The "disconnects" between Hittite and the other early Indo-European languages have been extensively explored, and scholars have realized that the conventional picture of the parent language must be modified to account for the facts of Hittite. Jay Jasanoff proposes the most thorough and systematic resolution of the problem yet published, putting forth a revolutionary model of the Proto-Indo-European verbal system.

This book reconciles what is known of the Proto-Indo-European verbal system with the evidence of Hittite and the other early Anatolian languages. The decipherment of Hittite in 1917 and the recognition that it was an Indo-European language had dramatic consequences for conceptions of the Indo-European parent language. For most of the twentieth century, attention focused on the peculiarities of Hittite phonology, especially the consonant h and its implications for the evolving laryngeal theory. Yet the morphological "disconnects" between Hittite and the other early languages are more profound...