Hurrian language Totally Explained

Everything about Hurrian Language totally explained

Hurrian is a conventional name for the language of the Hurrians (Khurrites), a people who entered northern Mesopotamia around 2300 BC and had mostly vanished by 1000 BC. Hurrian was the language of the Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotamia, and was likely spoken at least initially in Hurrian settlements in Syria. It is generally believed that the speakers of this language originally came from the Armenian mountains and spread over southeast Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC.

Classification

Hurrian is an ergative-agglutinative language that, together with Urartian, constitutes the Hurro-Urartian family. Some scholars see similarities between Hurrian and the Northeast Caucasian languages, and thus place it in the Alarodian family. Examples of the proposed phonological correspondences are PEC *l- > Hurrian t-, PEC *-dl- > Hurrian -r- (Diakonoff & Starostin).
Some scholars, such as I. J. Gelb and E. A. Speiser, tried to equate Hurrians and "Subarians".

History

The earliest Hurrian text fragments consist of lists of names and places from the end of the third millennium BC. The first full texts date to the reigns of Kings Tišatal and Urkeš, at the start of the second milliennium BC. Archeologists have discovered the texts of numerous spells, incantations, prophecies and letters at sites including Hattusha, Mari, Tuttul, Babylon, Ugarit and others. Early study of the language, however, was entirely based on the Mitanni letter, found in 1887 at Amarna in Egypt, written by the Hurrian king Tushratta to the pharaoh Amenhotep III. The Hurro-Urartian relation was recognized as early as 1890 by Sayce (ZA 5, 1890, 260-274) and Jensen (ZA 6, 1891, 34-72).
In the thirteenth century BC, invasions from the west by the Hittites and the south by the Assyrians brought the end of the Mitanni empire, which was divided between the two conquering powers. In the following century, attacks by the Sea Peoples brought a swift end to the last vestives of the Hurrian language. It is around this time that other languages, such as the Hittite language and the Ugaritic language also became extinct, in what is known as the Bronze Age collapse. In the texts of these languages, as well as those of Akkadian or Urartian, many Hurrian names and places can be found.
Renewed interest in Hurrian was triggered by texts discovered in Bogazköy in the 1910s and Ugarit in the 1930s. Speiser (1941) published the first comprehensive grammar of Hurrian. Since the 1980s, the Nuzi corpus from the archive of Silwa-tessup has been edited by G. Wilhelm. Since the late 1980s, significant progress was made due to the discovery of a Hurrian-Hittite bilingual, edited by E. Neu (StBoT 32).

Dialects

The Hurrian of the Mitanni letter differs greatly from that used in the texts at Hattusha. Whereas in Mitanni the vowel pairs i/e and u/o are differentiated, in the Hattusha dialect they've merged into i and u respectively. There are also differences in morphology, and so it's difficult to say if these represent dialects of one language or separate languages altogether. There was also a Hurrian-Akkadian creole, called Nuzi, spoken in the Mitanni provincial capital of Arrapha.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labio- dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal	m		n
Plosive	p		t		k
Affricate			(ts)
Fricative		f	s		x
Approximant	w			j
Lateral			l

As can be seen from the table, Hurrian didn't possess a voiced-voiceless distinction. There is no voiced consonant with an unvoiced counterpart, nor vice versa. However, based on evidence from the cuneiform script, there seem to have been voiced allophones of consonants other than /ts/, which occurred in certain environments (eg two voiced consonants or vowels). Sometimes a voiced consonant is written in these situations, ie b (for p), d (for t), g (for k), v (for f) or ž (for š), and, very rarely, ǧ (for h, ḫ). All consonants except /w/ and /j/ can be long or short. The long (geminate) consonants occur only between vowels. In the cuneiform, as in the latin transcription, geminated consonants are indicated by doubling the corresponding symbol, so ...VC-CV... Short consonants are written ...V-CV..., fpr example mānnatta ("I am") is written ma-a-an-na-at-ta.
Since /f/ wasn't found in the Sumerian cuneiform script, the Hurrians used the symbols representing /p/, /b/ or /w/. An /f/ can be recognised in words where this transciption varies from text to text. In cases where a word occurs only once, with a p, it can't be down if it was originally meant to represent a /p/ or an /f/. In final syllables containing a, /f/ becomes diphthongised to /u/, eg tānōšau (<*tān-ōš-af)) "I'm dead". /s/ is traditionally transcrabed by /š/, because the cuneiform script adapted the sign indicating /š/ for this phoneme. /ts/ is regularly transcribed by z, and /x/ by ḫ or h. In Hurrian, /r/ and /l/ don't occur at the beginning of a word.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid			o
Open		a

