Topics in Anatolian Historical Grammar Prof. Dr. H. Craig Melchert

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958 P. Goedegebuure topic of an INTER one can apply the ‘‘about’’-test. If the question, ‘‘Ask (something) about X’’, can be properly answered by the question, X is the topic of the INTER. 24 As in DECLs, at least one other subact is assigned focus function. The di¤erence with identifying focus questions is basically one of focal scope. Whereas an identifying focus question has only one of its referential subacts (R) in focus, the commenting Q-word question at least holds the ascriptive subact (T) in focus. The word order in Hittite DECL Comment focus clauses is (S)(O)V. Again, this also applies to Q-word clauses with comment focus. There are two Q-word questions in the corpus with contrastive subject-topics in comment focus clauses (a 47 below, and 50b ¼ (2)): (24) As for my sons: if a man has been killed, can they restore him to life? And if a cow (or) a sheep has been killed, can they restore it to life? [tue]ll¼a DUMU.MEŠ¼KA kui-n you:sg.gen¼and son.pl¼your what-acc.sg sagai-n iya-nzi miracle-acc.sg make-3pl.npst ‘And what kind of miracle can your sons perform?’ (OH/NS myth, a 47) (24) is an instance of comment information focus, not of identifying replacing/selecting focus on the object-ku word, as one might conclude from the preverbal position of the ku-word phrase. Had the latter been the case, the common background would have been: ‘‘Your (i.e., addressee’s) sons are performing some miracle, against expectations’’. Instead, it is the actions of the sons of the speaker himself that are the topic of the previous discussion, so speaker and addressee do not yet share information concerning addressee’s sons. In (24) the addressee’s sons are the new sentence topic, in contrast with the preceding sentence topic, the speaker’s sons. The rest of the clause, ‘performing some kind of miracle’ presents the salient information. The interpersonal level representation of (24) is: (25) (A I :[(F I : INTER (F I )) (P I ) S (P J ) A (C I :[{(Bid Cs R I )(T I )} InfFoc (R J ) ContrTop ](C I ))](A I )) In four of the comment-focus clauses in my corpus (a52, 63, 64, 120) the referent of the subject, which is usually 25 only marked on the verb, is what the INTER is about. This referent is therefore the topic of the clause. To show that these clauses are indeed comment focus clauses, we may approach the analysis from a di¤erent angle with the help of (4 ¼ a52, a¼ma¼kan kuit datti ‘‘But what will you take away (from it)?’’). Reporting arh˘ focus in (4) is excluded because that type of focus re-
quires a lexically expressed subject. Additionally, the verb is not part of the common background: the ‘taking away by father’ is not contextually present or inferable. This excludes identifying focus for the object-ku word. Furthermore, regarding communicative point, there is no contrast or counterexpectancy. The FDG representation of Hittite (4) is therefore: (26) (A I :[(F I : INTER (F I )) (P I ) S (P J ) A (C I :[(R I ) Top {(Bid Cs R J )(T I )} InfFoc ](C I ))](A I )) The topic subact usually involves the referent of the subject but this need not be the case (Lambrecht 1994: 146, ex. 3.29): (27) Pat said they called her twice. Hittite Q-word questions 959 Since the clause is about ‘‘Pat’’, the referent of Pat and her, the object pronoun her qualifies as the topic subact. This is also the case in the remaining comment-focus INTERs (a38b, 68a, 111a and KUB 33.87þ i 31 0 ,33 0 ). In each INTER the subject Q-word together with the predicate provides the comment for the object-topic, as in (28): (28) (One of the gods of the elder generation, Kumarbi, is creating gods and monsters to dethrone the Storm God Tessub, the supreme deity. Several battles have already taken place, and this time Kumarbi has fathered a Basalt monster. The monster, still a child, is presented to Enlil.) And Enlil began to say to himself: ‘‘Who is he, this child, whom they raised again, the Fate-Goddesses and the Powerful Goddesses?’’ kuis¼war¼as [namma] u-ski-zzi who-nom.sg¼quot¼them:acc.pl longer watch-iter-3sg.npst sallay-as DINGIR.MEŠ-as dassaw-es zah˘ h˘ a-u[s] great-gen.pl god.pl-gen.pl strong-acc.pl battle-acc.pl ‘Who can [any longer] watch them, the intense wars of the great gods?’ (NH myth, a 38b) The battles of the gods are not only part of the pragmatic presupposition, they are also the sentence topic, marked by means of the enclitic pronoun -as ‘them’. However, the activation state of the battles in the addressee’s mind is very low at this point in the discourse, even though they are at the center of attention for the speaker. The addition of a full coreferential NP in Afterthought position (Luraghi 1990: 106–107) is the regular Hittite ‘‘repair’’ mechanism to guide the addressee in correctly identifying the referent of an unaccented topic pronoun in Direct Discourse.
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Universität zu Köln Institut für
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2 4. Accented *-u: no certain examp
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4 Melchert 1994: 186-7). NB makes v
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6 ēšta ‘was’ < *h 1 és-t. Ge
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8 References Agbayani, Brian, and C
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10 ——. 2008. The Origin of the
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2 No explanation is offered by Sihl
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4 zarwaniya- ‘of horn’ (C) < *k
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6 requires a preform with fixed mid
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8 no conditioned change of posttoni
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10 contrasting example to prove tha
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12 Appendix: Evidence for Three Set
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14 References Bader, Françoise. 19
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16 Starke, Frank. 1990. Untersuchun
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2 (1) HKM 18:18-20 (MH/MS) nu=mu k
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4 For (“CAPERE”)u-pa- as ‘bri
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6 Appendix 1 Provisional Analysis o
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8 3. /o:/ < *uh 2 wa-šu-u-(ḫa)
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10 Hackstein, Olav. 2007. Ablative
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2 B. Evidence for basic types 1. Op
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4 presents with 3Sg -atär/-etär o
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6 2. Effects of change of state oft
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H. Craig Melchert Università di Ro
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3 As to Grk. γέγωνε ‘shout
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Hittite ḫi-Verbs of the Type -āC
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3 would like to attribute the alter
Page 53 and 54: 5 wappu- ‘river-bank’ reflects
Page 55 and 56: 7 totally exclude laḫḫiya- < l
Page 57 and 58: 9 *n e h 2 - > naḫḫ-. However,
Page 59 and 60: 11 attempts Tischler (1983: 8-9). P
Page 61 and 62: 13 We may thus assume that the preh
Page 63 and 64: 15 Kimball, Sara. 1988. Analogy, Se
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Page 67 and 68: 3 E. Ergo not coincidental that onl
Page 69 and 70: On Wh-(Non)-Movement and Internal S
Page 71 and 72: On the Hittite Preposed Relative Cl
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Page 137 and 138: 3 (a) /pi:hamma/i-/ ‘resplendent;
Page 139 and 140: 5 4. Ethnica (in contrast with Hitt
Page 141 and 142: 7 5.2. Adverb+Noun (with deity or t
Page 143 and 144: 9 (36) */Tarhu(nta)-tsalma-/, i.e.
Page 145 and 146: 11 8.3 m Tarḫu(n)miya- (Maşat, H
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Topics in Anatolian Historical Grammar Prof. Dr. H. Craig Melchert

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