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Two genitive constructions of Old Babylonian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 December 2019

Ilya Arkhipov  and
Sergey Loesov
Ilya Arkhipov*
Affiliation:
National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow1
Sergey Loesov*
Affiliation:
National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow
*
[email protected]
[email protected]
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Abstract

The paper shows that there is a pattern in the distribution of synthetic (šēp šarrim “the king's foot”) vs. analytical (kaspum ša awīlim “the boss's money”) genitive constructions in Old Babylonian. The choice depends on the lexical feature of head nouns known as (in)alienability. Old Babylonian kinship and body part terms, as well as some other substantives, are “inalienable”, which means they take only the synthetic construction. All other Old Babylonian nouns are “alienable”, which means they admit both the synthetic and the analytical construction (kasap tamkārī and kaspum ša tamkārī “the merchants’ money”). In the latter case, there is no general rule to predict the choice, yet in certain cases the two constructions display a non-random frequency distribution.

Keywords

Akkadian languageOld BabylonianNoun phraseGenitivePossessionAlienability
Type
Article
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 82 , Issue 3 , October 2019 , pp. 395 - 403
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London 2019

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Footnotes

1

The research has been supported by RFBR grant No. 16-04-00250a.

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