LuwGramm: A Grammar of the Luwian Language

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Elisabeth Rieken; Ilya Yakubovich, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 468167487

Luwian is a language of Pre-Classical Anatolia and Syria, which is attested in writing between 1500 and 700 BC. It belongs to the Anatolian group of the Indo-European family and thus represents a close relative of Hittite. It is attested in two scripts: Anatolian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform. The decipherment of the Luwian language was accomplished over the last hundred years and has now reached the stage of a broad communis opinio on the basics of its grammatical structure. it is, therefore, remarkable that there is no comprehensive grammatical description of the Luwian language, except for a fifty-year old Italian grammar, which is limited to hieroglyphic texts and predates major steps in their decipherment. The grammatical surveys of Luwian published in this century are all no more than 100 pages long and emphasize various aspects of its grammatical structure.The main purpose of the LuwGramm project is writing a reference grammar of Luwian, which could be equally useful for linguists and specialists in ancient civilizations. The core of the grammar should comprise the synchronic description of Luwian phonology, morphology and syntax and be written in a language that is understandable to non-linguists. Since the decipherment of the Luwian language is still far from being perfect, the bibliographic sections are added in order to reflect the difference of opinions on the more controversial aspects of the Luwian grammar. The comparative-historical sections will be geared to the interests of both Hittitologists and specialists in Indo-European Linguistics. It is expected that our joint work will lead to new discoveries, and therefore, the additional objective of the planned project is preparing 6-8 research papers devoted to specific problems of the Luwian grammar. The LuwGramm project is conceived as corpus-based grammatical research. An innovative feature of the proposed handbook will be its integration with the computer corpus of the Luwian language. We intend to publish the grammar as a paper book together with its electronic version. All the examples cited there in transliteration and transcription (forms, clauses, etc.) will be linked to the respective tokens in the annotated corpus of the Luwian language. Such a corpus has already been prepared within the framework of the ACLT project (http://web-corpora.net/LuwianCorpus/search/), but it will be modified in the light of the new interpretations reached in the course of the LuwGramm project. Thus, the users of the digital version will obtain access to the broader context of the cited forms, while the text of the grammar can be made more compact without excessive annotations.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants