Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian

Caucasian ´z w a- “to roast, bake” > Ubykh Û w a- (particularly in the second parts of
compounds), etc. 52 ; Hattic -Íuwa in a compound hanti-p-Íuwa “cook”. 53 If the Western
Caucasian labialization, as supposed by Nikolayev and Starostin, is caused by a lost
class prefix, it might be interesting to compare it to the frozen prefix in a Hurrian noun
derived from this root. The following phonological changes occurred in Proto-Hurro-
Urartian and Hurrian. The initial vowel of the root was fused with the final one of a
class prefix. The front short unrounded vowel *Ë > Hurrian a. 54 The group *md´z > -nd. 55
The Hurrian adjective and substantive (relative noun in Fillmore’s terms) [f/va/end-
a/i] “right; the right [side of the body]” (as opposed to Íaphaldi “the left [side of the
body]” 56 ) is written with the first syllable mostly rendered as wa a - (wa a -an-ta-ni he-ra-
52 Nikolayev and Starostin 1994, 643; Trubetzkoy 1930, etymology 98; 1987, 279; Starostin 1987, 462.
53 Ivanov 1985, 47, etymology n.47.
54 Cf. Diakonoff and Starostin 1986, 67.
55 Cf. on the change m > n in other positions (before a velar): Starostin 1988.
56 Wegner 1995, 122-123 (n.9) and 124 (n.12). Hurrian Íaphaldi “left” seems to have particular
importance for the entire problem of the phonetic shape of a whole group of terms common to Hurrian
and the other Northern Caucasian languages on the one hand and to Indo-European on the other (see on
this problem below, in the section dedicated to the name for “horse”). The Hurrian word has been
identified genetically with the dialectal Eastern Caucasian *ÇHapV-lV- “left” reconstructed on the
basis of Dargwa *Çipil “left” > Chirag dialect Çipil “left”; Lezghian *ÇaIpVl- > Çapla “left”, Agul
ÇaIplan “left” (Diakonoff and Starostin 1986, 54; Nikolayev and Starostin 1994, 341); the resemblance
of the word with Modern Persian Çap (Farsi and Tadzhik, borrowed into many other Iranian languages)
was mentioned as a less plausible alternative possibility of an Iranian borrowing in Eastern Caucasian.
But it seems that the word is truly connected to Cuneiform Luwian ipala- “left” (with regular loss of
the initial consonant, Melchert 1994, 254). As op first suggested, the Luwian word within Indo-
European is cognate with Tocharian B ≈wâlyai, A ≈âlyi “on the left” < *≈pal- (with palatalization of
the initial Indo-European velar consonant before a front vowel that had disappeared later in
Tocharian; but cf. also parallel Iranian forms: Ormuri Çéla/cêla “left-hand”, Efimov 1986, 69).
Phonetically, the relationship between the forms can only be explained by a supposition of an early
borrowing of a dialectal Indo-European satPm lexeme (such as the Proto-Iranian prototype of Persian
Çap) into Eastern Caucasian dialects and Hurrian. The Luwian word goes back to another Indo-European
dialectal satPm form while in Tocharian the original centum shape changed in the period of later
Tocharian palatalization. The difficulties connected to the word seem to be particularly severe, no
doubt because it became a cultural migrational term, as shown by the Altaic correspondences. But in this
case, it is definite that the direction of borrowing was from Indo-European into Northern Caucasian and
Hurrian, and that the forms were borrowed from a satPm dialect. Also important is the participation of
Luwian, Tocharian and Iranian in these lexical contacts.