appa

The form is attested in the Lallupiya song incipits.

[E.R.]

Checked against the photographs in the Mainzer Fotoarchiv.

[E.R.]

Depending on the interpretation of appa, the song incipit imma wārina imma wārina altannima appa mannun ^DAyantī could be interpreted as 1) “Irrigate indeed, irrigate indeed the fertile (one) behind the area of the spring for Ayantī!” or 2) “Irrigate indeed, irrigate indeed the area of the spring! Seize^? the fertile (one) for/from Ayantī!” (cf. also the lemmata of wārina- and altannima-).

Ad 1): The first analysis of appa as a postposition (CLL:20 with with question mark, Yakubovich 2017d, Sasseville 2021a:533f.) assumes a single sentence. A problem associated with it concerns the meaning ‘behind’, which occur also for =appi and which is why also the meaning ‘at’ (like Gk. ἐπί) is considered here. The spelling without initial plene vowel, which is paralleled only in =appi, seems to reflect the development to a clitic (in spite of the intervening space). The construction is be paralleled by tūwallanatima=antan ‘in the distant area (?)’ (see under tūwallanatima- and allatima- ‘area in a distance, distant area (?)’).

Ad 2): The division into two sentences is based on the observation that altannima and mannun do not show agreement and, consequently, should belong to two different constituents. Another option is therefore to take appa as a verbal form of its own (see CLuw. ap(p)-), viz. an imperative form in -a. The idea to posit a particle -a for the formation of 2sg. imperatives comes from Craig Melchert (e-mail of 20. Feb. 2021), who builds on Sasseville 2021a:343’s analysis of āwa ‘behold!’ as an imperative of a vowel stem awa-⁽ⁱ⁾ ‘to see’ and parses the form as au- ‘to see’ plus -a. Under this assumption, appa could constitute a regular root verb imperative of ap(p)- ‘to seize’ (cf. Hitt. ēp(p)-/app-^(mi) ‘to seize’) enlarged with a particle -a. This in turn would permit to accommodate two direct objects, altannima and mannun, in two separate sentences, for which a suitable context is at least imaginable.

A counterargument is raised by Sasseville (pers. comm.), pointing to the fact that all known imperatives in -a belong to stems in -a-, i.e. that there are no parallels for a particle -a as posited by Melchert. According to him, the plene spellings in tu-u-wa-a, li-lu-u-wa-a, i-ia-a, and na-an-na-a (KUB 25.39 i 26’f.) do not display a particle, but a lengthening caused when intoning the song.

Both solutions are fraught with difficulties, but preference is given here to postpositional solution, since it involves assumptions that also permit solutions to other problems.

[E.R.]

For some inconclusive considerations of the stem, see under Meaning.

[E.R.]