The Indo-European elements in Hurrian

This work grew out of preliminary investigations conducted by one of the authors —Arnaud Fournet. As a result of these investigations, Fournet prepared an 18-page paper, mostlybuilt upon Emmanuel Laroche’s Glossaire de la langue hourrite, in which he presented evidence that there might be a genetic relationship between Hurrian and Proto-Indo-European.

In due course, he showed the paper to the other author — Allan Bomhard. After receiving a positive response from Bomhard, Fournet invited him to join in a collaborative effort in which these ideaswould be explored in more depth, and Bomhard gratefully accepted the invitation.

This book is truly a collaborative effort. Even though each author took responsibility forcertain portions — Fournet primarily for Hurrian and Bomhard primarily for Indo-European —, as work on the manuscript was progressing, each author reviewed, commented upon, enhanced, corrected, or rejected what the other was writing.

No part escaped the scrutiny of both authors. Moreover, the scope of the work went well beyond what was in Fournet’s original paper — new and surprising possibilities kept emerging as research continued. What was intended as amore robust paper that expanded upon and refined Fournet’s original ideas kept growing in size,eventually becoming the book that we now present to the scholarly community.

Hurrian cannot be considered an Indo-European language — this is so obvious that it barely needs to be stated. Traditional Indo-European languages, such as Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, Old Irish, Old Church Slavic, Tocharian, etc., are clearly related to each other through many common features and shared innovations that are lacking in Hurrian.

However, that is not the end of the argument. “In the preceding chapters, we presented evidence that Hurrian and Proto-Indo-European [bear] a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could have been produced by accident; so strong that no philologer could examine [them] without believing them to have sprung from some common source. We propose that both are descended from a common ancestor, which may be called “Proto-Asianic”, to revive an old, but not forgotten, term.”

The Indo-European elements in Hurrianby Arnaud Fournet and Allan Bomhard

A common ancestor of Indo-European and Hurrian

A solution to the problem of Indo-Aryan origins

A Dictionary of Proto-Indo-European with Hurrian Comparative Indications. Part I