View source for Social:Hurro-Urartian languages

{{short description|Extinct language family}}
{{Infobox language family
  |name=Hurro-Urartian
  |altname=
  |region=[[Earth:Anatolia|Anatolia]], [[Place:Levant|Levant]], [[Place:Mesopotamia|Mesopotamia]], [[Place:Zagros Mountains|Zagros Mountains]]
  |familycolor=Caucasian
  |family=One of the world's primary [[Social:Language family|language families]]
  |child1=''Hurrian''
  |child2=''[[Social:Urartian language|Urartian]]''
  |child3=? ''[[Social:Kassite language|Kassite]]''
  |child4=? ''Subarean''
  |protoname= Proto-Hurro-Urartian
  |glotto=hurr1239
|glottorefname=Hurro-Urartian
}}

The '''Hurro-Urartian languages''' are an [[Social:Extinct language|extinct]] [[Social:Language family|language family]] of the [[History:Ancient Near East|Ancient Near East]], comprising only two known languages: Hurrian and [[Social:Urartian language|Urartian]].

==Origins==
It is often assumed that the Hurro-Urartian languages (or a pre-split Proto-Hurro-Urartian language) were originally spoken by people who engaged in the Kura-Araxes culture.<ref>John A. C. Greppin and I. M. Diakonoff. ''Some Effects of the Hurro-Urartian People and Their Languages upon the Earliest Armenians''.(1991) pp. 720-730. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/603403#?seq=1]</ref><ref>Charles Burney. ''Historical Dictionary of the Hittites''. (2004) pp. 129. [https://books.google.com/books?id=azPl5Jzv930C&dq=early+trans+caucasian+hurro-urartian&pg=PA129]</ref><ref>Marilyn Kelly- Buccellati. ''Andirons at Urkesh: New Evidence for the Hurrian Identity of the Early Trans-Caucasian Culture''. (2004) [http://urkesh.org/EL-MZ/Kelly-Buccellati_2004_Andirons_at_Urkesh.pdf]</ref><ref>Kassian, Alexei. ''Lexical Matches between Sumerian and Hurro-Urartian: Possible Historical Scenarios''. (2014) [https://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlj/2014/cdlj2014_004.html]</ref>

==External classification==
While the genetic relation between Hurrian and Urartian is undisputed, the wider connections of Hurro-Urartian to other language families are controversial.<ref name="WilhelmHurrian">{{cite book |last=Wilhelm |first=Gernot |year=2008 |chapter=Hurrian |editor-last=Woodard |editor-first=Roger D. |title=The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor |pages=81–104 |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press}}</ref> After the decipherment of Hurrian and Urartian inscriptions and documents in the 19th and early 20th century, Hurrian and Urartian were soon recognized as not related to the Semitic nor to the [[Social:Indo-European languages|Indo-European]] languages, and to date, the most conservative view holds that Hurro-Urartian is a primary language family not demonstrably related to any other language family.<ref>{{cite book |last=Speiser |first=E. A. |year=1941 |title=Introduction to Hurrian |series=The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research |volume=20 |location=New Haven |publisher=The American Schools of Oriental Research }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Laroche |first=Emmanuel |title=Glossaire de la langue Hourrite |series=Revue hittite et asianique |volume=34/35 |year=1980 |language=fr |location=Paris |publisher=Éditions Klincksieck }}</ref><ref name=Smeets/>

Early proposals for an external genetic relationship of Hurro-Urartian variously grouped them with the [[Social:Kartvelian languages|Kartvelian languages]], [[Social:Elamite language|Elamite]], and other non-Semitic and non-Indo-European languages of the region.

