Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 2016; 106(1): 62–90 Abhandlung Olga V. Popova* Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian DOI 10.1515/za-2016-0006 Abstract: This article presents a statistical analysis of signs of the CV type and their values as used for stop consonants in Alalaḫ VII documents. Comparing the Alalaḫ VII syllabary with those of OAkk, OAss and Mari, I show that it had not been systematized by the time of the city’s destruction, and that one cannot speak of an adequate written rep- resentation for all voiced, voiceless and emphatic stops in Alalaḫ VII. Nevertheless, the syllabary does show a tendency towards a rational distribution of the signs used. This research also demonstrates that it may be misleading to consider Alalaḫ VII the direct source of borrowing of Hittite cuneiform. This article presents a statistical study of the orthography of stop consonants in Old Babylonian Akkadian documents from Alalaḫ, level VII, in order to establish whether one can identify any systematic distribution of signs for voiced, voiceless and emphatic stops in syllables of the CV type. Alalaḫ, the modern Tell Açana, is a town of northern Syria (from the point of view of historical geography),1 which was excavated by L. Woolley in 1937–1939 and 1946– 1949 (see Woolley 1955). In the second millennium BC, the city of Alalaḫ was a part of the kingdom of Yamḫad.2 It was destroyed during the first campaign of Ḫattušili I in northern Syria in the mid-17 th century BC. This was exactly the period when level VII of Alalaḫ was ruined.3 Some scholars believe that it was around this time (Ḫattušili I’s first campaign in the mid-17 th century BC) that the Hittites adopted cuneiform writing from northern Syria, more pre- cisely from the Alalaḫ area (see van den Hout 2009 and 1 It now lies within the boundaries of the Republic of Turkey. 2 The kingdom of Yamḫad is known particularly thanks to sources from Mari, a kingdom with which Yamḫad maintained close diplo- matic relations. 3 Level VII of Alalaḫ dates from the late 18 th to the first half of the 17 th century BC (Middle Chronology). 2012 with bibliography; cf. the more cautious position by Wilhelm 2010). The Alalaḫ VII archive is the only full- fledged cuneiform archive of the Old Babylonian period from northern Syria that we possess up to this point. Its orthographic system is not only interesting in its own right but may also be of value for the study of Hittite orthogra- phy and phonology because it could prove to have been a source for Anatolian cuneiform. The archive of Alalaḫ VII consists of 293 texts. The first edition is that of A. Wiseman (1953), in which texts from levels VII and IV4 were published together indiscrim- inately and which did not include all the texts known. The 2000s saw the appearance of M. Dietrich and O. Lo- retz’s (2004; 2005; 2006) publication of Alalaḫ VII texts in copy and transliteration, and several texts were published by F. Zeeb (2001) in his work on the palatial economy of northern Syria;5 recently several dozen tablets have been reedited by J. Lauinger (2015). For the present study, I use Dietrich & Loretz, Zeeb, Oliva, and Lauinger’s editions with sparse emendations when necessary. The types of documents represented are diverse: there are documents on the purchase, sale and exchange of property, promis- sory notes, distribution lists, some historical texts, legal proceedings, testaments and letters.6 4 Level IV of Alalaḫ dates from the mid-16 th century BC (Middle Chro- nology). 5 See J. Oliva (1998; 2000; 2005) with editions or collations of some Alalaḫ VII texts. 6 The numeration of the Alalaḫ texts in this article is that given by ATaB; it follows Zeeb (1998, 876 ff.) and Niedorf (1998, 515 ff.). The publications of Wiseman (1953) are marked as AlT (AlT* for Alalaḫ VII texts and AlT for Alalaḫ IV texts). *Corresponding author: Olga V. Popova, Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Email: [email protected]Article note: I am very grateful to Alexei Kassian for his valuable help and advice in the writing of this paper. I would like to thank also Theo van den Hout for his valuable comments on an early draft. The responsibility for any remaining errors is my own.
Transcript
Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 2016; 106(1): 62–90
Abhandlung
Olga V. Popova*
Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian
DOI 10.1515/za-2016-0006
Abstract: This article presents a statistical analysis of signs of the CV type and their values as used for stop consonants in Alalaḫ VII documents. Comparing the Alalaḫ VII syllabary with those of OAkk, OAss and Mari, I show that it had not been systematized by the time of the city’s destruction, and that one cannot speak of an adequate written rep-resentation for all voiced, voiceless and emphatic stops in Alalaḫ VII. Nevertheless, the syllabary does show a tendency towards a rational distribution of the signs used. This research also demonstrates that it may be misleading to consider Alalaḫ VII the direct source of borrowing of Hittite cuneiform.
This article presents a statistical study of the orthography of stop consonants in Old Babylonian Akkadian documents from Alalaḫ, level VII, in order to establish whether one can identify any systematic distribution of signs for voiced, voiceless and emphatic stops in syllables of the CV type.
Alalaḫ, the modern Tell Açana, is a town of northern Syria (from the point of view of historical geography),1 which was excavated by L. Woolley in 1937–1939 and 1946–1949 (see Woolley 1955). In the second millennium BC, the city of Alalaḫ was a part of the kingdom of Yamḫad.2 It was destroyed during the first campaign of Ḫattušili I in northern Syria in the mid-17th century BC. This was exactly the period when level VII of Alalaḫ was ruined.3 Some scholars believe that it was around this time (Ḫattušili I’s first campaign in the mid-17th century BC) that the Hittites adopted cuneiform writing from northern Syria, more pre-cisely from the Alalaḫ area (see van den Hout 2009 and
1 It now lies within the boundaries of the Republic of Turkey.2 The kingdom of Yamḫad is known particularly thanks to sources from Mari, a kingdom with which Yamḫad maintained close diplo-matic relations.3 Level VII of Alalaḫ dates from the late 18th to the first half of the 17th century BC (Middle Chronology).
2012 with bibliography; cf. the more cautious position by Wilhelm 2010). The Alalaḫ VII archive is the only full-fledged cuneiform archive of the Old Babylonian period from northern Syria that we possess up to this point. Its orthographic system is not only interesting in its own right but may also be of value for the study of Hittite orthogra-phy and phonology because it could prove to have been a source for Anatolian cuneiform.
The archive of Alalaḫ VII consists of 293 texts. The first edition is that of A. Wiseman (1953), in which texts from levels VII and IV4 were published together indiscrim-inately and which did not include all the texts known. The 2000s saw the appearance of M. Dietrich and O. Lo-retz’s (2004; 2005; 2006) publication of Alalaḫ VII texts in copy and transliteration, and several texts were published by F. Zeeb (2001) in his work on the palatial economy of northern Syria;5 recently several dozen tablets have been reedited by J. Lauinger (2015). For the present study, I use Dietrich & Loretz, Zeeb, Oliva, and Lauinger’s editions with sparse emendations when necessary. The types of documents represented are diverse: there are documents on the purchase, sale and exchange of property, promis-sory notes, distribution lists, some historical texts, legal proceedings, testaments and letters.6
4 Level IV of Alalaḫ dates from the mid-16th century BC (Middle Chro-nology).5 See J. Oliva (1998; 2000; 2005) with editions or collations of some Alalaḫ VII texts.6 The numeration of the Alalaḫ texts in this article is that given by ATaB; it follows Zeeb (1998, 876 ff.) and Niedorf (1998, 515 ff.). The publications of Wiseman (1953) are marked as AlT (AlT* for Alalaḫ VII texts and AlT for Alalaḫ IV texts).
*Corresponding author: Olga V. Popova, Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Email: [email protected]
Article note: I am very grateful to Alexei Kassian for his valuable help and advice in the writing of this paper. I would like to thank also Theo van den Hout for his valuable comments on an early draft. The responsibility for any remaining errors is my own.
Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian 63
From the paleographic point of view, Wilhelm (2010, 260) notes that the north Syrian cuneiform of Alalaḫ VII maintains the Old Assyrian (OAss) tradition, with some influence from the contemporary Old Babylonian (OB) tradition. In the OAss syllabary, voiced, voiceless and em-phatic consonants were not distinguished in writing, and one syllabogram was generally used for all stops of each point of articulation (Hecker 1968, §§ 37–39); the situation was more or less the same in Old Akkadian (Krebernik 1998, 286–298; Gelb 1961, 30). In OB, on the other hand, all the phonological traits of Akkadian were rendered in writing quasi-unambiguously after the introduction of orthographical norms, in particular in Mari under Yaḫ-dun-Līm (see Durand 1985, 160 f.).
Earlier studies have also discussed the Alalaḫ or-thographic system. The first comment on the graphics and phonetics of Alalaḫ documents was made by Wiseman (1953, 19): “In common with Amarna, Boghaz-Köi and Nuzi, there is constant graphic confusion between voiced and voiceless stops. Emphatic sounds (q, ṭ, ṣ) are not sep-arately indicated.” Similar observations were made by G. Giacumakis (1970, 26), with regard to dental, velar and labial stops respectively: “The dentals d/t/ṭ which are dis-tinguished phonetically are not always distinguished in writing”; “The palatal [sic] stops g/k/q are frequently not distinguished in writing”; “The labials b/p are often con-fused in writing”. Giacumakis gives no statistics on the use of the various signs for the representation of stops, so his conclusion is probably based simply on his per-sonal impressions. Although both authors comment on material from two levels (the OB texts of Alalaḫ VII and the MB texts of Alalaḫ IV), they do draw some distinction between them by giving contrasting examples of graphic confusion from the documents within a single level. But they make no distinction between different vocalizations of the stops in their studies, although this consideration is indispensable given the syllabographic nature of the cu-neiform orthography. A. Kloekhorst (2010) takes the next step in the analysis of spelling of the stops in Alalaḫ VII in his article on the initial stops in Hittite. Starting from the assumption that Alalaḫ was the source of borrowing for Hittite cuneiform, he examines whether there is a differ-ence between the representations of voiced, voiceless and emphatic stops in the Akkadian of Alalaḫ VII, chiefly with regard to dental stops. He does not agree with the view of Giacumakis (1970) and Wiseman (1953) and claims that there is a phonological and orthographical distinction between voiced, voiceless and emphatic stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian: “In Alalaḫ Akkadian there was a phonemic distinction between all members of the dental series (t, d, ṭ), the velar series (k, g, q) and the labial series (p, b)”
(Kloekhorst 2010, 238). My article warns against an overly simplistic identification of Alalaḫ as the place of borrow-ing of Anatolian cuneiform and argues against some of Kloekhorst’s results.
In the present paper I provide a detailed study of the orthography of stops in Alalaḫ VII texts. How strong is the correlation between signs and phonemes in the Akkadian of Alalaḫ VII? Which signs are used to represent the stops in Alalaḫ VII documents? Since each cuneiform syllabary had its own set of signs and corresponding values, it is very important to know the source of borrowing of each syllabary: the choice of signs is not absolutely arbitrary but follows rules which depend on geographical and chronological conventions. I begin by presenting the Alalaḫ VII inventory of signs for the stops and specify the material that we possess for analysis. Subsequently, I carry out a careful statistical study of this material divided according to the place of articulation of the stops and their vocalization. In a third section, I show what information this statistical study provides us with and I compare the use of signs for the stops in Alalaḫ texts with the standard spelling of the OB texts from Mari at the same period,7 and with the OAkk and OAss syllabaries.
Material for the studyThe cuneiform syllabary of Alalaḫ VII contains enough different signs of the CV type to distinguish all the stops found in the language. In terms of place of articulation, the Akkadian stops can be divided into labial, dental and velar (the glottal stop is excluded from further analysis here). Labial stops have a two-part opposition between voiced /b/ and voiceless /p/, while for dental and velar stops the opposition is three-part, contrasting /t/, /d/, /ṭ/ and /k/, /g/, /q/ respectively, where the ṭ and the q denote the so-called “emphatic,” i.e., ejective stops.8 The set of signs representing stops in the Alalaḫ VII syllabary is pre-sented in Table 1.
