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.