The Hieroglyphic Luwian genitive case

Abstract Descriptions of Hieroglyphic Luwian grammar assert that the genitive endings ‑as(a) and ‑asi are interchangeable; their distribution is said to be random rather than governed by any conditioning factor. However, recent studies have shown that the ending ‑asi is geographically and chronologically restricted in the corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian texts, which suggests that the distribution is not entirely random. In this paper, it is argued that in texts from the “‑asi area” - where texts containing both endings are found - the genitive endings are distributed in a non-random way. Genitives in ‑as(a) are dependent on neuter gender head nouns, whereas genitives in ‑asi are dependent on common gender head nouns. This means that, syntactically, Hieroglyphic Luwian genitives resemble genitival adjectives by agreeing with the gender of their head. Although several counterexamples exist, they are probably caused by translation errors, by language change in late Hieroglyphic Luwian, and possibly by the fact that -as(a) may reflect -asa as well as -as. Finally, a new account of the historical development of Luwian genitives is presented.