7 The Alalaḫ VII archives date from the late 18th to the first half of the 17th century BC; the fall of Mari occurred in 1761 BC. Alalaḫ was bought by Zimri-Līm, a king of Mari, in 1764–1763 BC and was in his possession until the fall of Mari. This fact as well as close diplomatic relationship between Mari and Yamhad are reasons to consider the possibility of influence of the scribal tradition of Mari for the Alalaḫ area.8 On the phonetic nature of the “emphatics” in ОВ, cf. Kogan (2011, 59–61), with bibliography, and also Kouwenberg (2003) on the post-glottalized “emphatics” in ОАss.
64 Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian
Table 1: Alalaḫ VII sign inventory for the stops: names of the signs (e.g., pa) and their attested phonetic values (e.g., pa, bá).
Labial Dental Velar
a-vocalization pa = pa, bába = ba, pá
da = da, ṭa, táta = ta, ṭá, dáh ̮ i = ṭà
ka = ka, qà, ga14qa = qa, ka4ga = ga, qá, kà
i/e-vocalization be = bebi = bi, bé, pí, péne = bí
di = di, de, ṭi, ti4ti = ti, ṭì, dìte = te, ṭe4
ki = ki, ke, qí, qégi = gi, kí, ké, qì, qè
u-vocalization pu = pu, bu tu = tu, ṭú, dúdu = du, tù, ṭùtum = tu4, ṭu4
ku = ku, qú, gu5gu = gu
As we can see, one sign can have a number of values and may represent voiced as well as voiceless or emphatic stops at the same place of articulation and with the same vocalization. But since we can find several signs for the same place of articulation and the same vocalization, we can expect a distribution of values per signs.
Signs of the CV type differ according to vocalization, and can be divided into those ending in a, in u and in front vowels. The front vowels e and i are regarded as different phonemes in Akkadian, but this distinction is not always represented in writing, especially when we have no plene writing. The number of signs with a clear е-vocalization is limited. Besides, at least in some dialects, the opposi-tion between e and i was not retained consistently (Kogan/Loesov 2009, 125), as follows from the large amount of orthographic variation involving e/i. I will deal with this opposition in some stops with front vowels in Alalaḫ texts below.
The number of signs available to express a given stop consonant, and the way in which stops are allot-ted to these signs, may differ according to vocalization. What is more, in view of the syllabic nature of the writing system, the representation of a stop in a given lexeme may differ across word forms. Consequently, my attention in the present research will concentrate on word forms, and not on lexemes or roots. We must bear in mind that, in the syllabic writing in question here, different forms of a triconsonantal root (such as noun bulṭu(m) ‘life, lifetime,’ adjective balṭu(m) ‘living,’ verb balāṭu(m) ‘to live,’ etc. with their different grammatical forms) were units perceived differently in terms of orthography. Such word forms could have been viewed more or less individually.
Those word forms which were used particularly often became fixed in writing. This introduces the question
of so-called orthograms, the presence of which compli-cates the task of establishing the actual pronunciation of the corresponding word forms. By the term orthogram I refer to a systematically reproduced means of presenting a word form in writing. In this study, it applies to words which were used in the same form so often that they had been memorized by scribes since childhood and were always written in the same way. One trivial example illus-trating this point is the imperative of the verb qabû(m) ‘to speak’, which is always found in the address formula of letters as qí-bí-ma, using the sign ne=bí.9 In other forms of the verb,10 and in fact in the same form but outside the formula in question, the sign bi=bi is used (e.g., in Mari [q]í-bi-im ARM 27 25: 52). Thus, in the address formula of letters, qí-bí-ma is considered an orthogram, whereas outside the formula we find a normal phonetic spelling. Apparently orthograms were used in all cuneiform scribal schools to a greater or lesser degree. The most obvious or-thograms must be removed from the statistics.
I have no fixed criterion for the identification of or-thograms. Thus this category of word forms is chosen somewhat arbitrarily. The word forms that I treat as or-thograms in the Alalaḫ VII texts are the following fre-quently used items: pani (in the expression ana pani ‘on account of, in the presence of’)11 (10×), the volume meas-
9 In Alalaḫ VII texts, both times in letters: qí-[b]í-ma (11.01:2), qí-b[í-ma] (11.02:2).10 qabû(m) ‘to speak’ in Alalaḫ texts: 3 sg.pres.: i-qa-ab-bi (11.01:4), i-qa-ab-bi-ma (22.21:3); 3 sg.pret.: iq-bi-ma (20.01:18; 20.01A:19, 25), iq-bi-[ma] (20.01:24); iq-bi (21.01:15); Gtn-stem: iq-ta-ab-bi-ma (20.02:17); N-stem 3 sg.pres.: iq-qà-ab-bi (21.02:17).11 pa-ni (10.02:21; 20.08:15; 41.32:15; 41.35:11,44; 41.50:3,4; 51.02:8), pa-ni-šu (22.19:9); pa-[ni] (41.50:13).
Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian 65
ures parīsi12 (105×) and its abbreviated version pa13 (256×), and the imperative form of the verb qabû(m) ‘to speak’, qibī=ma,14 in the address formula of letters (in the follow-ing research I count neither qí 2×, nor bí 2×).
The above are all the forms treated as orthograms in this study. I do not consider the forms of bēlu(m)15 (9×) ‘lord’ to be orthograms because we find different forms of this word in Alalaḫ texts according to its grammati-cal function in individual contexts. Meanwhile, I do not treat enclitic pronouns as orthograms because there are so few examples of them: -ka16 (pron. encl. 2 sg.m.) (8×), -ki17 (pron. encl. 2 sg.f.) (1×), -kum18 = -ku-um (pron. encl. 2 sg.m.Dat.): (2×), -šunūti19 (3 pl.m.Acc. pron. encl.). Nor do
I include grammatical indices (conjugational prefixes and verbal infixes) in this category, though it is interesting to note that grammatical indices are normally indicated with the “standard” (more frequent) sign for the corresponding phoneme sequence in the syllabary (Durham 1976, 368). Thus, we have seven conjugational prefixes: two with a-vocalization (ta-) and five with e-vocalization (te-); and 24 verbal infixes: 14 with a-vocalization (-ta-), one with u-vocalization (-tu-) written with the sign du=tù, and nine with e-vocalization (-te-).
At first glance, it is obvious that Wiseman (1953, 19) and Giacumakis (1970, 26) are right to affirm that the use of signs is “confused.” Before I can uphold this assertion, I propose to divide the examined word forms into three groups:– Group 1: word forms using a statistically frequent
spelling of the stops, i.e., the “standard” spelling.20 I do not provide a list of these word forms here;
– Group 2: word forms showing variation between “standard” and “non-standard” (i.e., statistically rare) spellings of the stops;
– Group 3: word forms only found with a “non-stand-ard” spelling of the stops.
In Table 2, I present the word forms of Group 2, in which the same forms are spelt with different signs. Judging by this Table 2, one can affirm that the choice of signs depends neither on position nor on phonetic environ-ment: different signs can be used for the same phonemes in the context of the same word forms.
20 For the sake of simplicity, I will call the more frequent sign for one phoneme “standard” and the others “non-standard.” Although these terms are evidently not very felicitous, I prefer them to “correct/incorrect”: since the writing is not standardized at the state level, the “non-standard” spellings are not incorrect, but simply constitute al-ternative orthographic choices.
66 Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian
Table 2: The same word forms spelt with different signs
21 This orthography is not certain, because both forms are found in the same text and the sign is broken on the copy. Dietrich/Loretz (2006, 122) read it as [la-b]i-ru but this word needs a collation. In the copy, we see one horizontal wedge with the Winkelhaken: [la-b]é-ru (43.14:10).
22 CAD A, 157 ff.23 32.01 = AlT *28: Two final lines AlT *28: 25–26 are absent in the copy by Dietrich/Loretz (2005, 276), but present in the Wiseman copy (1953, Pl. X).
Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian 67
24 This spelling occurs in the text where we also find the same form written with the “standard” sign. This shows that the same scribe could use different signs within the same text.
68 Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian
Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian 69
Table 3: Words showing only “non-standard” spellings (Group 3) which I include in my statistics25
pá kaspu(m) ‘silver’: kù.babbar-pá-am (31.03:10; 31.04:11).pâdu(m) ‘to imprison’: 3 pl.pret.: i-pá-du-šu-nu-ti-ma (51.01:8). In postvocalic position both pa and pá can be found.
dú darāru(m) ‘to be free of debt’: N-stem form id-dú-ra-ar (32.03:9). The only form of this word in Alalaḫ VII with u-vocalization. In Alalaḫ VII Akkadian both du and dú can be found for the second consonant in cases of reduplication.
tá iklātu (an object in Alalaḫ): ik-i-l[a-t]á (40.04:3). A hapax, found only in Alalaḫ. CDA, 126 traces this word back to ikletu, (pl.f. of) iklu ‘darkness’ < *ˁiklatu. If this is the genuine etymology, we are dealing here with the feminine nominal suffix, meaning that the value /t/ is correct and that this word should be counted in the statistics.
tù irtu(m) ‘breast,’ ‘breastplate’ (ornament): i-ir-tù (40.05:14). mâtu(m) ‘to die’: 3 sg.m. perf. imtūt: im-tù-ut (40.05:6); both words are in the same text. The sign tu is usual after a consonant but in this corpus it never occurs after a liquid. It should be borne in mind that the text is old.26napištu(m) ‘throat, life’: na-pí-iš-tù (40.06:21). In this corpus, we have both tù and tú after š. This is the suffix -tu- forming the substantive of the verb NPŠ.uṭṭetu (a measure): še-tù (41.23:1, 20), see Zeeb (2001, 189 and n. 292) for etymology.
ṭá ṭabtu(m) ‘salt’: ṭá-ab-tum (41.38:4, 8); Gen: ṭá-ab-ti (41.92:6) may belong to the same root as ṭâbu(m) ‘to be(come) good’.
ṭa ṭabāḫu(m) ‘to slaughter’: 3 sg.m.stat.: ṭa-bi-iḫ (22.03:18)—the scribe’s choice. The phonetic value /ṭa/ in the initial position can be rendered by all the signs possible for /ṭa/.
ṭù muṭṭu(m) (measure):27 mu-uṭ-ṭù (41.32:1), a measure of weight. See CAD M, 161 f.
ga14 gazzu(m) ‘shorn’: ga14-az-zu-tim (22.05:31). This word can also be read with [ka] (I follow CAD G: 60).
kà kabātu(m) ‘to be(come) heavy’: 3 sg.pres. ikabbit: i-kà-b[it-ma] (10.03:6). In postvocalic position one can find both kà and ka.kašāpu(m) ‘bewitch’: subst.: kà-ša-ap-tum (10.03:30), kaššāpu(m) ‘sorcerer’: MUNUSkà-[ša-ap-ti] (10.03:33). Both words are in the same text. In initial position we also find ka-. No other spellings of this word are found in the corpus.
kí lú.meššalku(m) ‘?’: lú.mešša-al-kí (41.4:11; 41.5:11): the exact reading is unknown. Zeeb transliterates this as ša-al-kí (see 41.4:11 etc.): šalki ‘?’ (travelling conductor of Tigunna). The form šalku with the sign ku occurs in the text 41.7:4, so I read kí for consistency, and not gi with Dietrich and Loretz (2006, 116).
pá; qá
paqādu(m) ‘to entrust’: N-stem 3 pl.m.pres. ippaqqidū: ip-pá-qá-du (21.07:23). Other forms of this word are spelt with pa and qa.
25 In all these cases, the “non-standard” sign must have been cho-sen by the scribe from among several representational possibilities for the same phonemic value.26 As regards the interpretation of this form of mâtum ‘to die,’ I do not agree with Kloekhorst (2010, 233), who says that this spelling is at variance with two other “correct” spellings of this verb. It should be pointed out in passing that there is in fact a third “correct” spelling in
Kloekhorst’s terms, namely 3 pl.pret. i-mu-tu (20.09:13), and secondly that the form seen at line 20.08:13 is not 3 pl., but 3 sg.+subj. But more importantly, all three of these forms express the preterit; meanwhile, the form im-tù-ut (imtût) at issue here is in the perfect, bearing tù for the dental infix.27 Pace Zeeb (2001, 452 f. 630) ‘Inventardifferenz’; Kloekhorst (2010, 236, n. 117).
70 Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian
Table 4: Words showing only “non-standard” spellings (Group 3) which I do not include in my statistics
bá bappirum ‘beer bread’: bá-ap-pí-ri (41.13:16). A loanword from Sum. bappír; with the Sum. /ba/ normally yielding /pa/ in Akkadian (Thomsen 2001, 43). But since the reading of this word is not certain, I do not include it in the statistical study.28
pá pabinnu (type of tax): pá-bi-in-ni (22.04:9, 13), see CAD I: 74 f. and Lauinger (2015, 323): this word has no exact translation, so I cannot be sure of the consonant in question.papašnu(m) ‘?’: pa-pá-aš-nu (41.93:9). Zeeb does not translate this word and does not comment on it. I do not include it in the statistics.
kà zuzukannu (type of oxen in Alalaḫ): zu-zu-kà-an-nu (42.09:6). A Hurrian loanword (CDA, 40), found only in Alalaḫ. The exact reading is unknown. Cf. Dietrich/Loretz (2006, 109) zu-zu-ga-an-nu.
kí lú.meškiblu/giblu ‘?’: lú.meškí-ib-li (41.20:3; 41.23:19). See Zeeb (2001, 260–262) for interpretation: kiblu/giblu. Thus both [g] and [k] are possibilities here.tamku(m) ? ‘slave?’: ta-am-kí-šu-nu (22.08:1). The reading is not certain; the translation is that of Wiseman (AlT *60). In MB Alal., we can find damqu as ‘notable, well-to-do,’ so the correct reading could be dá-am-qì-šu-nu in this case, but for Alalaḫ VII we have no attestation of the value qì for the sign gi.
Word forms belonging to Group 2, presented in Table 2, provide the majority of the “non-standard” spellings. Thus one can see that it is not a question of distribution by position. I now present a list of words that are found only with “non-standard” sign values (Group 3) and discuss whether these words should be included in the statistical analysis.
One can note that some “non-standard” spellings from Tables 2, 3 and 4 are concentrated in a few particular texts. Table 5 represents a list of texts with “non-standard” spellings, with the purpose of establishing whether these orthographies can be explained as products of individual semiliterate scribes.
Table 5: List of texts with statistically rare spellings (texts with a single “non-standard” spelling are not marked; texts with more than one “non-standard” spelling are marked in grey)
In text 10.03 (a historical text of early Alalaḫ VII, probably written in Aleppo; Wilhelm 2010, 259); the paleography is archaic, there are 6 occurrences of kà (but in the same text we find a single “standard” ka) and one occurrence of ti4 (but in the same text we find a single “standard” ti in the same word).
Text 21.07: dì, qá, ka4 and pá (3×) (in this text we also find “standard” spellings for the velars).Text 22.02: pá, tu4.Text 22.03 shows the use of different signs for /ṭa/ in the same text.Text 22.06 ṭà (2×)Text 22.09 and its envelopes: tu4 (2×), pá (3×).Text 23.05 bá, tá.
28 Pace Kloekhorst (2010, 238).
Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian 71
Thus, 36 “non-standard” values of signs are in fact con-centrated in 12 texts; moreover, only in 24 cases do we find no use of alternative “standard” signs in the same texts for the same values. A further 34 “non-standard” spellings are found in separate texts, where one can find “stand-ard” spellings for the same phonetic values as well. In all, more than half of the statistically rare values observed are
used as alternatives to statistically frequent values, and so cannot be considered scribal mistakes.
After all these explanations and reservations, Tables 6, 7 and 8 give the numbers that I include in my statisti-cal study. I generally exclude obvious orthograms, words without reliably established phonetics, and proper names, both personal and geographical.
72 Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian
Table 8: Signs for velar stops
Alalaḫ with orthograms
Alalaḫ without orthograms
/ka/ ka (57×) kà (6×) ka4 (1×) ka (57×) kà (6×) ka4 (1×)
/ga/ ga (35×)ga14 (1×)?
ga (35×)ga14 (1×)?
/qa/ qa (70×)qá (3×)qà (3×)
qa (70×)qá (3×)qà (3×)
/kI/ ke (23×) = ki (114×)kí (4×)
ke (23×) = ki (114×)kí (4×)
/gi/ ge (6×) = gi (3×) ge (6×) = gi (3×)
/qI/ qé (16×) = qí (21×) qé (16×) = qí (19×)
/ku/ ku (80×) ku (80×)
/gu/ gu (9×) gu5 (1×) gu (9×) gu5 (1×)
/qu/ qú (18×) qú (18×)
Using these numbers, I intend to establish to what extent one can speak of a systematic distribution of signs for the stops in Alalaḫ VII texts.
Statisticsba paIt is not entirely clear how we should determine the sta-tistical significance of the observed distribution of signs and their phonetic values. Let us examine a straightfor-ward case involving two signs (ba, pa) and two phonemic sequences (/ba/, /pa/) as these are attested in the Alalaḫ corpus.
Table 9: Labial stops with a-vocalization
sign ba sign pa
phon. /ba/ 85 1
phon. /pa/ 12 34
If we estimate the ratios 85:1 and 12:34 using the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test,30 we find that, in the first
30 In the present paper, I accept the level of statistical significance as 5 %. This means that the null hypothesis should be rejected if the
case, the frequency distribution shows a highly significant deviation from the expected one: χ2 = 82; df = 1; ptwo-tailed < 0.001 for 85:1; and in the case of 12:34, the frequency distri-bution deviates very significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 10.5; df = 1; 0.001 <ptwo-tailed< 0.01.
Examination of the whole matrix also demonstrates that the frequency distribution deviates highly signifi-cantly from the expected one: χ2 = 78.4; df = 1; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
In our paleographic situation, it is intuitively appar-ent that, if a phonetic value is expressed by the sign ba 85 times and by pa only once, this is a significant distri-bution. On the other hand, however, if a phonetic value is expressed by the sign ba 12 times and by pa 34 times, it is not very likely that we are dealing with a significant distribution. In other words, ba 12× vs. pa 34× has the ap-pearance of a random configuration.
Arbitrarily, if a sign X is used for a phonemic sequence A within the range 75 %–95 % of all occurrences of A, I in-terpret this as weak evidence in favour of the hypothesis that the sign X is the only predominant way31 to express the phonemic sequence A. If the use of X falls within the range 95 %–100 %, I interpret it as strong evidence for the same hypothesis. The range 0 %–75 % indicates that there is no evidence for this hypothesis32.1) Thus, there is strong evidence for the hypothesis that
the sign ba is a predominant way to express the pho-nemic sequence /ba/, since ba is attested 85 times out of 86 occurrences of /ba/, i.e., the sign BA is used in 98.8 % of all occurrences of /ba/.
2) By contrast, there is no evidence for the hypothesis that the sign pa is a predominant way to express the phonemic sequence /pa/, since pa is attested only 34 times out of 46 occurrences of /pa/, i.e., the sign pa is used in 73.9 % of all occurrences of /pa/.
Similarly, if a phonemic sequence A is expressed by a sign X within the range 75 %–95 % of all occurrences of X, I in-
p-value is less than 0.05; in other words, p < 0.05 is significant. A probability p < 0.001 is called highly significant; 0.001 ≤ p < 0.01 is called very significant; 0.01 ≤ p < 0.05 is called simply significant (see Gries 2013, 28 f.).31 Henceforth, for the sake of convenience, I write simply ‘a predom-inant wayʼ for ‘the only predominant wayʼ and ‘a predominant pho-netic valueʼ for ‘the only predominant phonetic valueʼ.32 In treating this as strong evidence of a link between a given sign and a given value, I rely on the standard statistical principle that 5 % is an acceptable proportion of randomness (see Gries 2013, 5). Intu-itively it also seems reasonable to set limits of 75–95 % for a weak probability of a genuine relationship between sign and value, be-cause we do not have full data on the writing system of Alalaḫ VII. Nevertheless, only strong evidence is ultimately relevant here.
Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian 73
terpret this as weak evidence for the hypothesis that the sequence A is the only predominant phonetic value of X. If the expression of A falls within the range 95 %–100 %, I interpret it as strong evidence for the same hypothesis. The range 0 %–75 % indicates that there is no evidence for this hypothesis.1) Thus, there is strong evidence for the hypothesis that
/pa/ is a predominant phonetic value of the sign pa, since /pa/ is expressed by pa 34 times out of 35 oc-currences of pa, i.e., /pa/ is expressed in 97 % of all occurrences of pa.
2) By contrast, there is only weak evidence for the hy-pothesis that /ba/ is a predominant phonetic value of the sign ba, since /ba/ is expressed by ba 85 times out of 96 occurrences of ba, i.e., /ba/ is expressed in 88.5 % of all occurrences of ba.
be bi
Table 10: Labial stops with e/i-vocalization
be bi ne (bí)
/be/ 12 1? only for or-thograms33
/bi/ 0 50
/pi/ 0 55
/pe/ 0 2
In the case of the signs be and bi, examination of the whole matrix demonstrates that the frequency distribu-tion deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 105.6; df = 3; ptwo-tailed < 0.001
be be for /be/ — weak evidence (be is used in 92 % of all occurrences of /be/).34be for /pi/ — no evidence (be is never used for /pi/).be for/pe/ — no evidence (be is never used for /pe/).be for /bi/ — no evidence (be is never used for /bi/).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of be deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 36; df = 3; ptwo-tailed < 0.001. In this case,
33 This sign is used for /bí/ only in the orthogram qí-bí-ma (2 times), so I do not include it in the general matrix.34 As noted above, the representation of /be/ with the sign bi is not clearly established. This is in the same tablet where the word labērum is written with be in an intact portion (la-be-ru 43.14:8). So it is likely that 100 % of uses of the sign be express the phonemic sequence /be/.
the chi-squared approximation may be incorrect because there are not enough examples.
/be/ /be/ for be — strong evidence (/be/ is expressed in 100 % of all occurrences of be)./be/ for bi — no evidence (/be/ is expressed in 0.9 % of all occurrences of bi).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /be/ deviates very significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 9.3; df = 1; 0.001 < ptwo-tailed < 0.01.
As we can see, according to the chi-squared good-ness-of-fit test, the sign be must be assigned to one spe-cific phonemic sequence, and my statistics confirm this: the sign be is used for the phonemic sequence /be/ in 100 % of cases. As for the distribution of the graphical representation of /be/, if we take into account the fact that labērum is written once with be and once with bi, the phoneme is not securely allotted to one specific sign (the frequency distribution of the graphical representations of /be/ deviates only very significantly from the expected one according to the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test), and my statistics show that one can say only with weak evidence that the sign be is a predominant way to express the pho-nemic sequence /be/.
bi bi for /bi/— strong evidence (bi is used in 100 % of all occurrences of /bi/).bi for /be/ — no evidence (bi is used in 8 % of all occurrences of /be/).bi for /pi/ — strong evidence (bi is used in 100 % of all occurrences of /pi/).bi for /pe/ — strong evidence (bi is used in 100 % of all occurrences of /pe/).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of bi deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 96.8; df = 3; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
/bi/ /bi/ for bi — no evidence (/bi/ is expressed in 46.3 % of all occurrences of bi)./bi/ for be — no evidence (/bi/ is never expressed by be).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /bi/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 50; df = 1; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
/pi/ /pi/ for bi — no evidence (/pi/ is expressed in 50.9 % of all occurrences of bi)./pi/ for be — no evidence (/pi/ is never expressed by be).
