Hittite u before Vowels

Nearly all scholars who have worked with the cuneiform Hittite texts have assumed that the language has consonantal u (transcribed w or ṷ ) as well as syllabic u , and consonantal i (transcribed y, j , or ḽ) as well as syllabic i. Although there have been few explicit statements to that effect, it appears that the difference between w and u and between y and i has usually been considered phonemic. At any rate that is the opinion underlying Sturtevant's treatment. Nevertheless there has been a tendency to recognize only w and y before vowels and only u and i before consonants, and such a distribution raises the question whether w and u, y and i are not rather positional variants of the phonemes u and i. The purpose of this discussion is to examine and classify a large enough body of material to settle the question

Hittite language · Linguistics · Ancient Near East History · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy