The Indo-European Elements in Hurrian

44 4. Nominal Morphology
papan-ni ‘the mountain’ has no marker. In general, in the Hurro-Hittite bilingual discovered in
1983, words appearing in the Ergative case are persons, but inanimate objects like papan
‘mountain’ or kaballi ‘copper’ are also attested in the Ergative case. One of the most intriguing
sentences is this one, where the subject is unexpectedly in the Absolutive case: < m Me-e-ki-ne-e
ti-bé-na d IM-ub-u-ta; ku-un-zi-ma-i ka4-ti-ya> (Kbo 32.15 Vo IV 12—13) ‘Meki the words
toward Teššub kneeling says’. Meki, a person, is not marked in the Ergative case, in spite of
being the subject. The verb kadi ‘to say’ has, nevertheless, an explicit object tiwe-na ‘the
words’. There are several examples of this construction. But anyway, words do not kneel, and
they do not speak; only Meki would kneel and speak. Hurrian seems to dispense with grammar
when possible. Another item is KBo 32.13 Ro
I 12-13 ‘A feast magnificent did the goddess Allani organize’. The verb is transitive (-i-b), but
the subject bears no Ergative case marker. Speiser himself in (1941:108) had noticed that the
“Agentive” suffix was sometimes dispensed with, as in KUB XXV 42 v 6, where
is expected, which accounts for his reservations about Hurrian being an
Ergative language. On the whole, this can also “reflects the effort which Hurrian made to keep
the subject in the forefront of the utterance”, as noted by Speiser (1941:206). To some extent,
this means that the case-markers mainly confirm the grammatical functions of the words, which
are expected from their relative positions in the sentence.
As already mentioned, the object is usually unmarked, even when it refers to an animate,
like a ‘deer’ : ‘the deer (to) the other
mountain moved’ (Kbo 32.14 Ro I 2—3), where nali ‘deer’ is subject, can be compared with
‘may the hunters fell the deer’ (Kbo 32.14 Ro I), where
nali is object, with no formal change.
So it seems that the case is closed and that Hurrian is an Ergative language, and it should
not have an Accusative case at the same time. But then, some sentences seem to contradict this.
For example, in the Mitanni letter, Mit. I 114—115:
114. I [Gi]-li-i-an [pa-aš]-ši-i-it-¯i-ib-wə I [Ma-ni]-en-na-a-an [pa-aš]-ši-i-it-¯i-ib
Giliium ambactum meum Maninam ambactum tuum
115. [na]-ak-ku-ša-a-ú ú-ú-na-a-al-la-a-an še-e-ni-ib-wə-ta
missi veniendos ad fratrem meum.
The ending -an is usually translated as ‘and’, mainly because the standard approach of
ergativity is that it should exclude an Accusative. Is this not a clear case of Accusative, with
both Gilia and Mani being in the Accusative singular and the participle of the verb una- ‘to
come’ being in the Accusative plural -alla-a-an? The translation made by Wilhelm abides by
the option that -an is ‘and’: 72 ‘And Gilia, my envoy, and Mani, your envoy, I sent them and they
are coming to my brother’. But here, this translation seems to miss something of the real
structure of that sentence, where the Accusative marker is elegantly reconnecting Gilia, Mani,
and the verb una- in the next line. Another intriguing case of reconnection by the Accusative
marker is this sentence from Mit. IV 33—34:
72 In French in Moran (1987:141).