Re: Construct States

On 3-2-99, Edward Heil wrote: "Ah, I've heard of these.  I was perusing an
Akkadian grammar I found in a used bookstore; Akkadian has construct
states.  I understand Hebrew does too? I didn't read enough to get a firm
grasp on the concept."

It's easy. All the Hamito-Semitic languages I'm familiar with - Egyptian
and the Semitic languages - use the construct state to mark genitives and
compound nouns. Basically, because of an old genitive marker in /-i/ and
rules of accent ('Zweisilbengesetz' - making a three-syllable word into 2
syllables), when the case-markings are stripped from a word it appears in
its 'construct' (theoretically, its 'abstract') form.

For example, Tuppu^m 'tablet' (T = t with a dot under it, indicating it is
'emphatic' [glottalised or pharygealised], and the [u^] is a /u:/ formed
from the nominal case-ending -um combined with another preceding vowel;
accent is on the last syllable in this word because of this) is borrowed
from Sumerian (not surprising!) DUB-BI 'tablet. The construct of this word
is Tuppi; Tuppu^m < Tuppi + um. So when you say, My tablet, the 'object' of
the genitive is placed first in construct form, followed by the genitive of
the posessor. Tuppi:ya 'my tablet' < Tuppi + ya (length is a separate issue
here!)

Or let's take a slightly more fun Akkadian form: iltum 'goddess' and
$arratum ($ = sh) 'queen.'

Since the feminine form of words is usually overtly marked with a feminine
ending -at, we can see that the word ilum 'god' + fem. ending -at +
nominative ending -um = *ilatum, which under zweisilbengesetz become iltum
(stress moves back in a word to the first heavy syllable it finds, unless
the final syllable is a cirumflexed vowel followed by a consonant, in which
case the final syllable is accented - like in Tuppu^m).

The genitive of the feminine plural is a:t + -im, so 'Queen of the
Goddesses' becomes $arrat-ila:tim, while 'goddess of the queens' would be
ilat-$arra:tim.

It only gets tricky when an elided final vowel pops out, or when a vowel is
added to single-syllable words. Examples: Tuppu^m has the underlying form
Tuppi; sangu^m 'a type of priest' has the underlying form sanga; the
monosyllable ilum has the irregular construct form ili- (because
monosyllabic words are too short and would screw up the stress).

It's not as hard as it looks. After all, I just pulled this out of my head,
and I haven't been studying Akkadian for very long.

BB

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