Hurrian language - Citizendia

Hurrian
Spoken in:	Mitanni
Region:	Mesopotamia
Language extinction:	Ca 1000 BC
Language family:	Hurro-Urartian
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`–`
ISO 639-3:	`xhu`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Mitanni ( Hittite cuneiform, also Mittani) or Hanigalbat ( Assyrian Hanigalbat Khanigalbat cuneiform) Mesopotamia (from the Greek meaning "land between the rivers" is an area geographically located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers largely corresponding According to some definitions an extinct language is a Language which no longer has any speakers, whereas a dead language is a language which is no longer spoken List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family The Hurro-Urartian languages are an extinct Language family of the Ancient Near East, which comprises only two languages Hurrian and ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages ISO 639 -3 (ISO 639-32007 is an international standard for Language codes The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's

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. The Hurrians (also Khurrites; cuneiform Ḫu-ur-ri 𒄷𒌨𒊑 were a people of the Ancient Near East, who lived in northern Mesopotamia Mesopotamia (from the Greek meaning "land between the rivers" is an area geographically located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers largely corresponding The 23rd century BC is a Century which lasted from the year 2300 BC to 2201 BC Hurrian was the language of the Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotamia, and was likely spoken at least initially in Hurrian settlements in Syria. Mitanni ( Hittite cuneiform, also Mittani) or Hanigalbat ( Assyrian Hanigalbat Khanigalbat cuneiform) Syria ( سوريّة or) officially the Syrian Arab Republic (Arabic ar الجمهورية العربية السورية 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. The Armenian Highland (Russian Armyanskoye Nagorye; also known as the Armenian Upland or Armenian Plateau, also referred as Eastern Armenia) ^[1]

Classification

Hurrian is an ergative-agglutinative language that, together with Urartian, constitutes the Hurro-Urartian family. An ergative-absolutive Language (or simply ergative language is a language that treats the argument (" subject " of an Intransitive An agglutinative language is a Language that uses Agglutination extensively most Words are formed by joining Morphemes together Urartian (also called Vannic, in older literature also "Chaldean" is the conventional name for the language spoken by the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom The Hurro-Urartian languages are an extinct Language family of the Ancient Near East, which comprises only two languages Hurrian and Some scholars see similarities between Hurrian and the Northeast Caucasian languages, and thus place it in the Alarodian family. The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Caspian, Nakho-Dagestanian, or Dagestanian, are a family of Languages The Alarodian languages are a proposed language family that encompasses the Northeast Caucasian or Dagestan languages and the extinct Hurro-Urartian languages 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". Ignace J Gelb (October 14 1907 &ndash December 22 1985 was a Polish - American ancient historian and Assyriologist who pioneered the scientific Ephraim Avigdor Speiser ( January 24, 1902 &ndash June 15, 1965) was a Polish -born American Assyriologist. The land of Subar (Sumerian Su-bir4/Subar/Šubur or Subartu (Akkadian Šubartum/Subartum/ina Šú-ba-ri, Assyrian mât Šubarri) was situated

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. Hattusa (URU Ḫa-at-tu-ša 𒌷𒄩𒀜𒌅𒊭 Unicode cuneiform article to display these cuneiform characters--> Babylon was a City-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which can be found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq Ugarit ( Ugaritic: ʼugrt; Hebrew:; Arabic:) (modern Ras Shamra رأس شمرة ("top/head/cape of the wild Fennel 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 Amarna letters (sometimes "Amarna correspondence" or "Amarna tablets" are an archive of correspondence on Clay tablets mostly diplomatic The site of Amarna (commonly known as el-Amarna or incorrectly as Tel el-Amarna; see below ( Arabic: العمارنة al-‘amārnah) is located Tushratta was a king of Mitanni at the end of the reign of Amenhotep III and throughout the reign of Akhenaten -- approximately the late 14th century Amenhotep III (sometimes read as Amenophis III meaning Amun is Satisfied was the ninth Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty. 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. The Assyrians are an Ethnic group whose origins lie in what is today Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. In the following century, attacks by the Sea Peoples brought a swift end to the last vestives of the Hurrian language. The Sea Peoples is the term used for a confederacy of seafaring raiders of the second millennium BC who sailed into the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, caused political 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. Hittite or Nesili is the Extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, a people who created an empire centered on ancient Hattusas (modern The Ugaritic language, discovered by French archaeologists in 1928 is known only in the form of writings found in the lost city of Ugarit, near the modern The Bronze Age collapse is the name given by those historians who see the transition from the 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. Boğazkale is a district of Çorum Province in the Black Sea region of Turkey. Ugarit ( Ugaritic: ʼugrt; Hebrew:; Arabic:) (modern Ras Shamra رأس شمرة ("top/head/cape of the wild Fennel 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. Nuzi (or Nuzu; Akkadian Gasur; modern Yorghan Tepe, Iraq) was an ancient Mesopotamian city southwest of Kirkuk Wilhelm. Since the late 1980s, significant progress was made due to the discovery of a Hurrian-Hittite bilingual, edited by E. Neu (StBoT 32). Studien zu den Bogazkoy -Texten (abbreviated StBoT) edited by the German Akademie der Wissenschaften und Literatur, Mainz, since 1965

