/usal(i)-?/, (“*217”)u-sà-li5-
‘thief’
- Language
- Hieroglyphic Luwian
- Grammar
- subst, c.
- ID
- 3497
1. Individual Anatolian Languages
1.1 Hieroglyphic Luwian
/usal(i)-?/, (“*217”)u-sà-li5-
‘thief’1.1.1Transmission
This noun occurs twice in the HLuw. corpus, and both attestations originate from the bilingual Karatepe inscription in Cilicia, dating to the early 7th century BCE.
[AH.B.]
1.1.2Forms
| nom. pl. | /usalinzi?/ | (“*217”)u-sà-lì-zí | KARATEPE 1 Ho., §20 (Cilicia) |
| (˹“*217?˺”)u-sa-lí-˹zi˺ | KARATEPE 1 Hu., §20 (Cilicia) |
1.1.3Graphic Features
1.1.3.1Phonological Interpretation
The fully syllabic spelling of this lexeme provides a good impression of its general shape, but doubts remain over the details. Thus, without any direct cognates in the other Anatolian languages, the quality of the consonants remains in the dark, and possible phonological shapes besides the one adopted here are variations of /us(s)all(i)-/; cf. the discussion of the stem below.
Rieken 2010b:638 notes the vacillation between 〈sa〉 and 〈sà〉 in the forms, which shows that the restrictions earlier in place for 〈sà〉 have been abandoned in this late period of HLuw. and the sign is no longer reliably used to represent a different sibilant.
Both occurrences in in KARATEPE 1 Hu. and Ho., §20 feature the use of sign *217 for a logographic determinative. The sign has not been found with any other lexeme yet, and its meaning, let alone its possible syllabic value, are unknown. Only the use of sign *410, marking logograms, shows with a high level of certainty that *217 is intended as a determinative, and does not constitute a part of the syllabic representation of the word.
[AH.B.]
1.1.4Meaning ‘thief, robber, raider’
The general semantic content of this lexeme has been clear for a while due to the fact that it occurs in the Karatepe bilingual inscription, and /usal(i)-/ translates Phoenician bʿl ʾgddm ‘masters of gangs’, cf. Bossert 1949a:90 who tentatively connects it to the GKW ušai- ‘(unknown)’ and translates it as ‘Bandenführer’. In Hu. §20 (likewise in Ho. §20), the noun occurs at the very end of the clause after the verb: (MALUS)á-tu-wa/i-ri+i-zi-wa/i-ta CAPUT-tí-zi kwa/i-ta-na a-ta ˹á-sa-ta˺ (˹“*217?˺”)u-sa-lí-˹zi˺, approx. /attuwalinzi=wa=tta ...-ttinzi kwittan anta asanta usalinzi/, ‘Where there were bad men, raiders’. The positioning at the end of the clause emulates the structure of the Phoenician text, except that bʿl ʾgddm ‘masters of gangs’ is in direct apposition to its head noun there and not at the other end of the clause as in the HLuw. version.
In the meantime, the meaning of the word has seen some reinterpretation, because its morphology obviously does not emulate the Phoenician model. Hawkins & Morpurgo Davies 1978a:108 suggest ‘robbers, plunderers’, followed, albeit on different morphological grounds, by Yakubovich 2016a:86 n. 26, who also mentions the difficulties that can arise in the bilingual inscription with denotations of the Phoenician and Luwian words not fully overlapping in many instances.
It is not known at this point what further information the logographic determiner *217 adds to the lexeme. The sign does not occur in any other context, and its shape does not provide any obvious hint as to its meaning.
[AH.B.]
1.1.5Stem
Different analyses have been put forward to explain the present lexeme. Hawkins & Morpurgo Davies 1978a:108 (repeated in Hawkins 2000a:61 and followed by Yakubovich 2015a:47) and considers /usal(i)-/ to be derived from the verb /usa-/ ‘to lead (here)’.Yakubovich 2016a:86 n. 26 states that this notion was based on a semantically fraught interpretation of the verb also meaning ‘to carry (away)’, which has since been refuted. In that case, the phonological shape of the noun should be /usall(i)-/ and represent a substantivised adjective of appurtenance in /-alla/i-/.
A different view is expressed by Yakubovich 2016a:86 n. 26, who regards the lexeme as a compound verb of /u-/ ‘around’ and a verb */sali-/ ‘to intrude’ (with a cognate in Hittite šalig- ‘to touch, intrude’). In that case, the phonological interpretation of the noun should be /usal(i)-/ with a singleton /l/, which is the form assumed here until proven otherwise.
[AH.B.]