Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Graduate Student, Lehrstuhl für Indogermanistik
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Indo-European Linguistics
Thesis Title: Phonetic complements in Hittite: a contribution to the research of cuneiform orthography
|
Prof. Dr. Rosemarie Lühr
|
About
Phonetic complements provide particularly in logo-syllabic writing systems additional information for the reading of signs. They disambiguate the reading of logograms by repeating the first or as in cuneiform the last syllables of a word.
In Hittite omission of phonetic complements with Sumerograms is assumed to be a criterion for younger texts but a complete analysis is yet to be done. Some Sumerograms (e.g. verbs and adverbs) show a more stable orthographic pattern concerning the use of phonetic complements while others (e.g. certain groups of nouns) switch between use and omission. Word class seems to play an important role in this process.
It is also conceivable that some types of texts required a more precise rendering of the grammatical relations than others. Consequently, for a comprehensive analysis of phonetic complements also differences between types and genres of texts have to be considered.
