The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, vol. P, fasc. 1.

• Author: Melchert, H. Craig

The present fascicle of this ongoing work contains, besides the usual assortment of rarities and hapax legomena, the lemmata for two of the most fundamental and widely attested verbs in the language: pa(i)-, "go" and pai-/pe-/pi-, "give," as well as several important nominal stems.

The overall content and the longer articles, in particular, show the outstanding strengths justly praised by previous reviewers: thoroughness and accuracy of documentation, with careful attention to detail; judicious interpretations and analyses, with explicit argumentation and due attention to differing views; and a remarkable lucidity of presentation which makes the wealth of information offered truly accessible.

The current state of Hittite studies precludes "definitive" solutions to many problems. Solutions that include syntactic conditioning, such as the use of local particles and preverbs, are in any case not amenable to a purely lexicographical approach. Nevertheless, the CHD is not only an indispensable reference work offering a reliable and up-to-date repertoire of the Hittite lexicon. It is also a rich source of data and ideas regarding a host of textual, grammatical, and socio-historical problems. In those cases where it cannot offer a complete answer, the CHD with its excellent arrangement frames the question and points the way to a solution.

Some improvements over earlier fascicles are noticeable: cross-references to alternate spellings and non-obvious allomorphs are more plentiful, as are explicit rejections of ghost words and misreadings. The editors have also wisely chosen to sacrifice perfect consistency in the interest of incorporating new insights of recent scholarship.

Inevitably, I cannot agree with every single analysis or interpretation, but I leave the few such individual cases to other occasions where I can present the requisite counterarguments. I will focus here on a more general issue with consequences for future fascicles.

The CHD has consistently failed to recognize the phenomenon by which Hittite (at least Old Hittite) distinguishes both a collective and an individual or count plural for a single noun stem.(1) In the present fascicle, for example, (DUG)palhi- (a vessel) is said to be common gender with "neuter forms apparently restricted to the plural." This is errant nonsense and a serious distortion of Hittite grammar. We are dealing not with a peculiar gender alternation, but merely with a common-gender noun which has both a...