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

On Wh-(Non)-Movement and Internal Structures
of the Hittite Preposed Relative Clause
MATTYAS HUGGARD
University of California, Los Angeles
Relative constructions have received much attention from linguists over the past
few decades as they are interesting on the level of their syntax, typology, and semantics.
As a clause type, relative clauses (RCs) have a high frequency of usage,
independent of text or register type, and in many languages they exhibit features
such as movement or non-movement of the relativized Determiner Phrase (DP),
the presence or absence of a resumptive constituent, and restrictive versus appositive
semantics, all of which provide access to basic structural properties of a
given language. Of the various syntactic strategies employed dealing with relativization
(postnominal, prenominal, circumnominal, and correlative), Hittite, the
oldest attested Indo-European language, predominantly exhibits the correlative
construction.
It has now been over sixty years since Held’s description (1957) of the Hittite
RC, and fifteen years since the last structural account offered by Garrett (1994) in
the course of discussing RC syntax in Hittite and Lycian. During this time, advances
have been made both in the realm of syntactic theory and within the field
of Anatolian studies. Until recently it was assumed that the correlative strategy
was the only relative construction available in Hittite. However, Probert (2006)
provided evidence for the existence of embedded relatives in Old Hittite, which
exploits the same morpheme ku- for both relative and interrogative function. This
dual strategy of embedded-correlative is similar to what occurs in Latin, Ancient
Greek, Hindi, and Old English (Bianchi 2000:54), which thus further encourages
a revision of the relativization strategy proposed for Hittite in the literature.
1. The raising analysis
In this paper I would like to discuss the properties of relative clauses in Hittite in
light of the head-raising analysis proposed by Kayne (1994:85–97). For the past
decade, a number of reanalyses of the syntax of relativization have been proposed
by scholars using the raising analysis instead of the Principles and Parameters
adjunction proposal, which takes relative clauses to be right-adjoined to a nominal
constituent that they modify.
Stephanie W. Jamison, H. Craig Melchert, and Brent Vine (eds.). 2011.
Proceedings of the 22nd Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. Bremen: Hempen. ###–###.