The grammar of the Hittite language has a highly conservative verbal system and rich nominal declension. The language is attested in cuneiform, and is the earliest attested Indo-European language.
Noun and adjective declension
Gender system and cases Hittite distinguishes between two genders, common (animate) and neuter (inanimate). The distinction between genders is fairly rudimentary since it is made only in the nominative and accusative case, and the same noun is sometimes attested in both genders. It is still debated whether or not this reflects a prehistoric merger of inherited PIE masculine and feminine into a single common/animate gender or an archaic system in which there was already a common gender. Nouns referred to living beings (humans, animals and Gods) are usually found in the common/animate gender, but some inanimate objects actually have the common/animate gender. For instance, nouns in a-stem and t-stem are common/animate and, given how productive was the formation of words in the a-stem and t-stem, many words in Hittite indicating inanimate objects are actually in the common/animate gender in the nominative and accusative. The other gender, the neuter/inanimate, is referred to objects, including parts of the body, and abstract concepts or collective nouns, e.g. "family, assembly, troops, humanity". Some common examples of neuter declension are the u-stem nouns and the nouns formed by the suffixes -ātar, -eššar and the suffix for collective nouns -a(i)-. Words derived by common/animate gender roots through neuter suffixes are neuter.
The only reference to a female gender, which however does not erase the two-gender system "common-neuter gender", is the infix -(š)šara-, used to indicate female gender for humans and deities.
The nominal system consists of the following 9 cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative-locative, ablative, ergative, allative, and instrumental.
The nominative marks the subject of a sentence or the predicate nominative (e.g., "I am a man"). The genitive marks the possessor, the material of an object (e.g., "A sword <made> of iron"), the content of an object (e.g., "A vessel <full> of wine"), the object of an action (e.g., "The destruction of the city") and a partitive construction (a part of a whole); the last four usages are called "genitive of material", "genitive of contents", "objective genitive" and "partitive genitive". The genitive case is also used with postpositions in OH (in NH, a case shift happened from genitive to dative-locative except in the postposition iwar, "in the manner of").
The dative-locative is used to mark the indirect object and the static position/location. It also mark a position/location with motion verbs (e.g., "I pour wine into the glass"). In Hittite, it is also used in some fixed temporal expression, e.g., "at night, in Winter". The accusative marks the direct object of a transitive verb (e.g., "I eat the apple"); in causative constructions (e.g., "He makes his ox cross the river"), a double accusative is found. Double accusative in Hittite is also used in the sentence "make something into something else" (e.g., "I refuse to make him my husband") and, from this expression, double accusative was used in the later coined structure "Treat somebody/something like..." (e.g., "I treated them like mothers and fathers"). To conclude, accusative in Hittite marks the time extent/duration, e.g. "I had reigned for ten years". The vocative is used in invocations (exclamations containing a direct address to humans or deities during a prayer or ritual). The allative (also known as "directive" and "terminative") is used to indicate the motion to or toward/in direction of a place. Verbs are always directive (e.g., "I go/come/travel to Rome; I carry the merchandize to Rome") and never stative (e.g., "I am in Rome") and describe the act of walking/perambulating. By contrast, a verb like "pour" has a direction but it's not a perambulatory movement. Sometimes, the allative is substituted by the accusative, which is called "accusative of direction" in this context. By contrast, the ablative is used to mark motion from a place or a beginning point in time (e.g., from now on). It is also used to mark movement through a place or object (e.g., "I get inside the house through the window"). This kind of ablative is called "perlative ablative". In NH, the ablative was then used to mark the agent of an action in passive constructions (e.g., "The city was destroyed by the king") instead of the instrumental case. The instrumental marks the (concrete or abstract/intangible) tool through which an action is performed in OH; as in many other Indo-European languages (e.g., balto-slavic languages), it also has a sociative/comitative meaning, i.e., it marks the person an action is performed with. It also expresses the cause of an action and, in OH, it marks the agent of an action in passive constructions. In NH, the instrumental was substituted by the ablative, as in Latin.
The Hittite declension system also distinguishes between two numbers (singular and plural) and shows indirect traces of a dual number; due to syncretism, the ending of ablative and instrumental in the plural coincide.
Hittite uses split ergativity: when a common/animate noun is the subject of a transitive verb, e.g., "The child eats the apple", the subject is marked by the nominative case. By contrast, when a neuter noun is the subject of a transitive verb, e.g., "The spear kills the soldier", the subject of the sentence is marked by the ergative case; hence, only neuter nouns show the ergative case in their declension, which means that common/animate nouns show 8 cases, while neuter nouns show 9 cases. Inflected adjectives always have the ergative case in their declension, but this case is used only when an adjective is referred to a neuter noun in the ergative case, i.e., followed by a transitive verb; consequently, adjectival declension shows 9 cases. Personal pronouns as the subject are always in the nominative case; the subject of an intransitive verb always take the nominative ending as well.
a-stem declension in Old Hittite (OH) The basic scheme of suffixation is given in the table below, which is valid for almost all nouns and adjectives. The example a-stem word shown is "man", which has no ergative case due to it being the common/animate gender. The letter "š" is always pronounced as /s/, while "z" is always pronounced /ts/ and derives from an ancient */ti/ or */tj/. For instance, in mi-verb declension, the 3rd person singular ending in the present tense -zi according to Hoffner and Melchert comes from an earlier *-ti.
SingularPlural Nominative-aš-eš; -a (n.)Ergative-anz(a) (n)-antēš (n) Vocative -a - - - Accusative -(a)n; -∅ (n)-uš (c.); -a (n.) Genitive-aš-an > -aš (later); -aš (n.) Dative-locative -i; -ya-aš Ablative -az, -za; -az(a) (later) -az(a), -za Allative -a- - - Instrumental -it, -et -it, -et Given that the nominal root ends with the thematic vowel -a and some suffixes starts in a vowel, the final -a in the root is elided (e.g., attaš, "father" > dat-loc. atti, not *attai). Only in some rare instances that represent an innovation, a dat-loc. in -ai is found; some of these instances are foreign words and foreign names.
Neuter nouns in the accusative singular take -n only if the thematic vowel is -a-, e.g., yukan (plough). All the other neuter nouns take -a (sometimes indicated as the "zero-ending" -∅). As for the neuter accusative plural, names belonging to the common/animate gender take -uš, while names belonging to the neuter gender take -a. Only names in i-stem take the dative-locative in -ya. Vocative and allative case have no plural counterpart neither in Old Hittite (OH), nor in Middle Hittite (ME) and New Hittite (NE). As already stated, due to syncretism, the ending of ablative and instrumental in the plural coincide. The instrumental case has two possible endings (-it, -et) and, according to Hoffner (2008), -it is the oldest ending; it developed from an earlier ending -t through anaptyxis/ephentesis in environment of a preceding dental consonant. Some tracks of this presumed ending can be found in irregular instrumental endings, in names such as genu (knee) > genut, šākuwa (eye) > šākuwat.
In MH, two more plural suffixes were created for the nominative and accusative (nom. -eš, -uš, -aš; acc. -uš, -eš, -aš). Then, the allative and instrumental cases both merged with ablative -az(a). The use of old allative -a and old instrumental -it in NH are archaisms. In NH, all the three plural suffixes for nouns of common gender in the two strong cases (nominative and accusative) collapsed into -uš, with only some exceptions. In OH, the original suffix of the genitive plural is -an; then, a new suffix -aš was coined in Late OH and displaced -an in NH.
Adjectives in a-stem share the same endings of noun declension; their gender depends from the gender of the noun they refer to (common/animate or neuter).
Examples of noun declension (a-stem, OH)
antuḫšaš (man), attaš (father), annaš (mother), išḫāš (lord), arunaš (sea), common/animate yukan (plough), pedan (place), ekan (ice), neuter
In the following examples, all forms not directly attested are put between brackets. Case Singular Plural Nom. antuḫšaš, attaš, annaš, išḫāš, arunaš antuḫšeš, attiēš, anniš (irr.), išḫešErg. - - - - - - Voc. [*antūḫša], atta, [*anna], išḫā - - - Acc. antūḫšan, attan, annan, išḫān antuḫšuš, attuš, ann(i)uš, išḫuš Gen. antuḫšaš, attaš, annaš, išḫāš antuḫšan, attan, [*annan], išḫān > -aš Dat-loc. antuḫši, atti, anni, išḫī antuḫšaš, addaš, [*annaš], išḫaš Abl. antuḫšaz(a), attaz(a), annaz(a), [*išḫāz(a)] antuḫšaz(a), attaz(a), annaz(a), [*išḫāz(a)] All. antuḫša, atta, anna, išḫā - - - Instr. antuḫšit/et, [*attit/et, *annit/et, *išḫit/et] antuḫšit/et, [*attit/et, *annit/et, *išḫit/et] CaseSingularPluralNom.yukan, pedan, ekan[*yuka, *peda, *eka]Erg.[*yukanz(a), *pedanz(a), *ekanz(a)] (n.)[*yukantēš, *pedantēš, *ekantēš] (n.)Voc.[*yuka, *peda, *eka] - - -Acc.[*yukan, *pedan, *ekan][*yuka, *peda, *eka]Gen.yukaš, pedaš, ekaš[*yukaš], pedaš, [*ekaš]Dat-loc.yuki, pedi, eki[*yukaš], pedaš, [*ekaš]Abl.[*yukaz(a)], pedaz(a), [*ekaz(a)][*yukaz(a)], pedaz(a), [*ekaz(a)]All.[*yuka, peda, eka] - - -Instr.yukit/et, [*pedit/et, *ekit/et]yukit/et, [*pedit/et, *ekit/et]
An example of adjective declension (a-stem, OH) The adjective chosen is araḫzenaš, araḫzenan ("external"), inflected for both genders. +CaseSingularPluralNom.araḫzenaš, araḫzenanaraḫzeneš, araḫzenaErg. - - -, [*araḫzenanz(a)] - - -, [*araḫzenantēš]Voc.[*araḫzena] - - -Acc.araḫzenan[*araḫzenuš, *araḫzena]Gen.araḫzenašaraḫzenašDat-loc.araḫzeni[*araḫzenaš]Abl.araḫzenaz(a)araḫzenazaAll.araḫzena - - -Instr.[*araḫzenit/et][*araḫzenit/et]
Syntax Hittite is a head-final language, with subject-object-verb word order.
Hittite syntax shows one noteworthy feature that is typical of Anatolian languages: commonly, the beginning of a sentence or clause is composed of either a sentence-connecting particle or otherwise a fronted or topicalized form, and a "chain" of fixed-order clitics is then appended.
Yes-no questions were marked using prosodic features such as rising intonation. In writing, they were partially left unmarked: Scribes in Assyria and Babylonia who wrote Akkadian in cuneiform script (and later Hittites as well) sometimes indicated the interrogative intonation by a plene spelling of the vowel in the final syllable of the central word in the interrogative clause. Nevertheless, the use of this device in Hittite was rare and probably not codified.
Verb conjugation