Aramaic ?k?, lyk? and Iraqi Arabic ?

aku, maku: The Mesopotamian Particles of Existence Author(s): Christa Mller-Kessler Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 123, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 2003), pp. 641646 Published by: American Oriental Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3217756 . Accessed: 17/03/2011 06:27
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aos. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

American Oriental Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Oriental Society.

http://www.jstor.org

Aramaic 'k', lyk' and Iraqi Arabic 'aku, maku: The Mesopotamian Particles of Existence
CHRISTA MULLER-KESSLER FRIEDRICH-SCHILLER-UNIVERSITAT JENA

linguistic phenomenon which has been evident in the central and southern Mesopota-

mian area (the former Babylonia), including neighboring Khuzistan,since the early Christian centuries is the deictic indicator k "here"that functions predominantlyas the adverb k' or kh, and is a Common Aramaicparticle.1The earliest attestationof kh in Aramaic occurs in the Sfire inscriptionsin ancient northernSyria outside the boundariesof Mesopotamia,2 and it is still employed in modern Aramaic. This deictic particle can be combined with many other grammaticalparticles. For example, with the deictic element h' it forms the adverbhkh or h(')k' "here,hither,"3 which appearsin Classical Syriac in a dissimilated varianthrk'4and in modernWest Aramaic (e.g., Ma'lula) on account of phonetic change as hoxa.5 Furthermore can be combined with prepositions, e.g., with the proclitic preposika tion l_, as the adverb Ik' "here,"with 'd as 'd k' "up to here,"or with mn as mn k' "from here."6This list could be lengthened, but for our purposes this is not necessary, since all other possible combinations can be looked up in the relevant Aramaic dictionaries. Another grammaticalcategory where the deictic indicator k' is in use is that of the demonstrativepronounsthat refer to distance. As early as ImperialAramaic forms such as zk, dk, zk', znk, and zky7and augmentedvariantsh'z'k, and h'zyk (pre-ClassicalMandaic)8are identical for the masculine and employed, and only later shortenedvariantslike h'k "that," feminine singular.9For the plural ("those") one has 'Ik, 'lky in Imperial Aramaic, hlyk in QumranAramaic and Jewish PalestinianAramaic, hn(y)kin ChristianPalestinianAramaic, Babylonian TalmudicAramaic, and Mandaic.10This means that the deictic particle k' can be added to the basic forms of the demonstrativepronounsthat are identical with the neardeixis (z', d', zn, dn, or 'ylyn, hlyn, and hnyn), thereby forming the far-deixis.

An earlierversion of this article was presentedat the twenty-eighthDeutscher Orientalistentag Bamberg, 27 in March 2001. 1. One can hardlyestablish the Aramaiclanguage type in use from the scanty text material(dockets, short inscriptions)extant before the Christianarea in the east. The Hatraninscriptionsmust be excluded here, since from the linguistic-dialectalpoint of view Hatralies outside the boundaryof central and southernBabylonia, which has always been considered a distinct areahistorically and linguistically, even in the ancient Near Easternperiod. 2. Fitzmyer 1995: 186. 3. Sokoloff 2002: 381. 4. Noldeke 1977: 97. 5. Arnold 1990: 395. 6. Miller-Kessler 1991: 141. 7. For ImperialAramaic, see Folmer 1995: 198-205. 8. Pre-ClassicMandaicadds now h'z'k "that(m.),"6Ba14 (= BM 132948 in Miller-Kessler 1996: 186), hz'k, Christie's Mandaic lead roll (= Miiller-Kessler1999b: 442 1. 81); h'zyk "that(f.)," 13Aa42 (= BM 135791, unpublished lead roll). These central and southeasternBabylonian Aramaic forms survive in the Iraqi ChristianArabic dialect of Baghdadas hadak and hadik, cf. Abu-Haidar1991: 81. 9. See Miller-Kessler 2003a [in press]. 10. Cf. Miller-Kessler 1999a: 84-85; Sokoloff 2002: 387; Drower and Macuch 1963: 125.