Vowels, just like consonants, can be either long or short. In the cuneiform script, this is indicated by placing an additional vowel symbol between the CV and VC syllables, giving CV-V-VC. Short vowels are indicated by a simple CV-VC pairing. In the latin transcription, long vowels are indicated with a macron, ā, ē, ī, ō, and ū. For /o/, which is absent in the Sumerian script, the sign for U is used, whereas /u/ is represented by Ú.

Grammar

Word derivation

While Hurrian wasn't an agglutinative language, and thus couldn't combine multiple stems to form new steps, there was a large number of suffixes which could be attached to existing stems to form new words. For example, attardi (ancestor) from attai (father), futki (son) from fut (to beget), aštohhe (feminine) from ašti (woman). There are also many verbal suffixes, which often change the valency of the verb they modify.

Morphology

Case and number

All Hurrian nouns end in a vowel. Moreover, there are very few which end in /a/ or /e/, and all other nouns end in /i/. This stem-final vowel disappears when certain endings are attached to it, such as case endings which begin with a vowel, or the article suffix. Examples: kāz-ōš (like a cup) from kāzi (cup), awarra (the fields) from awari (field). Hurrian has 13 cases in its system of declension. One of these, the Equative case, has a different form in both of the main dialects. In Hattusha and Mari, the usual ending is -oš, termed equative I, whereas in the Mitanni letter we find the form -nna, called equative II. Another case, the so-called 'e-case', is very rare, and carries a genitive or allative meaning.
Like many languages in the region, Hurrian is an ergative language, which means that the same case is used for the subject of an intransitive verb as for the object of an intransitive one; this case is called the absolutive. For the subject of a transitive verb, however, the ergative case is used. Hurrian has two numbers, singular and plural. The following table outlines the case endings.

Case	Singular	Plural
Absolutive	-Ø	-Ø, -lla
Ergative	-š	-(a)šuš
Genitive	-fe, -we	-(a)še
Dative	-fa, -wa	-(a)ša
Locative (in, at ...)	-a	-(a)ša, -a
Allative (to ...)	-ta	-(a)šta
Ablative (from ...r)	-tan	-(a)štan
Instrumental (with ...)	-ae	not found
Ablative-Instrumental (through/by ...)	-n(i), -ne	-(a)šani, -(a)šane
Comitative (together with ...)	-ra	-(a)šura
Associative (as ...)	-nn(i)	not found (often extrapolated -(a)šunn(i))
Equative I (like ...)	-ōš	not found
Equative II	-nna	-(a)šunna
'e-Case'	-ē	not found

In certain phonological enviroments, these endings can vary. The f of the genetive and dative endings merges with a preceding p or t giving pp and tt respectively, eg. Teššuppe (of Teššup), Hepat-te (of Hepat). The associative can be combined with the instrumental, as in šēna-nn-ae (brother-instr-dat), meaning 'brotherly'.

The article

Case	Singular	Plural
Absolutive	-Ø	-na
all other cases	-ne	-na

In Hurrian, the definite article is attached directly to the noun, but before any case endings, eg tiwē-na-še (object.art.gen.pl) (of the object). Since the article is unmarked in the absolutive singular, a word can be ambiguously definite or indefinite, thus kāzi can mean either 'a cup' or 'the cup' depending on context. The /n/ of the article merges with a preceding /n/, /l/ or /r/ giving /nn/, /ll/ and /rr/ respectively, eg. ēn-na (the gods), ōl-la (the others), awar-ra (the fields). In these cases, the stem-final vowel /i/ has been dropped; the singulars of these words are ēni (god), ōli (another), awari (field). If there are two consonants preceding the final /i/, an epenthetic vowel /u/ is inserted between them, eg. hafurun-ne-ta (heaven-art-all.sg, to heaven), the stem of which is hafurni (heaven).

