Hurrian and Ugaritic sibilants: Essay of phonetic interpretation

Vera Tsukanova (University of Marburg; vera.tsukanova@uni-marburg.de); Ilya Yakubovich (University of Marburg; ilya.yakubovich@uni-marburg.de)

Journal of Language Relationship, № 23/3-4, 2025 - p.276-303

Abstract: The phonetic values of the sibilant phonemes in Hurrian and Ugaritic must be revisited in the light of the evolving interpretation of sibilants in neighbouring languages, which is partly due to the evolution of the Affricate Hypothesis. We are arguing that the syllabic cuneiform orthography of Mitanni and Boğazkōy Hurrian uses the Š-series to reflect the alveolar fricative phonemes /s/ and /z/, while the Z and S-series are deployed for the rendering of affricate phonemes. Furthermore, we are suggesting that the Ugaritic alphabetic grapheme 〈ṯ〉 renders not the interdental /θ/, as was traditionally assumed, but the alveolar /s/. The revised sound values of the Hurrian sibilants simplify the scenario of how the Mesopotamian cuneiform script was adapted to writing Hittite.

Keywords: Hurrian language, Ugaritic language, sibilant phonemes, Affricate Hypothesis

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