Journal of the American Oriental Society 123.3 (2003)

641

642

Journal of the American OrientalSociety 123.3 (2003)

A comparable situation exists for the Classical Arabic demonstrativepronouns of distance ddka, tdka, tika, dalika, tilka, 'ulaka, and 'ulalika and their diverse dialectal byforms, which need not be listed here. None have yet been attestedfor Early Arabic (Friharabisch). All of the above-mentionedforms in Aramaicand Arabic are well known, and this overview is intended only as a demonstrationthat the deictic particle k' may be suffixed or combined with many other particles (demonstratives,prepositions, adverbs). The same is true for the following variant forms of the particle of existence, which are restrictedto the central and southeasternBabylonian Aramaic dialects. This dialect group, to which belong Mandaic, Babylonian Talmudic Aramaic, and a few incantation texts in koine Babylonian Aramaic, is quite distinct from the other northeasternAramaic dialects such as Palmyrene,Hatran,and Syriac. The latterhave only the simple particleof existence 'yt(y) "thereis" and lyt "thereis not." Both 'yt and lyt or l"yt are Common Aramaic, and except for the koine Babylonian Aramaic, examples are accountedfor in the relevantreference grammarsand do not present any problem.They differ in the dialects only by their diverse pronunciation, but not in spelling. Apart from the non-augmented particles of existence, one finds the variants augmentedby k' in the central and southeasternBabylonian Aramaic dialects. They are restricted to this dialect group and do not survive in the Neo-Syriac dialects, as do other grammaticalfeatures, such as the infinitive forms of the derived stems. For Babylonian Talmudic Aramaic one has 'yk' < *'yt + k' "there is" and lyk' <*1' + 'yt + k' "there is not" in the following examples: w'yk' d'mry "and there are some who
say ... ," Hullin 3b; 'yk' gbr' byhwd'y "there is a man among Jews," Baba Mesia 86a; and

negated lyk' Im'n d'mr "thereis none who said.. ." Megilla 26b; or bmqwmdlyk' psyd', Baba Qamma27b.l For pre-ClassicalMandaicthe contractedvariant'k' is alreadyattested in wmn ns{m}m't' d-'k' bg'w, bhzyn 's'ry' "andfrom all souls that exist in these! magical bonds,"lead roll b 120-22 (= Lidzbarski 1909: 368); hyl'ywn d-kwlhwnml'ky' d-'k' bmy' sy'wy' "the might of all angels who exist in the black sea," Ligabue lead roll 34/5, with variant*lhyl'ywn *d-k[w]lhwnml'ky' wdmlk' d-'yk' bml'y' sy'wy' "the might of all angels and of the king who exist in the black sea," Macuch lead roll la31-32 (= Miiller-Kessler 2003b [in preparation]); well as both forms 'k' and 'k' in Mandaicmagic bowls: wmn kwl as d-'k' bbyt[h] "andfrom everyone who is there in his house," BM 91781:14 (= Segal 2000: 93M), and the parallel wmn kwl d-'k' bbyth, BM 91731:9 (= Segal 2000: 90M). The forms 'k' and 'k' correspondto the negated versions lyk' and I'kV,although no nelater gated form has yet been attestedfor the pre-Classicalincantationcorpus. Furthermore, Classical Mandaic texts show: 'k' d-g'byr myn'n "there is one who is stronger than us," Ginzdyamina 80:24 (= Petermann1867: 80); 'k' hyy' k' m'r'y 'k' m'nd' d-hyy' "thereis the living one, there is my lord, there is Manda d-Hiyya," de Morgan 1904, 3:1; lyk' (variant l k') d-lyt Ih s'k' "thereis nothing thathas no end,"Ginzayamina 77:18 (= Petermann1867: 77). The spelling with the grapheme' is naturallyonly the mater lectionis for /i/ or /l/. Also the koine Babylonian Aramaic bowls once show 'yk' in the sentence: wkl Iwtt''ysp' smyd' wnydr' wqyryt' wlwtt' wsyqwpyt' d'yk' bgwt' "andevery curse, bridled spell, vow, imprecation, curse, and plague that exist there in the inside,"Miiller-Kessler2003a, bowl 15:4.12 In Neo-Mandaic, viz., the dialect of Ahwaz in the province Khuzistanthe augmentedpar11. For more examples, see Schlesinger 1928: 140-42 and Sokoloff 2002: 113-14, 625-26. 12. Misunderstoodin the editio princeps by Naveh and Shaked 1993: 132.

