Compound Determinatives

The corpus of Anatolian Hieroglyphic (AH) inscriptions does not include any texts which reflect on the use of language or any aspects of the development or structure of the writing system. Therefore, metalinguistic awareness can only be approached indirectly via the obser- vation of script usage. It is, arguably, the use of determinative signs as a means of structuring and organizing the representation of words which offers most insight into the ancient scribes’ understanding of writing and language. This paper examines the use of compound determi- natives as the most complex system relevant to the question of metalinguistic awareness.