Igor Diakonoff and Sergei Starostin suggested that Hurro-Urartian and the Northeastern Caucasian language family can be included in a macro-family; this grouping was provisionally dubbed the [[Social:Alarodian languages|Alarodian languages]], by Diakonoff.<ref>{{cite book |author=Diakonoff, I.M. |title=The Pre-History of the Armenian People |translator=Lori Jennings |publisher=Delmar |place=New York |year=1984}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first1=Sergei A. |last1=Starostin |first2=Igor M. |last2=Diakonoff |title=Hurro-Urartian as an Eastern Caucasian Language |place=Munich |publisher=R. Kitzinger |year=1986}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Diakonoff |first=Igor M. |year=1995 |title=Long-Range Linguistic Relations: Cultural Transmission or Consanguinity? |journal=Mother Tongue |volume=24 |pages=34–40 |url=https://archive.org/download/MotherTongue10April1990/Mother%20Tongue%2024%20%28March%201995%29.pdf }}</ref> Several studies argue that the connection is probable.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Ivanov |first=Vyacheslav V. |title=Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian and Indo-European |journal=UCLA Indo-European Studies |volume=1 |year=1999 |pages=147–264 |url=http://www.pies.ucla.edu/IESV/1/VVI_Horse.pdf |access-date=2016-08-18 |archive-date=2018-09-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180924093729/https://pies.ucla.edu/IESV/1/VVI_Horse.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name="Greppin">{{cite journal |last=Greppin |first=John A.C. |title=The Urartian substratum in Armenian |journal=Bulletin of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences |volume=2 |issue=2 |pages=134–137 |year=2008 |url=http://science.org.ge/old/moambe/2-2/Grepin.pdf}}</ref> Other scholars, however, doubt that the language families are related,<ref name="Smeets">{{cite journal |author=Smeets, Rieks |title=On Hurro-Urartian as an Eastern Caucasian language |journal=Bibliotheca Orientalis |volume=XLVI |year=1989 |pages=260–280 |url=https://glottolog.org/resource/reference/id/315299}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |author=Fournet, Arnaud |title=About the vocalic system of Armenian words of substratic origins |journal=Archiv Orientální |year=2013 |volume=1 |url=https://www.academia.edu/5551322}}</ref><ref>Johanna Nichols (January 2003). "The Nakh Dagestanian consonant correspondences". In Dee Ann Holisky; Kevin Tuite (eds.). Current Trends in Caucasian, East European, and Inner Asian Linguistics: Papers in Honor of Howard I. Aronson. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 208. ISBN 9027247587.</ref> or believe that, while a connection is possible, the evidence is far from conclusive.<ref>{{cite book |author-last=Zimansky |author-first=Paul |editor-first1=Gregory |editor-last1=McMahon |editor-first2=Sharon |editor-last2=Steadman |article=Urartian and Urartians |title=The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia: (10,000-323 BCE) |year=2011 |page=556 |article-url=https://www.academia.edu/10023756 |isbn=9780199940127 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |first1=Thomas V. |last1=Gamkrelidze |first2=T.E. |last2=Gudava |article=Caucasian Languages |encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia Britannica |year=1998 |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Caucasian-languages}}</ref><ref>Kallio, Petri. "XXI. Beyond Indo-European". In Klein, Jared; Joseph, Brian; Fritz, Matthew (eds.). Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 2285–2286.</ref> Uralicist and Indo-Europeanist Petri Kallio argues that the matter is hindered by the lack of consensus about how to reconstruct Proto-Northeast-Caucasian, but that Alarodian is the most promising proposal for relations with Northeast Caucasian, greater than rival proposals to link it with Northwest Caucasian or other families.<ref name=Kallio>{{cite book |last1=Kallio |first1=Petri |editor1-last=Klein |editor1-first=Jared |editor2-last=Joseph |editor2-first=Brian |editor3-last=Fritz |editor3-first=Matthew |title=Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics |publisher=De Gruyter Mouton |pages=2285–2286 |chapter=XXI. Beyond Indo-European}}</ref> <!-- [Moving the following to article on Alarodian languages; of little relevance to this article.]  However, nothing is known about Alarodians except that they "were armed like the Colchians and Saspeires," according to Herodotus.<ref>[https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Herodotus/7b*.html Herodotus. Book VII: chapters 57‑137]</ref> Colchians and Saspeires are generally associated with Kartvelians or [[History:Scythians|Scythians]]. Additionally, leading Urartologist Paul Zimansky rejected a connection between Urartians and Alarodians.<ref>Zimansky, Paul "Urartian and Urartians." The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia (2011): 556. [https://www.academia.edu/10023756/Urartian_and_the_Urartians]</ref>  -->

Arnaud Fournet and Allan R. Bomhard argue that Hurro-Urartian is a sister family to Indo-European.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Fournet |first1=Arnaud |last2=Bomhard |first2=Allan R. |year=2010 |title=The Indo-European Elements in Hurrian |place=La Garenne Colombes, Charleston |website=academia.edu |url=https://www.academia.edu/7637643}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.academia.edu/40055347 |author=Fournet, Arnaud |title=PIE Roots in Hurrian |year=2019 |volume=1}}</ref>

