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November 14, 2011
Akkadian Cognate List
The third edition of John Huehnergard’s A Grammar of Akkadian is out at Eisenbrauns. This edition has a Semitic cognates appendix. Such tools are always welcome additions but this list, while I think beneficial for students, has significant limitations. As Huehnergard tells us,
Many of the cognates listed below already appear in von Soden’s Akkadisches Handwörterbuch (AHw). Other cognates have been proposed by other scholars, and these scholars have been cited where appropriate. But it should be noted that this list is not intended to be complete, and I have undoubtedly overlooked many additional suggestions.
In other words it only reflects a subset, an important subset to be sure, but a subset of cognates. If one is interested in Akkadian - Hebrew cognates, this list is no substitute for Tawil’s An Akkadian Lexical Companion For Biblical Hebrew. If one is interested in comparative linguistics, it is no substitute for Swadesh like lists – the word lists in Bennett’s Comparative Semitic Linguistics for example. And none of these tools is as good as looking up lexemes of interest in the context of their individual literatures.
Don’t get me wrong, Huehnergard's list of Semitic cognates is a good addition to his grammar. In part because it (along with a couple of other welcome additions to the grammar) is free online and easy to use, I will no doubt consult it. But I will consult it taking into account both what it is and what it is not.
Via Daily Hebrew
Posted by Duane Smith at November 14, 2011 9:35 AM | Read more on Akkadian |
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Comments
Thanks for linking to us. Nice to know we are the publisher of Bennett, as well as Huehnergard. Eisenbrauns, the source for all your comparative Semitic needs! : )
James
Posted by: James at November 14, 2011 12:24 PM
Many thanks for alerting us about this. I like A Grammar of Akkadian and anything that can be added is good. Also thanks for mentioning Tawil's and Bennett's books, I have not yet seen either of these, but will attempt to get my hands on them in the near future.
Posted by: busi at November 15, 2011 7:44 PM
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