Suffixaufnahme

One prominent feature of Hurrian is the phenomenon of suffixaufnahme, or suffix absorption, which it shares with Urartisch and the geographically proximate Kartvelian languages. In this process, the dependent modifiers of a noun share the noun's case suffixes. Between the suffix of the dependent noun and the case ending comes the article, which agrees with the referent in number, for example, with an adjective:

(1)	ḫurwoḫḫeneš ōmīnneš
	ḫurw-oḫḫe-ne-š	ōmīn-ne-š
	Hurrian-adj-art.sg-erg.sg	land-art.sg-erg.sg
	"the Hurrian land"

Suffixaufnahme also occurs with other modifers, such as a noun in the genitive modiying another noun, in which case the following nouns takes a possessive pronoun.

(2)	šēniffufenefe ōmīnīfe
	šēn-iffu-fe-ne-fe	ōmīni-i-fe
	brother-my-gen.sg-art.sg-gen.sg	land-his-gen.sg
	"of the land of my brother" (lit, "of my brother his land")

The phenomenon is also found when the head noun is in the locative, instrumental or equative. In the absolutive singular, suffixaufnahme would be meaningless, as the case and number are unmarked. When more than two genitives occur, they're merged, so suffixaufnahme only occurs on the innermost genitive, as in the following example:

(3)	ōmīni Mizrinefenefe efrīfe aštīnna
	ōmīni	Mizri-ne-fe-ne-fe	efri-i-fe	ašti-i=nna
	country	Egypt-art.sg-gen.sg-art.sg-gen.sg	ruler-its-gen.sg	lady-his=she
	"she is the lady of the ruler of the country Egypt"

Verbs

The verbal morphology of Hurrian is extremely complex, but it's constructed only through the affixation of suffixes (indicated by '-') and clitics (indicated y ('='). Hurrian clitics stand for unique words, but are attached to other words as though they were suffixes. Transitivity and intransitivity are clearly indicated in the morphology; only transitive verbs take endings that agree with the person and number of their subject. The direct object and intransitive subject, when they're not represented by an independent noun, are expressed through the use of clitics, or pronouns (see below). Moreover, suffixes can be added to the verb stem which modify its meaning, including valency-chaning morphemes such as -an(n)-- (causative), -ant (applicative) and -ukar ([reciprocative). The meanings of many such suffixes have yet to be decoded.

Indicative mood

After the derivational suffix come those marking tense. The present tense is unmarked, the preterite is marked by -ōš and the futur by ēt. The preterite and future suffixes also the suffix -t, but only in intransitive forms, not in antipassive ones; in the present, this suffix never occurs. Another, separate, -t suffix is found in all tenses in transitive sentences - it indicates a 3rd person plural subject. In the indicative this suffix is mandatory, but in all other moods it's optional. Because these two soffix are identical, ambiguous forms can occur; thus, unētta can bean "they will bring [something]" or "he/she/it will come", depending on the context.
After these endings come the vowel of transitivity. It is -a when the verb is intransitive, -i when the verb is in the antipassive and -o (in the Mitanni letter, -i) in transitive verbs. The suffix -o comes immediately after the derivational suffixes. In transitive verbs, the -o occurs only in the present, but in other tenses it's indicated by the presence (or absence) of the aforementioned -t suffixes.
In the next position, the suffix of negation can occur; in transitive sentences, it's -wa, whereas in intransitive and antipassive ones it's -kkv. Here, the V represents a repetition of the vowel that precedes the negative suffix, although when this is /a/, both vowels become /o/. When the negative suffix is immediately followed by a clitic pronoun (except for =nna), its vowel is /a/, regardless of the vowel that preceded it, eg mann-o-kka=til=an (be-intr-neg-1.pl.abs-and), "and we're not...". The following table gives the tense, transivity and negation markers:

Transitivity		Present	Preterite	Future
intransitive	affirmative	-a	-ōšta	-ētta
intransitive	negative	-okko	-ōštokko	-ēttokko
antipassivische	affirmative	-i	-ōši	-ēti
antipassivische	negative	-ikki	-ōšikki	-ētikki
transitive without derivational suff.	affirmative	Mari/Hattusha -o Mitanni -i	Mari/Hattusha -ōšo Mitanni -ōši	Mari/Hattusha -ēto Mitanni -ēti
transitive without derivational suff.	negative	Mari/Hattusha -owa Mitanni -iwa	Mari/Hattusha -ōšowa Mitanni -ōšiwa	Mari/Hattusha -ētowa Mitanni -ētiwa
transitive with derivational suff.	affirmative	-Ø	Mari/Hattusha -ōšo Mitanni -ōši	Mari/Hattusha -ēto Mitanni -ēti
transitive with derivational suff.	negative	-wa	Mari/Hattusha -ōšowa Mitanni -ōšiwa	Mari/Hattusha -ētowa Mitanni -ētiwa

