TIL about construct state. I was looking to understand why some words in the Akkadian dictionary include (m), whichh led to mimation, then what a construct is.
If I'm understanding correctly, the word kāru(m) (port) as a definite or indefinite noun would be kārum, but in a genitive construction like port of hope, it would be kāru along with whatever hope is in genitive case.
@Adam There's another way with Akkadian, actually.
Assuming that tukultum can also mean "hope" (though it's not an attested definition in Black, George, Postgate, which I'll abbreviate BGP), then you can also do kārum ša tukultim.
That's what Huehnergard introduces first. But in Chapter 8 he shows the normal way.
But I don't see the ending in -u.
It would be kār tukultim instead, with kār being in the construct form (which he also calls the bound form).
@Adam With a macron, nominative plural. Without a macron, I believe it's just a dialectal pronunciation.
Read the intro to BGP, p. xi
> Mimation (that is, the final -m of the nominative case ending) is ignored in the alphabetic ordering of the entries; this usually makes very little difference to the order, but note that the final -m of dative or loc.-adv. forms is observed.
Ok. I'm sure it will make more sense to me once I've read further. I still haven't gotten the hard copy in the post yet and have just been perusing the PDF.
I think the page numbering might have changed slightly between 2nd and 3rd edition of Huehnergard, although I appreciate the effort he must have put into trying to keep them as close as possible between revisions
> In the third edition...[the] pagination of the first and second editions has for the most part been retained, apart from the insertion of the new appendix and a few minor deviations elsewhere.
I like Heuhnergard's reason for starting with Old Babylonian first, and for me especially I'll stick with it primarily since both the Epic of Gilgamesh and fragments of the Atrahasis are in Old Babylonian.
I know I do eventually need to get to Neo-Assyrian. I did some rudimentary work on Neo-Assyrian treaties for my dissertation, but lacked the technical skill to comment more fully on them. Fortunately that wasn't necessary for it, but if I want to do something in the future, I should know better.
So maybe Old Babylonian -> Standard Babylonian -> Neo-Assyrian will be my learning order.