74 Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian
The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /pi/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 55; df = 1; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
/pe/ /pe/ for bi — no evidence (/pe/ is expressed in 1.9 % of all occurrences of bi)./pe/ for be — no evidence (/pe/ is never expressed by be).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /pe/ deviates not significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 2; df = 1; ptwo-tailed > 0.05. In this case, the chi-squared approximation may be incorrect because there are not enough examples.
Thus, the phonemic sequences /pi/ and /bi/ are assigned to the sign bi with strong evidence, and this is confirmed by the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test. We have too few occurrences of the phonemic sequence /pe/ to reach firm conclusions, but in both attested instances it is repre-sented by bi.
Despite the fact that the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test shows that bi must be assigned to some phonemic sequence, we can see that the simple statistics provide no evidence that this sign has any predominant phonetic value.
Interestingly, the stable graphical opposition between the sequences /be/ and /bi/ proves that /e/ and /i/ were two different phonemes in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian: different signs are used to represent these phonemic sequences ac-cording to vocalization. So, for the labial stops vocalized with front vowels, the Alalaḫ syllabary has the be sign for voiced labials with e-vocalization and the bi sign for all other phonemic sequences of labials with front-vowel vo-calization.
bu puThe phonemic sequences /pu/ and/bu/ are represented by the same sign.
Table 11: Labial stops with u-vocalization
bu
/pu/ 36
/bu/ 57
The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the fre-quency distribution of the phonetic values of bu deviates not significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 4.7; df = 1; ptwo-tailed > 0.05. So here we cannot speak of any systematic distribution of phonemes over signs.
da ta
Table 12: Dental stops with a-vocalization
da ta h ̮ i
/da/ 14 6 0
/ta/ 4 78 0
/ṭa/ 11 3 3
In the case of the signs da, ta and h ̮ i, examination of the whole matrix demonstrates that the frequency distribu-tion deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 76, 9; df = 4; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
ta ta for /ta/ — strong evidence (ta is used in 95.1 % of all occurrences of /ta/).ta for /da/ — no evidence (ta is used in 30 % of oc-currences of /da/).ta for /ṭa/ — no evidence (ta is used in 17.5 % of oc-currences of /ṭa/).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of ta deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 124; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
/ta/ /ta/ for ta — weak evidence (/ta/ is expressed in 89.5 % of all occurrences of ta)./ta/ for da — no evidence (/ta/ is expressed in 14 % of all occurrences of da)./ta/ for h ̮ i — no evidence (/ta/ is never expressed by h ̮ i, which is used 3× for dental stops).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /ta/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 141; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
Thus, according to the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test, we have a graphical distribution for the phonemic se-quence /ta/, and my statistical research shows with strong evidence that this distribution is in favour of the sign ta. But although the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test demon-strates that the use of the sign ta is clearly non-random, my statistics show that we can only speak of weak evi-
Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian 75
dence for considering /ta/ a predominant phonetic value of the sign ta.
da da for /da/ — no evidence (da is used in 70 % of all occurrences of /da/).da for /ta/ — no evidence (da is used in 4.9 % of oc-currences of /ta/).da for /ṭa/ — no evidence (da is used in 65 % of oc-currences of /ṭa/).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of da deviates not significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 5, 5; df = 2; p > 0.05.
Thus da is not strongly associated with any phonemic se-quence.
/da/ /da/ for da — no evidence (/da/ is expressed in 48 % of all occurrences of da)./da/ for ta — no evidence (/da/ is expressed in 7 % of all occurrences of ta)./da/ for h ̮ i — no evidence (/da/ is never expressed by h ̮ i, which is used 3× for dental stops).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /da/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 14.8; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
Thus, according to the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test, we have a graphical distribution for the phoneme se-quence /da/, but we can see from my statistics that this distribution is in favour of the sign da only in 70 % of cases, meaning that we cannot regard it even as weak evi-dence (as is confirmed by the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test, leaving aside the possibility of the sign h ̮ i expressing /da/). As regards the distribution of da, the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test confirms my statistics—there is no evi-dence for a systematic distribution here.
The h ̮ i sign is normally assigned to /ḫi/, but also to /ṭa/ (its only value for dental stops):
h ̮ i h ̮ i for /ṭa/ — no evidence (h ̮ i is used in 17.5 % of occurrences of /ṭa/).h ̮ i for /ta/ — no evidence (h ̮ i never represents /ta/).h ̮ i for /da/ — no evidence (h ̮ i never represents /da/).The h ̮ i sign is used much more frequently to rep-resent the phonetic value /ḫi/, so I do not use the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test to examine the fre-
quency of distribution of the phonetic values of the h ̮ i sign.
/ṭa/ /ṭa/ for h ̮ i — no evidence (/ṭa/ is expressed by h ̮ i only 3× out of numerous occurrences of h ̮ i)./ṭa/ for ta — no evidence (/ṭa/ is expressed in 3.5 % of all occurrences of ta)./ṭa/for da — no evidence (/ṭa/ is expressed in 38 % of all occurrences of da).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /ṭa/ deviates significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 7.5; df = 2; 0.01 < ptwo-tailed < 0.05.
For the phonemic sequence /ṭa/, the chi-squared good-ness-of-fit test shows a weak possibility of a systematic distribution, and indeed this distribution is in favour of the sign da in only 65 % of cases; I take this as no evidence for a significant distribution.
di ti
Table 13: Dental stops with e/i-vocalization
di ti te
/ti/ 1 139 0
/di/ 113 4 0
/ṭi/ 5 2 0
/te/ 0 0 41
/de/ 3 0 0
/ṭe/ 0 0 5
Examination of the whole matrix of the signs di, ti and te demonstrates that the frequency distribution deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 319; df = 10; ptwo-tailed < 0.001
ti ti for /ti/ — strong evidence (ti is used in 99.2 % of all occurrences of /ti/).ti for /di/ — no evidence (ti is used in 3.5 % of all occurrences of /di/).ti for /ṭi/ — no evidence (ti is used in 28.5 % of all occurrences of /ṭi/).ti for /te/ — no evidence (ti never represents /te/).ti for /de/ — no evidence (ti never represents /de/).ti for /ṭe/ — no evidence (ti never represents /ṭe/).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values
76 Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian
of ti deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 655; df = 5; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
/ti/ /ti/ for ti — strong evidence (/ti/ is expressed in 95.8 % of all occurrences of ti)./ti/ for di — no evidence (/ti/ is expressed in 0.9 % of all occurrences of di)./ti/ for te — no evidence (/ti/ is never expressed by te).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /ti/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 274; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
Thus, the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that we have a graphical distribution for the phonemic sequence /ti/, and my statistical research shows that this distribu-tion is in favour of the sign ti with strong evidence. As the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests, there is a sys-tematic distribution of phonetic values, and my research shows with strong evidence that this distribution is in favour of the value /ti/.
di di for /di/ — strong evidence (di is used in 96.5 % of all occurrences of /di/).di for /ti/ — no evidence (di is used in 0.8 % of oc-currences of /ti/).di for /ṭi/ — no evidence (di is used in 71.5 % of oc-currences of /ṭi/).di for /te/ — no evidence (di never represents /te/).di for /de/ — strong evidence (di is used in 100 % of occurrences of /de/).di for /ṭe/ — no evidence (di never represents /ṭe/).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of di deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 507.7; df = 5; ptwo-tailed > 0.001.
/di/ /di/ for di — weak evidence (/di/ is expressed in 92.5 % of all occurrences of di)./di/ for ti — no evidence (/di/ is expressed in 2.8 % of all occurrences of ti)./di/ for te — no evidence (/di/ is never expressed by te).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /di/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 210.8; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
/de/ /de/ for di — no evidence (/de/ is expressed in 2.5 % of all occurrences of di)./de/ for ti — no evidence (/de/ is never expressed by ti).
/de/ for te — no evidence (/de/ is never expressed by te).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /de/ deviates significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 6; df = 2; 0.01 < ptwo-tailed < 0.05. In this case, the chi-squared approximation may be incorrect because there are not enough examples.
The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the sign di must be assigned to some phonemic sequence. But my statistics show that there is only weak evidence for its dis-tribution in favour of the value /di/, and that the values /ti/ and /de/ are not its predominant values. However, the sign di can still represent them, so overall we cannot speak of any clearly predominant value for this sign.
The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests a graph-ical distribution for the phoneme sequence /di/, and my statistics confirm with strong evidence that this distribu-tion is in favour of the sign di. We do not have enough ex-amples to test the graphical distribution of /de/ with the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test, as all three cases of its occurrence are represented by the sign di.
/ṭi/ /ṭi/ for di — no evidence (/ṭi/ is expressed in 4.1 % of all occurrences of di)./ṭi/ for ti — no evidence (/ṭi/ is expressed in 1.4 % of all occurrences of ti)./ṭi/ for te — no evidence (/ṭi/ is never expressed by te).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /ṭi/ deviates not significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 5.4; df = 2; ptwo-tailed > 0.05. In this case, the chi-squared approximation may be incorrect because there are not enough examples.
First of all, there are not enough examples to check the graphical distribution of /ṭi/ by means of the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test. And as we see, my statistical study shows no evidence that the sign di is a predominant way to represent the phonemic sequence /ṭi/.
te te for /te/ — strong evidence (te is used in 100 % of occurrences of /te/).te for /ti/ — no evidence (te never represents /ti/).te for /di/ — no evidence (te never represents /di/).te for /ṭi/ — no evidence (te never represents /ṭi/).te for /de/ — no evidence (te never represents /de/).te for /ṭe/ — strong evidence (te is used in 100 % of occurrences of /ṭe/).
Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian 77
The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of te deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 176.5, df = 5; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
/te/ /te/ for te — weak evidence (/te/ is expressed in 89 % of all occurrences of te)./te/ for di — no evidence (/te/ is never expressed by di)./te/ for ti — no evidence (/te/ is never expressed by ti).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /te/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 82; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
/ṭe/ /ṭe/ for te — no evidence (/ṭe/ is expressed in 11 % of all occurrences of te)./ṭe/ for di — no evidence (/ṭe/ is never expressed by di)./ṭe/ for ti — no evidence (/ṭe/ is never expressed by ti).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /ṭe/ deviates very significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 10; df = 2; 0.001 < ptwo-tailed < 0.01. The chi-squared approximation in this situa-tion may be incorrect because there are not enough examples.
Thus, the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that there is a graphical distribution for the phoneme sequence /te/ and my statistics show strong evidence that this distri-bution is in favour of the sign te. Although the statistics show with strong evidence that the predominant way to express the phoneme sequence /ṭe/ is the sign te, we do not have enough examples for the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test.
If the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that we can expect a distribution of the values of the sign te, my statistics show that we cannot affirm with strong evi-dence that the phonemic sequence /te/ is a predominant value of the sign; there is only weak evidence that it could be /te/, and no evidence in favour of /ṭe/.