After this, in transitive verbs, comes the subject marker. The following forms are found:

	1st person singular	1st person plural	2nd person singular	2nd person plural	3rd person sing/pl
with -i (transitive) (only Mitanni)	-af, -au	-auša	-i-o	-aššo, -aššu	-i-a
with -wa (negated)	-uffu	-uffuš(a)	-wa-o	-uššu	-wa-a
with other morphemes (no merging)	-...-af, -...-au	-...-auša	-...-o	-...-aššo, -...-aššu	-...-a

The suffixes of the first person, both plural and singular, and the second person plural suffix combine with the preceding suffixes -i and -wa. However, in the Mari and Hattusha dialects, the suffix of transitivity -o doesn't combine with other endings. The distinction between singular and plural in the third person is provided by the suffix -t, which comes directly after the tense marker. In the third person, when the suffix -wa occurs before the subject marker, it can be replaced by -ma, also expressing the negative: irnōhoš-i-ā-ma, (like-trans-3rd-neg) "He doesn't like [it]".
In the Old Hurrian of Hattusha the ending of the third person singular was -m and the plural -ito. In the intransitive and antipassive, there was also a subject marker, -p for the third person but unmarked for the others. It is unknown whether this suffix was also found on transitive objects. If a verb form was nominalised, eg. to create a relative clause, then another suffix was used: -šše. Nominalised verbs can undergo suffixaufnahme. Verb forms can also take other enclitic suffixes; see 'particles' below.

Other moods

To express nuances of grammatical mood, several special verb forms are used, which are derived from the indicative (non-modal) forms. Wishes and commands are formed with an optative system, whose principal characteristic is the element -i, which is attached directly to the verb stem. There is no difference between the form for transitive and intransitive verbs, there being agreement with the subject of the sentence. Tense markers are unchanged in the optative.

Person/Number	Negation	Ending	Meaning
1st person Singular	affirmative	-ile, after /l/ or /r/, -le and -re	"I want to..."
1st person Singular	negative	-ifalli	"I don't want to..."
1st person Plural		unattested
2nd person Singular	affirmative	-i, -e	"you will (imperative)
2nd person Singular	negative	-ifa, -efa	"you will not..."
2nd person Plural	affirmative	-i(š), -e(š)	"you will..."
2nd person Plural	negative	-ifa(š), -efa(š)	"you will not..."
3rd person Singular	affirmative	-ien¹	"he/she/it can..."
3rd person Singular	negative	-ifaen¹	"he/she/it cannot..."
3rd person Plural	affirmative	-iten¹	"may they..."
3rd person Plural	negative	-itfaen¹	"may they not..."

¹ In the optative forms of the third person, the /n/ ending is present in the Mari/Hattusha dialect when the following word begins with a consonant.
   The so-called final form, which is needed to express a wish or command, is formed in conjuction with the 'with', and has different endings. In the singular, the suffixes -ae, -ai, -ilae and -ilai are found, which after /l/ and /r/ become -lae/-lai and -rae/rai respectively. In the plural the same endings are used, though sometimes the plural suffix -ša is found as well, bbut this isn't always the case.
   To express a possibility, the potential form must be used. For intransitive verbs, the ending is -ilefa or olefa (-lefa and -refa after /l,r/), which doesn't need to agree with the subject. Transitive potential forms are formed with -illet and -allet, which are suffixed to the normal endings of the transitive indicative forms. However, this form is only attested in Mitanni and only in the third person. The potential form is also occasionally used to express a wish.
   The desiderative form is used to express an urgent request. It is also only found in the third person, and only with transitive verbs. The ending for the third person singular is -ilanni, and for the plural, -itanni.

