Proceedings of the Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference

In this paper, I propose a formal analysis of the eleven- and twelve-syllable lines of Vedic, with a glance at Greek lyric meter and a look at Greco-Aryan. Based on the higher incidence of word-end, as well as surface hiatus patterns and clitic placement, in certain positions of verse-final pādas, the Vedic eleven- and twelve-syllable lines can be described as an octosyllable and enneasyllable, respectively, expanded by a bacchiac or amphibrach; these subdivide into [2|3][3|3] and [2|3][3|4]. These parses are consistent with the ternary podic analysis of native metrical tradition (Piṅgala). The positions especially of medial feet permit substitutions of heavy syllables for light and vice versa, to such an extent that mismatched weights became almost de rigueur. The eight-, eleven-, and twelve-syllable lines can thus be represented by related tree structures. Greek furnishes comparable eleven- and twelve-syllable lines (glyconics and hipponacteans with internal “dactylic” expansion). The proposed representations of the major Vedic pāda types add a vertical dimension to horizontal comparison and reconstruction of the Indo-European system.

The establishment of the Hittite-speaking court in Hattusa in the 17th century BCE must have led to close contact of speakers of Hattian, Luwian, and newly introduced Hittite in and around Hattusa, if not beyond. In such a situation we would expect influence from Hattian on
Hittite beyond borrowed lexemes. However, there is no evidence of Hattian interference with the grammar of Hittite that can be extracted from the documents of the court, our main source of Hittite. Nonetheless, a rare document, the oracle inquiry KBo 18.151, does exhibit such influence from Hattian. As has generally been accepted, this document, dated to Hattusili I’s reign, contains orthographic anomalies pointing to Hattian phonetic interference reflecting the speech of a native speaker of Hattian, perhaps representing the general populace. But there is more interference. The current study reveals how the incorrect use of Hittite case endings is best explained as resulting from pattern imposition of the Hattian case system. The language of KBo 18.151 might thus reflect the type of Hittite that resulted from acquisition of Hittite as a second language. This implies that Old Hittite society was diglossic, with Hittite predominantly as the elite language, while Hattian and possibly Luwian were spoken by the general populace. KBo 18.151 provides an invaluable glimpse into the initial phase of Hittite-Hattian language contact from the perspective of a native Hattian speaker.

Ancient Greek accentuation has been notoriously difficult to categorize comprehensively. We set out a new model which we believe is the first fully comprehensive account that formally treats nominal accentuation as approximations of recessive accentuation. This is done using Direct OT, according to which morphemes are represented by the constraints they violate.

In this paper I provide a comprehensive analysis of the 51 instances I have found of the future passive imperative in Latin, offering new suggestions about the chronology of the creation of the three different 2nd/3rd singular endings, -tō, -minō, and -tor, and their usage. The data suggest that -minō is the most archaic ending attested for the 2nd/3rd sg. future passive imperative. I argue that the preserved instances of passive use of the ending -tō represent a more recent development rather than deriving directly from the situation reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European. In Latin, this use seems instead to be a transfer of the active ending onto deponents via common verbs. Further, the lack of transparency of the ending -minō has several consequences for this verbal category in Latin, such as the creation of a more clearly marked passive ending -tor. I consider also whether the situation in Latin reflects a paradigmatic gap.

In Ancient Greek, verbal first compound members in -εσι- derive regularly from verbs with aorists in -εσ- (e.g., ἐτέλεσα ⇒ τελεσι-). From this context, the sequence -εσι- is reanalyzed as a linking element and extended to verbs without an aorist in -εσ- (e.g., πηγεσι- vs. aor. ἔπηξα). Previous analyses of this analogical extension have proved empirically inadequate. I reconstruct a process, active in Homeric Greek and parallel to the deverbative formation of verbal second members in -ής (Meissner 2006:186–96), which produces verbal first members in -εσι- by analogy with the compositional forms of s-stems (-τειχής : τειχεσι- :: -τελής : τελεσι-). The process starts with denominative verbs from neuter s-stems, which also produce second members in -ής. As these are reanalyzed as deverbative, a verbal first member in -εσι- is also created and specialized for transitive meanings. The new derivational rule spreads according to strictly defined patterns of proportional analogy to verbs without a connection to s-stems, but with verbal second members in -ής. Once the new subclass of τερψίμβροτος compounds in -εσι- is created, it patterns with the class of φερέοικος compounds in -ε- and provides the -ε- verbal first members with an -εσι- counterpart. While the analogical process ceases to be productive already in Homer, compounds in -εσι- remain in the lexicon of poetry and onomastics as archaisms.

