100 Jahre Entzifferung des Hethitischen

In 2015, we celebrate the centennial of the decipherment of Hittite by Bedrich Hrozný and, thus, the establishment of Hittite linguistics. The outstanding contributions of Hrozný to the fields of Hittitology and Comparative Philology were acknowledged, among other things, within the framework of the conference of the Society of Indo-European Studies, which took place in Marburg on September 21-23, 2015. The location was especially appropriate for the occasion because of the focus on the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European languages, which characterizes Comparative Philology at Marburg.

The title "100th Anniversary of the Decipherment of Hittite: Morpho-syntactic Categories in Language History and Research" combined assessing past achievements with an enquiry into research questions that are relevant for current scholarship. Special focus was placed on the impact of Hittite evidence on the reconstruction of the Indo-European proto-language and its phylogeny.

The twenty-five articles published in this volume tackle the general topics of the conference from comparative, synchronic linguistic, and textual perspectives. They include articles evaluating the results of Indo-Europeanists' research on Hittite over the past 100 years (Melchert, Jasanoff, Kim), work focusing Hittite textual studies (Francia) and morphology (Fellner/Grestenberger, Höfler, Kocharov, Simon, Yoshida), or the broader topics of historical morphology (Kloekhorst, Kümmel, Oettinger), as well as studies in syntax and the syntax/semantics interface (Boroday/Yakubovich, Dardano, Frantíková, Hackstein, Kölligan, Luraghi/Inglese). In addition, several papers deal with problems of method and theory (Cotticelli/Giusfredi, Sideltsev, Widmer). Finally, there is a remarkable number of contributions the the so-called "minor" Anatolian languages, namely Luwian and Lycian (Martínez, Sasseville, Serangeli, Vernet).

The positive response from the international scholarly community shows that the work on