The Curious Case of the Vanished Coordinative Conjunction in Neo-Assyrian.

While most Akkadian dialects use two coordinators, a phrase and clause level u= and a clause level =ma, in the Neo-Assyrian period both are mostly missing from native Assyrian texts . Not only is lack of overt coordination exceptional among the Semitic languages, cross-linguistically asyndeton is a rare strategy, only attested in languages with no writing tradition. In this paper, we will concentrate on u=. We sketch the various environments where u= is no longer used in Neo-Assyrian and consider what other strategies are used to mark coordination in this dialect . Finally, we propose a diachronic path to explain which processes contributed to the loss of the coordinator u=. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of the American Oriental Society is the property of American Oriental Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)