieks Smeets: Review of the Diakonoff Starostin 1986 . In: Bibliotheca Orientalis. Volume 46, Leiden 1989.