Dialect admixture of Babylonian and Assyrian in SAA VIII, X, XII, XVII and XVIII

Datos Bibliográficos

ID24074513
AutoresMartin Worthington (0000-0002-7948-0371, autor de correspondencia)
Año2006
Volumen68
Páginas59-84
Fecha de publicación2006-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaIraq (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0021-0889 • E-ISSN: 2053-4744
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0021088900001169
OpenAlexW2468218737
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas11

Studies of language contact in Mesopotamia have tended to concern themselves principally with lexical borrowing and structural influence, and to focus on the interaction of Akkadian with Sumerian and (in later times) Aramaic. This paper attempts to innovate on the field in two respects. First, studies of language contact in Mesopotamia largely neglect the sociolinguistic aspects of the phenomenon, which have been problematized with rewarding results in a large and ever-growing body of sociolinguistic literature. A masterly study by Adams has recently shown that sociolinguistic methods can successfully be applied to corpus languages, in his case Latin. Sociolinguistic aspects of language contact are the primary focus of this paper. Second, instead of the interaction between Akkadian and another language (Sumerian, Aramaic), we shall be concerned with that between dialects of Akkadian itself, which can be distinguished through phonology, morphology and, to a lesser extent, lexicon: Neo-Assyrian and two dialects of Babylonian. The Babylonian dialects, respectively vernacular Neo-Babylonian and so-called “Standard Babylonian” (German Jungbabylonisch ), appear in different epistolary contexts. As the language of scholarship and belles lettres , Standard Babylonian occurs in learned citations, and was used to elevate one's language. We will encounter it frequently in letters written to the king by Neo-Assyrian scholars. Vernacular Neo-Babylonian was the base dialect of numerous letters by and to Babylonians. Characteristically Neo- (as opposed to Standard) Babylonian forms are usually not found in Assyrian letters.

Akkadian · Ancient history · Art · Assyria · Focus (optics) · Language contact · Lexicon · Linguistics · Literature · Mesopotamia · Phenomenon · Sumerian · Vernacular · Ancient Near East History · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy