The Periphrastic Perfect in Hittite: Development and functions

• Applicant: Andrey Shatskov, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 554559530

The main goal of this project is to provide a detailed description of the development and functions of the periphrastic perfect in Hittite. The existence of a periphrastic perfect in Hittite, formed with the participle and the auxiliaries es- 'to be' and hark-'to hold, have', has long been acknowledged, but ist development from resultatives and ist functions has not yet been adequately investigated. For instance, beside the well-known resultative function, the Hittite periphrastic perfect can also denote that a situation has occurred at least once during a period of time prior to the present time (so-called "experiential/existential perfect"). Furthermore, the development of es-perfects seems to have been not entirely parallel to that of hark-perfects: in Old Hittite there are no proper instances of the former, and in New Hittite texts some es- + participle constructions are still resultatives rather than perfects. The different timelines for the rise of es- and hark-perfects in Hittite can also have repercussions for the study of the split-auxiliary system in Hittite. The results of the research will be presented in a monograph that will detail the development and functions of the periphrastic perfect in Hittite. The main body of instances of Hittite participial constructions will be accessible via an open-access database.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants