Arabic and Akkadian Case Endings

إعْراب

root: ع-ر-ب / form IV verbal noun / definition: inflection

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Thanks to an unexpected but very welcome email from one of my Akkadian teachers I met during my summer course, I’m happily resuming my Akkadian language studies this week!

I wrote about some of the Arabic-Akkadian lexical similarities I noticed back in July, but the similarities between these two Semitic languages are far deeper than just that. Today, I thought I’d share just one small aspect of the grammatical similarities between Akkadian and Arabic: case endings.

In Arabic, nouns be either مرفوع (in nominative case), منصوب (accusative), or مجرور (genitive). It’s the same for Akkadian.

For singular nouns (and adjectives), the Akkadian case endings are as follows:

• nominative: –um
• accusative: –am
• genitive: –im

…so there’s a clear link to the corresponding Arabic case endings:

• nominative: –un ( ٌ )
• accusative: –an ( ً )
• genitive: –in ( ٍ )

…it’s just that the nunation (final ن) in Arabic is mimation (final م) in Akkadian.

We should note here though that the Arabic case endings mentioned above (tanween) are only used for indefinite nouns and adjectives. For definite ones (or non-final words in a genitive construction, إضافة), the nunation is dropped and we’re left with: –u, –a, and –i.

In Akkadian, the loss of mimation does occur but it’s not related to definiteness; mimation was dropped in later dialects of Babylonian and Assyrian, leaving the case endings as either –u, –a, or –i.

For non-final words in genitive constructions in Akkadian, the singular case endings are lost completely.

The dual case endings are also similar in the two languages. Both languages have one case ending for the nominative, and one case ending to represent both the accusative and genitive (often referred to as the oblique case):

• nominative: –ān in Akkadian, –āni (ـانِ) in Arabic
• accusative/genitive: –īn in Akkadian, –ayni (ـَينِ) in Arabic

As mentioned previously, Akkadian replaces common Semitic diphthongs (like ay) with long vowel sounds (like ī)—hence the initial vowel difference in the accusative/genitive endings.

The only other difference between the dual case endings then is that Arabic has the additional short vowel i at the end.

Like with Arabic, the n sound of the dual ending is lost when a possessive suffix is added. For example, the Akkadian īnān (“two eyes”) with the possessive suffix –ki (“your (f)”) becomes īnāki.

Finally, we come to the plural case endings and encounter some more similarities. The masculine plural endings look like this:

• nominative: –ū in Akkadian, –ūna (ـونَ) in Arabic
• accusative/genitive: –ī in Akkadian, –īna (ـينَ) in Arabic

…the two languages have the same long vowel sounds for the masculine plural—but Arabic has added نَ.

In Akkadian, these plural case endings remain as they are even when the noun occurs as a non-final word in a genitive construction.

Akkadian has another set of case endings for the masculine plurals: –ānū for nominative and –ānī for accusative/genitive. These endings are a combination of the dual and plural endings—which reminds me of when we looked at the Arabic plural of the plural!

As for the feminine plurals, we have the following:

• nominative: –ātum in Akkadian, –ātun (ـاتٌ) in Arabic
• accusative/genitive: –ātim in Akkadian, –ātin (ـاتٍ) in Arabic

…so it’s another example of the mimation in Akkadian versus the nunation in Arabic. For more about Arabic feminine plurals, take a look at this post.

By the end of this post, I’m sipping my herbal tea a little more desperately as I’m trying to cure what I think is a developing sore throat—I really can’t afford to be ill when I have my Akkadian class plus an important event for my PhD coming up this week.

Keep me in your prayers. I’ll keep sipping.

.في أمان الله

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