una-

This lexeme is found once in a burial inscription that is found at the cemetery of Sardis and roughly datable to the 5^th or 4^th century BCE.

[I.Y.]

1sg. pret. ind. act.

unadν

LW 10.18 (Sardis)

The syntactic peculiarity of the verb under discussion is the double accusative construction associated with its only attestation. On the one hand, it immediately governs the singular object ẽtamν, apparently ‘ordinance’ (vel sim.), on the other hand, the accusative plural (?) pronoun piš appears in the same clause (there is no possibility to take this form as either nom.sg. or nom.pl.). The general sense of the sentence appears to be ‘Let one honor me together with my ancestors, as I proclaimed / listed them’. This interpretation implies that the internal verbal phrase ẽtamν unadν had the meaning ‘to proclaim’ or something similar, perhaps representing a synonym of fẽtamνidν, and that unadν functioned as a light verb.

The proposed interpretation does not bode well for the suggestion that unadν represents a derivative of u-^(d) ‘to write’, offered in Heubeck 1959a:66f. and followed in Gusmani 1964a:220. Writing was not such an old phenomenon in Lydia that the verb ‘to write’ might have a chance to evolve into a light verb. Furthermore, the combinatory considerations adduced in Heubeck 1959a in support of his hypothesis appear to be based on the false or adventurous analysis: the form uν is not an infinitive but a local adverb, while uwed is unlikely to belong here (see under lemma). Under such conditions, one can proposed a different segmentation un-adν, implying a derivative with the root *un- ‘to know’ (cf. Lyd. wnẽni- ‘to acknowledge’). The phrase with the original meaning ‘to let know the ordinance’ could easily evolve into a phrasal verb similar to Turkish beyan etmek ‘to proclaim’, which could then take an additional direct object.

[I.Y.]

For the verbal suffix -a(d)-, see Melchert 1992a:53 and Sasseville 2021a:107.

[I.Y.]