The Signs TA and DA in Old Hittite: Evidence for a Phonetic Difference

Abstract

In this article it will be argued that in Old Hittite the signs TA and DA are not used interchangeably, as is commonly believed, but in fact represented different sounds.The sign TA represents the value [ta], with a voiceless [t], whereas the sign DA can represent either the value [t ? a], with a glottalized [t ? ], or the value [da], with a voiced [d], depending on the environment. The values of these signs thus perfectly match their values in the Old Babylonian texts from Alalaḫ, in which TA represents ta (= [ta]) and DA can represent both ṭa (= [t ? a]) and da (= [da]).

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 10 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.