The poorly attested [[Social:Kassite language|Kassite language]] may have belonged to the Hurro-Urartian language family.<ref name="Schneider">{{cite journal |last=Schneider |first=Thomas |title=Kassitisch und Hurro-Urartäisch. Ein Diskussionsbeitrag zu möglichen lexikalischen Isoglossen |journal=Altorientalische Forschungen |year=2003 |issue=30 |pages=372–381 |language=de}}</ref>

==Contacts with other languages==
Hurrian was the language of the Hurrians (occasionally called "Hurrites"), and was spoken in the northern parts of [[Place:Mesopotamia|Mesopotamia]] and [[Place:Syria|Syria]] and the southeastern parts of [[Earth:Anatolia|Anatolia]] between at least last quarter of the third millennium BC and its extinction towards the end of the second millennium BC.<ref>Wilhelm, Gernot. 2008. Hurrian. In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.) The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor. p. 81</ref> There have been various Hurrian-speaking states, of which the most prominent one was the kingdom of Mitanni (1450&ndash;1270 BC). It has also been proposed that two little known groups, the Nairi and the Mannae,<ref>J. N. Postgate, "Mannäer", in RlA VII, pp. 340-42, 1987-90</ref> might have been Hurrian speakers, but as little is known about them, it is hard to draw any conclusions about what languages they spoke. Furthermore, the [[Social:Kassite language|Kassite language]] was possibly related to Hurro-Urartian.<ref name=Schneider /> Francfort and Tremblay<ref>Francfort H.-P., Tremblay X. [https://scribd.com/document/242322412/Francfort-et-Tremblay-Marhasi-et-la-civilisation-de-l-Oxus-pdf Marhaši et la civilisation de l'Oxus] // Iranica Antiqua, vol. XLV (2010), pp. 51–224. doi: 10.2143/IA.45.0.2047119.</ref> on the basis of the Akkadian textual and archaeological evidence, proposed to identify the kingdom of Marhashi and [[Biology:Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex|Ancient Margiana]]. The Marhashite personal names seems to point towards an Eastern variant of Hurrian or another language of the Hurro-Urartian language family.

There was also a strong Hurrian influence on the [[History:Hittites|Hittite]] culture in ancient times, so many Hurrian texts are preserved from Hittite political centres. The Mitanni variety is chiefly known from the so-called "Mitanni letter" from Hurrian Tushratta to pharaoh Amenhotep III surviving in the [[Place:Amarna|Amarna]] archives. The "Old Hurrian" variety is known from some early royal inscriptions and from religious and literary texts, especially from Hittite centres.

[[Social:Urartian language|Urartian]] is attested from the late 9th century BC to the late 7th century BC as the official written language of the state of [[Place:Urartu|Urartu]] and was probably spoken by the majority of the population in the mountainous areas around Lake Van and the upper Zab valley. It branched off from Hurrian at approximately the beginning of the second millennium BC.<ref>Wilhelm, Gernot. 2008. Urartian. In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.) The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor. p. 105</ref> Scholars, such as Paul Zimansky, contend that Urartian was only spoken by a small ruling class and was not the primary language of the majority of the population.<ref>"Urartian Material Culture As State Assemblage: An Anomaly in the Archaeology of Empire," Paul Zimansky, Page 103 of 103-115</ref>

