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The Old Hittite and the Proto-Indo-European tense-aspect system

  • Alwin Kloekhorst
Published/Copyright: October 7, 2017
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Indogermanische Forschungen
From the journal Indogermanische Forschungen Volume 122 Issue 1

Abstract

Building on Melchert’s observation that in Old Hittite narrative texts an aspectual system seems to be used that is different from the aspectual system found in the majority of Hittite texts (Melchert 1998), this article discusses the nature of the tense-aspect system of Proto-Indo-European, especially on the basis of a comparison between the Sanskrit and Hittite verbal systems (following observations and analyses by Pooth 2009). It is argued that the tense-aspect system of the Old Hittite narrative texts as described by Melchert may go back directly to the system that can be reconstructed for early Proto-Indo-European, namely one in which there was no distinction in tense, but rather a distinction between progressive and non-progressive aspect.

Published Online: 2017-10-7
Published in Print: 2017-9-26

© 2017 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Titelei
  2. Inhalt
  3. Some remarks on dicens in Late Latin texts
  4. A shared substrate between Greek and Italic
  5. The paradigm of the word for ‘house, home’ in Old Irish and related issues
  6. Towards the prosodic structure of infinitive formations in Baltic and Slavic and its diachronic implications
  7. The development of the Proto-Indo-European instrumental suffix in Germanic
  8. Position as a behavioral property of subjects
  9. Between the historical languages and the reconstructed language
  10. Vocalic elements and prosody in Slavic comparatives
  11. Luwic *mar-
  12. Sidetic masara ↑ue[
  13. Armenian hołm ‘wind’, Greek πόλεμος ‘war’
  14. Schimpfen und Fluchen im Luwischen
  15. Das Suffix *-u̯ó- im Indogermanischen und Anatolischen
  16. An agreement between the Sardians and the Mermnads in the Lydian language?
  17. The Old Hittite and the Proto-Indo-European tense-aspect system
  18. Die Pronominal‑ und Partikelkette in den altanatolischen Sprachen
https://doi.org/10.1515/if-2017-0015

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Titelei
  2. Inhalt
  3. Some remarks on dicens in Late Latin texts
  4. A shared substrate between Greek and Italic
  5. The paradigm of the word for ‘house, home’ in Old Irish and related issues
  6. Towards the prosodic structure of infinitive formations in Baltic and Slavic and its diachronic implications
  7. The development of the Proto-Indo-European instrumental suffix in Germanic
  8. Position as a behavioral property of subjects
  9. Between the historical languages and the reconstructed language
  10. Vocalic elements and prosody in Slavic comparatives
  11. Luwic *mar-
  12. Sidetic masara ↑ue[
  13. Armenian hołm ‘wind’, Greek πόλεμος ‘war’
  14. Schimpfen und Fluchen im Luwischen
  15. Das Suffix *-u̯ó- im Indogermanischen und Anatolischen
  16. An agreement between the Sardians and the Mermnads in the Lydian language?
  17. The Old Hittite and the Proto-Indo-European tense-aspect system
  18. Die Pronominal‑ und Partikelkette in den altanatolischen Sprachen
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