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 have merged into i and u respectively. There are also differences in morphology, and so it is difficult to say if these represent dialects of one language or separate languages altogether. A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος dialektos) is a variety of a Language that is characteristic of a particular group of There was also a Hurrian-Akkadian creole, called Nuzi, spoken in the Mitanni provincial capital of Arrapha. Nuzi (or Nuzu; Akkadian Gasur; modern Yorghan Tepe, Iraq) was an ancient Mesopotamian city southwest of Kirkuk Arrapha ( Syriac: ܐܪܦܗܐ أررابخا,عرفة was an ancient Assyrian city that existed in what is today the city of Kirkuk

Phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemes of English
	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 did not possess a voiced-voiceless distinction. In Phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a Consonant articulated with both Lips The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet In Phonetics, labiodentals are Consonants articulated with the lower Lip and the upper Teeth. Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior Alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets Palatal consonants are Consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the Hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. Affricate Consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as or) but release as a fricative (such as or or occasionally into Fricatives are Consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together Approximants are speech sounds ( Phonemes) that could be regarded as intermediate between Vowels and typical Consonants In the articulation of approximants Laterals are "L"-like Consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless 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). In Phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds ( Phones that belong to the same Phoneme. 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 Phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken Consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short Consonant. 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/ was not 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 cannot 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/ do not occur at the beginning of a word.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e}		o
Open		a

Vowels, just like consonants, can be either long or short. A front vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward A central vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between A back vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as A close vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in many spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as A mid vowel is a Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an An open vowel is a Vowel sound of a type used in most spoken Languages The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as 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 was not an agglutinative language, and thus could not 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. In Linguistics, agglutination is the morphological process ofadding Affixes to the base of a Word. In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word 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. In Linguistics, verb valency or valence refers to the number of arguments controlled by a verbal predicate.

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. In Grammar, the case of a Noun or Pronoun indicates its Grammatical function in a greater Phrase or Clause; such as the One of these, the Equative case, has a different form in both of the main dialects. Equative is a case with the meaning of comparison or likening 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. In Grammar, the genitive case or possessive case (also called the second case) is the case that marks a Noun as modifying another Allative case ( abbreviated ALL, from Latin allāt-, afferre "to bring to" is a type of the locative

