Syllabification and Stress

[us4-he2-gal2]

Thread Orientation: On this thread we discuss the ways in which the Akkadian language forms syllables and which of the syllables in a word is given stress.
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Syllabification and Stress

Understanding the rules of syllabification will become an important aspect of reading Akkadian; as we noted on the Phonology thread, the myriad of cuneiform signs generally represent a given syllable when writing Akkadian - henceforth, understanding how the language allows or does not allow a word a given combination of syllables becomes all important.


Luckily, the rules of Syllabification seem pretty straight foward for this language - Huehnergard gives the following three specifications:


1. Every syllable has one, and only one, vowel:

so AVA , EEL, LUA, IAT are not ok.

AV, VEV, DE are.


2. There are only two cases when a syllable may *start* with a vowel: a) if it is the first syllable in a word. b) if it is the second of two successive vowels, for example, take the word: ki-am. Because the first syllable ends in the vowel i, the second syllable may begin with a vowel.

so let's take the word abum. The word may be split into two syllable like this: a/bum. However it could not be split ab/um, because the u vowel is a) not starting the word and b) not the second of two successive vowels as the a in ki-am.


3. No syllable may begin or end with two consonants.

so akk, tde, tto are not ok.

ak, te, vev are.

- Stress -

Huehnergard relays that the stressed syllable in Akkadian is entirely predictable and follows 3 simply rules. This is indeed cause for celebration as the stuff is easy to forget and so the easier the better! Stress is important for a number of reasons, certainly it is important for the proper use of spoken langange.. without with language would approach something of a monotone and become less distinguishable.




To learn the three rules of Akkadian syllable stress, one must first learn the distinguish three types of syllables:

Light - Syl. ends in short vowel	Heavy - end in long vowel macon or short vowel plus consonant:	Ultra-Heavy - ends in long vowel circumflex or in any long vowel plus consonant:
e.g. -ā, -bā	e.g. -ā, -bā, -ak -bak	-â, -â, -āk, -bāk

Now for the rules. A syllable in Akkadian has the stress if:


a) The last syllable: contains an ultraheavy syllable, it takes the stress -

ib/nû
nû is ultraheavy and final, it takes the stress

ib/dûk
dûk is ultraheavy and final, it takes the stress


b) *if* there is no ultra heavy final syllable, but the word contains non-final heavy or ultraheavy syllable, then that syllable bears the stress:

i/par/ras
par is heavy because short vowel plus consonant is a heavy syllable - because the final syl. is not ultraheavy, par bears the stress.

i/dū/kū
dū bears the stress: kū is final but not ultraheavy because macro vowels (ū) must be followed by a consonant to make them ultra heavy (kūg).

tē/te/nep/pu/šā
nep recieves the stress as šā is not ultraheavy, pu is light; nep (short vowel plus consonant = "heavy") , is the last non-final heavy syllable.


c) *if* there is no heavy/ ultra heavy syllable in the final or second final syllable, the first syllable bears the stress:

zi/ka/rum
zi receives the stress - ka is light and rum is heavy, but not ultraheavy.

i/lū
i receives the stress: lū is in this case the final syllable, meaning it would need to be ultraheavy not just heavy to take the stress.

[af]

There is something that i can not understand about stress in akkadian.
I think we all know this resource www.soas.ac.uk/baplar/recordings/the-epic-of-gilgamesh-old-babylonian-version-bmvat-lines-ii0-iii14-read-by-martin-west.html. