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Re: OT: What language is "Hattusas"?

From:Leo Caesius <leo_caesius@...>
Date:Tuesday, September 6, 2005, 15:22
On Tue, 6 Sep 2005 04:53:40 -0500, Thomas Wier <trwier@...> wrote:

>It is indeed an isolate, although a good friend of mine who is a >Hittitologist told me that some speculate that the language is most >closely related to the Northwest Caucasian languages. I know of >no works that attempt to substantiate this claim.
E. Forrer was the first to suggest a connection to Abkhaz on the basis of structural similarities (particularly the extensive use of prefixation), in "Die acht Sprachen der Boghazkoy-Inschriften" (Sitzunberichte der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaft, Phil.-hist. Klasse, Nr. LIII, 1919, pp. 1029-41). A few years later, Robert Bleichsteiner proposed the same thing in his article "Zum Protohattischen" (Berichte des Forschungs- Institutes fuer Osten und Orient, Bd.III, 1923, pp. 102-6). I'm not sure what the last word on the subject has been. More recently, Simon Janashia, a young scholar from Tblisi, proposed "Hetto-Iberian," a linguistic superfamily uniting Hattic and the South Caucasian languages. I'm a bit wary of it.