Phonologie Hittite.

• Author: Yakubovich, Ilya

Phonologie Hittite. By SYLVAIN PATRI. Handbuch der Orientalistik, vol. I/130. Leiden: BRILL, 2019. Pp. xiii + 733. $238.

For the first hundred years of its existence. Hittite phonology primarily served the need of providing the input for comparative-historical studies. Such a state of affairs has to do with the nature of the available data: Traditional phonologists tend to be poorly equipped for investigating cuneiform texts, while cuneiformists rarely prioritize phonological research. In contrast, Indo-European comparative linguistics immediately addressed Hittite from the decipherment of the language in the early twentieth century. It suffices to mention here the boost given by this discovery to the development of the Laryngeal Theory. Accordingly, most publications dealing with the interpretation of the Hittite sound system belong to scholars trained as Indo-Europeanists. Thus, H. Craig Melchert and Alwin Kloekhorst have acted as the primary sparring partners in this field in recent years. The appearance of the book under review changes this state of affairs since it was produced by a linguist with theoretical and typological interests who explicitly distances himself from Indo-European comparison as a way of verifying Hittite synchronic phonology.

The structure of the book is sufficient to demonstrate the comprehensive character of the research undertaken. After the introduction and chapter 1, devoted respectively to theoretical prerequisites and the nature of the Hittite corpus, the author proceeds to describe the conventions of Hittite cuneiform in chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 4 is devoted to the segmental phonological inventory and its phonetic interpretation, while chapter 5 lists the combinations of sounds attested in Hittite lexemes. Chapters 6 and 7 focus on the problems of accentuation and syllable structure, while chapter 8 adopts the perspective of rule-based phonology for the description of allophonic and morphophonemic alternations in Hittite. The concluding chapter 9 treats the Hittite clitics, including the special phonological rules that manifest themselves at clitic boundaries.

Turning to the evaluation of Patri's monograph, one has to begin by acknowledging the efforts invested in gathering and classifying the relevant Hittite data. The descriptive information on all aspects of the Hittite phonological system remains useful even when one disagrees with the author's interpretations. Without any irony, one must be grateful to the author for undertaking this sorting task.

As far as the style of the presentation goes, one observes a healthy balance between using the conventions of Cuneiform Studies, with which Sylvain Patri has become thoroughly familiar, and evaluating them from a cross-linguistic perspective. As an example, 1 would like to mention his rejection of the term "plene spelling" in favor of "vowel replication" (p. 142 n. 19). While the contrast between plene and defective spellings makes sense with reference to the alphabetic systems that inconsistently deploy maires lectionis, its transfer to the Hittite cuneiform appears to have been unwarranted, since vowel replication in this case does not normally complement the otherwise deficient notation, but rather marks an additional phonological feature (primarily the accent).

In contrast, the interpretation of the data leaves a mixed...