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. An ergative-absolutive Language (or simply ergative language is a language that treats the argument (" subject " of an Intransitive According to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle, every sentence can be divided in two main constituents, one being the subject of the sentence and the An object in Grammar is a Sentence element and part of the sentence predicate. In Ergative-absolutive languages the absolutive ( abbreviated ABS) is the Grammatical case used to mark both the subject of an 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 . In Ergative-absolutive languages the absolutive ( abbreviated ABS) is the Grammatical case used to mark both the subject of an The ergative case is the Grammatical case that identifies the subject of a Transitive verb in Ergative-absolutive languages In such languages In Grammar, the genitive case or possessive case (also called the second case) is the case that marks a Noun as modifying another The dative case is a Grammatical case generally used to indicate the Noun to whom something is given Locative (also called the seventh case) is a Grammatical case which indicates a location . . )	-a	-(a)ša, -a
Allative (to . Allative case ( abbreviated ALL, from Latin allāt-, afferre "to bring to" is a type of the locative . . )	-ta	-(a)šta
Ablative (from . In Linguistics, ablative case ( abbreviated ABL) is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic . . r)	-tan	-(a)štan
Instrumental (with . The instrumental case (also called the eighth case) is a Grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the . . )	-ae	not found
Ablative-Instrumental (through/by . . . )	-n(i), -ne	-(a)šani, -(a)šane
Comitative (together with . The comitative case, also known as the associative case, is a Grammatical case that denotes companionship and is used where English would use "in company with" . . )	-ra	-(a)šura
Associative (as . The comitative case, also known as the associative case, is a Grammatical case that denotes companionship and is used where English would use "in company with" . . )	-nn(i)	not found (often extrapolated -(a)šunn(i))
Equative I (like . Equative is a case with the meaning of comparison or likening . . )	-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. Suffixaufnahme ( German for "suffix-absorption" is a linguistic phenomenon whereby prototypically a genitive noun declines to match The South Caucasian languages (also known as Ibero-Caucasian or Kartvelian) are spoken primarily in Georgia, with smaller groups of speakers in Turkey 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 are 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 is constructed only through the affixation of suffixes (indicated by '-') and clitics (indicated y ('='). In Linguistics, a clitic is a grammatically independent and phonologically dependent Word. 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. In Mathematics, the term intransitivity is used for related but different properties of Binary relations The property of not being transitive The direct object and intransitive subject, when they are 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]]). In Linguistics, verb valency or valence refers to the number of arguments controlled by a verbal predicate. A causative form in Linguistics, is an expression of an agent causing or forcing a patient to perform an action (or to be in a certain condition 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. Present Tense is the first Sagittarius album released in 1968 by Columbia Records. This article is about the grammatical term To see the article relating to Eschatology and the Book of Revelation, see Preterism. In Grammar, the future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet but expected to happen in the future (in an Absolute tense 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. The antipassive voice is a Verb voice found mostly in ergative languages Like the Passive voice, the antipassive decreases the verb's valency 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 is optional. Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive Verb forms that are used to signal modality. 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 is 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 is -wa, whereas in intransitive and antipassive ones it is -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 are 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 does not 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 does not 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. A relative clause is a Subordinate clause that modifies a Noun. 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. Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive Verb forms that are used to signal modality. Wishes and commands are formed with an optative system, whose principal characteristic is the element -i, which is attached directly to the verb stem. The optative mood is a Grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope 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 do not want to. . . "
1st person Plural		unattested
2nd person Singular	affirmative	-i, -e	"you will (imperative)
2nd person Singular	negative	-ifa, -efa	"you will not. The imperative mood is a Grammatical mood that expresses direct commands or requests . . "
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 is not 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 does not 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 will 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. In Linguistics, a participle (from Latin participium, a Calque of Greek μετοχη "partaking" is a derivative of a non-finite In Grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages 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 is 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 cannot 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 is 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 cannot occur independently, but are only enclitic. A possessive pronoun is a Part of speech that attributes ownership to someone or something 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, e. g. 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. Demonstratives are deictic words (they depend on an external frame of reference that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others . . 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. In Grammar, a preposition is a Part of speech that introduces a prepositional phrase. 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 is 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. In Grammar, a preposition is a Part of speech that introduces a prepositional phrase. 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 Linguistics, the term particle is a word lacking a strict definition but has the function of changing the relation of the parts of the sentence to one another and is therefore In contract with nouns, which also end in /i/, the final vowel of the conjunctions ai (when) and anammi (therefore) is not 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 are 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. This article describes cardinal numbers in mathematics For cardinals in linguistics see Names of numbers in English. Ordinal numbers are formed with the suffix -(š)še or ši, which becomes -ze or -zi after /n/. In Set theory, an ordinal number, or just ordinal, is the Order type of a Well-ordered set. 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. In Linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and Verb of a sentence appear or usually Within noun phrases, the noun regularly comes at the end. In grammatical theory, a noun phrase (abbreviated NP) is a Phrase whose head is a Noun or a Pronoun, optionally accompanied 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. A relative clause is a Subordinate clause that modifies a Noun. 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, i. e. 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. A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one Language from another with little or no translation 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. The Indo-Aryan languages (within the context of Indo-European studies also Indic) are a branch of the Indo-European language family Sanskrit ya. Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical 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 cannot be verified, as there are no written records of Caucasian languages from the time of the Hurrians. The languages of the Caucasus are a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains which lie between 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 have done them, but tenfold. "

Hurrian literature

Texts in the Hurrian language itself have been found at Hattusa, Ugarit (Ras Shamra), and Sapinuwa (but unpublished). Hattusa (URU Ḫa-at-tu-ša 𒌷𒄩𒀜𒌅𒊭 Unicode cuneiform article to display these cuneiform characters--> Ugarit ( Ugaritic: ʼugrt; Hebrew:; Arabic:) (modern Ras Shamra رأس شمرة ("top/head/cape of the wild Fennel Sapinuwa or Shapinuwa (modern Ortaköy, Turkey) was a Bronze Age Hittite city Also, one of the longest of the Amarna letters is Hurrian; written by King Tushratta of Mitanni to Pharaoh Amenhotep III. The Amarna letters (sometimes "Amarna correspondence" or "Amarna tablets" are an archive of correspondence on Clay tablets mostly diplomatic Tushratta was a king of Mitanni at the end of the reign of Amenhotep III and throughout the reign of Akhenaten -- approximately the late 14th century Amenhotep III (sometimes read as Amenophis III meaning Amun is Satisfied was the ninth Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty. 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. Hittite or Nesili is the Extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, a people who created an empire centered on ancient Hattusas (modern

Important finds were made at Ortaköy (Sapinuwa) in the 1990s, including several bilinguals. Ortaköy is a district of Çorum Province in the Black Sea region of Turkey, located at 57 km from the city of Çorum. 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. Sargon II ( Akkadian Šarru-kinu "legitimate king" reigned 722 – 705 BC was an Assyrian king ^[2]

References

^ Hurrian language - Britannica Online Encyclopedia
^ Wegner (2000:25)

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