1 ORTHOGRAPHY; PHONETIC AND PHONOLOGICAL ASPECTS

This chapter deals with issues of orthography which have implications for our understanding of the phonology of Amurru Akkadian. It is my belief that when dealing with this language, a written language with a deep-rooted scholarly tradition, this is how one should deal with phonological issues, i.e., it is better not to separate discussions of orthographical questions from discussions of explicitly linguistic problems.

A short survey of the following sections may pinpoint the need for thorough research into the orthography and writing habits of each of the subcorpora, of yet smaller reference groups of texts, and even of each of the specific scribes, in order to understand the syllabary system of either a single text or of the whole corpus. A certain scribe may use different signs for the indication of a single value in a more or less unsystematic manner, as is the case with the scribe of the General's Letter (RS 20.33). However, we do fiud certain learned customary spellings which are subject to alternation in the writing of this and other scribes. In such cases, there can be no arbitrary use of signs. The use of a relatively rigid syllabary is, in general, the rule when trying to describe the writing systems of the scribes of Amurru, as we shall see in the following discussions.

General Akkadian phonological rules, as well as dialect-specific rules of any of the core Akkadian languages, will not be discussed in this chapter, unless they are unequivocally related to the study of the phonological systems of our texts. Such features, whenever they occur in our texts, are to be regarded as basically morphophonemic rather than pure phonological traits. Due to this methodology, the reader will not find himself puzzled by blurring of data which are irrelevant for the study of features specifically related to Amurru Akkadian. Moreover, this concen-

26 tration in Amurru Akkadian features may help in preventing us from falling into the common trap of mixing synchronical and historical phonological data. The latter are, obviously, to be treated under the title of morphology or morphophonology rather than in the section of phonology per se. What is usually encountered in phonological discussions of grammatical studies of Akkadian dialects is, for the most part, a morphophonological study, which may not reflect pure phonological rules.

It is premature to present a separate chapter concentrating on the morphophonology of our PA dialect, because of the lack of thorough investigations into the morphophonology of the various Akkadian languages (especially the older ones). Hence, all morphophonological alternations have been dealt with in the respective morphological sections, mainly those dealing with stems or patterns. This chapter deals only with those feature which are relevant for the study of the phonological traits in the language of our scribes.

My methodology can be illustrated by the way in which the various stative formations from the etymon [wdii "glad" are treated in this study (for the notion "etymon", see 3.4). The following forms are attested: [ia-ad-ia-ku, [la-di-ia-k[u71, [ra-da-ak-ku "I am glad"; [ia-di-ia-ta "you are glad"; [ia-du,-nim "they are glad". All these forms are dealt with in the section dealing with the morphological patterns of the stative. However, the form [la-da-ak-ku, which exhibits a specific phonological feature of this language, is dealt with also in 1.12 of this chapter (as well as referred to in another morphological treatment, namely that of the person morphemes, 2.3.3.3.1). Various spellings and phonological features of the other forms are dealt with in this chapter as well (l.8 and 1.5 respectively). As mentioned above, various formations of inner-word stem patterns should not be dealt with in orthographical-phonological discussions. This is true especially for this language, which was a second language for its speakers, even if one can attribute some of these alternations to actual contemporary phonological traits of any of the core Akkadian dialects. Thus, a form like aq-fix(DE)-bi "he has said" (RS 20.162: 8) are dealt with in the proper morphological section (2.4.2.1.3), where both the partial assimilation of t to emphatic q and vowel harmony are discussed. Both features are Assyrian. Note, that although these traits are phonological in Assyrian, they had been acquired at the morphophonological level by the scribe who used this form. This is proved by the vast variation of forms which may differ from each other merely by phonetic features, as well as by the possibility of non-occurrence of similar phonetic changes throughout all forms in even one and the same text. On the other hand, the spelling with the DE sign for fix, will be dealt with within the framework of spelling conventions and usages discussed in this chapter (1.15)

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