As for the vocalization with /e/ or /i/, the situation is the opposite of that observed for labial stops: voiced stops show no difference, with di = /di/ and /de/, while voice-less stops demonstrate a divergence, as the ti sign is used for /ti/ and the te sign is used for /te/.
du tu
Table 14: Dental stops with u-vocalization
du tu tum
/du/ 34 2 0
/tu/ 4 53 4
/ṭu/ 1 11 1
Examination of the whole matrix for the signs du, tu and tum demonstrates that the frequency distribution devi-ates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 81.4, df = 4, ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
tu tu for /tu/ — weak evidence (tu is used in 87 % of all occurrences of /tu/).tu for /du/ — no evidence (tu is used in 5.6 % of all occurrences of /du/).tu for /ṭu/ — weak evidence (tu is used in 84.6 % of occurrences of /ṭu/).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of tu deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 67, df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
/tu/ /tu/ for tu — weak evidence (/tu/ is expressed in 80 % of all occurrences of tu)./tu/ for du — no evidence (/tu/ is expressed in 10.2 % of all occurrences of du)./tu/ for tum — weak evidence (/tu/ is expressed in 80 % of all occurrences of tum for a CV syllable).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /tu/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 78.8; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
Thus, the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that we can expect a graphical distribution for the phoneme sequence /tu/. My research shows only weak evidence that this distribution is in favour of the sign tu, because this phoneme sequence is represented by tu only in 86 % of cases. The same goes for the distribution of the phonetic values for the sign tu: /tu/ can be considered a predomi-nant value for this sign only with weak evidence.
tum tum for /tu/ — no evidence (tum is used in 6.5 % of all occurrences of /tu/).tum for /du/ — no evidence (tum never represents /du/).
78 Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian
tum for /ṭu/ — no evidence (tum is used in 7.7 % of occurrences of /ṭu/).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of tum deviates not significantly from the ex-pected one: χ2 = 5.2, df = 2; ptwo-tailed > 0.05. But in this case the chi-squared approximation may be incorrect because there are not enough exam- ples.
/ṭu/ /ṭu/ for tu — no evidence (/ṭu/ is expressed in 17 % of all occurrences of tu)./ṭu/ for du — no evidence (/ṭu/ is expressed in 2.6 % of all occurrences of du)./ṭu/ for tum — no evidence (/ṭu/ is expressed in 20 % of all occurrences of tum for a CV syllable).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /ṭu/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 15; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001. But in this case the chi-squared approxima-tion may be incorrect because there are not enough examples.
For the phonemic sequence /ṭu/, the chi-squared good-ness-of-fit test suggests that the distribution of its graphi-cal representations deviates highly significantly from the expected one. Since we do not have enough examples, this chi-squared approximation may be incorrect. And it is only with weak evidence that we can say that tu is a predominant way to represent the phonemic sequence /ṭu/ (84.6 % of occurrences of the phonemic sequence /ṭu/ is represented by tu).
For the sign tum, the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test gives us no proof that it is assigned to any specific pho-nemic sequence. We must keep in mind, though, that the use of this sign for CV sequences is a relatively new phe-nomenon that became available due to the loss of mima-tion. And we have only weak evidence that the phonemic sequence /tu/ is the predominant value of the sign tum (only 80 %).
du du for/du/ — weak evidence (du is used in 94.4 % of all occurrences of /du/).du for /tu/ — no evidence (du is used in 6.5 % of oc-currences of /tu/).du for /ṭu/ — no evidence (du is used in 7.7 % of oc-currences of /ṭu/).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of du deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 51.2; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
/du/ /du/ for du — weak evidence (/du/ is expressed in 87.2 % of all occurrences of du)./du/ for tu — no evidence (/du/ is expressed in 3 % of all occurrences of tu)./du/ for tum — no evidence (/du/ is never expressed by tum out of 5 occurrences of tum for a CV sylla-ble).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /du/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 60.7; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
While the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that there is a graphical distribution for the phoneme sequence /du/, my research shows that there is only weak evidence that the sign du is a predominant representation of /du/, because only 94.4 % of the occurrences of the phonemic sequence /du/ are expressed by du.
The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that we can expect a systematic distribution for the sign du, but the sign represents the phonemic sequence /du/ only in 87.2 % of cases, so we have only weak evidence in this case.
ka ga qa
Table 15: Velar stops with a-vocalization
ka ga qa
/ka/ 59 6 1
/ga/ 1 35 0
/qa/ 1 3 70
Examination of the whole matrix demonstrates that the frequency distribution deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 279.2, df = 4, ptwo-tailed <0.001.
ka ka for /ka/ — weak evidence (ka is used in 89.5 % of all occurrences of /ka/).ka for /ga/ — no evidence (ka is used in 2.8 % of oc-currences of /ga/).ka for /qa/ — no evidence (ka is used in 1.4 % of oc-currences of /qa/).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of ka deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 110.3; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian 79
/ka/ /ka/ for ka — strong evidence (/ka/ is expressed in 96.8 % of all occurrences of ka)./ka/ for ga — no evidence (/ka/ is expressed in 13.6 % of all occurrences of ga)./ka/ for qa — no evidence (/ka/ is expressed in 1.4 % of all occurrences of qa).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /ka/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 94; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that there is a graphical distribution for the phoneme sequence /ka/, but there is only weak evidence for considering the sign ka a predominant way to express /ka/ (the phoneme is rep-resented by ka in 89 % of cases). The chi-squared good-ness-of-fit test suggests that there is a principled distribu-tion of phonetic values for the sign ka, and my statistics show that in 96.7 % of cases ka represents the phoneme sequence /ka/, so /ka/ is a predominant phonetic value of the sign ka with strong evidence.
ga ga for /ga/ — strong evidence (ga is used in 97.2 % of all occurrences of /ga/).ga for /qa/ — no evidence (ga is used in 4.1 % of oc-currences of /qa/).ga for /ka/ — no evidence (ga is used in 9 % of oc-currences of /ka/).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of ga deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 42.6; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
/ga/ /ga/ for ga — weak evidence (/ga/ is expressed in 79.5 % of all occurrences of ga)./ga/ for ka — no evidence (/ga/ is expressed in 1.6 % of all occurrences of ka)./ga/ for qa — no evidence (/ga/ is never expressed by qa).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /ga/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 66.17; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that there is a graphical distribution of the phoneme sequence /ga/, and my statistics show that there is strong evidence to consider the sign ga a predominant way to express this phonemic sequence.
The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that there is a distribution of the phonetic values for the sign ga, but my statistics show that /ga/ can be considered a predominant phonetic value of the sign ga only with weak evidence, since the sign ga is used for the phonemic se-quence /ga/ in only 79.5 % of cases.
qa qa for /qa/ — weak evidence (qa is used in 94.5 % of all occurrences of /qa/).qa for /ka/ — no evidence (qa is used in 1.5 % of oc-currences of /ka/).qa for /ga/ — no evidence (qa never represents /ga/).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of qa deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 136; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
/qa/ /qa/ for qa — strong evidence (/qa/ is expressed in 98.6 % of all occurrences of qa)./qa/ for ka — no evidence (/qa/ is expressed in 1.6 % of all occurrences of ka)./qa/ for ga — no evidence (/qa/ is expressed in 6.9 % of all occurrences of ga).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /qa/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 125; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that there is a graphical distribution of the phoneme sequence /qa/, and my statistics show that it is only with weak evidence that the sign qa can be considered a predominant way to express this phonemic sequence, since the phonemic se-quence /qa/ is represented by qa in only 94.5 % of cases.
The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that there is a distribution of the phonetic values for the sign qa, and my statistics confirm that /qa/ can be considered a predominant phonetic value of the sign qa with strong evidence. Thus, we can say that the sign qa is assigned to the phonemic sequence /qa/.
ki giIn the case of velar stops followed by front vowels, there are no special signs for vocalization in e or i, and therefore I do not differentiate here between the two cases.
80 Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian
Table 16: Velar stops with e/i-vocalization
ki gi
/kI/ 137 4
/gI/ 0 9
/qI/ 35 0
Examination of the whole matrix of the use of ki and gi signs demonstrates that the frequency distribution devi-ates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 127.1, df = 2, ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
ki ki for /kI/ — strong evidence (ki is used in 97.1 % of all occurrences of /kI/).ki for /gI/ — no evidence (ki never represents the phonemic sequence /gI/).ki for /qI/ — strong evidence (ki is used in 100 % of occurrences of /qI/).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of ki deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 176.7; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
/kI/ /kI/ for ki — weak evidence (/kI/ is expressed in 80 % of all occurrences of ki)./kI/ for gi — no evidence (/kI/ is expressed in 30.7 % of all occurrences of gi).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /kI/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 125.4; df = 1; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
Thus, if the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that we can expect a graphical distribution for the phonemic sequence /kI/, my statistics show that ki is a predominant way to express the phonemic sequence /kI/ with strong evidence, because ki is used in 97.1 % of occurrences of /kI/. Meanwhile, the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test sug-gests that we can expect a principled distribution of the phonetic values for the sign ki, but my statistics show that there is only weak evidence for treating /kI/ as a predom-inant phonetic value for ki, because only 80 % of uses of the sign ki represent /kI/. And we have no evidence for /qI/ as a predominant value of ki.
/qI/ /qI/ for ki — no evidence (/qI/ is expressed in 20 % of all occurrences of KI)./qI/ for gi — no evidence (/qI/ is never expressed by GI).
The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /qI/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 35; df = 1; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
Thus, if the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that we can expect a graphical distribution for the phonemic sequence /qI/, my statistics show that ki is a predominant way to express the phonemic sequence /qI/ with strong ev-idence, because ki is used in 100 % of occurrences of /qI/.
gi gi for /gI/ — strong evidence (gi is used in 100 % of all occurrences of /gI/).gi for /kI/ — no evidence (gi is used in 2.9 % of oc-currences of /kI/).gi for /qI/ — no evidence (gi never represents /qI/).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of gi deviates very significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 9.3; df = 2; 0.001 < ptwo-tailed < 0.01.
/gI/ /gI/ for gi — no evidence (/gI/ is expressed in 69.3 % of all occurrences of gi)./gI/ for ki — no evidence (/gI/ is never expressed by ki).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /gI/ deviates very significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 9; df = 1; 0.001 < ptwo-tailed < 0.01. The chi-squared approximation may be incor-rect, because there are not enough examples.
Thus, we do not have enough examples to allow us to rely too heavily on the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test, and on the basis of the data available the frequency distribution of the graphical representations of /gI/ deviates only very significantly from the expected one; but the phonemic se-quence /gI/ is expressed by the sign gi in 100 % of cases, constituting strong evidence that gi is a predominant way to express /gI/ (with the caveat that there are only a small number of examples).
The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that we cannot identify any systematic distribution of phonetic values for gi (the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of gi deviates only very significantly from the ex-pected one), and this is confirmed by my statistics: there is no evidence that any phonemic sequence is a predominant value of gi. At the same time, the sign gi never occurs for an emphatic consonant.
Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian 81
ku gu
Table 17: Velar stops with u-vocalization
ku gu
/ku/ 80 0
/gu/ 1 9
/qu/ 18 0
Examination of the whole matrix demonstrates that the frequency distribution deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 64.8, df = 2, ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
ku ku for/ku/ — strong evidence (ku is used in 100 % of all occurrences of /ku/).ku for /gu/ — no evidence (ku is used in 10 % of oc-currences of /gu/).ku for /qu/ — strong evidence (ku is used in 100 % of occurrences of /qu/).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of ku deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 104.8; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
/ku/ /ku/ for ku — weak evidence (/ku/ is expressed in 80.8 % of all occurrences of ku)./ku/ for gu — no evidence (/ku/ is never expressed by gu).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /ku/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 80; df = 1; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
/qu/ /qu/ for ku — no evidence (/qu/ is expressed in 18.2 % of all occurrences of ku)./qu/ for gu — no evidence (/qu/ is never expressed by gu).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /qu/ deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 18; df = 1; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that we can expect a graphical distribution for the phonemic se-quence /ku/, and my statistics show strong evidence that ku is a predominant way to express this phonemic se-quence (in 100 % of occurrences, /ku/ is expressed by ku). This also applies to /qu/: the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that we can expect a graphical distribution
for this phonemic sequence, and my statistics show strong evidence that ku is a predominant way to express /qu/ (in 100 % of occurrences, /qu/ is expressed by ku).
