The Aramaeans in Ancient Syria

94 holger gzella

refers to the “internal” viewpoint of a situation as completed or in prog­
ress regardless of its location on the time line; and modality can encode
nuances of possibility, obligation, or doubt.67 the boundaries between
them are not always sharp, since, for example, future tense overlaps with
modality (for the idea of uncertainty governs both), the present is by defi­
nition ongoing, and past events are often presented as completed. the
“perfect” (or “suffix conjugation”) and two basic variants of the “imperfect”
(or “prefix conjugation”) constitute the backbone of the verbal system in
old aramaic and Samʾalian. in these finite conjugations, afformatives
alone (for the “perfect”) or a set of pre­ and afformatives (for the “imper­
fect”) mark distinctions of person, number, and, except for the first per­
son, gender. the following forms of the “perfect” for sound verbal roots
like ktb ‘to write’ in the unmarked stem are attested or, if absent from the
corpus due to its focus on narratives about kings and their deeds (which
allows but limited room for female agents), can be reconstructed with
reasonable confidence on the basis of the more varied official aramaic
material (in parentheses):

person Singular plural

3 masc. ktb /katab­Ø/ ktbw /katab­ū/

3 fem. ktbt /katab­at/ — (presumably /katab­ā/?)68

2 masc. ktbt /katáb­tā/ ktbtm /katab­tūm/ (later -t(w)n /­tūn/)

2 fem. (ktbty /katáb­tī/) (ktbtn /katab­tenn/)

1 masc./fem. ktbt /katab­t/ ktbn /katáb­nā/

defective spelling of afformatives presumably ending in /­ā/ may have
been triggered by penultimate stress. the historical final vowel of the first­
person singular ending /­tu/ (> /­tī/ in canaanite) had been lost in ara­
maic already at the beginning of the textual record, supposedly because
the quantity of this vowel was not stable. Samʾalian agrees with the rest
of aramaic here.69 the base vowel in the second syllable of the “per­
fect” stem is lexical; most verbs referring to events have /a/, whereas /e/
(< /i/) often occurs with stative verbs and still points to the origin of this
form in a conjugated adjective. evidence from later vocalized traditions,

67 for a discussion of the theoretical implications of tense, aspect, and modality, see
gzella 2004: 57–110.
68 in official aramaic, this form has merged with its masculine counterpart, although
a proper feminine form, as in many other Semitic languages, reappears in later aramaic
varieties. the situation in old aramaic remains thus unclear. cf. gzella 2008: 93f.
69 e.g., Kai 214: 1, 14; 215: 5; Kuttamuwa l. 1, 2. the alleged spelling šmty ‘i have erected’
in Kai 215: 20 instead of the conventional reading šmt (as in Kuttamuwa l. 2) is by no
means certain (see nebe 2010: 319).