Comparative Lexical Studies in Neo-Mandaic Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics Editorial board Aaron D. Rubin and C.H.M. Versteegh VOLUME 73 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ssl Comparative Lexical Studies in Neo-Mandaic By Hezy Mutzafi LEIDEN • bOSTON 2014 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mutzafi, Hezy. Comparative lexical studies in Neo-Mandaic / By Hezy Mutzafi. pages cm. — (Studies in semitic languages and linguistics ; Volume 73) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-25704-7 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-25705-4 (e-book) 1. Mandaean language—Grammar. 2. Mandaean language—Lexicology. I. Title. PJ5329.M88 2014 492’.3—dc23 2013048037 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 0081-8461 ISBN 978-90-04-25704-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-25705-4 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. For Shira and Yitav CONTENTS Preface ................................................................................................................ ix Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ xi Abbreviations and Symbols ......................................................................... xiii 1. Introduction ................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Neo-Mandaic and Its Speakers .................................................... 1 1.2 The Neo-Mandaic Lexicon in Previous Studies ..................... 5 1.3 Methodology ..................................................................................... 9 1.3.1 Sources ................................................................................... 10 1.3.2 Transcription and Citation Forms ................................. 12 2. Aspects of Previous Research ................................................................ 17 2.1 Classicisms ......................................................................................... 17 2.2 Inaccurate Definitions ................................................................... 22 2.3 Ad hoc Persian and Arabic Loanwords .................................... 26 2.4 Ad hoc Circumlocutions ............................................................... 27 2.5 Ghost Words ..................................................................................... 30 2.6 Aramaic Verbal Roots Based on Incorrect Etymologies ...... 32 3. Neo-Mandaic and Pre-Modern Aramaic ............................................ 35 3.1 Continuity of the Neo-Mandaic Lexicon and Old Aramaic 35 3.2 Continuity of the Neo-Mandaic Lexicon and Literary Mandaic .............................................................................................. 36 3.3 Some Hitherto Unattested Mandaic Lexemes Surfacing in Neo-Mandaic ............................................................................... 38 3.3.1 Genuine Aramaic Words and Forms Hitherto Unattested in Literary Mandaic ..................................... 39 3.3.2 Early Iranian Loanwords Hitherto Unattested in Literary Mandaic ................................................................. 58 3.3.3 Akkadian Lexical Influences Surfacing in Neo-Mandaic ........................................................................ 62 3.4 The Importance of Neo-Mandaic for Elucidating Literary Mandaic Lexemes ............................................................................ 77 viii contents 4. Neo-Mandaic and Other Neo-Aramaic Varieties: Isolexes ........... 91 4.1 Shared Retentions of Neo-Mandaic and Other Neo-Aramaic Varieties ................................................................... 91 4.2 Shared Retentions with Semantic Differences ....................... 96 4.2.1 Semantic Differences Unique to Neo-Mandaic ......... 96 4.2.2 Further Shared Retentions with Semantic Differences ............................................................................ 99 4.2.3 Shared Retentions in Neo-Mandaic, NENA and Ṭuroyo .................................................................................... 103 4.3 Peripheral Relic Lexical Items ..................................................... 112 4.3.1 Relic Lexical Items Shared with Western Neo-Aramaic ........................................................................ 112 4.3.2 Relic Lexical Items Shared with Ṭuroyo and with Mlaḥsô .................................................................................... 116 4.4 Neo-Mandaic-NENA Isoglosses ................................................... 117 4.4.1 Isoglosses in Both Form and Meaning ......................... 118 4.4.2 Morpho-Lexical Isoglosses ............................................... 123 4.4.3 Neo-Mandaic Isolexes with Some of the NENA Dialects .................................................................................. 126 4.4.4 Neo-Mandaic-NENA Isolexes with Semantic Differences ............................................................................ 138 5. The Uniqueness of the Neo-Mandaic Lexicon within Neo-Aramaic ............................................................................................... 145 5.1 Pre-Modern Aramaic Words and Meanings Surviving Only in Neo-Mandaic ............................................................................... 145 5.2 Unique Neo-Mandaic Words and Meanings Related to Lexical Replacement ...................................................................... 166 5.2.1 Unique Neo-Mandaic Words ........................................... 166 5.2.2 Unique Neo-Mandaic Meanings .................................... 176 5.3 Unique Neo-Mandaic Compounds and Blends ...................... 193 5.4 Some Unique Neo-Mandaic Words of Unknown or Uncertain Origin .............................................................................. 199 5.5 Various Other Unique Neo-Mandaic Words and Meanings 203 Bibliographical References ........................................................................... 213 Index of Neo-Mandaic Words ..................................................................... 223 PREFACE The impetus to carry out fieldwork on Neo-Mandaic and to write this book is very much due to the late Rudolf Macuch’s own work on this language and the fascinating linguistic details revealed in his publica- tions. Already in 1992, as a BA student at the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Languages, Tel Aviv University, I wished to learn more about Neo- Mandaic and its speakers, and wrote a few queries to Prof. Macuch, who kindly replied to me promptly and at length, and added intriguing details about his work on his Neumandäische Texte im Dialekt von Ahwāz (pub- lished in 1993). Had it not been for Macuch’s scholarly work on Neo-Mandaic during the second half of the 20th century, the Mandaic language would prob- ably have been regarded by contemporary Semitic scholarship as no more alive than Jewish Babylonian and other Aramaic idioms of Late Antiquity, and no scholarly interest in delving deeper into its linguistic repositories would have been triggered. Indeed, in an article which had appeared only a year before Macuch published the first transcribed Neo-Mandaic text (Macuch 1965) and his Handbook of Classical and Modern Mandaic, H.J. Polotsky wrote that “. the two varieties of Babylonian Aramaic which were employed in writ- ing in the Middle Ages, viz. the language of the Babylonian Talmud and Mandaean, did not leave descendants” (Polotsky 1964: 105). Even much later Neo-Mandaic was virtually ignored by other Aramaists and Semitists, and for nearly five decades, until Häberl’s publication of his dissertation on the dialect of Khorramshahr in 2009, all scholarly knowl- edge of Neo-Mandaic had been exclusively associated with the name and works of Rudolf Macuch. Since 1992 I had been hoping that someday I would be able to meet with Neo-Mandaic speakers and become acquainted with their language at close quarters, but the opportunity to do so came only 16 years later, in 2008, when I conducted my first fieldwork on this language, specifically on the dialect of Khorramshahr, in New York. This was followed in 2010 by another fieldwork trip in Australia which concerned both Neo-Mandaic dialects of Ahvaz and Khorramshahr. The present book deals with salient lexical features of one of the rar- est and most seriously endangered modern varieties of Aramaic. Being an x preface offshoot of a pre-modern vernacular closely related to Classical Mandaic, and having developed within the confines of a few isolated language-islets in the extreme southwestern part