Although Hurro-Urartian languages became extinct with the collapse of the Urartu empire, Diakonoff and Greppin suggested that traces of its vocabulary survived in a small number of loanwords in Old Armenian.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Diakonoff |first=I. M. |year=1985 |title=Hurro-Urartian Borrowings in Old Armenian |journal=Journal of the American Oriental Society |volume=105 |issue=4 |pages=597–603 |doi=10.2307/602722 |jstor=602722 |s2cid=163807245 }}</ref><ref>John A. C. Greppin; I. M. Diakonoff, Some Effects of the Hurro-Urartian People and Their Languages upon the Earliest Armenians, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 111, No. 4 (Oct., 1991), pp. 720-730</ref><ref name=Greppin/> More recent scholarship by Arnaud Fournet, Hrach Martirosyan, Armen Petrosyan, and others has proposed more extensive contacts between the languages, including vocabulary, grammar, parts of speech, and proper nouns loaned into  Armenian, such as Urartian "eue" ("and"), attested in the earliest Urartian texts (compare to Armenian "yev" (և, եվ), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European ''[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h%E2%82%81epi *h₁epi]'').<ref>Armen Petrosyan. "The Armenian Elements in the Language and Onomastics of Urartu." Association for Near Eastern and Caucasian Studies. 2010. p. 133. [https://www.academia.edu/2939663/The_Armenian_Elements_in_the_Language_and_Onomastics_of_Urartu]</ref> Other loans from Armenian into Urartian includes personal names, toponyms, and names of deities.<ref>Archiv Orientální. 2013. [https://www.academia.edu/5551322/Arch%C3%ADv_Orientalni._2013._About_the_vocalic_system_of_Armenian_words_of_substratic_origin._81.2_207_22_ About the vocalic system of Armenian words of substratic origin.] (81.2:207–22) by Arnaud Fournet</ref><ref>Hrach K. Martirosyan. ''Etymological Dictionary of the Armenian Inherited Lexicon.'' Brill. 2009.</ref><ref>Hrach Martirosyan. "Origins and historical development of the Armenian language." 2014. pp. 7-8. [https://ling.hse.ru/data/2014/09/01/1313574129/Hrach%20Martirosyan%20-%20Handout.pdf]</ref><ref>Hrach Martirosyan (2013). "The place of Armenian in the Indo-European language family: the relationship with Greek and Indo-Iranian*" Leiden University. p. 85-86. [https://www.jolr.ru/files/(128)jlr2013-10(85-138).pdf]</ref><ref>Armen Petrosyan. "Towards the Origins of the Armenian People. The Problem of Identification of the Proto-Armenians: A Critical Review." Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies. 2007. pp. 33-34. [https://www.academia.edu/3657764/Towards_the_Origins_of_the_Armenian_People_The_Problem_of_Identification_of_the_Proto_Armenians_A_Critical_Review_in_English_]</ref><ref>Yervand Grekyan. "Urartian State Mythology". Yerevan Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography Press. 2018. pp. 44-45. [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351107801_Biaynili-Owrartu_Astvacner_tacarner_pastamunk_BIAINILI-URARTU_GODS_TEMPLES_CULTS]</ref>

There are some lexical matches between Hurro-Urartian and the [[Social:Sumerian language|Sumerian]], indicating an early contact.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Kassian |first=Alexei |year=2014 |title=Lexical Matches between Sumerian and Hurro-Urartian: Possible Historical Scenarios |journal=Cuneiform Digital Library Journal |volume=2014 |issue=4 |url=https://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlj/2014/cdlj2014_004.html}}</ref>

==Characteristics==
Besides their fairly consistent ergative alignment and their generally agglutinative [[Social:Morphology (linguistics)|morphology]] (despite a number of not entirely predictable [[Social:Morpheme|morpheme]] mergers), Hurrian and Urartian are also both characterized by the use of suffixes in their [[Social:Morphological derivation|derivation]]al and [[Social:Inflection|inflection]]al morphology (including ten to fifteen grammatical cases) and postpositions in syntax; both are considered to have the default order [[Social:Subject–object–verb|subject–object–verb]], although there is significant variation, especially in Urartian. In both languages, nouns can receive a peculiar "anaphoric suffix" comparable (albeit apparently not identical) to a definite article, and nominal modifiers are marked by Suffixaufnahme (i.e. they receive a "copy" of the case suffixes of the head); in verbs, the type of valency (intransitive vs transitive) is signalled by a special suffix, the so-called "class marker". The complex morpheme "chains" of nouns and verbs follow roughly the same morpheme sequences in both languages. In nouns, the sequence in both languages is stem – article – possessive suffix – plural suffix – case suffix – agreement (Suffixaufnahme) suffix. In verbs, the portion of the structure shared by both languages is stem – valency marker – person suffixes. Most morphemes have fairly similar phonological forms in the two languages.

Despite this structural similarity, there are also significant differences. In the phonology, written Hurrian only seems to distinguish a single series of phonemic obstruents without any contrastive phonation distinctions (the variation in voicing, though visible in the script, was allophonic); in contrast, written Urartian distinguishes as many as three series: voiced, voiceless and "emphatic" (perhaps glottalized). Urartian is also characterized by the apparent reduction of some word-final vowels to schwa (e.g. Urartian ''ulə'' vs Hurrian ''oli'' "another", Urartian ''eurišə'' vs Hurrian ''evrišše'' "lordship", Hurrian 3rd person plural enclitic pronoun ''-lla'' vs Urartian ''-lə''). As the last two examples shows, the Hurrian geminates are also absent in Urartian.

