The Baltic *-ā́-illative

The Lithuanian-Latvian illative was formed from the IE accusativus directivus and the local postposition *-ā́. Traces of the postponed *-ā́ have been preserved in yrà ‘is, are; OLith. there is, there are’ < *ī-r-ā́, and Lith. čià ‘here’ < *tj-ā́. Typologically, the Baltic illative can be compared to Greek derivatives with -δε, e.g. οἴκα-δε ‘homewards; at home’. As for the origin of the postponed *-ā́, two hypotheses can be formulated: 1. *-ā́ comes from the IE allative postposition *-eh₂ (see Hajnal 1992); 2. *-ā́ boils down to the instr. sg. of the anaphoric pronoun *h₁o-h₁. The primary illative plural ended in -s-ā́, e.g. OLith. (debesisa) ‘into heaven’. The postposition -na, which can be found e.g. in the ill. pl. miškúosna ‘into forests’, is an innovation resulting from reanalysis of the acc. sg. *-n + *-ā́ → *-nā́. The neutralisation of the privative opposition inessive : illative originally comprised an area much larger than today’s and included the West Aukštaitian dialect. The starting point of this neutralisation was plural forms. This primary state of affairs has remained until the present day in East Aukštaitian in the north from the line Raguva-Ukmergė-Molėtai-Salakas, where inessive sg. and illative sg. are distinguished, but inessive pl. and illative pl. are not, due to apocope of the final vowel, i.e. píevos ‘on meadows’ (= iness. pl. píevose) alongside píevos ‘onto meadows’ (= ill. pl. píevosna) (Zinkevičius 1966: 201). In the privative opposition inessive : illative, the illative form derived from the IE accusative of direction is the marked member of the opposition.

Periphrastic passive and resultative in Hittite and Proto-Indo-European

There are several ways to express passive meaning in ancient Indo- European languages, one of them being periphrastic constructions. This paper argues that periphrastic passives in these languages developed from earlier object-oriented resultative constructions, which can be reconstructed for the proto-language as well.

Future conditionals in Lycian

Lycian funerary inscriptions, being overall legal statements regarding the correct management of the tomb after the death of its owner, comprise many future conditional clauses consisting of two types, paratactic and hypotactic. In the latter a preposed relative clause precedes a resumptive main clause, while in the former two adjoining main clauses are interpreted as protasis and apodosis without any obligatory subordinator. In the last case, the general rule is that some constituent pertaining to the preceding prohibition clause against unauthorized burial undergoes left dislocation, the contrastive topic pointing to the conditional character of the sentence. The lack of an overt subordinator in the paratactic type - the odd modal particle e͂‘if’ is at best optional - points to an archaism in Lycian, as opposed to Hittite and Luwian. This paper aims at providing a critical description of the future conditionals in the corpus, accounting for how they are formed and used.

Small-scale patterns in a larger picture

Telling apart family-internal developments from contact-induced changes and socio-geographically conditioned areal trends is still one of the main challenges in tracing the development - and stability - of languages. Notably prima facie contact phenomena might turn out to have resulted from the interaction of a variety of sources upon closer inspection; assessing their interaction is a crucial requirement for comprehending the dynamics of change. Based on the example of simplification patterns in the system of short personal pronouns observed in the Balkan Slavic dialects located in the territory of North Macedonian and Greece, the present paper illustrates the necessity of identifying the multiplicity of triggers and their interaction, thereby making a case for the relevance of small-scale, transient patterns in understanding diachronic processes. In particular, it places the simplifications within the pronominal system into the larger context of differential object indexing by preverbal pronominal elements in the Balkan languages. With the loss of agreement distinctions on pronouns being characteristic for the last phase in the emergence of object indexing, both processes appear to be closely related. Obviously, in this case, the convergence of various different processes has created a favorable environment for the mutual reinforcement and stabilization of two otherwise highly volatile phenomena.

Tocharian B santse ‘daughter-in-law’

In Ogihara’s edition of the Tocharian B so-called “Avadāna-Manuscript”, a fragment from the Dhanika-Avadāna contains a word santse. On the basis of parallel texts, it is shown that santse means ‘daughter-in-law’. This newly identified word is cognate with a.o. Greek νυός ‘daughter-in-law’ and derives from Proto-Indo- European *snusó-.

A functional discourse approach to the particle ἀτάρ in Classical Greek

Taking into consideration both discourse structure and the pragmatics of contrast, this paper draws on Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) to provide a comprehensive and unified account of ἀτάρ in Classical Greek. In classical Greek drama, the particle ἀτάρ designates two main types of contrast. In its most common usage, it marks a discourse contrast, a boundary in conversational structure, such as the beginning of a new exchange or adjacency pair. More specifically, ἀτάρ can signal a change of addressee; the introduction of a new topic or new visual focus; or an abrupt thematic discontinuity such as an interruption. Moreover, ἀτάρ can also mark denial of expectation, especially when preceded by a preparatory μέν. When expressing counterexpectation, the particle instructs the addressee to process the next discourse segment in such a way as to contradict or eliminate some piece of information possibly inferred from the preceding segment. Very similarly, the classical prose of Herodotus, Plato and Xenophon shows analogous usages of ἀτάρ, namely, as a boundary between larger portions of discourse with or without thematic discontinuity, or as a marker of denial of expectation between acts and moves.

The Hieroglyphic Luwian genitive case

Descriptions of Hieroglyphic Luwian grammar assert that the genitive endings ‑as(a) and ‑asi are interchangeable; their distribution is said to be random rather than governed by any conditioning factor. However, recent studies have shown that the ending ‑asi is geographically and chronologically restricted in the corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian texts, which suggests that the distribution is not entirely random. In this paper, it is argued that in texts from the “‑asi area” - where texts containing both endings are found - the genitive endings are distributed in a non-random way. Genitives in ‑as(a) are dependent on neuter gender head nouns, whereas genitives in ‑asi are dependent on common gender head nouns. This means that, syntactically, Hieroglyphic Luwian genitives resemble genitival adjectives by agreeing with the gender of their head. Although several counterexamples exist, they are probably caused by translation errors, by language change in late Hieroglyphic Luwian, and possibly by the fact that -as(a) may reflect -asa as well as -as. Finally, a new account of the historical development of Luwian genitives is presented.

Mihi est from Brythonic to Breton II

Middle Breton (MB) presents an anomaly of pronominal argument coding in imperative and mihi est HAVE constructions: objects can be accusative proclitics only in 1st/2nd person, while unique enclitics appear in 3rd person. Part II traces the history of object coding: Independent > enclitic coding originates in unavailability of accusative object mesoclitics in V1 imperatives by Vendryes’ Restriction in Brythonic, and nonagreement with nominative objects of mihi est in Breton-Cornish. Restriction of enclitics to 3rd person originates with mihi est in typically nonhuman nominative object possessa in Brythonic or Breton-Cornish. It spreads to imperatives through shared enclitic coding in MB, and is circumvented by the MB innovation of accusative proclitics for mesoclitics that allows 1st/2nd person even in V1, as well as the participle in the new HAVE-perfect later in MB. “Innovative” varieties of Breton transition to regular accusative objects with or without losing dative subjects of mihi est. The developments are constrained to familiar patterns of nominative/anomalous subject + accusative/nominative object case combinations, giving rise to the imperative + HAVE construction grouping of Finnish within the history of Breton.