parlā-

The only occurrence of the lexeme comes from a song incipit of the Ištanuwa festival (NS).

[E.R.]

Checked against the photographs in the Mainzer Fotoarchiv.

[E.R.]

CLuw. parlā rhymes with preceding ḫarlā and modifies the verbal action ḫūiya-⁽ⁱ⁾ ‘to run’: šummallanna=mu=r ḫarlā parlā ḫūiyadda “The šummallanna ran ḫarlā parlā for^?/to^?/with regard to me.” Obviously, the two words describe the motion, most likely the direction of the movement.

While the handbooks do not translate the word (DLL:79, CLL:169, HHw:s.v.), Yakubovich 2017d regards parlā as the nom./acc. pl. n. of parla/i- (thus also CLL:169) and tentatively suggests a meaning ‘front’, probably assuming agreement with the neuter plural subject šummallanna. This is possible syntactically and would be in line with the interpretation of parla/i- and its depictive use noted there (see under Lemma; also for ḫarlā, see under the respective lemma).

However, also an alternative analysis for parlā should be taken into consideration. Unless the plene spelling mirrors the intoning of the song, it may indicate a word-final accent compatible with a non-mutating common gender a-stem parlā- c., here in the dat./loc. sg. Typically, such a formation would have an abstract meaning, i.e. ‘front position’. This solution is particularly attractive for the reason that the adjective parlai(ya)- ‘front (?)’ presupposes an a-stem base identical with the present lemma parlā-, and it is hence preferred here.

[E.R.]

For the derivational history, see under Meaning.

[E.R.]

1. parlai(ya)-

For the derivational base see CLuw. parla/i-.