Advances in Late Babylonian.

• Author: Von Dassow, Eva
• Position: Zahi and Zeit: Grammatik der Numeralia and des Verbalsystems im Sputbabylonischen - Book Review

THE APPEARANCE OF A REVIEW seven years after the publication of the book that is its subject may be justified, in this case, by the absence of any other reviews of the book in question. (1) Such neglect is odd, for Michael P Streck's Zahl und Zeit is one of very few studies devoted to the Late Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, perhaps the only one to date that proceeds from a sound basis in modern linguistics, and it has appeared during a time when new work on Late/Neo-Babylonian documents and archives has been in spate. It is a rather difficult work to get through--among other obstacles, Streck's sometimes turgid writing style can render simple concepts complicated, and Assyriologists lacking solid training in linguistics are likely to stumble over technical terms (while linguists lacking Assyriological training may lose their way in the thickets of text citations and terms specific to Akkadian). However, Streck achieves significant results, even breakthroughs, using logically rigorous methods of analysis and argument, and for this reason his work deserves the attention of scholars of Akkadian in general, and of specialists in Late Babylonian texts in particular.

In a brief introduction, Streck enunciates the principles that underpin his study and outlines its methods and content (pp. xxiii-xxv). On the grounds that the observable transformations in grammar and lexicon from Old to Late Babylonian could only have taken place in a living language, he argues that Late Babylonian was a real, spoken language, not merely a code used for writing documents by generations of people who spoke Aramaic. (Less convincing, given the example of the Mari letters, is his insistence that family members would hardly have written to each other about personal matters in a foreign tongue.) While Akkadian-Aramaic bilingualism can be assumed for first-millennium Mesopotamia, the influence of Aramaic on Late Babylonian is not a fact to be taken for granted but a question to be investigated. Rather than being dismissed as a grammatically debased vestigial form of Akkadian, contaminated by Aramaisms, Late Babylonian, being a real language, should be studied seriously using the methods of descr iptive linguistics. Streck brings linguistic methods to bear on the investigation of two discrete areas of Late Babylonian grammar: the morphology and syntax of numbers (Zahl) and the verbal system (Zeit). The corpus on which his investigation is based consists of all Late Babylonian documents and letters, excluding correspondence with the Assyrian court, from the eighth century B.C. through the latest appearance of such texts (pp. xxvi-xxix).

Each of the two parts of the book, part I being devoted to numbers and the far more substantial part II to the verbal system, is provided with an introduction articulating the concepts and methods employed in the study of its subject. (In this review, sections and subsections within parts I and II will be referred to using Streck's section numbering.) The procedure followed in both parts is to collect and organize attested forms according to grammatical and logical categories, then to analyze and explain the array of attestations. Thus, the study of numbers is organized into the sections "cardinals," "ordinals," "fractions," and so on, with subsections devoted to different numbers or groups of numbers, written representations thereof, and questions of grammar and syntax. The study of the verbal system is organized into sections labeled according to the paradigmatic designations iparras, iprus, and iptaras (also paris, which Streck excludes from the verb system), with subsections separating out the functions a nd contexts in which these forms are used, followed by a series of discussions devoted to the analysis and explanation of the verbal system.

This procedure is overtly inductive, but sustained by a deductive framework, In the background are the assumptions that language (and its textual representation) systematically conveys meaning, and that--as I would put it--there exists an absolute reality comprising principles of linguistics and a comprehensive taxonomy of definitions of linguistic phenomena; the descriptive linguist's task seems to be to identify which phenomena are present in the attested reality of a given language, using the principles and definitions found in the universe of absolute linguistic reality. A fundamental principle, articulated by Streck in the explanation of functional analysis at the beginning of part II ([sections]2), is that the meaning of grammatical forms is determined by actual usage. Through the systematic collection and analysis of utterances--textual passages, in the case of an extinct language--actual usage can be studied and meaning ascertained. Then linguistic concepts can be used to define and categorize the attested for ms. In addition to the foregoing assumptions and principles, the investigation undertaken in Zahi und Zeit must assume the existence of rules (or better, patterns) for Late Babylonian ortho graphy, through which the Late Babylonian dialect is represented in the texts.

Streck's combination of inductive and deductive methods for the most part produces convincing results. He effectively tests linguistic concepts, new hypotheses, and previously accepted explanations (including ideas that have attained the status of textbook dogma) on the data set of attested forms, and arrives at better explanations. In the following paragraphs I highlight examples that I found especially useful or illuminating. Their value, and the probability that they will not otherwise be widely noticed, warrants reproducing Streck's arguments in some detail, which I hope to do without distortion.

The most important issue addressed in Zahl und Zeit is the system of verb tenses, the central concern of part II. Though the focus is on Late Babylonian, Streck's discussion embraces Akkadian in general. In accord with the methods outlined above, the study of the verbal system proceeds from the systematic collection of attestations (II [section][section]5-39), which are organized first according to grammatical categories or forms (iparras, etc.), and then according to logical categories, that is, categories of usage and meaning (e.g., time reference, mode, subordination). Here Streck includes an examination of paris (II [section][section] 37-39), in order to demonstrate that paris should not be considered a component of the verbal system because it is not a verb form but an adjective in the absolute state in predicative function (cf. GAG [section][section] 74-77, wherein W von Soden classifies paris as a tense in the verbal system, though with qualifications; a...