Transitivity, intransitivity and diathesis in Hittite

The aim of this paper is to explore some transitivity related phenomena in Hittite. As well known, Hittite has a variety of features that affect or are affected by transitivity, such as the distribution of nominative and accusative third person clitics, affixes used for verb derivation, the so-called reflexive particle -z(a), and verbal diathesis. Arguably some of these features are connected with degrees of transitivity or intransitivity. After surveying some relevant concepts related to (in)transitivity (sec. 2), I will especially concentrate on the rise of split intransitivity (sec. 3), and on (pairs of) verbs that display a causative vs. anticausative semantic opposition (sec. 4). I will then discuss the relevance of the findings in sec. 4 for the reconstruction of the PIE voice system (sec. 5). Section 6 contains the conclusions.