A Grammar of Neo-Assyrian

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The purpose of the project “Neo-Assyrian Grammar” is twofold:a) A reference grammar of Neo-Assyrian, based on the corpus of Neo-Assyrian letters, legal and administrative documents, treaties and prophecies dating to the 9.–7th c. BC. A comprehensive collection of references will lead to a description of the orthography, phonology, morphology and syntax of Neo-Assyrian. The grammar will be basically synchronic. However, since Neo-Assrian texts are known throughout a period of 250 years, the term “synchronic” is meant in a broader definition than used for living languages, and dialectal as well as chronological differences within the text corpus will be considered. This reference grammar will mainly serve Ancient Near Eastern scholars as a tool in the interpretation and translation of texts.b) Defining the position of Neo-Assyrian within the history of the Assyrian language and, in a wider perspective, Akkadian language. This entails to trace the major lines of development from (Old and) Middle Assyrian to Neo-Assyrian. The results of the DFG project “Mittelassyrische Grammatik”, which are described in the monograph de Ridder 2018 “A Descriptive Grammar of Middle Assyrian” will be especially useful in this respect. Focus will also be laid on the influence of the Aramaic language, which spread in the Neo-Assyrian kingdom. A last point is the contact with the Neo-Babylonian language and the question if and how Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian influenced each other. This concluding chapter will especially address Ancient Near Eastern scholars and Semitists interested in historical linguistics.