Proto-Anatolian language

Proto-Anatolian is the proto-language from which Anatolian languages emerged. As with all other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; the language has been reconstructed by applying the comparative method to all the attested Anatolian languages as well as other Indo-European languages.

For the most part, Proto-Anatolian has been reconstructed on the basis of Hittite, the best-attested Anatolian language. However, the usage of Hittite cuneiform writing system limits the enterprise of understanding and reconstructing Anatolian phonology, partly from the deficiency of the adopted Akkadian cuneiform syllabary to represent Hittite sounds and partly from Hittite scribal practices.

It is especially pertinent to what appears to be confusion of voiceless and voiced dental stops, in which signs -dV- and -tV- are employed interchangeably in different attestations of the same word. Furthermore, in the syllables of the structure VC, only the signs with voiceless stops are usually used. Distribution of spellings with single and geminated consonants in the oldest extant monuments indicates that the reflexes of Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops were spelled as double consonants and the reflexes of PIE voiced stops as single consonants. This regularity is the most consistent in the case of dental stops in older texts; later monuments often show irregular variation of this rule.

Common Anatolian preserves PIE vowel system basically intact. Some cite the merger of PIE */o/ and */a/ (including from *h₂e) as a Common Anatolian innovation, but according to Melchert that merger was secondary shared innovation in Hittite, Palaic and Luvian, but not in Lycian. Concordantly, Common Anatolian had the following short vowel segments: */i/, */u/, */e/, */o/ and */a/.

Among the long vowels, */eː/ < PIE *ē is distinguished from */æː/ < PIE *eh₁, with the latter yielding ā in Luwian, Lydian and Lycian. Melchert (1994) had earlier assumed also contrast between a closer mid front vowel */eː/ < PIE *ey (yielding Late Hittite ī) and a more open */ɛː/ < PIE *ē (remaining Late Hittite ē), but the examples are few and can be accounted for otherwise.

The status of the opposition between long and short vowels is not entirely clear, but it is known for certain that it does not continue intact the PIE contrast, as Hittite spelling varies in a way that makes it very hard to establish whether vowels were inherently long or short. Even with older texts being apparently more conservative and consistent in notation, there are significant variations in vowel length in different forms of the same lexeme. It has been thus suggested by Carruba (1981) that the so-called scriptio plena represents not long vowels but rather stressed vowels, reflecting the position of free PIE accent. Carruba's interpretation is not universally accepted; according to Melchert, the only function of scriptio plena is to indicate vowel quantity; according to him the Hittite a/ā contrasts inherits diphonemic Proto-Anatolian contrast, */ā/ reflecting PIE */o/, */a/ and */ā/, and Proto-Anatolian */a/ reflecting PIE */a/. According to Melchert, the lengthening of accented short vowels in open syllables cannot be Proto-Anatolian, and the same goes for lengthening in accented closed syllables.

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