The Luwian language was spoken in Ancient Anatolia and is attested through written texts that are approximately datable to 1500–800 BCE. It belongs to the Anatolian sub-family of the Indo-European family and thus represents a close relative of Hittite. The Luwian language is attested in cuneiform and hieroglyphic scripts, but the present paper is based on the data in cuneiform transmission, which reflects better the Luwian phonological system. As typical of the Anatolian languages, Luwian features the second-position Wackernagel clitics, which are arranged vis-à-vis each other according to their formal ranks but can undergo morphophonemic changes in sandhi with each other. Establishing the correct inventory of the Luwian clitics is impossible without studying the licensing conditions and outcomes of such processes. The present paper approaches this problem from the perspective of morphophonemic variation in parallel versions of Luwian cuneiform incantations.

One of the outcomes of the conducted analysis is the demonstration that the cuneiform sequences a-ta-tar and a-at-tar can reflect the same clitic chain /a꞊ada꞊dar/ at the morphophonemic level. This alternation provides a new argument toward vindicating the existence of the fortis/lenis opposition in the Luwian phonological system, which is superimposed upon the inherited opposition between voiced and voiceless plosives. Another result of this paper is the observation that the particles [꞊dar] and [꞊r], previously regarded as independent lexical units, represent allomorphs of the same clitic. The occurrences of [꞊r] are limited to the position after the pronominal clitics /꞊du/, /꞊mu/, and /꞊di/, while the variant [꞊dar] occurs after the pronominal clitics /꞊as/, /꞊an/, and /꞊ada/. A formal account involving “weak” and “strong” clitics is put forward to capture this distribution, but its ultimate rationale must have to do with the laws governing syncope and lenition in Luwian. Quite aside from its linguistic conclusions, the present paper sheds light on a number of obscure and mostly fragmentary Luwian passages, which have defied satisfactory account thus far.