Language and Nature Papers Presented to John Huehnergard on the Occasion of His 60Th Birthday
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LANGUAGE AND NATURE PAPERS PRESENTED TO JOHN HUEHNERGARD ON THE OCCASION OF HIS 60TH BIRTHDAY edited by REBECCA HASSELBACH and NAʿAMA PAT-EL studies in ancient ORientaL civiLizatiOn • numbeR 67 ThE ORIENTAL InSTITUTE OF THE UnIVERSITY OF CHICAGO chicagO • IllinOis Library of Congress Control Number: 2011933159 ISBN-10: 1-885923-91-0 isbn-13: 978-1-885923-91-2 issn: 0081-7554 The Oriental Institute, Chicago © 2012 by the university of chicago. all rights reserved. Published 2012. Printed in the united states of america. studies in ancient ORientaL civiLizatiOn • numbeR 67 THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Series Editors Leslie schramer and thomas g. urban with the assistance of Rebecca cain Series Editors’ Acknowledgments zuhal Kuru and Jessen O’brien assisted in the production of this volume. Cover prepared by Kristy Shuey of 2nd Street Design Lab, Austin, Texas selection of ethiopic, ugaritic, akkadian, hebrew, and Old south arabian texts — we thank the semitic museum, harvard university, Wayne t. Pitard, and John huehnergard fortheir use. Printed by McNaughton & Gunn, Saline, Michigan the paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ameri- can national standard for information services — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library materials, ansi z39.48-1984. TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface. Rebecca Hasselbach and Naʿama Pat-El .............................................................. vii List of Contributors and Their Affiliations . ix John as a teacher and mentor. Rebecca Hasselbach and Naʿama Pat-El . xi the Research of John huehnergard. Rebecca Hasselbach and Naʿama Pat-El . xiii a brief note on the Festschrift illustrations. X Bonnie Woods................................................. xxi Contributions 1. Functional values of iprus Forms in Old Babylonian šumma Protases. Eran Cohen................................. 1 2. The hypotaxis-Parataxis dichotomy and elliptic conditional clauses in semitic. Lutz Edzard...................... 13 3. t-stem verbs without metathesis in aramaic and hebrew documents from the Judean desert. Steven E. Fassberg . 27 4. People without town: the ʿapiru in the amarna evidence. Daniel E. Fleming . 39 5. Denominal, Lexicalized hiphil verbs. W. Randall Garr .......................................................... 51 6. The treatment of vowel Length in arabic grammar and its adaptation to hebrew. Gideon Goldenberg.............. 59 7. Wisdom in ugaritic. Edward L. Greenstein . 69 8. Predicate nominals and Related constructions in neo-mandaic. Charles G. Häberl................................ 91 9. Yaqtul and a ugaritic incantation text. Jo Ann Hackett . 111 10. The verbal endings -u and -a: a note on their Functional derivation. Rebecca Hasselbach......................... 119 11. Ibn Khaldūn as a historical Linguist with an excursus on the Question of ancient Gāf. Wolfhart Heinrichs . 137 12. A morphosyntactic explanation of tǝpôṣôtîkem (Jer 25:34). Jeremy M. Hutton . 151 13. Canaano-akkadian: Linguistics and sociolinguistics. Shlomo Izre’el . 171 14. The evidential Function of the Perfect in north-eastern neo-aramaic dialects. Geoffrey Khan..................... 219 15. Les noms de plantes akkadiens dans leur contexte sémitique. Leonid Kogan . 229 16. Grammaticalization and the biblical hebrew Pseudo-cohortative. Paul Korchin.................................. 269 17. The biblical hebrew verbal system in a nutshell. Dennis Pardee . 285 18. The syntax of ʾǎšer and šec — Yet again. Naʿama Pat-El . 319 19. Late biblical hebrew in the book of haggai. Gary A. Rendsburg ................................................. 329 20. Two modern south arabian etymologies. Aaron D. Rubin...................................................... 345 21. “if Water had not been made to dry up, this earth Would have been drowned”: Pahlavi *āwās- “to dry.” P. Oktor Skjærvø . 353 22. Vowel syncope and syllable Repair Processes in Proto-semitic construct Forms: a new Reconstruction based on the Law of diminishing conditioning. Richard C. Steiner................................ 365 23. Reconciling some morphological eccentricities of the semitic genitive case marker. David Testen................. 391 24. Mixed Linguistic Features in a Judeo-arabic text from algeria: the Šarḥ to the Hafṭarot from constantine. Ofra Tirosh-Becker............................................................................. 407 25. Alternierende metrik in der akkadischen Poesie. Josef Tropper................................................. 433 26. On Personal names ending in -āyu in the amarna Letters and in texts from canaan. Wilfred van Soldt . 