This article argues that the phonetic distinction between the Hittite fortis and lenis stops was not one of voice, but rather one of length, and that this distinction must have been present in Proto-Anatolian as well. On the basis of typological and comparative considerations it is argued that the Proto-Anatolian stop system cannot have developed from the stop system that is traditionally reconstructed for the Proto-Indo-European mother language and in which voice is the basic distinction. Instead, the relationship must have been the other way around: the voice distinction of PIE is a younger development of the length distinction as found in the Proto-Anatolian stop system. This relationship can only be accounted for within the context of the Indo-Hittite hypothesis, and therefore forms a new argument in favor of it.

In this article it will be argued that the Indo-European laryngeals *h2 and *h3, which recently have been identified as uvular fricatives, were in fact uvular stops in Proto-Indo-Anatolian. Also in the Proto-Anatolian and Proto-Luwic stages these sounds probably were stops, not fricatives.

In this article it is argued that in Hittite the members of the sign pairs ta vs. da, ka vs.ga and ke/i vs. ge/i represent phonologically distinct sounds in word-initial position. The signs ta and da represent a normal fortis and a glottalized fortis stop, respectively: ta = /ta/ vs. da = /t?a/. The signs ka and ke/i, on the one hand, and ga and ge/i, on the other, represent a fortis and a lenis stop, respectively: ka and ke/i = /k-/ vs. ga and ge/i = /g-/.The distribution of the fortis and lenis stops in word-initial position in Hittite is then compared to the situation in the Luwic branch. Moreover, it is argued that the phonetic values of these signs directly reflect their value as attested in the Old Babylonian texts from Alalaä VII.The linguistic interpretation of Hittite is seriously hampered by the fact that several details regarding its orthography are still unclear. For instance, one of the issues that has remained controversial is the interpretation of spelling conventions regarding initial stops.It is commonly held that the Hittites have taken over the cuneiform script from the North Syrian region and that the typical Hittite ductus best resembles the ductus as found in Old Babylonian texts from Alalaä (Tell Açana, level VII; cf. e. g. Rüster/Neu 1989, 15). The cuneiform syllabary that was in use there possesses in its CV series separate signs to distinguish voiceless from voiced stops,

Since the beginning of Indo-European linguistics, the group of words in which the Skt. cluster kṣ corresponds to Gk. KT have received much attention. According to Brugmann (1897: 790), these clusters must reflect a combination of a PIE velar plus "þ-Laute" 1 (hence the name "thorn"-clusters), which was the standard view for many decades. For instance, in Pokorny 1959, the word for 'bear' (Skt. ¶kºa-, Gr. ἄρκτος) is reconstructed as * ¶ §þo-(875); the word for 'earth' (Skt. kºám-, Gr. χθών) as *ǵ h ðem-(414); etc. When in 1932 Kretschmer equated the words for 'earth' in the newly found languages Hittite (tēkan) and Tocharian B (tkaṃ) with the thus far common reconstruction *ǵ h ðem-, he was able to convincingly show that the initial cluster must originally not have contained a "thorn", but rather consisted of a dental and a velar stop, *d h ǵ h-. According to Kretschmer, the original order of these stops was retained in Hittite and Tocharian, but in Greek and Indo-Iranian the cluster was metathesized to *ǵ h d h-, with a subsequent development of *-d hto-sin Indic "weil ihm zwei Verschlußlaute im Wortbeginn ungewohnt waren" (1932: 67). In the other languages, *d h ǵ hwas simplified to *ǵ h-, yielding Lat. hum-, Lit. žem-, OCS zem-, etc. Burrow (1959) argued, however, that assuming a metathesis in Indic is unnecessary. In analogy to Skt. kºumánt-'having cattle' ~ Av. fšūmaṇt-'id.' < *p §u-mént-, where an initial cluster *p §-yielded Skt. kº-, 2 showing a development of palatovelar * § into the retroflex sibilant ṣ, Burrow argued that we may assume a similar change for the "thorn"-clusters: *H ¶t §o-> * ¶tśa-> * ¶»ºa-> ¶kºa-'bear' and *d h ǵ h ém-> *d h ́h ám-> *dź h ám-> ḍẓ h ám-> »ºám-> kºám-'earth'. 3 In his famous 1977 article 'A thorny problem', Schindler therefore concluded that the assumption of a separate phoneme *þ or *ð "is superfluous for an early stage of Indo-European" (1977: 34). According to him, all words with "thorn"-clusters reflect a cluster *TK (the one word where he reconstructs *KT, namely 'yesterday', will be treated in detail below). Moreover, he assumed that already in the PIE mother language this cluster was reduced in some environments, for instance before a syllabic nasal: *TK±C > *K±C. Recently, Lipp, in his book Die indogermanischen und einzelsprachlichen Palatale im Indoiranischen (2009), devotes a 350 pages long chapter to "Das Problem des Ansatzes von idg. þ (Thorn)", in which he provides a very detailed account of all problems, proposed solutions and material regarding the "thorn"-clusters. Although this chapter is extremely elaborate, I still have the feeling that not all details regarding this topic have 1 He states, however, that "[d]ie Qualität dieser uridg. Reibelaute [...] nicht genauer zu bestimmen [ist]; die Zeichen þ und ð sind nur ein Notbehelf". 2 This is not a regular development, however. We must assume that *p §u-mént-first yielded *pśumánt-, after which *p-was dissimilated against *-m-, yielding *kśumánt-, which subsequently developed in kṣumánt-. Cf. e.g. *pleu-men->...

In this article, new readings are proposed for the Old Phrygian inscription G-02, which is famous for having been written next to a depiction of two feet, and for containing the sequence podas, which is commonly interpreted as denoting ‘feet’ and reflecting Proto-Indo-European *pod-/ped-. A careful examination of the damaged part of this inscription reveals the presence of a word petes, however, which is argued to be a better candidate for representing the Old Phrygian word for ‘feet’. Not only does this interpretation yield a better understanding of the composition of the inscription as a whole, it is also in accordance with the so-called Phrygian “Lautverschiebung”, which states that PIE mediae have become voiceless stops in Phrygian.