Grammatical characteristics

In the Anatolian languages, the noun inflects, or indicates through its form, singular and plural, animate and inanimate, and common (masculine and feminine or “animate”) and neuter (or “inanimate”) gender. As in modern European languages, linguistic gender refers primarily to formal classes of nouns and corresponds only partially to the animacy or sex of the actual item to which the noun refers. The attested languages do not show a distinct dual number, a grammatical form specifically indicating two objects or feminine gender.

Old Hittite distinguishes seven cases—varying forms of the noun that mark its function in a sentence, such as subject, direct object, indirect object, or possessor—in the singular, but these are reduced to five in the later language, and the other Anatolian languages show a similarly simplified system. Suffixes marking cases are inherited from or built on Indo-European material. One innovation is that the nominative of a neuter noun may not serve as the subject (i.e., as an agent) of a transitive verb. The noun in such a role appears in a case called “ergative” (appearing in Hittite as -ants): neuter wātar ‘water,’ but witenants ārri ‘the water washes.’ On the other hand, a striking archaism is that Hittite and Luwian preserve an archaic type of noun with alternating -r and -n suffixes that appear in different cases: Hittite wāt-ar, wit-en-as ‘water’; Luwian dū-r, dū-n-ati ‘urine.’

The personal pronouns show recognizable Indo-European stems and the characteristic use of distinct subject and nonsubject forms, as with Hittite wēs ‘we’ and antsās ‘us.’ Peculiar to Anatolian is a u vowel in the first person singular, with Hittite ūk ‘I’ and ammuk ‘me’ and Luwian (a)mu, Lycian amu/ẽmu, and Lydian amu, all meaning both ‘I’ and ‘me.’ Another innovation is a demonstrative stem (‘this, that’) appearing as abā- ‘that’ in Hittite, Palaic, and Luwian and as ebe- ‘this’ in Lycian; the same stem is used as the personal pronoun bi- ‘he, she, it’ in Lydian. The relative-interrogative pronoun kwi- ‘who’ (compare Latin quī/quis) is pan-Anatolian. The Anatolian languages have greatly elaborated the Indo-European system of enclitic pronouns (unaccented pronouns that are attached to a preceding accented word), as with Hittite kuenzi-us ‘kills them,’ where -us indicates ‘them.’.

The Anatolian verb inflects for singular and plural, as in the noun; for two tenses, present (also used for the future) and preterite (past); and for two moods, indicative and imperative. In Hittite, Palaic, Luwian, and probably Lycian there is, besides the active voice, a mediopassive voice that marks actions that affect the subject, as in the contrast between active neyanzi ‘they turn (someone or something else)’ and mediopassive neyantari ‘they turn (themselves).’ The mediopassive is also used for actions that are inherently internal to the subject. For instance, to render ‘lies, reclines’ in Hittite is kittari, in Palaic kītar, in Luwian zīyar, and in Lycian sijẽni. The mediopassive may also be used for the passive, when a subject has an action performed on it, as in the Hittite dattari ‘is taken.’.

The basic verb stem can express various aspectual distinctions, such as the degree to which an action is ongoing or complete. Examples include the Hittite dāi ‘takes’ or ‘is taking’ and dāhhun ‘I took’ or ‘I have taken.’ However, infixes such as -ske- may be added to any verb stem to overtly indicate various imperfective meanings, as with the Hittite daskemi ‘I am taking,’ ‘I take (several objects),’ or ‘I repeatedly/habitually take.’ Hittite and Luwian also combine the verbs “have” and “be” with the past participle to indicate an attained state, a construction remarkably close to the English perfect: “had taken” is rendered in Hittite as dān ‘taken’ + harta ‘had’; “because they had heard about me” is rendered nu conjunction + -mu ‘me’ + kuit ‘because’ + istamassan ‘heard’ + harker ‘they had.’

A deservedly famous feature of the Anatolian languages is the practice of attaching not only enclitic pronouns but also whole series of particles of diverse meanings to the first accented word in a sentence, including conjunctions that begin sentences. This usage is found elsewhere in older Indo-European languages, but the Anatolian group has exploited it to an unusual degree. For instance, Hittite nu-war-at-si-kan dānzi ‘they take it from him’ contains the conjunction nu, a particle -war- indicating the sentence is a direct quotation, -at- ‘it’ marking the direct object, -si- ‘to him’ marking the indirect object, and a particle -kan whose precise meaning is still not determined, followed by the verb dānzi ‘they take.’