quality of the Hittite, which is of the lowest order. I have recently pointed out[1] that Western Asia is at all times, and certainly round about 1500 B. C., practically inarticulate as regards literary contents, expression, and style. There is not in the volume of inscriptions before us a single sentence that rises above banality of contents and crudity of expression and style. This fenomenon is by no means favorable to the I. E. character of the language; it must, if possible, be accounted for by the assumption that the invading Indo-Europeans were, at that early time, so completely absorbed by the Anatolian aborigines as to have given up every trace of their ethnic character. The reverse has happened in India, in Persia, and particularly in Greece, where the invaders found the advanced material civilizations of the Mycenæans and Minoans, who, apparently, were even more inarticulate than the Western Asiatics, but upon whom they impressed their national character so as to result in the final composite of Greek art on the material side, and Greek literature, mythology, and filosofy on the mental side.
Hrozný makes out the feeblest case imaginable on the ground of etymology and fonetics. But if we take his text-readings, interpretations, and grammatical estimates at their face value, his plea for I. E. morfology in Hittite is, on the surface at least, strong enough to captivate, if not to convince.
Let us go in medias res.
There is a non-thematic or mi-verb yami, which means, rather unexpectedly, ‘I make’ (not ‘I go’). Its conjugation in the present active is as follows:
| Singular | Plural | |
| 1. | yami | yaweni |
| 2. | yaši, yeši | yatteni |
| 3. | yazi, yazzi, yezzi, yizzi | yanzi, yenzi |
This paradigm is certainly impressive, and it has impressed. I would remark that the z of the third person forms is not as simple as it might seem. We instinctively think with the author that it is for t, mouillated by i (cf. Gr. σɩ for τɩ). But the participle present in Hittite ends according to the same grammatical theory in za, e. g., adanza, ‘eating’[2]: adanzi, ‘they eat’. Now the