While, on the basis of the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test, we can suppose a phonetic distribution for ku, my statistics show that there is only weak evidence to consider /ku/ a predominant phonetic value of this sign, because it is used for /ku/ in only 80.8 % of its occurrences of ku used for /ku/. And there is no evidence that /qu/ can be considered a predominant phonetic value of ku.
gu gu for /gu/ — weak evidence (gu is used in 90 % of all occurrences of /gu/).gu for /ku/ — no evidence (gu never represents /ku/).gu for /qu/ — no evidence (gu never represents /qu/).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the phonetic values of gu deviates highly significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 18; df = 2; ptwo-tailed < 0.001.
/gu/ /gu/ for gu — strong evidence/(gu/ is expressed in 90 % of all occurrences of gu)./gu/ for ku — no evidence (/gu/ is expressed in 10 % of all occurrences of ku).The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that the frequency distribution of the graphical rep-resentations of /gu/ deviates significantly from the expected one: χ2 = 6.4; df = 1; 0.01 < ptwo-tailed < 0.05.
Thus, the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that we cannot expect to find a graphical distribution for the phonemic sequence /gu/, because the frequency distribu-tion of the graphical representations of /gu/ deviates only significantly from the expected one. My statistics confirm that gu can be considered a predominant way to express /gu/ only with weak evidence. However, we do not have enough examples.
The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test suggests that we can expect a phonetic distribution for the sign gu, and my statistics show that there is strong evidence to consider the phonemic sequence /gu/ a predominant phonetic value of gu.
82 Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian
AnalysisFrom the above analysis we can see that the relationship between sounds and signs in Alalaḫ is far from clear-cut. Let us compare the situation in Alalaḫ with that seen in Mari, another OB corpus which very probably influenced the syllabary of Alalaḫ VII area to a great extent. The or-thography of Mari was reformed (see Durand 1985, 160 f.) and the writing was systematized. I analyzed the texts of ARM 27 using the same principle as above, making use of this corpus (Birot 1993), because these texts were actually written within the Mari state. This corpus consists of 177 texts, and it gives a fairly complete picture of the spelling of this period in Mari. In the table below, I present a list of CV signs with their values as used in Mari texts.
Table 18: Signs for labial stops in Mari
Mari
/ba/ ba (246×) 100 %
/pa/ pa (311×) 100 %
/be/ be (587× in bēlum only)bi (51×)
/pi/ bi (135×) 100 %
/pe/ bi (40×) 100 %
/bi/ bi (349×)ne = bí (166× in qí-bí-ma only)
/bu/ the same signpu = pu (304×)pu = bu (255×)
/pu/
Table 19: Signs for dental stops in Mari
Mari
/da/ da (114×) 100 %
/ta/ ta (236×) 100 %
/ṭa/ h ̮ i = ṭà (29×) 100 %
/di/ di (169×) 98.2 %h ̮ i = dí (3×) 1.8 %
/de/ di (21×) 100 %
/ti/ ti (390×) 100 %
/te/ te (98×) 98.9 %ti = te9 (1×) 1.1 %
/ṭe/ te = ṭe4(101×) 99 %ṭe5 (1×) 1 %
/ṭi/ ti = ṭì (20×) 100 %
/du/ du (118×) 100 %
/tu/ tu (189×) 100 %
/ṭu/ tu = ṭú (28×) 100 %
Table 20: Signs for velar stops in Mari
Mari
/ka/ ka (416×) 100 %
/ga/ ga (28×) 100 %
/qa/ qa (178×) 100 %
/kI/ ki (193×) 100 %
/gI/ gi (15×) 100 %
/qI/ ki (219×) 100 %
/ku/ ku (249×) 100 %
/gu/ gu (14×) 100 %
/qu/ ku (62×) 100 %
As is clear from this table, the distribution in Mari is abso-lutely systematic. In what follows I bring together all the data given above to draw conclusions about the orthogra-phy of the stops in the Alalaḫ VII documents.
Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian 83
Table 21: Comparative table of signs for labial stops in OAkk, OAss, Mari and Alalaḫ VII
/a/ /i/ & /e/ /u/
OAkk (Sargonic Period)35 ba = ba, pá bi = bi, píne = bí(be = be)
pu = bu, pubum= pù, bù
OAss36 ba = ba, pá((pa = pa))
bi = bi, píbe = be, pè, bi4, pì(ne = bí)
bu = bu, pu
Mari ba = bapa = pa
bi = bi, be, pí, pé(be = be)
pu = pu, bu
Alalaḫ VII ba = ba, pápa = pa, ((bá))
bi = bi, pí, pébe = be(ne = bí)
pu = bu, pu
Labial stops With regard to labial stops with a-vocalization, the value /pa/ is not assigned to the sign pa, but the sign pa is used almost exclusively for this value. The sign ba can repre-sent both values, but the phonemic sequence /ba/ is ren-dered by ba in 98.8 % of cases. So we can assume that the sign pa is a newly emerged sign that began to take on the value /pa/ in order to create a systematic distribution for labial stops with a-vocalization, because when a sign first appears it must have a single value. This hypothesis is fairly plausible, given that, in the OAkk and OAss sylla-baries, it was the sign ba that was used for labials with a-vocalization. In OAkk, the sign pa was used only in ge-ographical names (Gelb 1961, 28–31; Rubio 2006, 113). In OAss, the situation is similar (Hecker 1968, § 37): the sign ba is used for both ba and pá, and pa occurs only occa-sionally. By contrast, the pair pa and ba has a very clear distribution in Mari, and we can observe the complete absence of values bá and pá. Thus, from an orthographic point of view, we are dealing in Alalaḫ with an OAkk or OAss syllabary that was changing under the influence of the OB syllabary.37 In Alalaḫ, however, the sign–value
35 See Gelb (1961, 28–31); Krebernik (1998, 286–298); Rubio (2006, 110–139).36 See Hecker (1968, § 37).37 The hypothesis of an OAss syllabary that was changing under the influence of OB in Alalaḫ VII would correspond better with the pale-ographic evidence (see Wilhelm 2010, 260).
pairings for labial stops with a-vocalization were not yet consistently defined, because among the mixed spellings we have a few very commonly used words such as the verbs paqādu(m) ‘to trust,’ apālu(m) ‘to pay,’ nabalku-tu(m) ‘to cross over, revolt’ and šapāku(m) ‘to pour on,’ as well as the noun pāṭu(m) ‘border.’ Kloekhorst (2010, 238) correctly concludes that /ba/ and /pa/ were opposed pho-nemically, but one cannot claim that their graphic reali-zation is very consistent in Alalaḫ VII. As follows from the above, the signs for labial stops with a-vocalization were not fully specialized at the moment of the destruction of Alalaḫ VII.
In fact, as regards labial stops, it is only in the case of a-vocalization that we can identify any kind of system-atic distribution. For labials with e/i-vocalization we find the sign bi used for values pí, bi and pé. As I have already noted, the sign ne with value bí occurs twice and only in orthograms. The only significant distribution here is in the case of the sign be, which is used in 100 % of occur-rences for the phonemic sequence /be/, the voiced labial stop with e-vocalization. In turn, the phonemic sequence /be/ is most probably associated with the sign be, because the single instance of the form labērum (43.14:10), which is transliterated by Dietrich/Loretz (2006, 122) as bé, occurs on the broken part of the tablet. As for this pair in Mari, ne=bí is only found in qí-bí-ma in the address formula, while be is found only in bēlum (and this word is never spelt in a different way in any forms), while the sign bi is used for all other values. The only difference in Alalaḫ VII is that be occurs not just in bēlum but in another three words as well. Thus, in Alalaḫ the opposition e/i was prob-
84 Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian
ably phonological and was expressed via spelling in sylla-bles with voiced labial stops. In OAkk (Gelb 1961, 29), be occurs but only rarely.
For the pair /pu/ and /bu/ there is only one sign, al-though words containing this syllable can be divided into those with voiced and voiceless labials on etymological grounds. So we see that, in the case of labial stops, in syl-lables with front vowels and /u/ the available signs were not distributed systematically in the period of Alalaḫ VII. In Mari, as well as in OAkk (Gelb 1961, 28–31; Krebernik 1998, 288; Rubio 2006, 113) and OAss (Hecker 1968, § 37a), the same sign pu is used for /pu/ and /bu/.
Dental stopsThe phonemic sequence /ta/ is nearly always rendered by the sign ta, with strong evidence (although there are forms of the words imittu(m) ‘right hand’ and qātātu(m) ‘guar-antee’ which are spelt with both ta and tá), but the sign ta is not used exclusively for the phonemic sequence /ta/ (only in 89.5 % of cases). Judging by statistics, we cannot say that the sign da is a predominant way to express the phonemic sequence /da/ (only 70 % of occurrences of this phonemic sequence are rendered by da). The verbs darāru(m) ‘to become free (of debts)’ and idātu(m) ‘wage’ occur with both da and dá. The number of examples is ob-viously not sufficient for the purposes of this study. The sign da is not assigned to any specific phonemic sequence with a-vocalization either.
For the emphatic /ṭa/ we have only 17 examples, in-volving 4 words: of these, 11 are spelt with ṭa, 3 with ṭá and 3 with ṭà. My statistics show that there is no evidence to attach this phoneme sequence to any particular sign: it is rendered by the sign da in only 65 % of its occurrences. The chi-squared goodness-of-fit test shows that the fre-quency distribution of the graphical representation of /ṭa/ deviates only significantly from the expected one. The verb ṭâbu(m) ‘to be good’ is written 6 times with ṭa and once with ṭà. The probably related noun ṭabtu(m) ‘salt,’ which in all three occurrences is written with ṭá (the sign ta), perhaps demonstrates here that paronymous words were not always perceived as such by speakers. In fact,however, I claim that the number of occurrences of the phonemic sequence /ṭa/ is not sufficient to draw any valid conclusions about its representation in the Alalaḫ texts.
In Mari texts, a strict distribution of the three signs can be observed: da is used for /da/; ta is used for /ta/; and h ̮ i (= ṭà) is used for /ṭa/. With regard to OAkk and OAss, it must be noted that the sign da hardly ever occurs
in OAss (Hecker 1968, § 38), while in OAkk, on the other hand, it is used for all dental stops with a-vocalization (Gelb 1961, 28–31, Krebernik 1998, 288, Rubio 2006, 114).
There might be an attempt to assign the value /ta/ to the ta sign. It is difficult to say if ta or da can be regarded as a newly emerged sign, because neither of the two is as-signed with strong evidence to any value. The value /ṭa/ for the sign h ̮ i can be taken as newly emerged in Alalaḫ VII, while in Mari this pairing is already fixed.38 It is in-teresting that the sign h ̮ i, and no other, is used for the dental emphatic with a-vocalization in the Uršu text (KBo 1.11). This text was written “in Akkadian language using a variant of the cuneiform script typical for the late Old Babylonian signs and ductus forms of Northern Syria” (Goren/Mommsen/Klinger 2011, 694). The h ̮ i sign with its value ṭà occurs in this text in forms of the verb naṭālum ‘to look.’39 But this is the only occurrence of the phonemic sequence /ṭa/ in the Uršu text. Durham (1976, 373) does not mention the use of ṭà for the rendering of emphatics in Boghazköy Akkadian, but only ṭa and ṭá (to be exact, for later texts in BoAkk). The case of the emphatic is in-teresting, because even if the Uršu text is not a precursor of Hittite texts but merely a product of Syrian scribes (i.e., from the same area as Alalaḫ), this still shows that there was a tendency to render /ṭa/ by means of the h ̮ i sign (ṭà) in this area. Accordingly, the da = ṭa40 and da = da correlations posited by Kloekhorst (2013, 128) are not so significant; and in the Alalaḫ VII syllabary, at the time of the Hittite invasion, there appears a specially dedicated sign for the dental emphatic with a-vocalization (h ̮ i = ṭà), which was probably introduced under the influence of one of the OB syllabaries from Mesopotamia.
The particular inference that can be made on the basis of the above analysis, of interest to Hittitologists and In-do-Europeanists, is that there is no formal statistical as-sociation between the graphical da and the phonetic /ṭa/ in Alalaḫ VII (pace Kloekhorst 2010). I cannot agree that the signs da and ta had a clear distribution in Alalaḫ VII. Only the phonemic sequence /ta/ is associated with the corresponding sign ta. Therefore one should be careful when making comparisons with Hittite, as Kloekhorst does when he claims that the use of da for /da/ and /ṭa/ (for him a postglottalized [tˀ], after Kouwenberg 2003,
38 In Mari texts the sign h ̮ i occurs three times with the value dí.39 3 pl.pres.: i-na-ṭà-lu (Uršu: 23′), 3 Sg.pres.: i-na-ṭà-al-ma (Uršu: 30′).40 Kloekhorst (2010, 235) notes that personal names with the ṭāb el-ement are 22× written with ṭa = da.
Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian 85
81–82), in contrast with the use of ta for /ta/ in Hittite, could be a “direct continuation of their values in Alalaḫ Akkadian” (Kloekhorst 2013, 125, 140). The fact is that da cannot truly be considered a predominant way to render either /da/ or /ṭa/ in Alalaḫ VII. For the emphatic dental our data are insufficient, but the sign h ̮ i with value ṭà is newly borrowed from one of the Mesopotamian OB syl-labaries in order to introduce a special sign for this third member of the opposition.
As for dental stops with front vowels, with regard to i-vocalization there is strong evidence for the association of the sign ti with the phonemic sequence /ti/ (this phone-mic sequence is spelt with di = ti4 only once—in the word that has both spellings). Meanwhile, the sign di is, with strong evidence, a predominant way to express /di/ (four cases of the dì spelling, which remained an alternative representation for /di/, appear in words also spelt with di in these texts, namely the verb edû(m) ‘to know,’ the name of the month ITIḪudizzi and the 3rd person sg.pret. of nadānu(m) ‘to give’ (iddin), which in other documents is written with di), though the sign di can be used to express other phonemic sequences as well.
The emphatic consonant with i-vocalization occurs only seven times in the corpus, and the chi-squared good-ness-of-fit test shows that we do not have enough exam-ples to draw any valid conclusions about the distribution of the sequence /ṭi/. My statistics show no evidence that any sign can be considered a predominant way to express /ṭi/, and the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test does not suggest that /ṭi/ might have a clear distribution. Thus, despite the systematic distribution as concerns voiced and voiceless stops, again we do not find a consistent treat-ment of the emphatic—this much can be concluded even from the small number of examples we have.41 It is inter-esting that the signs di and ti, which can both be used for the emphatic, are thus interchangeable in this function, although they are distinguished fairly clearly with regard to their use for voiced and voiceless stops.
Let us now turn to dentals with e-vocalization. The syllable /te/ is rendered only by the sign te. But this sign is used not only for /te/, but also for the emphatic with e-vocalization: for the dental emphatic with the vowel /e/ we have 5 spellings with ṭe4 (= te). For the phonemic se-
41 One cannot agree with Kloekhorst (2010, 236) that the di sign is the predominant way to represent /ṭi/.
quence /de/, which occurs three times,42 the same sign is used as for /di/.
Thus, for the emphatic /ṭ/ we observe a clear distribu-tion depending on vocalization. Dental stops behave here like voiced labials. Consequently, the opposition /e/ vs. /i/ is phonemic for this area.43 We are dealing here with the opposition /te/ vs. /ti/ and /ṭe/44 vs. /ṭi/.45 So this study gives us information about the status of the vowel /e/ in opposition to /i/, which are shown to be different pho-nemes in Alalaḫ.
In Mari, /de/ and /di/ are represented by di (in 3 cases the sign h ̮ i is used for /di/). The phonemic sequence /te/ is represented by te, /ti/ by ti, the emphatic /ṭe/ by ṭe4 = te (except for one case of ṭe5), and /ṭi/ by ṭì (= ti). So we have a clear distribution of signs for voiced and voiceless stops in Mari. The emphatic is represented by the same sign as the voiceless stop with the appropriate vowel (ṭe4 = te, ṭì = ti), which reveals an interesting difference between Mari and Alalaḫ: in Alalaḫ, the dental emphatic can be expressed with the sign for the voiced dental. In OAkk, the sign di was not used (Gelb 1961, 28–31), while, in OAss, it is ti that was rare. In Alalaḫ VII, we see a fairly clear-cut distribution for this pair.
As for the potential association between the sign tu and the phonemic sequence /tu/, we observe only weak evidence in its favour. The same is true for the pair du and /du/. In the Alalaḫ VII period, the values tu4 and ṭu4 appear for the sign tum. The Alalaḫ VII texts were written at a point when the -m at the end of words had begun to be lost, but had not disappeared entirely, as is clear from the existence of spellings like qa-du-um alongside qa-du (without -um). Thus, although the syllable /tu/ is normally
42 Pace Kloekhorst (2013, 132). The sign di has the /de/ value in dabdû(m) ‘defeat’: da-aw-de-e (21.01:37), minde ‘maybe’: mi-in-de (11.01:4), redû(m) ‘to lead’: 3 sg.pres.: e-re-ed-de (20.02:10).43 Note the forms i-dá-ti (40.08:10) and e-da-te (40.09:10) for idātu(m) ‘wage.’44 In eṭēru(m) ‘to pay’: 3 pl. pres.: i-iṭ-ṭe4-ru (31.07:13), munus.meš
ṭēmītu(m) ‘wise’: ṭe4-mi-tum (41.44:13), ṭênu(m) ‘to grind’: inf.: ṭe4-e-nim (41.4:26, 27) ṭepûm ‘to add’: 3 sg.prec.: li-ṭe4-ep-pí (10.01:20) (CAD Ṭ, 101 pace Dietrich & Loretz transliterations, Giacumakis 1970, 109 and Kloekhorst 2010, 236, n. 115, which follow the interpretation of CAD B, 257 ṭebûm ‘to sink, impress’).45 In balṭu(m) ‘living’: ba-al-ṭi-š[u] (31.13:12), bulṭu(m) ‘lifetime’: bu-ul-ṭi-šu-ma (21.01:3), līṭu(m) ‘hostage’: li-iṭ-ṭi (31.12:5), pāṭu(m)/paṭṭu(m) ‘border’: pá-aṭ-ṭi-šu (22.02:2); [pa-ṭ]i-š[u] (22.09:2)
86 Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian
Table 22: Comparative table of signs for dental stops in OAkk, OAss, Mari and Alalaḫ VII
/a/ /i/ & /e/ /u/
OAkk (Sargonic Period)46 da = da, tá, ṭa ti = ti, dì, ṭìte = te(ne = dè, te4, ṭè)
tu = tu, dú, ṭúdu = du, tù, ṭù
OAss47 (da48 = da, tá, ṭa)ta = ta, dá, ṭá
di = di, ti4, ṭite = te
tu = tu, dú, ṭúdu = du, tù, ṭù
Mari da = data = tah ̮ i = ṭà
di = diti = ti, ṭìte = te, ṭe4
tu = tu, ṭúdu = du
Alalaḫ da = da, ṭa, táta = ta, ṭá, dáh ̮ i = ṭà
di = di, de, ṭi, (ti4)ti = ti, ṭì, (dì)te = te, ṭe4
tu = tu, ṭú, dúdu = du, tù, ṭùtum = tu4, ṭu4
written with tu, it is found 4 times with tù49 and 4 times with tu4. The latter cases are interesting because they show the emergence of the value tu4 for the sign tum: this is seen (in all four cases) at the end of a conjugated form of the verb nabalkutu(m) ‘to cross over,’ where mimation is gram-matically impossible (the spelling ib-ba-la-ak-ka-tu 22.01: 18 with tu also occurs). For the emphatic /ṭu/, we have 11 spellings with ṭú, 1 with ṭù and 1 with ṭu4. The example with ṭu4 is in the word balṭu(m) ‘living’: ba-al-ṭu4-um-ma (31.02:11). I do not think that we have ṭum with phonetic
46 Gelb 1961, 28–31; Krebernik 1998, 286–298; Rubio 2006, 110–139.47 Hecker 1968, § 38.48 Positionally restricted (see Hecker 1968, § 38). There is no sepa-rate sign for the emphatic /ṭ/.49 Once in the infix of im-tù-ut (40.05:6), a form of the verb mâtum ‘to die’. This is interesting because, for infixes, we must have the standard sign for the corresponding syllable. It is possible that this is a matter of the scribe’s personal choice, but nevertheless the value tù occurs three times in two texts: in a similar text 40.06:21 and in 41.23:1, 20 (see Zeeb 2001, 189, n. 292, n. 293 for interpretation). But these are word forms that occur only once in the corpus.Wiseman (1953, 101) notes that this tablet is similar to AlT *1 (= 10.01) and to AlT *126 (= 10.03), i.e., two historical texts, the oldest found in the corpus of Alalaḫ VII. He concludes that text AlT*366 = 40.05 is also one of the oldest texts, dating to the time when Yarim-Līm received the city from Abbân. So we could expect a low degree of standardization in the writing system. Of a similar nature is text 40.06 = AlT *432, which Wiseman (1953, 111) compares to AlT 366 and in which we have another use of tù: na-pí-iš-tù (40.06:21). Indeed, those texts still retain the old shape of the ša sign.It is interesting that the sign tù is noted by Durham (1976, 368) as fre-quent in the conjugational prefixes of Boghazköy Akkadian. Durham regards the use of tù (= du) as normal in BoAkk in the sense that it is more frequent than the corresponding tu. This value is absent in Mari.
complement -um here (pace Kloekhorst 2010, 236, who con-siders -um a phonetic complement that shows the reading of the preceding tum), as there are not many phonetic com-plements in the Alalaḫ VII texts. The same sign is used for the value tu4, and in my opinion, if there is a reading with a voiceless dental stop without mimation, then a reading with the emphatic dental stop without mimation is also possible. Nevertheless, I would like to note that the value tu4 occurs only in final position, since the value ṭu4 (if we assume this reading)50 occurs inside the word.
Therefore, for dental stops with u-vocalization, we observe a preference of du for /du/ and tu for /tu/, but only with weak evidence, and alternative spellings with other signs still remain. In the examples with u-vocalization we can also see the signs with mimation which begin to be used for open syllables, thus producing new homophones. As for the emphatic, there is only weak evidence for con-sidering the sign tu with value ṭú a predominant way to express the phonemic sequence /ṭu/, and the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test warns that there are not enough exam-ples to support any valid conclusion. Thus, in this respect, I do not agree with Kloekhorst (2010, 236).
In Mari, the distribution is clear: the emphatic is ren-dered by the same sign as the voiceless stop. The com-parison with Mari shows how uneven the distribution in Alalaḫ is. The value tu4 for tum appears only in Alalaḫ VII, and is therefore likely to represent a local innovation related to the loss of mimation.
50 Or, if this is a phonetic complement, its use shows that reading of /m/ in the tum-sign needed to be made explicit by other means.
Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian 87
Thus, while Kloekhorst (2010, 236) comes to the con-clusion that voiced and voiceless dental stops were nor-mally written with the “correct signs”, in fact it is only legitimate to speak of some distribution with regard to dentals vocalized with front vowels. When it comes to a-vo-calization, only the phonemic sequence /ta/ can be said to be (almost) consistently expressed, namely by the sign ta; other pairings remain unstable, including those involving emphatic consonants. Kloekhorst concludes that while da is a predominant way to express /ṭa/ (a view I do not share), the emphatic differs phonemically from the voice-less /ta/. By contrast, /ṭu/ is mostly spelt with tu, imply-ing that the emphatic /ṭ/ differs from the voiced /d/, and his conclusion is that there are three distinct phonemes in the language of Alalaḫ VII: /t/, /d/ and /ṭ/ (Kloekhorst 2010, 236). This might indeed be true, but in my opinion it is important to note that there is only weak evidence for this distribution. In the case of dentals with front vowel vocalization, the distribution of signs is largely depend-ent on vocalization, with some confusion in the case of i-vocalization. In my opinion, the use of the sign h ̮ i with value ṭà is reasonably good evidence for the existence of a distinct phoneme /ṭ/. I also agree that voiced, voiceless and emphatic stops were different phonemes, because my data here confirm a tendency towards the establishment of a systematic distribution.
Velar stopsThe phoneme sequence /ka/ is a predominant phonetic value of the sign ka, but there is only weak evidence for treating the sign ka as a predominant way to express /ka/. Thus, it is likely that ka is a newly emerged sign which has taken on the value /ka/. As Kloekhorst (2010, 237) correctly notes, all 6 (not 5) spellings of the form kà = ga occur in the same text, namely 10.03. Nevertheless, instances of the “standard” ka = ka are also found in the same text (10.03: 27, 31). Thus, within the same text, the scribe could have a choice, which testifies that the phonemic sequence /ka/ was not assigned to any specific sign. But we must bear in mind that text 10.03 is one of the historical texts related to the early Alalaḫ VII period. The sign ga is a predominant way to express /ga/ with strong evidence (indeed, the only use of the value ga14 of ka is in the word where the reading ka is also possible: ga14-az-zu-tim (22.05:31) ‘shorn’), but the value /ga/ is the predominant phonetic value of ga only with weak evidence. The sign qa is used almost exclu-sively for the phonemic sequence /qa/, but qa can be con-sidered a predominant way to express /qa/ only with weak evidence (although in 94.5 % cases the phonemic sequence
is rendered by qa).51 In Alalaḫ, I found one use of the sign qa for the value ka4, and this innovation could have been adopted in Hittite. This is a form of the verb kašādu(m): i-ka4-<ša>-du-šu (21.07: 14), which in the same text occurs with the spelling ka in the same word form i-ka-[ša]-du-šu (21.07:11), i.e., the scribe again had a choice. As in the case of dental stops vocalized with a, the syllabary contains a dedicated sign for the emphatic, which more than any other consideration demonstrates its status as a separate phoneme. In Mari, the distribution is clear. For emphatic stops with a-vocalization, a special sign qa appears in 100 % of cases. Indeed, in OAkk and OAss for velars with a-vocalization a single sign—ga—was used, the sign ka being entirely restricted to Sumerograms (Krebernik 1998, 291). The occurrence of qa for the emphatic in Alalaḫ is probably due to the influence of one of the contempo-rary OB syllabaries from Mesopotamia. Indeed, in Alalaḫ ga has a richer variety of values, whereas ka and qa are generally restricted to a single value each—these signs are less ambiguous, as is characteristic of newly emerged signs.
For velars with front vowel vocalization, there are only two signs available: ki and gi. For the phonemic se-quence /ki/, there is strong evidence for taking the sign ki as a predominant means of expression52. The value /gi/ is assigned to the sign gi, but the latter can represent /ki/ in the cases listed above. The sign ki is used for the emphatic. Syllables with g occur in all positions (cf. OAss, where gi and gu occur only in the initial position), but on the whole they are rarer, as is normal in Akkadian. In Mari, this distribution is absolutely clear, and the situation is the same with respect to the emphatic (which is rendered by ki).
The set with u-vocalization is relatively consistent in Alalaḫ. The phonemic sequences /ku/ and /qu/ are ex-pressed by ku. As for the pair gu and /gu/, we can see that the sign gu is used only for this phonemic sequence, but we do not have enough data to affirm that gu is a predominant way to express /gu/. The data we have (9 to 1: i-ra-ag-gu5-mu 20.06:17) do not allow us to speak of strong evidence, because only 90 % of occurrences of /gu/
51 I agree with the interpretation of forms ka-at-tu-šu-nu (31.05:12); ka-tu-šu-nu (31.12:11) in CAD K, 308: kattû ‘guarantor,’ which is also followed by Kloekhorst (2010, 237), pace Dietrich & Loretz 2005 [2006], 265, 271. The only spelling /qa/ with ka = qà remains the N-stem 3 sg.pres. iq-qà-ab-bi (21.02:17) of the verb qabûm ‘to speak.’Other spellings with qá = ga are paqādu(m) ‘to entrust’: N-stem 3 pl.pres. ip-pá-qá-du (21.07:23) and in Gen.sg. of qātum ‘hand’: qá-ti-šu-nu-ma (41.38:5); qá-ti-šu-ma (41.38:9).52 The spelling with kí occurs only in lú.meššalku(m) ‘travelling con-ductor of Tigunna’ and the month name ITIKirari (see Tables 2 and 3).
88 Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian
are rendered by gu. This is confirmed by the chi-squared goodness-of-fit-test, which shows just significant devi-ation of the frequency of distribution from the expected one, i.e., the sign gu behaves as a newly emerged sign in the syllabary. However, this is a sign which had already existed in OAkk but had been used unambiguously. In OAss (Hecker 1968, § 39a), the sign gu is rare and is used only in initial position. In Alalaḫ texts, we have very few examples to establish whether the sign gu was a predom-inant way of expressing /gu/ (as in Mari).
Kloekhorst concludes (2010, 237) that most of the forms with velars are written “correctly,” and that the “in-correct spellings” are found on a few tablets only, showing that there was a phonological difference. I agree that a phonological difference did exist; however, among signs for velars, only the sign ku can be treated as the predom-inant way to express particular values (namely /ku/ and /qu/), while only the value /qa/ is a predominant phonetic value of a particular sign (namely qa). The other signs and values are assigned with weak evidence.
Table 23: Comparative table of signs for velar stops in OAkk, OAss, Mari and Alalaḫ VII
/a/ /i/ & /e/ /u/
OAkk (Sargonic Period)53 ga = ga, kà, qá gi = gi, kí, qìgi4 = gi4, ki4, qi4ki = ki, qí, gi5
ku = ku, qú, gu5gu = gu
OAss54 ga = ga, qá, kà((ka = qà))
gi55 = gi, geki = ki, ke, qí, qé, gi5
gu56 = guku = ku, qú, gu5
Mari ka = kaga = gaqa = qa
ki = ki, ke, qí, qégi = gi
ku = ku, qúgu = gu
Alalaḫ ka = ka, ((qà)), ((ga14))qa = qa, ((ka4))ga = ga, qá, kà
ki = ki, ke, qí, qégi = gi, ge, kí, ké
ku = ku, qú, (gu5)gu = gu
ConclusionThe following general conclusions can be drawn:1) The writing system of the Alalaḫ VII scribal school
was not yet fully standardized as compared with those of some other cuneiform traditions (e.g., Mari).
2) The statistical study shows that be & /be/, ti & /ti/ are the only cases where the sign and the phonemic sequence are strongly linked in both directions (i.e., be is used for more than 95 % of all occurrences of /be/, and /be/ is the phonetic value of more than 95 % of all occurrences of be; the same goes for ti & /ti/).
53 Gelb 1961, 28–31; Krebernik 1998, 286–298; Rubio 2006, 110–139.54 Hecker 1968, § 39.55 gi in initial position only (see Hecker 1968, § 39a).56 gu in initial position only (see Hecker 1968, § 39a).
In the cases of pa & /pa/, ka & /ka/, qa & /qa/, gu & /gu/, one can claim with strong evidence that the cor-responding phonemic sequences are the predominant values for these signs, i.e., these are probably newly emerged signs that have taken on the corresponding values in order to reflect phonemic oppositions.57 In the cases of /ba/ & ba, /ta/ & ta, /di/, /de/ & di, /te/ /ṭe/ & te, /ga/ & ga, /ki/, /qi/ & ki, /gi/ & gi, /ku/, /qu/ & ku, one can claim with strong evidence that these signs are the predominant ways to express the corresponding phonemic sequence in each case (sometimes two different phonemic sequences, where emphatics are also involved). Apart from these pairs,
57 gu was already used in OAkk; in OAss it was positionally re-stricted.
Olga V. Popova, Cuneiform Orthography of the Stops in Alalaḫ VII Akkadian 89
there is no strong correlation between the phonology and orthography of the stops in Alalaḫ VII.
3) In the case of a-vocalization only, there are separate signs for dental and velar emphatics.
4) The distribution of the signs for the voiced labial (be, bi) and voiceless and emphatic dental (te, ti) with e/i-vocalization shows that /e/ and /i/ were perceived as different phonemes in Alalaḫ VII.
5) The acquisition of some new phonetic values was due to the loss of mimation, namely the values tu4 and ṭu4 for the sign tum.
6) Compared to the systematized syllabary of Mari, Alalaḫ VII presents a great deal of variety, unlike OAkk and OAss, Alalaḫ clearly does not show one syl-labogram for each point of articulation. My hypoth-esis is the following: we can assume that, under the influence of the OB syllabary of Mari or Babylon58, with which Yamhad was in a close diplomatic rela-tionship in the 18th century BC, the syllabary of Alalaḫ VII (which was initially close to those seen in OAkk or OAss and could have been derived from one of these)59 had a tendency towards the systematic distribution of the signs used, but this tendency had not developed to the full by the time of the city’s destruction. That is, new signs and values had been introduced, but they had not led to a completely systematic relationship between sound and script. Paleographical data also support this conclusion.
7) Kloekhorst’s (2010; 2013) central idea that, when the sign da in Old Hittite cuneiform cannot be interpreted as /da/, it should cover /ṭa/ (namely in the initial po-sition of the Hittite verbs dai- ‘to put’, da- ‘to take’) turns out to be unsupported by the available Alalaḫ statistics: in Alalaḫ, da has no strong association with any phonemic sequence.
8) Taking into account all these data, it may be mislead-ing to consider Alalaḫ VII the direct source for the borrowing of Hittite cuneiform. Indeed, the following differences can also be observed. The Hittite sign ba (HZL #203) in OH/OS is rarely attested, although it
58 Influence from Mari’s scribal tradition is more probable on his-torical grounds.59 The difference consists in the use of ta for all dental stops with a-vocalization and di for all dental stops with i-vocalization in OAss, and the use of da for all dental stops with a-vocalization and ti for all dental stops with i-vocalization in OAkk. Since we cannot conclude which signs of ta and da and ti and di were innovations in Alalaḫ VII, we cannot determine which of the two syllabaries was the basis for the Alalaḫ VII system. Taking into account Wilhelm’s (2010) pale-ographic conclusion that Alalaḫ VII cuneiform is close to OAss cunei-form, we can assume that it is OAss with an OB influence.
is known with the phonetic value labial + a from OS onward. Normally, phonetic ba was used in foreign words, e.g., labarna- ‘lord’ (OS+) and so on. It remains unclear whether ba covers a special labial conso-nant, missing from the standard Hittite phonolog-ical system, or instead serves as a graphical marker of foreign borrowings. The Hittite sign be (HZL #13) is well attested with the phonetic values pát60 and pít (OS+), whereas its phonetic values be/pè/pì are ex-tremely rare, if attested at all (cf. StBoT 25, 48). The Hittite sign qa (HZL #21) with the phonetic value velar + a seems unknown to the OS corpus, while it is char-acteristic of NS texts. Note that qa is widely used for Akkadograms and Sumerograms already in OS. The Hittite sign h ̮ i (HZL #335) is not attested with the pho-netic value dental + front vowel at all. As for the Hittite sign gu (HZL #304) with the phonetic value velar + u, this is extremely rare, but it is already attested at least once in OS (pa-an-gu-uš ‘assembly’ KBo 16.71+ II 9′). So, given the difference in the use of these five signs and the fact that the distribution of signs over voiced, voiceless and emphatic values was not completed at the time of the destruction of Alalaḫ VII, it seems problematic to view the Alalaḫ VII orthography as a direct source of the attested61 Old Hittite system.
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