Hattic language

The heartland of the oldest attested language of Anatolia before the arrival of Hittite-speakers, ranged from Hattusa, then called "Hattus", northward to Nerik.

They absorbed or replaced the Hattic-speaking ruling class (Hattians)[citation needed] but retained the name Hatti for the region.

Certain similarities between Hattic and both Abkhazo-Adyghean and Kartvelian languages have led to proposals by some scholars about the possibility of a linguistic bloc from central Anatolia to the Caucasus.

Hattic has been claimed to form conventional plurals with a le- prefix: "children" = le-pinu; however, most specialists today consider it to be a possessive pronominal clitic, meaning "his" or "their".

Some linguists like Polomé and Winter have claimed that the accusative case was marked with es- and give the example of ess-alep "word",[13] but that has been identified by others as a pronominal clitic, meaning "their".