Akkadian language

**Akkadian** (/əˈkeɪdiən/; Akkadian: 𒀝𒅗𒁺𒌑 *akkadû*) is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia (Akkad, Assyria, Isin, Larsa, Babylonia and perhaps Dilmun) from the third millennium BC until its gradual replacement in common use by Old Aramaic among Assyrians and Babylonians from the 8th century BC.

It is the earliest documented Semitic language. It used the cuneiform script, which was originally used to write the unrelated, and also extinct, Sumerian (which is a language isolate), as well as the fellow East Semitic language Eblaite, the Hurro-Urartian language Hurrian, Elamite (another language isolate) and the Indo-European language Hittite. Akkadian is named after the city of Akkad, a major centre of Mesopotamian civilization during the Akkadian Empire (c. 2334–2154 BC). The mutual influence between Sumerian and Akkadian had led scholars to describe the languages as a *Sprachbund*.

Akkadian proper names were first attested in Sumerian texts from around the mid-3rd millennium BC. From about the 25th century BC, texts fully written in Akkadian begin to appear. By the 10th century BC, two variant dialectic forms of the same language were in use in Assyria and Babylonia, known as **Assyrian** and **Babylonian** respectively. The bulk of preserved material is from this later period, corresponding to the Near Eastern Iron Age. In total, hundreds of thousands of texts and text fragments have been excavated, covering a vast textual tradition of religious and mythological narrative, legal texts, scientific works, personal correspondence, political, civil and military events, economic tracts and many other examples.

Centuries after the fall of the Akkadian Empire, Akkadian (in its Assyrian and Babylonian varieties) was the native language of the Mesopotamian empires (Old Assyrian Empire, Babylonia, Middle Assyrian Empire) throughout the later Bronze Age, and became the lingua franca of much of the Ancient Near East by the time of the Bronze Age collapse c. 1150 BC. Its gradual decline began in the Iron Age, during the Neo-Assyrian Empire when in the mid-eighth century BC Tiglath-Pileser III introduced Imperial Aramaic as a lingua franca of the Assyrian empire. By the Hellenistic period, the language was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia. The last known Akkadian cuneiform document dates from the 1st century AD. Mandaic spoken by Mandean Gnostics and the dialects spoken by the extant Assyrians (Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, the virtually indistinguishable Chaldean Neo-Aramaic and Suret are three (Northwest Semitic) Neo-Aramaic languages that retain Akkadian vocabulary and grammatical features, as well as personal and family names. These are spoken by Assyrians and Mandeans mainly in northern Iraq, southeast Turkey, northeast Syria, northwest Iran, the southern Caucasus and by communities in the Assyrian diaspora.

Akkadian is a fusional language with grammatical case; and like all Semitic languages, Akkadian uses the system of consonantal roots. The Kültepe texts, which were written in Old Assyrian, include Hittite loanwords and names, which constitute the oldest record of any Indo-European language.

## Phonetics and phonology

Because Akkadian as a spoken language is extinct and no contemporary descriptions of the pronunciation are known, little can be said with certainty about the phonetics and phonology of Akkadian. Some conclusions can be made, however, due to the relationship to the other Semitic languages and variant spellings of Akkadian words.

### Consonants

The following table presents the consonants of the Akkadian language, as distinguished in Akkadian cuneiform. The reconstructed phonetic value of a phoneme is given in IPA transcription, alongside its standard (DMG-Umschrift) transliteration in angle brackets `⟨ ⟩`.

1. ↑ Assyrian Akkadian *š* represented the voiceless alveolar fricative [s].
2. ↑ Babylonian Akkadian *š* represented the voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ].
3. ↑ Akkadian *r* is alternatively interpreted as a guttural rhotic [ʁ] or [ʀ].

### Reconstruction

Akkadian emphatic consonants are typically reconstructed as ejectives, which are thought to be the oldest realization of emphatics across the Semitic languages. One piece of evidence for this is that Akkadian shows a development known as Geers' law, where one of two emphatic consonants dissimilates to the corresponding non-emphatic consonant. For the sibilants, traditionally /š/ has been held to be postalveolar [ʃ], and /s/, /z/, /*ṣ*/ analyzed as fricatives; but attested assimilations in Akkadian suggest otherwise. For example, when the possessive suffix *-šu* is added to the root *awat* ('word'), it is written *awassu* ('his word') even though *šš* would be expected. The most straightforward interpretation of this shift from *tš* to *ss* is that /s, ṣ/ form a pair of voiceless alveolar affricates [t͡s t͡sʼ], \*š is a voiceless alveolar fricative [s], and \*z is a voiced alveolar affricate or fricative [d͡z~z]. The assimilation is then [awat+su] > [awatt͡su]. In this vein, an alternative transcription of \*š is \*s̠, with the macron below indicating a soft (lenis) articulation in Semitic transcription. Other interpretations are possible, however. [ʃ] could have been assimilated to the preceding [t], yielding [ts], which would later have been simplified to [ss].

The phoneme /r/ has traditionally been interpreted as a trill but its pattern of alternation with /*ḫ*/ suggests it was a velar (or uvular) fricative. In the Hellenistic period, Akkadian /r/ was transcribed using the Greek ρ, indicating it was pronounced similarly as an alveolar trill (though Greeks may also have perceived a uvular trill as ρ).

### Descent from Proto-Semitic

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 These are only distinguished from the ∅ (zero) reflexes of /h/ and /ʔ/ by /e/-coloring the adjacent vowel \*a, e.g. PS *\*ˈbaʕ(a)l-um* ('owner, lord') → Akk. *bēlu(m)*.

### Vowels

Akkadian vowels

The existence of a back mid-vowel /o/ has been proposed, but the cuneiform writing gives no good proof for this. There is limited contrast between different u-signs in lexical texts, but this scribal differentiation may reflect the superimposition of the Sumerian phonological system (for which an /o/ phoneme has also been proposed), rather than a separate phoneme in Akkadian.

All consonants and vowels appear in long and short forms. Long consonants are transliterated as double consonants, and inconsistently written as such in cuneiform. Long vowels are transliterated with a macron (ā, ē, ī, ū) or a circumflex (â, ê, î, û), the latter being used for long vowels arising from the contraction of vowels in hiatus. The distinction between long and short is phonemic, and is used in the grammar; for example, *iprusu* ('that he decided') versus *iprusū* ('they decided').

### Stress

The stress patterns of Akkadian are disputed, with some authors claiming that nothing is known of the topic. There are, however, certain points of reference, such as the rule of vowel syncope, and some forms in the cuneiform that might represent the stressing of certain vowels; however, attempts at identifying a rule for stress have so far been unsuccessful.

Huenergard claims that stress in Akkadian is completely predictable. In his syllable typology there are three syllable weights: *light* (V, CV); *heavy* (CVC, CV̄, CV̂), and *superheavy* (CV̂C). If the last syllable is superheavy, it is stressed, otherwise the rightmost heavy non-final syllable is stressed. If a word contains only light syllables, the first syllable is stressed.

A rule of Akkadian phonology is that certain short (and probably unstressed) vowels are dropped. The rule is that the last vowel of a succession of syllables that end in a short vowel is dropped, for example the declinational root of the verbal adjective of a root PRS is *PaRiS-*. Thus the masculine singular nominative is *PaRS-um* (< *\*PaRiS-um*) but the feminine singular nominative is *PaRiStum* (< *\*PaRiS-at-um*). Additionally there is a general tendency of syncope of short vowels in the later stages of Akkadian.

## See also

* Sumerian language
* Cuneiform

## References

1. ↑ Kogan, Leonid (2011). "Proto-Semitic Phonetics and Phonology". In Semitic languages: an international handbook, Stefan Weninger, ed. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. p. 68.
2. ↑ Sabatino Moscati et al. "An Introduction to Comparative Grammar of Semitic Languages Phonology and Morphology". (section on vowels and semi-vowels)