ñtawãta-

The lexeme is found in two grave inscriptions.

[D.S.]

acc. sg.	ñtawãtã	TL 149.4 (Rhodiapolis)
	ñtạẉãtã	TL 52.2 (Sidek-Yayla)

The word is sometimes divided into two, i.e. ñta wãtã, in the literature (Houwink ten Cate 1961a:92, Carruba 1974a:594, Shevoroshkin 1994a:134), which is unmotivated and creates unnecessary syntactic problems.

[D.S.]

Thomsen 1899a:70 n. 1 recognizes that ñtawãtã represents a substantive denoting some kind of condition for the use of the tomb. Christiansen 2020a:235 points out rightly that the ñtawãtã is something given to the Mindis (dative!), the group who operates burials, so that it likely refers to the right of access or the right to control its allocation in accordance with the tomb owner’s will. She therefore translates the word with ‘access (?)’ (similarly Melchert in DLL:45 “inclusion”, Gehrisch 2018a:169f. “permission”, outdated Meriggi 1928a:172 n. 2 “ordinance’, Houwink ten Cate 1961a:92 “the right to be buried”, Bryce 1975a:36 “burial rights” (both taking miñti as nom. sg. instead of dat. sg.); cf. also Carruba 1974a:594 “supervision”).

[D.S.]

There are two ways to analyze ñtawãta- morphologically: it is either a possessive with the suffix -wẽt(i)- derived from the adposition ñte ‘in(side)’ followed by a substantivization in -a- c., or, as per Carruba 1974a:594, a participle of a univerbated ñte uwe- ‘to focus on, pay attention to’ (Hitt. anda au(š)-^(ḫi); see also Lyc. B ñtuwitẽni) also substantivized with -a- c. (followed by Neumann 2007a:248).

[D.S.]

For the lemma head see Lyc. ñte.