Grammatical Variation in Neo-Assyrian.

• Author: Yakubovich, Maria
• Position: Book review

Grammatical Variation in Neo-Assyrian. BY MIKKO LUUKKO. State Archives of Assyria Studies, vol. 16. Helsinki: THE NEO-ASSYRIAN TEXT CORPUS PROJECT, 2004. Pp. xiv + 276. $60 (paper).

Assyrian, alongside Babylonian, is considered to be a dialectal group within Akkadian. Neo-Assyrian is the youngest Assyrian dialect, existing between approximately 1000 and 612 B.C. It was used throughout the territory of the vast Assyrian empire, together with the Babylonian and Aramaic languages.

The appearance of Mikko Luukko's book will certainly please scholars working with Neo-Assyrian texts as well as those interested in Akkadian linguistics. The variations in the writing of Akkadian can provide us with valuable information about changes in phonology, morphology, syntax, and writing conventions. Lamentably, very few works dedicated to variation in different periods of the Akkadian language have appeared so far. Furthermore, none of the extant works, such as A. Goetze, in RA 52 (1958), and J. Guy, Phonetique comparee des dialects moyen-babyloniens du nord et de l'ouest (Leuven, 1966), matches Luukko's book in clarity and accuracy of presentation and explanation.

The book under review examines synchronic linguistic variation in Neo-Assyrian texts. The main purpose of this study is to collect and describe the available evidence. The Neo-Assyrian variations investigated in this book are only those that have been transmitted to us in Neo-Assyrian sources proper. The transliterations of Neo-Assyrian words and loanwords from and into other languages have not been taken into consideration. The author tries to analyze the evidence synchronically, without comparing the divergent variants with older or contemporary forms of other dialects of Akkadian, even though occasionally he has to resort to historical comparison, especially with Middle Assyrian (pp. 93, 144). Proper treatment of historical changes that are reflected in the Neo-Assyrian variations would make the book even more useful. In any case, all future research on historical linguistics of Akkadian dialects, including Neo-Assyrian, will be greatly aided by Luukko's work.

The reader of this book should also keep in mind that even though its title is "Grammatical Variation in Neo-Assyrian," the actual textual corpus under investigation does not include all Neo-Assyrian texts. In addition to all available Neo-Assyrian letters, the author has taken into consideration the treaties and loyalty oaths of the...