MULLER-KESSLER: The Mesopotamian Particles of Existence

643

tide of existence has survived as ekko or ekka "thereis," and as negated lekka, lekko "there is not." In this very dialect it functions as a pseudo-verb ext, lext, but only in the present tense, and it is conjugatedwith the personal suffixes.13 It should be pointed out thatin the late tractatesof the BabylonianTalmud(Nedarim,Nazir, Tamid,Kerithoth,Me'ilah, Tamid),which aremainly writtenin StandardLiteraryBabylonian Aramaic, similarto the language of the Geonim, and are nearly identical to Targumic Aramaic, the augmentedforms do not occur. A similar situation exists in Classical Syriac, which forms a central Aramaic group with StandardLiterary Babylonian Aramaic and thereforedoes not employ this augmentedparticle of existence. Again one has an isogloss by which the central and southeasternBabylonian Aramaic group deviates from Classical Syriac. Furthermore,this augmented particle of existence does not appear as a linguistic phenomenon in ninety percent of the incantation bowls composed in StandardLiterary Babylonian Aramaic or in the magic bowls inscribed in the two Syriac scripts (Estrangela and Manichaean), although the latter often conform to the central and southeasternBabylonian Aramaic dialect type. 14 '(y)k' and lyk' are formed by the assimilation of k' to the final consonant t of the particle of existence or its negated form lyt. This is not problematic with regard to phonetics, and examples can be found in the relevant standardreference grammarsand dictionaries. More interestingare the Classical Mandaic variantswith /l/ 'k' or later in Ahwaz with /e/ instead of /ay/, ekka or ekko.15These are also attestedin pre-Classicalmagic texts for which seeming Babylonian Talmudic Aramaic variants may occur in the manuscripts,but not in the printededitions. This central and southeasternBabylonian Aramaic 'k' form seems to have surviveduntil today in the centraland southernIraqiArabic dialects. We find it in everyday 'aku"thereis," and in negated mdku"thereis not."Concerningthese Arabic dialectal forms 'aku and maku of Iraq,one finds hardly any contributionsfrom Arabic scholars, who in most cases assume an internalArabic development.The Arabic dialect experts have been very contradictoryin their explanationsof 'aku and maku.In the linguistic introductionto MesopotamianArabic in the Handbuchder arabischen Dialekte, Otto Jastrowdoes not deal with either particle,16 but this handbookwas not intended as a forum for theoretical explanations. It is appropriatehere to begin with earlier attempts to explain this specific central and southern Iraqi Arabic dialect particle: Nisar Malaika argued in 1963 that 'aku developed from the imperfect of the auxiliaryverb kana "to be" ykin, but only secondarily on analogy to negated maku "there is not." The sequence suggested by Malaika is: "*maykun > *ma'akun> *ma'aku> mdku(vgl. dazu ha. lam yaku)."'akuwas separatedonly from the negated form.17 Probably based on Malaika's suggestion, in his 1974 contribution on 'aku the "thereis,"WernerDiem paraphrases quotationof the IraqiArabic scholarJalal al-Hanafi al-Baghdadiof 1963: "Galal adds that 'others' see in 'aku und maku a contraction(ihtisar) of yakun 'he (it) is' and ma yakun 'he (it) is not.' "18 Haim Blanc in CommunalDialects in Baghdad (1964) claims 'aku for the entire territory of Mesopotamia with the exception of the hilly north (including Mardin), which instead has fihu andfiyu. For the negated form he states that Moslems, Jews, and Christians
13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. See, for more details, Macuch 1993: 91-92, 400, 409. See, in general, Muller-Kessler2001. See Macuch 1993: 400. Jastrow 1980: 140-58. Malaika 1963: 57. Jalal 1963: 22.

644

Journal of the American OrientalSociety 123.3 (2003)

have a correspondingform pronouncedmaku,but that it locally diverges. Here Blanc refers to 'Ana on the Middle Euphrateswhich has maku, and to some southernIraqidialects with mames. Apart from the present forms, Blanc also mentions Barthelemy's Dictionnaire arabe-franqais(p. 776), and its etymological conjecturethat long dku derived from hak-hu, which Blanc considers an "ingenious conjecture."19 Without consideringthe geographicaldistributionof the two terms, which are indeed restrictedto certainareas in Mesopotamia,in 1974 Diem20 attemptedto derive both particles from Yemenite Arabic. For 'aku he predicts a combined form consisting of the deictic indicator k and the independent pronoun of the third person singular masculine *(h)u. He anticipates a possible objection, since in the dialect of Baghdad this pronoun is huwwa, referring to compounds like minu < *min hu "who," sinu "what,"and yahu "which."The elision of h in *hu after a consonant as in minu and sinu would also be the case in 'aku, whereas in ydhu the h would have been preserved. Neither phonetic nor morphological objections exist to the positing of a compound *ak + *hu. The existence of a compound of the deictic element with the personal pronoun of the third person can be demonstratedfor Yemenite Arabic in the dialects of the towns Ta'izz and Ibb: in third masculine 'akkuwwaand feminine 'akkiyya,in plural 'akunnaand 'akinna. The basic meaning of the term in Yemenite, to continue Diem's argument,is "is there,"which on analogy to other languages-but not to Iraqi Arabic (so Diem)-underwent "an analogous shift of meaning"to "thereis." In contrast to Diem, Jastrow takes a different point of view in a long footnote in his monographon the MesopotamianArabic Qoltu dialects. He proposes deriving this particle from Arabic kdna "to be." Citing numerousexamples from the dialect of Azex, he points to forms in the Azex paradigmof kiku"thereis" formed by the presence indicatorku + the imperfect ykun: kdyku"therewas" < kdn + ykun, with the negated variantmdku"thereis not" from md kdyku"thereis not." To quote Jastrow, "Die Existenz von mdkuinnerhalbeines Paradigmas,das eindeutig aus altemyakun abgeleitet ist, sprichtgegen die These W. Diems. Diem derzufolge irak-arabisches'aku, maku nicht mit yakun, sondern mit einer im Jemen belegten Partikelak-zusammenhangt."21 To date, however, it has never been considered whether 'aku and mdkumight have developed in a less complicated way. That is, no one has connected the two particles with the central and southeasternBabylonian Aramaicvariantform of the particleof existence 'yk'. Attention should be drawnin this connection to the quotationof an Arabic scholar already mentioned by Diem 1974: "accordingto the Iraqi scholar Galal al-Hanafi al-Bagdadi the famous Pere Anastase al-Karmalideclared 'aku to be of Sabean and-if I understandhim correctly-ultimately Greek origin, an opinion to be discardedimmediately as impossible." Withoutbeing able to check the quotationof Pere Anastase al-Karmali,I wonderif by "Sabean" he meant the Subhi, i.e., the Mandaeansof Iraq, who display in their literaturethe first indication of Arabic maku in the form of mdkd, 'tr' d-m'k' nsy' "a place where there are no women,"Drower Collection 34. This mdkdis alreadythe Arabic form, but even then the internalArabic argumentsare not fully convincing. A number of factors already pointed out by Diem speak against the deriviation from ykin. The linguistic development via ykun is only possible for maku if we posit a complicated chain of apocopes and changes of stress. The form of 'akucannotbe explained in this way. Also mdkuin the northerndialect of Azex (outside the borderof ModernIraq)was in19. Blanc 1964: 146-47. 20. Diem 1974: 448-53. 21. Jastrow 1981: 164.

MULLER-KESSLER: The Mesopotamian Particles of Existence

645

fluenced by central Iraqi Arabic maku and cannot be taken as a convincing argument for the correct derivation of 'aku and maku from the prefixed form yakun of kana. Both 'aku and maku are fixed forms expressing existence and are employed in schematic paradigms in both present and past tense, as is the case for maku in Azex.22 A similar shortcoming in the line of argumentation is the presumption that the deictic particle ka + personal pronoun of the third person masculine singular hi yields ku. Here also one would have expected Yemenite feminine and plural variants as well. The suggestion by T. M. Johnstone to take 'aku and maku as ossified verbs or demonstrative particles is hardly likely.23 In conclusion, one may say that the solutions proposed to date to explain 'aku and maku by internal Arabic developments are less than satisfactory. In contrast to the interpretatio difficilior of an Arabic derivation, one can assume the simpler solution that an Aramaic loan of the particle of existence 'yt augmented by the deictic element k' forms the base of these terms. This Aramaic '(y)k' originated and survived in the precise geographical locations where the characteristic Baghdadi Arabic 'aku and maku are in use today. One might also compare another Aramaic syntactical feature of this area, the Iraqi Arabic indicator for the future gam, which is based on the Aramaic participle qd'em formerly employed in a shortened form qa in Mandaic and (Babylonian) Talmudic Aramaic.24 This gdm shows nearly identical syntactical functions in indicating present and future as in former central and southeastern Babylonian Aramaic.25 Also noteworthy are the prepositions bdrrd "outside," derived from Aramaic br', and gidddm "before" from Aramaic qwdm, cited by Mailaka.26 Therefore with Oussani in his article "The Arabic Dialect of Baghdad," one can rightly call this geographical part of Mesopotamia "the land of aku and maku,"27 and the former home of 'k' and lyk'.
22. 'yk' and lyk' in Mandaic and (Babylonian)TalmudicAramaicnever carry a suffixed enclitic personal pronoun. This was pointed out by my colleague TheodoreKwasmanin the discussion after the reading of my paper at Bamberg. 23. Johnstone 1967: 146 n. 1. 24. See Noldeke 1964: 379; Schlesinger 1928: 42-44; Sokoloff 2002: 976-77. Incantationbowl texts in koine Babylonian Aramaic from Nippur [CBS 2945:7, CBS 16041:11] show still the long and non-apocopated form qymynfor the plural;see Miiller-Kessler2003a [in press]. 25. For various examples, see Mailaka 1963: 79, 81; Denz 1971: 66-67. 26. Mailaka 1963: 33. 27. Oussani 1901: 106.

REFERENCES

Abu-Haidar,F 1991. ChristianArabic of Baghdad. Semitica Viva 7. Wiesbaden:Otto Harrassowitz. Arnold, W. 1990. Das NeuwestaramdischeV, Grammatik.Semitica Viva 4. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Dialects in Baghdad. Harvard Middle EasternMonographs10. Cambridge, Blanc, H. 1964. Communal
Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.

des Denz, A. 1971. Die Verbalsyntax neuarabischenDialektes von Kwayris (Irak). Abhandlungenfiir die Kunde des Morgenlandes40, 1. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. of Diem, W. 1974. A Historical Interpretation IraqiArabic 'aku "thereis." Orbis 23: 448-53. Drower Collection: partially unpublishedDrower Collection housed in the Bodlian Library,Oxford, quoted by no. Drower, E. S., and R. Macuch, 1963. A Mandaic Dictionary. Oxford: ClarendonPress. Fitzmyer,J. A. 1995. The AramaicInscriptionsofSefire. 2nd ed. Biblica et Orientalia19. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute.