Examples of finite verb forms

The following tables give examples of verb forms in various syntactic environments, largely from the Mitanni letter:

Ex.	Form	Gloss	Translation
(4)	koz-ōš-o	restrain-pret-2.sg	"You restrained"
(5)	pal-i-a-mā-šše=mān	know-trans-3rd-neg-nom=but	"..., but which he doesn't know"
(6)	pašš-ēt-i=t=ān šeniffuta	send-fut-antipass=1.sg.abs=and to.my.brother	"and I'll send to my brother"
(7)	tiwēna tān-ōš-au-šše-na-Ø	the.things do-pret-1.sg-nom-art.pl-abs	"the things I've done"
(8)	ūr-i-uffu=nna=ān	want-trans-neg+1.sg=3.pl.abs=and	"and I don't want it"
(9)	itt-ōš-t-a	go-pret-intr-intr	"I went, you went, ..."
(10)	kul-le	say-opt.1.sg	"I want to say"
(11)	pašš-ien	send-opt.3.sg	"may he send"
(12)	pal-lae=n	know-final-3sg.abs	"so he knows"
(13)	kepānol-lefa=tta=ān	send-pot=1.sg.abs=and	"and I might send"

Infinitive verb forms

Infinitive forms of the verb in Hurrian include both nominalised verbs (participles) and a more conventional infinitive. The first nominalised participle, the present participle, is characterised by the ending -iri or -ire, eg. pairi, "the one building, the builder", hapiri, "the one moving, the nomad". The second nominalised participle, the perfect participle, is formed with the ending -aure, and is only attested once, in Nuzi: hušaure, "the bound one". Another special form is only found in the dialect of Hattusha. It can only be formed from transitive verbs, and it specifies an agent of the first person. Its ending is -ilia, and this participle can undergo suffixaufnahme.

(14)	pailianeš šuḫnineš
	pa-ilia-ne-š	šuḫni-ne-š
	build-I.pret.part-art.sg-erg.sg	wall-art.sg-erg.sg
	"the wall built by me" (here in the ergative, so a subject of a transitive verb)

The infinitive, which can also be found nominalised, is formed with the suffix -umme, eg fahrumme, "to be good", "the good one"

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

Hurrian uses both enclitic and independent personal pronouns. The independent pronouns can occur in any case, whereas the enclitic ones represent only the absolutive. It is irrelevant to the meaning of the sentence to which word in the sentence the enclitic pronoun is attached, so it's often attached either to the first phrase or to the verb. The following table gives the attested forms of the personal pronouns, omitting those which can't be determined.

Case	1st Singular (I)	2nd Singular (you)	3rd Singular (he/she/it)	1st Plural (we)	2nd Plural (you)	3rd Plural (they)
Absolutive (indep.)	ište	fe	mane, manni	šattil, šattitil(la)	fella	manella
Absolutive (enclit.)	-t(ta)	-m(ma)	-n(na), -me, -ma	-til(la)	-f(fa)	-l(la), -lle
Ergative	išaš	feš	manuš	šieš	fešuš	manšoš
Genitive	šofe	fefe			feše
Dative	šofa	fefa		šaša (?)	feša	manša
Locative					feša (?)
Allative	šuta			šašuta (?)
Ablative			manutan
Comitative	šura		manura			manšura, manšora
Equative II	šonna		manunna

The variant forms -me, -ma and -lle of the third person absolutive pronouns only before certain conjuctions, namely ai (when), inna (when), inu, unu (who), panu (though), and the relative pronouns iya and iye. When an enclitic personal pronoun is attached to a noun, an extensive system of sound changes determines the final form. The enclitic -nna of the third person singular behaves differently from the other pronouns: when it's preceded by an ergative suffix it, unlike the other pronouns, combines with the suffix to form šša, whereas with all other pronouns the š of the ergative is dropped. Moreover, a word-final vowel /i/ changes to /e/ or /a/ when any enclitic pronoun other than -nna is attached.

Possessive pronouns

The Hurrian possessive pronouns can't occur independently, but are only enclitic. They are attached to nouns or nominalised verbs. The form of the pronoun is dependent on that of the following morpheme. The table below outlines the possible forms:

Fall	1st Singular (my)	2nd Singular (your)	3rd Singular (his/her/its)	1st Plural (our)	2nd Plural (your)	3rd Plural (their)
word-finally	-iffe	-f	-i	-iffaš	-šše	-yaš
before consonants (except /f,w/)	-iffu	-fu	-i	-iffaš	-šu	-yaš
before vowels and /f,w/	-iff	-f	-i	-iffaš	n. bel.	-yaš

The final vowel of the noun stem is dropped before an attached possessive pronoun, for example šeniffe ("my brother", from šena "brother"). It remains, however, when a consonant-initial pronoun is atached: attaif ("your father", from attai, "father")

Other pronouns

Hurrian also has several demonstrative pronouns: anni (this), anti/ani (that), akki...aki (one...the other). The final vowel /i/ of these pronouns is retained only in the absolutive, becoming /u/ in all other cases, eg. akkuš "the one" (erg.), antufa ("to that [one]"). There are also the relative pronouns iya and iye. Both forms are free interchangeable. The pronoun has the function of the absolutive in the relative close, and so represents an intransitive subject or a transitive object. The interrogative pronoun (who/what) is only attested in the ergative singular (afeš), and once in the absolutive singular (au).

Adpositions

In Hurrian, there are many adpositions which can denote local and abstract relations, most of them built on the dative and genitive cases. They are almost exclusively postpositions - only one preposition (āpi + dative, "for"), is attested in the texts from Hattusha. All adpositions can themselves generally be in the allative, rarely in the dative or in the "e-case".
Some examples: N-fa āyita or N-fenē āyē (in the presence of; from āyi "face"). N-fa etīta or N-fa etīfa (for, because of; from eti "body, person"), N-fenē etiyē (concerning), N-fa furīta (in sight of; from furi, "sight, look"), and only in Hattusha N-fa āpita (in front of; from āpi, "front"). Besides these, there's ištani "space between" which is used with a plural possessive pronoun and the locative, for "between us/you/them", eg ištaniffaša (between us, under us).
Im Hurritischen existieren zahlreiche feste Wendungen, um verschiedene lokale und abstrakte Relationen auszudrücken. Sie werden zumeist mit dem Dativ oder Genitiv gebildet. Es sind fast ausschließlich Postpositionen, also nachgestellte Adpositionen, bekannt. Nur eine Präposition, also eine vorangestellte Adposition, (āpi (vor) mit Dativ), ist in Texten aus Hattusha belegt. Alle Adpositionen lassen sich auf Substantive zumeist im Allativ, selten im Dativ oder im e-Kasus, zurückführen. Aus diesem Grund erfolgt Suffixaufnahme mit dem Fall der Postposition, wenn das Nomen (N), mit dem die Adposition verwendet wird, im Genitiv steht.

Conjunctions and adverbs

Only a few sentence-initial particles are attested. In contract with nouns, which also end in /i/, the final vowel of the conjunctions ai (when) and anammi (therefore) isn't dropped before an enclitic personal pronoun. Other conjunctions include alaše (if), inna (when), inu (like) and panu (although). Hurrian has only a small amount of adverbs. The temporal adverbs are henni (now), kuru (again) and unto (then). Also attested are atī (thus, so) and tiššan (very).

Enclitic particles

The enclitic particles can be attached to any word in a sentence, but most often they're attached to the first phrase of the sentence or to the verb. Common once include =ān (and), =mān (but), =mmaman (to be sure) and =nīn (truly!).

(15)	atīnīn mānnattamān
	atī=nīn	mānn-a=tta=mān
	so=truly	be-intr=1.sg.abs=but
	"But I really am thus"

Numbers

In addition to the irregular number word šui (every), all the cardinal numbers from 1 to 10 as well as a few higher ones are attested. Ordinal numbers are formed with the suffix -(š)še or ši, which becomes -ze or -zi after /n/. The following table gives an overview of the numeral system:

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	13 or 30	17 or 70	18 or 80	10000	30000
Cardinal number	šukko, šuki	šini	kike	tumni	nariya	šeše	šinti	kiri, kira	tamri	ēmani	kikmani	šintimani	kirmani	nupi	kike nupi
Ordinal number	unattested	šinzi	kiški	tumnušše	narišše	unattested	šintišše	unattested	unattested	ēmanze	unattested	unattested	kirmanze	unattested	unattested

Distributive numbers carry the suffix -ate, eg. kikate (by threes), tumnate (by fours). The suffix -āmha denotes multiplicatives, eg. šināmha (twice), ēmanāmha (thrice). All cardinal numbers in a vowel, which drops when an enclitic is attached.

Syntax

The normal word order of a Hurrian sentence is SOV. Within noun phrases, the noun regularly comes at the end. Adjectives, numbers, and genetive modifiers come before the noun they modify. Relative clauses, however, tend to surround the noun, which means that the noun which the relative clause modifies stands in the middle of the relative clause. Hurrian has at its disposal several paradigms for constructing relative clauses. It can either use the relative pronouns iya and iye, which has already been described under 'pronouns' above, or the nominalising suffix -šše attached to a verb, which undergoes suffixaufnahme. The third possibility is for both these markers to occur (see example 16 below). The noun, which is represented by the relative clause, can take any case, but within the relative clause can only have the function of the absolutive, for example it can only be the subject of an intransitive relative clause or the object of a transitive one.

(16)	iyallānīn šēniffuš tiwēna tānōšāššena
	iya=llā=nīn	šēn-iffu-š	tiwē-na-Ø	tān-ōš-ā-šše-na-Ø
	rel.pron=3.pl.abs=truly	brother-my-erg.sg	object-art.pl-abs	send-pret-3.sg.subj-nom-art.pl-abs
	"those, which my brother sent"

As has been outlined above, Hurrian transitive verbs take only take a subject in the ergative and an object in the obsolutive. The indirect object of ditransitive verbs, however, can be in the dative, locative, allative, or with some verbs also in the absolutive.

(17)	olaffa katulle
	ola-Ø=ffa	katul-le
	other-abs=2.pl.abs	say-opt.1.sg
	'I want to tell you_abs something else_abs“

Vocabulary

The attested Hurrian lexicon is quite homogenous, containing only a small number of loanwords (eg. tuppi (clay tablet), Mizri (Egypt) both from Akkadian). The relative pronouns iya and iye may be a loan from the Indo-Aryan language of the Mitanni people who had lived in the region before the Hurrians; cf. Sanskrit ya. Conversely, Hurrian gave many loan words to the nearby Akkadian dialects, for example hāpiru (nomad) from the Hurrian hāpiri (nomad). There may also be Hurrian loanwords among the languages of the Caucasus, but this can't be verified, as there are no written records of Caucasian languages from the time of the Hurrians. The source language of similar sounding words is thus unconfirmable.

Sample text

Untomān iyallēnīn tiwēna šūallamān šēniffuš katōšāššena ūriāššena, antillān ēmanāmḫa tānōšau. (aus dem Mitanni-Brief, Kolumne IV, Zeilen 30-32)

Word in morphemes	Grammatical analysis
unto=mān	now = but
iya=llē=nīn	relative.pronoun = 3.plural.absolutive = truly
tiwē-na-Ø	thing - article.plural - absolutive
šū-a=lla=mān	every - locative = 3.plural.absolutive = but
šēn-iffu-š	brother - my - ergative.singular
kat-ōš-ā-šše-na-Ø	say - preterite.transitive - 3.singular.subject - nominaliser - article.plural - absolutive
ūr-i-ā-šše-na-Ø	want - transitive - 3.singular.subject - nominaliser - article.plural - absolutive
anti=lla=an	those = plural.absolutive = and
ēman-āmḫa	ten - multiplicative
tān-ōš-au	do - preterite.transitive - 1.singular.subject

Translation: "Those things, which my brother truly said and wanted as a whole, now I've done them, but tenfold."

Hurrian literature

Texts in the Hurrian language itself have been found at Hattusa, Ugarit (Ras Shamra), and Sapinuwa (but unpublished). Also, one of the longest of the Amarna letters is Hurrian; written by King Tushratta of Mitanni to Pharaoh Amenhotep III. It was the only long Hurrian text known until a multi-tablet collection of literature in Hurrian with a Hittite translation was discovered at Hattusas in 1983.
Important finds were made at Ortaköy (Sapinuwa) in the 1990s, including several bilinguals. Most of them remain unedited as of 2007.
No Hurrian texts are attested from the first millennium BC (unless one wants to consider Urartian a late Hurrian dialect), but scattered loanwords persist in Assyrian, such as the goddess Savuska mentioned by Sargon II.

References

Further Information

Get more info on 'Hurrian Language'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://hurrian_language.totallyexplained.com">Hurrian language Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.