Die akkadischen Verbalstamme mit ta-Infix.

• Author: Buccellati, Giorgio
• Position: Die akkadischen Verbalstamme mit ta-Infix: Alter Orient und Altes Testament, vol. 303 - Book Review

Die akkadischen Verbalstamme mit ta-Infix. By MICHAEL P. STRECK. Alter Orient und Altes Testament, vol. 303. Munster: UGARIT-VERLAG, 2003. Pp. xii + 163.

This volume offers an exhaustive philological treatment of Akkadian verbal forms characterized by a pattern with internal t. A total of 421 entries correspond to approximately 2000 attestations belonging to 179 stems (p. 132). The wealth and thoroughness of the documentation are the most welcome feature of the book, which serves as a rich repository of data, presented according to a well articulated analysis of types, always identified as to time period and, where necessary, genre. Use of the book is also facilitated by excellent indices and an English summary.

The catalog with its supplementary sections takes up the bulk of the volume: the basic stem (Gt) on pp. 19-98 and 99-102 (roughly one half of the whole), and the other stems on pp. 110-31. The Gt forms are presented according to semantic categories, of which the most frequent are the reciprocal (207 catalog entries) and the intensive (109), followed by the reflexive (fifty-five), the separative (thirty-four), the medio-passive (twelve), the "sociative" (four), with forty-two forms remaining unclear. (These totals are based on Streck's tabulations on p. 90.) The remainder of the book deals briefly with the analytical equivalents of the Gt stems, Sumerian reduplication, comparative Semitic observations, and the basic meaning of the Gt stem. Within the Gt catalog one will also find interesting analyses of the notional value of the forms discussed, and a statistical analysis of their distribution along chronological and dialectal lines. Throughout, one appreciates the way in which careful interpretations are given for each example, often with interesting new insights (e.g., p. 23, catalog entry 10 for Atram-hasis 78 II iv 14).

Following the traditional grammatical understanding of these forms, the author describes them as "stems with a -ta- infix." So stated in the title, the point is nowhere argued in the book, although it should be. For substantial arguments have been advanced in favor of considering these forms as being characterized not by infixation, but by the process of noun formation that depends on patterning (see, e.g., G. Goldenberg, "Principles of Semitic Word Structure," in Studies in Semitic Linguistics [Jerusalem, 1998], esp. [section]8, p. 36, and [section][section]14-16, pp. 43-47; this is my view as well). In other words, t (or ta) is no more an infix than u is an infix in purs or ma is a prefix in mapras.

The significance of this fact is brought out by an inconsistency in Streck's own approach, since in chapters twelve and thirteen he deals with nominal forms as patterns, and not as being characterized by affixation: he describes PitRaS(t), taPRaS(t) and taPRuS(t) as internally inflected forms, not as, respectively, PiRaS(t) with infixed t, or PRaS, PRuS...