646

Journal of the American Oriental Society 123.3 (2003)

Folmer, M. 1995. The AramaicLanguage in the AchaemenidPeriod. Louvain: Peeters. Jalal al-Hanafi al-Baghdddi.1963. Dictionary of the Baghdadi Dialect, vol. A. Baghdad. Jastrow,0. 1980. Das mesopotamischeArabisch, IV: Text in der Mundartder Muslime von Bagdad. In Handbuchder arabischenDialekte, ed. W. Fischer and 0. Jastrow.PortaLinguarumOrientalium NS 16. Wiesbaden:Otto Harrassowitz.Pp. 140-73. .1981. Die mesopotamisch-arabischen Franz Steiner. qdltu-Dialekte,vol. 2. Stuttgart: Johnstone,T M. 1967. Eastern Arabian Dialect Studies. London: Oxford Univ. Press. Lidzbarski, M. 1909. Ein mandaisches Amulett. In Florilegium ou recueil de travaux d'e'rudition dedies a Monsieur le MarquisMelchior de Vogiie.Paris:ImprimerieNational. Pp. 349-73. Macuch, R. 1993. NeumanddischeTexteim Dialekt von Ahwdz. Semitica Viva 12. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. des Malaika,N. 1963. Grundziigeder Grammatik arabischen Dialektes von Bagdad. Wiesbaden:Otto Harrassowitz. Morgan, de J. 1904. Etudes linguistiques, IIe partie: Textesmandaites. Mission scientifique en Perse V Paris. Teil Miiller-Kessler,Ch. 1991. Grammatikdes Christlich-Paldstinisch-Aramdischen, 1: Schriftlehre, Lautlehre,Formenlehre.Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag. 1996. The Story of Bguzan-Lilit, Daughterof Zanay-Lilit.JAOS 116: 185-95. 1999a. Die fruhe christlich-palastinisch-aramaische CCR 1 tiberEvangelienhandschrift setzt durcheinen ostaramaischen(syrischen) Schreiber?Journalfor the Aramaic Bible 1: 79-86. . 1999b. AramaischeBeschworungenund astronomischeOmina in nachbabylonischer Zeit. Das FortlebenmesopotamischerKulturim VorderenOrient. In Babylon: Focus Mesopotamischer Geschichte, Wiegefriiher Gelehrsamkeit,Mythos in der Moderne, 2: InternationalesColloquium der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft24.-26. Marz 1998 in Berlin, ed. J. Renger.Berlin: Saarbriicken Kommissionsverlag.Pp. 427-43. . 2001. The Earliest Evidence for TargumOnqelos from Babylonia and the Question of Its Dialect and Origin. Journalfor the Aramaic Bible 3: 181-98. .2003a. A Handbookof Magic Bowls in Koine Babylonian Aramaic. Leiden: Brill-Styx [in press]. .2003b. Mehr zu den MonddamonenSidrus-Siraand Sin-Dew. OrientaliaNS [in ms.]. Naveh, J., and Sh. Shaked 1993. Magic Spells and Formulae: AramaicIncantationsof Late Antiquity. Jerusalem:Magnes Press. N6ldeke, Th. 1875; rpt. 1964. Manddische Grammatik.Darmstadt:Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Darmstadt: WissenschaftlicheBuchNoldeke, Th. 1898; rpt. 1977. Kurzgefasstesyrische Grammatik. gesellschaft. Oussani, G. 1901. The Arabic Dialect of Baghdad.JAOS22: 97-114. Petermann,H. 1867. Thesauruss. Liber magnus vulgo "LiberAdami" appellatus opus Mandaeorum summiponderis. Leipzig: T. . Weigel. Schlesinger, M. 1928. Satzlehre der aramiischen Sprache des babylonischen Talmuds.Leipzig: Verlag der Asia Major. Segal, J. B. 2000. Catalogue of the Aramaic and Mandaic IncantationBowls in the British Museum. London: British Museum Press. Bar Ilan Univ. Press. Sokoloff, M. 2002. A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. Ramat-Gan: