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Akkadian language

Akkadian (lišānum akkadītum) or Assyrian-Babylonian was a Semitic language (part of the greater Afro-Asiatic language family) spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate. The name of the language is derived from the city of Akkad, a major centre of Mesopotamian civilization.

Attested since the later 3rd millennium BCE and in continued use throughout the 2nd millennium BCE, its use declined from the 8th century BC or so, and it was largely extinct during the Hellenistic period.

History

Akkadian is divided into several varieties based on geography and historical period:

Old Akkadian, 2500–1950 BC
Old Babylonian/Old Assyrian, 1950–1530 BC
Middle Babylonian/Middle Assyrian, 1530–1000 BC
Neo-Babylonian/Neo-Assyrian, 1000–600 BC
Late Babylonian, 600 BC–100 AD

The Akkadian Empire established by Sargon I introduced the Akkadian language (the "language of Akkad") as a written language, adapting Sumerian cuneiform orthography for the purpose. During the Middle Bronze Age Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian period, the language virtually displaced Sumerian, which is assumed to have been extinct as a living language by the 18th century BCE.

Middle Assyrian served as a lingua franca in much of the Ancient Near East of the Late Bronze Age (Amarna period). During the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Neo-Assyrian began to turn into a chancellery language, being marginalized by Old Aramaic. Under the Achaemenids, Aramaic continued to prosper, but Assyrian continued its decline, with a brief revival under the Chaldean Empire. The language's final demise came about during the Hellenistic period when it was further marginalized by Koine Greek, although Neo-Assyrian cuneiform remained in use in literary tradition well into Parthian times. The latest known text in cuneiform Babylonian is an astronomical text dated to CE 75. After this, the language and its literary tradition was forgotten until the decipherment of cuneiform in the 1850s.

Writing system

Akkadian scribes wrote the language using cuneiform script, an earlier writing system devised by the Sumerians using wedge-shaped signs pressed in wet clay. As employed by Akkadian scribes the adapted cuneiform script could represent either (a) Sumerian logograms (i.e. picture-based characters representing entire words), (b) Sumerian syllables, (c) Akkadian syllables, or (d) phonetic complements. Cuneiform was in many ways unsuited to Akkadian: among its flaws was its inability to represent important phonemes in Semitic, including a glottal stop, pharyngeals, and emphatic consonants. In addition, cuneiform was a syllabary writing system — i.e. a consonant plus vowel comprised one writing unit — frequently inappropriate for a Semitic language made up of triconsonantal roots (i.e. three consonants minus any vowels).

Phonology

As far as can be told from the cuneiform orthography of Akkadian, several Proto-Semitic phonemes are lost in Akkadian. The Proto-Semitic glottal stop , are lost as consonants, either by sound change or orthographically, but they gave rise to the vowel quality e not exhibited in Proto-Semitic. The interdental and the voiceless lateral fricatives merged with the sibilants as in Canaanite, leaving 19 consonantal phonemes:

	Bilabial	Dental		Palatal	Velar		Uvular
	Bilabial	plain	emphatic	Palatal	plain	emphatic	Uvular
Nasal	m	n
Plosive	p b	t d	tˁ <ṭ>		k ɡ	kˁ
Fricative	v	s z	sˁ <ṣ>	ʃ <š>			χ <ḫ>
Rhotic		r
Approximant		l		j

The nature of *š as postalveolar and of *z *s *ṣ as fricatives is not uncontroversial, due to attested assimilations of voiceless coronal affricates to *s. An alternative approach to the phonology of these consonants is to treat *s *ṣ as voiceless coronal affricates , *š as a voiceless coronal fricative [s] and *z as a voiced coronal affricate or fricative [d͡z~z]. In this vein, an alternative transcription of *š is *s̠, with the macron below indicating a soft (fricative) articulation in Semitic transcription.

There are four vowel qualities, with distinctive vowel length:

Grammar

Akkadian is an inflected language, and as a Semitic language its grammatical features are highly similar to those found in Classical Arabic. It possesses two genders (masculine and feminine), distinguished in second person pronouns (you-masc., you-fem.) and in verb conjugations; three cases for nouns and adjectives (nominative, accusative, and genitive); three numbers: (singular, dual, and plural); and unique verb conjugations for each first, second, and third person pronoun.

Akkadian nouns are declined according to gender, number and case. There are three genders; masculine, feminine and common. Only a very few nouns belong to the common gender. There are also three cases (nominative, accusative and genitive) and three numbers (singular, dual and plural). Adjectives are declined exactly like nouns.