443 27. Jumping spiders (araneae: salticidae) of the concord area, middlesex county, massachusetts. Richard K. Walton . 451 28. Verbal endings in the afroasiatic Prefix conjugations. Andrzej Zaborski ............................................. 459 29. Prepositional Phrases as subjects in several semitic Languages. Tamar Zewi . 465 v PREFACE this volume includes thirty contributions — twenty-nine papers and one artistic contribution — by John’s col- leagues, former students, and friends, on a variety of topics, representing John’s versatility and many interests: eran cohen reviews and discusses the functional value of akkadian iprus in conditional clauses in epistolary and legal texts. cohen points to the syntactic environment and the genre as conditioning factors. Lutz edzard discusses the akkadian injunctive šumma, used in oath formulae, where it expresses positive state- ment when it is followed by a negation particle. edzard examines whether this pattern should be considered an elliptical conditional. steven Fassberg deals with verbal t-forms that do not exhibit the expected metathesis in hebrew and aramaic of the dead sea scrolls. Fassberg suggests an explanation on the basis of diachronic evidence as well as compara- tive evidence from other aramaic dialects. daniel Fleming asks who were the ʿapiru people mentioned in egyptian texts in the Late bronze age and what was their social standing as is reflected in the amarna letters. Randall garr studies one class of denominal hiphil verbs and asks why these verbs are assigned to the causative stem despite their non-causative semantic content. gideon goldenberg discusses the concept of vocalic length and the status of yā, waw, and ʾalif in arabic grammati- cal tradition and in the medieval hebrew tradition that was its product. ed greenstein suggests that the roots of biblical wisdom can be located in second-millennium canaanite literature by identifying wisdom sayings and themes in the ugaritic corpus. this is a part of the author’s ongoing re- search into this genre. charles häberl looks into predicates of verbless sentences in semitic and particularly in neo-mandaic, which ex- hibits syntactic subtleties not found in the classical semitic languages. Jo ann hackett takes another look at ugaritic yaqtul and argues for the existence of a preterite yaqtul, contra sev- eral recent studies. Rebecca hasselbach tackles the evasive origin of the semitic verbal endings -u and -a and explains their develop- ment in the various branches. Wolfhart heinrichs’s contribution is a study of a passage from ibn Khaldūn’s muqaddima on the pronunciation of arabic qāf. this study shows that ibn Khaldūn held innovative views of language and its evolution. Jeremy hutton sheds more light on tg forms in biblical hebrew, through an analysis of the anomalous form təpôṣôtîkem. this study further uses comparative evidence to suggest a better understanding of this, and simi- lar forms. shlomo izre’el offers a revised and improved version of his important study of the language of the amarna letters, so far available only as an unpublished manuscript. geoffrey Khan discusses the functional differences between the preterite and the perfect in nena. Khan suggests that one of the functions of the perfect is marking a speaker’s attitude toward the event. Leonid Kogan offers a comparative etymological study of botanical terminology in akkadian. Paul Korchin argues that occurrences of the cohortative in biblical hebrew that do not conform to the normative volitive function, the so-called pseudo-cohortatives, represent instances of a “centrifugal” directive affix ex- pressing motion away from the speaker/main event. vii viii Preface dennis Pardee provides a detailed description and explanation of his understanding of the hebrew verbal system as primarily expressing aspect, tense only secondarily. naʿama Pat-el continues the discussion of the origin of the hebrew relative particle šeC- from a syntactic perspec- tive. she argues that, based on its syntactic distributions, the origin of the particle from the relative particle ’ăšer as proposed by John huehnergard is more likely than a recent suggestion that the two particles are unre- lated. gary a. Rendsburg argues in favor of Late biblical hebrew features in the book of haggai against Young, Rezetko, and ehrensvärd, who denied the presence of such features in the text. Rendsburg argues that Late biblical hebrew features are found in various layers of grammar and style throughout the book. aaron d. Rubin provides semitic etymologies of two modern south arabian words, lxm ‘shark,’ and mehri nǝxāli ‘under.’ P. Oktor skjaervo elucidates a passage from the Pahlavi Rivāyat and discusses the Pahlavi verb *āwās ‘to dry.’ Richard c. steiner discusses a universal that governs the evolution of phonological rules and applies it to the recon- struction of Proto-semitic. he proposes a new vowel syncope rule