The Aramaeans in Ancient Syria

102 holger gzella

indeed be accepted,98 the word in question may simply be a lexical loan.
nothing points to a functional opposition between a productive n­stem
and other medio­passive categories in Samʾalian.

4.5 Irregular Verbs

phonetic peculiarities of various classes of verbal roots cause a number
of deviations from the sound paradigm. evidence from later aramaic pro­
vides some clues for the situation in the corpus under review here, but
once again, the limited amount of material leaves many questions unan­
swered.99

1. Verbs with root­initial /n/ and lqḥ ‘to take’: in later aramaic, these
   roots normally assimilate /n/ and /l/ to the following consonant in the
   “imperfect” and infinitive. as a consequence, the imperative is formed
   on a biradical base (i.e., /qaḥ/ ‘take!’). non­assimilated forms of lqḥ
   also occur, especially in tell fekheriye, hence the form of the impera­
   tive in old aramaic remains unclear. a more detailed discussion of
   this phenomenon can be found in the section on phonology.


2. Verbs with root­initial /y/ are generally thought to drop the /y/ in
   the “imperfect” (as in classical arabic) and subsequently lengthen
   the second root consonant instead, but the origin of this compensa­
   tory lengthening is difficult to pinpoint before the 6th century B.c.100
   hence it is hard to say whether yšb ‘he sits’ (Kai 224: 17, from yθb) is
   still vocalized as /yaθeb/ or already as /yaθθeb/.101 the imperative, at
   any rate, is based on the second and third root consonants, i.e., šbw
   /θebū/ ‘dwell!’ (Kai 224: 7). in the c­stem, the original root­initial /w/
   (which has shifted to /y/ in northwest Semitic) reappears: hwšbny
   /hawθebánī/ ‘he placed me’ (Kai 216: 5) from wθb as opposed to
   yhynqn /yahayneqn(ā)/ ‘may they suckle’ (Kai 222 a: 22 and else­
   where) from *ynq.


3. Verbs with a long (“geminate”) second root consonant lengthen the
   first root consonant in forms with preformatives or prefixes ending in
   a vowel: ʿll /ʿālel/ ‘entering’ (Kai 222 a: 6, participle from ʿll) but yʿl

98 hoftijzer – Jongeling 1995: 410 have summarized other proposals.
99 See especially folmer 2011: 151–157 for a balanced survey of the evidence.
100 Beyer 1984: 149f.
101 note that a form like yēṭaḇ ‘it pleases’ in Biblical aramaic (ezra 7: 18) may also pre­
serve a reflex of the root consonant /y/ if it indeed derives from */yayṭab/. no such forms
are attested in the epigraphic corpus of old and official aramaic, though.