The Riddles of Hittite Indefinite Pronouns

Complex NPI systems: Hittite data

“…However, first the NPI is instantiated by a relative pronoun, not the normal morphologically marked NPI form which would be kuitki. As I showed in Sideltsev (2015b), relatives used as indefinites have been shown to have properties divergent from the morphologically marked NPIs. Second, the negation satisfies the second position pronoun requirement.…”

“…(2) a. It is curious that this secondary system of NPIs (see Sideltsev (2015b); Haug & Sideltsev (To appear)) is much more limited with respect to the contexts in which it can appear than the NPIs of the kuiški type. Furthermore it never appears in unambiguous questions (Haug & Sideltsev To appear).…”

Accented Clitics in Hittite?

“…Extraordinarily, indefinite pronouns in Hittite attest a second position requirement, see in detail Huggard () with critical refinements in Sideltsev () and Sideltsev & Molina (). Just as with the enclitics analysed above, the second position of indefinite pronouns in Hittite never alternates with first position:…”

“…iv 18–19nu=za d ištar gašan = ya parā ḫantandatara[(p)]iya= ya mekki conn = refl Istar lady=my divine.providence then=and much tekkuš[(šanu‐)]t show‐ 3sg.pst ‘Then too Istar, my lady, showed much of her divine power’.See Goedegebuure (: 463) for other analogous – and statistically dominating – contexts with preverbal placement of apiya=ya . In the light of this parallelism I suppose that apiya=ya in (18) is also preverbal, and parā ḫantatar is simply located within the verbal group, see for such rare cases on the material of indefinite pronouns (Sideltsev ), cf. Sideltsev & Molina ().…”

“…An unusually large number of constituents in Hittite have been identified as occupying second position: Wackernagel enclitics, the enclitic conjunctions/particles ‐( m ) a ‘but’ and ‐( y ) a ‘and’, relative pronouns, a number of subordinators, and indefinite pronouns, see for recent overviews, Huggard () Sideltsev (), Sideltsev & Molina ().…”