Akkadian verbs have thirteen separate root stems. The three basic modifications of the simple stem (numbered I, or called the Grundstamm, G-Stamm) are doubling of the second root-letter (II or Doppelungsstamm, D-Stamm), š-prefix (III or Š-Stamm) or n-prefix (IV or N-Stamm). A second series is created by infixing the syllable ta between the first two root letters, creating a generally reflexive set of stems. These two sets of four stems each are the most commonly used in Akkadian. A third set is created by the infixation of the syllable tan between the first two root letters. The final stem uses both the š-prefix and doubling of the second root letter. The stems, their nomenclature and examples of the third-person masculine singular permansive of the verb parāsum (root PRS: 'to decide, distinguish, separate') is shown below:

I.1	G	paris	the simple stem, used for transitive and intransitive verbs	corresponding to Arabic stem I (fa‘ala) and Hebrew qal
II.1	D	purrus	gemination of the second radical, indicating the intensive	corresponding to Arabic stem II (fa‘‘ala) and Hebrew pi‘el
III.1	Š	šuprus	š-preformative, indicating the causative	corresponding to Arabic stem IV (’af‘ala) and Hebrew hiph‘il
IV.1	N	naprus	n-preformative, indicating the reflexive/passive	corresponding to Arabic stem VII (infa‘ala) and Hebrew niph‘al
I.2	Gt	pitrus	simple stem with t-infix after first radical, indicating reciprocal or reflexive	corresponding to Arabic stem VIII (ifta‘ala) and Aramaic ’ithpe‘al (tG)
II.2	Dt	putarrus	doubled second radical preceded by infixed t, indicating intensive reflexive	corresponding to Arabic stem V (tafa‘‘ala) and Hebrew hithpa‘el (tD)
III.2	Št	šutaprus	š-preformative with t-infix, indicating reflexive causative	corresponding to Arabic stem X (istaf‘ala) and Aramaic ’ittaph‘al (tC)
IV.2	Nt	itaprus
I.3	Gtn	pitarrus	simple stem with tan-infix after first radical
II.3	Dtn	putarrus	doubled second radical preceded by tan-infix
III.3	Štn		š-preformative with tan-infix
IV.3	Ntn	itaprus	n-preformative with tan-infix

Akkadian verbs usually display the tri-consonantal root, though some roots with two- or four-consonant roots also exist. There are three tenses: present, preterite and permansive. Present tense indicates incomplete action and preterite tense indicates complete action, while permansive tense expresses a state or condition and usually takes a particle.

Akkadian, unlike Arabic, has mainly regular plurals (i.e. no broken plurals), although some masculine words take feminine plurals. In that respect, it is similar to Hebrew and Maltese.

Word order

Akkadian sentence order was Subject+Object+Verb (SOV), which sets it apart from most other ancient Semitic languages such as Arabic and Biblical Hebrew, which typically have a Verb-subject-object (VSO) word order. (Modern South Semitic languages in Ethiopia also have SOV order, but these developed within historical times from the classical SVO language Ge'ez.) It has been hypothesized that this word order was a result of influence from the Sumerian language, which was also SOV. There is evidence that native speakers of both languages were in intimate language contact, forming a single society for at least 500 years, so it is entirely likely that a sprachbund could have formed. Further evidence of an original VSO or SVO ordering can be found in the fact that direct and indirect object pronouns are suffixed to the verb. Word order seems to have shifted to SVO/VSO late in the 1st millennium BC to the 1st millennium AD, possibly under the influence of Aramaic.

Literature

Atrahasis Epic (early 2nd millennium BC)
Enûma Elish (ca. 18th century BC)
Amarna letters (14th century BC)
Epic of Gilgamesh (Sin-liqe-unninni' "standard" version, 13th to 11th century BC)

Notes

References

Aro, Jussi (1957). Studien zur mittelbabylonischen Grammatik. Studia Orientalia 22. Helsinki: Societas Orientalis Fennica.
Buccellati, Giorgio (1996). A Structural Grammar of Babylonian. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Buccellati, Giorgio (1997). "Akkadian," The Semitic Languages. Ed. Robert Hetzron. New York: Routledge. Pages 69-99.
Bussmann, Hadumod (1996). Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-20319-8
Caplice, Richard (1980). Introduction to Akkadian. Rome: Biblical Institute Press. (1983: ISBN 88-7653-440-7; 1988, 2002: ISBN 88-7653-566-7) (The 1980 edition is partly available online)
Gelb, I.J. (1961). Old Akkadian Writing and Grammar. Second edition. Materials for the Assyrian Dictionary 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Huehnergard, John (2005). A Grammar of Akkadian (Second Edition). Eisenbrauns. ISBN 1-57506-922-9
Marcus, David (1978). A Manual of Akkadian. University Press of America. ISBN 0-8191-0608-9
Mercer, Samuel A B (1961). Introductory Assyrian Grammar. New York: F Ungar. ISBN 0-486-42815-X
Soden, Wolfram von (1952). Grundriss der akkadischen Grammatik. Analecta Orientalia 33. Roma: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum. (3rd ed.: ISBN 88-7653-258-7)