In the morphology, there are differences as well. Hurrian indicates the plural of nouns through a special suffix ''-až-'', which only survives in fossilized form merged into some case endings in Urartian. Hurrian clearly marks tense or aspect through special suffixes (the unmarked form is the present tense) whereas Urartian has not been shown to do so in the attested texts (the unmarked form functions as a past tense). Hurrian has special negative verbal suffixes that negate a verb and are placed before the ergative person agreement suffixes; Urartian has no such thing and instead uses negative particles that are placed before the verb. In Hurrian, only the person of the ''ergative subject'' is marked obligatorily through a suffix in a verb form, whereas the ''absolutive'' subject or object is optionally marked with a pronominal enclitic that need not be attached to the verb and can also be attached to any other word in the clause. In Urartian, the ergative suffixes and the absolutive clitics have merged into a single set of obligatory suffixes that express the person of both the ergative and the absolutive participant and are an integral part of the verb. In general, the profusion of freely moving pronominal and conjunctional clitics that characterize Hurrian, especially that of the Mitanni letter, has few parallels in Urartian.

Urartian is closer to the so-called Old Hurrian variety (mostly attested in Hittite documents) than to the Hurrian of the Mitanni letter. For example, both use ''-o-/-u-'' (rather than ''-i-'') as the marker of transitive valency and both display the plural suffix ''-it-'', expressing the number of the ergative subject and occupying a position before the valency marker.<ref>Wilhelm, Gernot. 2008. Hurrian. In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.) The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor. pp. 81-104</ref><ref>Wilhelm, Gernot. 2008. Urartian. In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.) The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor. pp. 105-123</ref><ref>Wegner, I. 2000. Einführung in die hurritische Sprache.</ref><ref>Дьяконов И. М. Языки древней Передней Азии. Издательство Наука, Москва. 1967. Часть I. Глава IV. Хурритский и урартский языки. pp. 113-165</ref>

==Cognates==
Below are some Hurrian and Urartian lexical cognates, as listed by Kassian (2010).<ref name=Kassian2010>Kassian, Alexei. 2010. Hurro-Urartian from the lexicostatistical viewpoint. In Manfried Dietrich and Oswald Loretz (eds.), ''Ugarit-Forschungen: Internationales Jahrbuch für die Altertumskunde Syrien-Palästinas'', 383-452. Münster: Ugarit.</ref>

:{| class="wikitable sortable"
! gloss !! Hurrian !! Urartian
|-
| all || šua=lla || šui=ni-
|-
| to burn (tr.) || am- || am-
|-
| come || un- || nun=a-
|-
| to give || ar- || ar-
|-
| hand || šu=ni || šu-
|-
| to hear || haš- || haš-
|-
| heart || tiša || tiš=ni
|-
| I || iš-/šu- || iš-/šu-
|-
| mountain || pab=ni || baba=ni
|-
| name || tiye || ti=ni
|-
| new || šuhe || šuhi
|-
| not || =u || u=i, =u=ri
|-
| one || šu=kki || šu=sini
|-
| road || hari || hari
|-
| to go || ušš- || uš-
|-
| year || šawali || šali 
|}


== References ==
{{reflist|25em}}

==Further reading==
* Fournet, Arnaud. 2013. "Eléments De Morphologie Et De Syntaxe De La Langue Hourrite. Destinés à l’étude Des Textes Mittaniens Et Anatolo-Hittites". In: ''Bulletin De l’Académie Belge Pour l’Étude Des Langues Anciennes Et Orientales'' 2 (avril), pp.&nbsp;3–52. https://doi.org/10.14428/babelao.vol2.2013.19843.
* Khachikyan, Margarit (2019). "Towards the Reconstruction of the Hurro-Urartian Protolanguage." In: ''Over the Mountains and Far Away: Studies in Near Eastern History and Archaeology Presented to Mirjo Salvini on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday'', edited by Avetisyan Pavel S., Dan Roberto, and Grekyan Yervand H. Summertown: Archaeopress. 304-06.{{doi|10.2307/j.ctvndv9f0.37}}.

==External links==
*[http://www.pies.ucla.edu/IESV/1/VVI_Horse.pdf Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian and Indo-European] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180924093729/https://pies.ucla.edu/IESV/1/VVI_Horse.pdf |date=2018-09-24 }}

{{Language families}}
{{Eurasian languages}}

[[Category:Language families]]

{{Sourceattribution|Hurro-Urartian languages}}