Hittie Etymological Dictionary, vol. 3: Words Beginning with H.

• Author: Beal, Richard H.

Trends in Linguistics 3. By JAN PUHVEL. Berlin and New York: MOUTON DE GRUYTER, 1991. Pp. ix + 441. $176.30 (cloth).

As in previous volumes, the passages cited are grouped together by grammatical form, rather than by meaning or usage, i.e., for verbs sg. 1 exx. (active, then middle!!) then the sg. 2 exx., etc. This makes it tedious to find the justification for the often large number of meanings and/or usages cited by the author in the lemma (e.g., sixteen English words translate Hittite halzai-). Special meanings such as with preverb + verb are not separated out. Thus there are twenty-nine different words given to translate huet- and huet- + preverb, the justification for which requires plowing through eight pages of translations organized only by grammatical form. For instance, at the top of page 344, because they use separate forms, two nearly identical passages involving "plucking" with animal hair (one act. 2nd and one mid. 2nd) are separated by a passage where huittiya- act. 2nd + preverb para is translated "temporize."

Words or families of words derived from other words are listed under the lemma of the most basic word. However, these are not cross-referenced. Nor are unusual forms that are by-forms of more common words, e.g., hai(n)k- for henk-. Separation of e and i makes it difficult to decide where to look (is it henk- or hink-?), and again there are no cross-references. The glide -ia-, correctly transliterated -y- in this English-speaking dictionary is inconsistently alphabetized, sometimes as -ia- as the CHD does, (hiyarra- is followed by hiqqar), but sometimes in the position of Engl. -y-, (hariya- comes after hariuzi).

A list of rare words beginning with h, that were omitted by J. Tischler's Hethitisch-Deutsches Worterverzeichnis . . . [Innsbruck: Institut fur Sprachwissenschaft, 1982], was published in a review by Ahmet Unal, JNES 49 (1990): 357-59; most of them have also been omitted from Puhvel. For ha- to hant- a more complete dictionary, A. Kammenhuber's reworking of J. Friedrich's Hethitisches Worterbuch [[HW.sup.2]] (Heidelberg: Winter), appeared almost simultaneously with the work under review. What follows are remarks on individual entries.

hahhima-: not "withering of vegetation caused by summer drought" but rather "frost" following H. Hoffner, Hittite Myths (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), 14, and F. Pecchioli Daddi and A. Polvani, La mitologia ittita (Brescia: Paideia, 1990), 59 n. 14. hahhima- has the verb "to get cold, freeze" in the same line: [...] [(ha-ah-hi-m)a . . . -]ta e-ku-na-i in KUB 45.20 i 8 and dupl. KUB 23.121 ii 7.

halanta: the lexical text which equates halanta with Akk. resu "head" has in its Sumerian column GU "neck." The Hittite scribe could have been translating either.

hallanniya-: since the object of this rare verb is grass and crop land (apparently the enemy's foot is involved in one instance) it seems that [HW.sup.2]'s more specific translations "zertreten" and "niedertreten" are to...