This paper challenges the traditional etymology of Greek μοιχός as a τομός-type noun derived from PIE *h₃mei̯g̑ʰ- ‘to piss’ and proposes to trace back the word to PIE *mei̯k̑- ‘to mix’. I re-evaluate the Latin and Sanskrit evidence cited in favor of a derivation for μοιχός from *h₃mei̯g̑ʰ- and find it inconclusive for the salient details of the semantic development proposed in the earlier literature. Moreover, the lateness of both the Sanskrit and Latin evidence points towards parallel innovations of the meaning ‘to ejaculate’ from ‘to piss’. Instead, the insight that reflexes of *mei̯k̑- frequently denote extramarital intercourse across Indo-European languages and especially Greek, notably in Homeric uses of μίσγω and ἐμίγην in adulterous contexts, provides semantic support for deriving μοιχός from PIE *mei̯k̑-. I formalize the derivation through a rátha-type derivational chain (*mei̯k̑- → *moi̯k̑-éh₂ → *moi̯k̑-h₂-ó-s > μοιχός) and adduce evidence from the Balto-Slavic branch for the intermediate τομή-type abstract. This analysis circumvents the difficulties posed by a lack of incontrovertible Greek evidence for the reconstruction of word-initial Saussure-Hirt effect (*#HRo > *#Ro) in PIE, especially when the resonant has the feature [–nasal]. A full re-evaluation of the evidence is, however, left for future research.

This paper clarifies the morphological development of Homeric τερμιόεις ‘fringed, hemmed, edged’ and re-examines its relationship with
Mycenaean te-mi-dwe ‘wedged’. Earlier accounts, notably Meier (1975:75), interpret τερμιόεις as preserving an archaic i-stem base, with the once-attested Linear B form ṭẹ-mi-we-te (neuter nominative dual) taken as direct evidence for such a formation in Mycenaean. Through a reassessment of the Linear B dossier, I argue that this form is more plausibly explained as a scribal error for te-mi-de-we-te, consistent with the id-stem base attested elsewhere in the corpus. I further show that only the id-stem variant yields metrically acceptable forms in hexametric poetry, whereas a Proto-Greek i-stem-based *termi-went- would not scan without the addition of linking -o-, a feature absent in Mycenaean and demonstrably secondary in Homeric *-went-adjectives. I therefore argue for a reversal of the trajectory described by Meier. Rather than preserving an older form, Homeric τερμιόεις is best viewed as an innovative reshaping influenced by poetic constraints and contamination with other -ιόεις adjectives. This proposal aligns with recent findings in the study of artificial i-stems in the Homeric Kunstsprache, chiefly van Beek 2022a and Lundquist 2023.

This paper explores the prosody of the Rigvedic clause against the backdrop of two phenomena: (1) the treatment of vowel-vowel junctures at the word boundary (in particular whether such sequences show hiatus or contraction) and (2) the caesura in trimeter (11- and 12-syllable) lines. The behavior, with respect to these phenomena, of a variety of functional elements in the language of the Rigveda is investigated, leading to the conclusion that (1) and (2) provide critical evidence for the natural language prosody of that language. A sharp contrast is drawn with approaches that assume that the relevant processes reflect “poetic license” or arise metri causa.

The most fundamental use of phylogenetic methods is to infer a cladistic tree structure. Besides the use of different methods for the phylogenetic inference (parsimony, likelihood), contemporary phylogenetic research also discusses on which linguistic features an inference should be based. What happens if we substitute (or complement) the basic vocabulary data with other data types, such as sound changes or morphosyntactic features? By a comparative phylogenetic reconstruction model, i.e., a reconstruction of the transition rates and probability of presence at the root and hidden nodes of features in a phylogenetic tree, we may reconstruct the probability of the presence of different features back to a proto-language, and using a world tree even further back, to Early language. However, how reliable is this reconstruction? How does this reconstruction relate to other types of reconstruction, using, e.g., the comparative method or diachronic typology? Alternatively, is there any other information that can be extracted from a comparative phylogenetic reconstruction?

This paper introduces and outlines comparative phylogenetic reconstruction: the advantages, the constraints, and the ways in which these models support or contradict earlier attempts towards reconstruction. Further, this paper indicates how comparative phylogenetic reconstruction can be used to scale up questions about the origin of morphosyntactic categories, general evolutionary trends, as well as aspects of lineage and areality in the diffusion of morphosyntax.