Annotating Correlative Constructions in Hittite: A Universal Dependencies Approach

Hittite, the oldest attested Indo-European cuneiform language, poses distinctive challenges for Universal Dependencies (UD) annotation. This paper presents the annotation of correlative constructions in a treebank of the correspondence of Puduheba, Queen of Hatti, to Egypt (late Bronze Age). In Hittite correlatives, a pre-posed clause headed by the relative-indefinite pronoun kuiš/kuit precedes a main clause containing a resumptive demonstrative. Our solution assigns advcl:cor to the pre-posed clause; kuiš/kuit receives its internal syntactic function (typically nsubj or obj); and the resumptive demonstrative is marked with the Coref feature as anaphor within UD's extended dependency graph. Annotation decisions are visualised using Arborator. Beyond practical annotation, this approach opens broader questions about relativisation typology and how digital tools can reveal grammatical structures in ancient languages.