Some Notes on split ergativity in Hittite

Abstract

The Hittite grammar is characterized by a morphosyntactic split that affects the behaviour of the inflectional classes of Noun phrases (DPs). While a singular neuter transitive subject is marked by /-anza/suffix, commons DPs end with an /-š/mark. In addition, intransitive neuter subjects and neuter objects pattern in the same way, marked by /-ø/, while in commons the object role is marked by an /-n/ ending, which distinguishes it from the subjects. The aim of this paper is to investigate over a possible definition of split ergativity in the Hittite grammar.