lammaur/n-

The sole attestation of this word comes from a song incipit transmitted in an Ištanuwa festival text.

[E.R.]

nom./acc. sg.

la-am-ma-úr

KBo 4.11 rev. 48

(CTH 772, NS)

For the morphological analysis, see CLL:124 and Starke 1990a:54. Simon (s.v. lammaur) remarks on potential problems due to the absence of the secondary particle -ša/-za, which he claims is unexpected in an r/n-stem. However, in view of the small size and high age of the Ištanuwa corpus, it is far from clear if any rules posited for the other Cuneiform Luwian texts will apply here, too.

[E.R.]

Checked against the photographs in the Mainzer Fotoarchiv. – For the ad hoc emendation la-am-ma-〈du〉-úr by Carruba, see Simon (s.v. lammaur) with references.

[E.R.]

The word has remained semantically opaque so far; cf. DLL:62, Starke 1990a:547, CLL:124, Melchert 1994a:275, HHw:92, Sasseville 2021a:415, Simon s.v. lammaur. The song incipit runs as follows: tap-pa-ši-tar ta-pa-la tap-pa-ši-tar ta-pa^!-la la-am-ma-úr ti-ti-ya-a-la a-li-na-an ḫal-ti-it-ta-ri DINGIR^MEŠ-zi (KBo 4.11 rev. 47-49). The semantic interpretation suggested by Sasseville can be modified and completed by filling in the translations that were achieved in the work on the present dictionary (see under the lemmata of titiyāl(i)- ‘lactating, nurturing (?)’ and alinna/i- ‘foreign (?)’): “In the sky the storm-clouds, in the sky the storm-clouds are called (by their) foreign lammaur ‘nourishing ones’, oh Gods.” In the context of ḫaltittari ‘is called’ with multiple forms in the neuter nom./acc. pl., i.e. the subject and its predicate noun, it can be deemed likely that lammaur means ‘denomination, name’ and is related to the Anatolian words for ‘name’ (e.g. HLuw. /alaman-/, Hitt. lāman-) and the verbs for ‘to name, call (by name)’ (HLuw. /lamanissa-⁽ⁱ⁾/, Hitt. lamniye/a-^(mi)). Following this assumption, it is suggested here that lammaur is an abstract noun derived with -w(a)r/-un- (following Starke 1990a:547) from the base *lammā(i)-^(di) < *lamnā(i)-^(di) ‘to name, call (by name)’ (or less likely *lamma-^(ti), in which case one would expect *lammur; see Sasseville 2021a:19f.) ← *lamn- ‘name’ (cf. also the use of the particle =tar, parallel to that Hittite ḫalzāi-/-i(ya)-^(ḫi) with one of the particles =ašta, =kan, or =ššan when combined with šum-šu ‘his name’ or lamnit ‘by name’).Regarding the semantics of lammaur, the educated guesses by Carruba 1998c:75f. and Starke 1990a:547 are outdated. Different also Simon s.v. lammaur.

[E.R.]

As claimed by Starke 1990a:547 (followed in Melchert 1994a:275), lammaur can be analyzed as an abstract noun in -w(a)r/-un- showing a syncope in the final syllable. For the derivational process leading to the stem under discussion (as well as less attractive alternative interpretations), see under Meaning.

[E.R.]

For the lemma head see HLuw. /alaman-/.