/kwissa-(i)/, kwa/i-sà-
‘to fear’
- Language
- Hieroglyphic Luwian
- Grammar
- verb
- ID
- 1880
1. Individual Anatolian Languages
1.1 Hieroglyphic Luwian
/kwissa-(i)/, kwa/i-sà-
‘to fear’1.1.1Transmission
This lexeme is attested twice in inscriptions from Tabal and Cilicia, dating from the late 8th to the early 7th century BCE.
[A.P.]
1.1.2Forms
| 3sg. pres. act. | /kwissaya/ | hwa/i-sà-i-ia | KARATEPE 1 (Hu.), §34 (Cilicia) |
| /kwissai/ | kwa/i-sà-i | SULTANHAN, §17 (Tabal) |
1.1.3Graphic Features
1.1.3.1Phonological Interpretation
The phonological interpretation of this verb is quite secure, despite their use of different initial signs (cf. Melchert 1987a:187 n. 15). Thus Hawkins & Morpurgo Davies 1993a:56 point out that the verb is cognate with /kwissant(i)-/ ‘fearsome’ and /kwaya-(i)-/ ‘to fear’. Even though the signs 〈hwa/i, kwa/i〉 are ambiguous regarding their vowel, the following sign 〈sà〉 strongly suggests that the preceding vowel should be assumed to be /i/ rather than /a/ (see Rieken 2010b:657-659).The distribution of the SA signs is no longer fully reliable after the 9th century BCE, but remnants remain, and this verb and its derivative /kwissant(i)-/ ‘fearsome’ consistently show 〈sà〉.
[AH.B.]
1.1.4Meaning
Since the verb appears also in the bilingual inscription KARATEPE 1, where it translates Phoenician yštʿ ‘he used to fear’, its meaning was already clear to Bossert 1950-1951a:269, 275. In SULTANHAN, §17, the meaning becomes likewise clear: wa/i-ti-i kwa/i-sa za-na DEUS-ni-na kwa/i-sà-i, approx. /wa=tti kwis zan massanin kwissai/, i.e. ‘He who fears this god’, occurring in a passage detailing the benefits awaiting a devotional person (cf. Hawkins 2000a:466).
[AH.B.]
1.1.5Stem
The verb is a deradical derivation from the zero grade of the root that also gave rise to /kwaya-(i)-/ ‘to fear, revere’. Derived with the suffix /-ssa-(i)/, it remains in the ḫi-conjugation pattern, the two attestations showing the desinential allomorphy inherent to that verbal class, i.e. 3sg. pres. act. /-ai/ and /-aya/, see e.g. Sasseville 2021a:342. Outdated is the analysis as 3sg. pret. act. put forward in Hawkins & Morpurgo Davies 1978a:111f., which was later corrected to present tense by Hawkins 2000a:62 himself.
[AH.B.]
1.1.6Derivatives
For the lemma head see HLuw. /kwaya-(i)/.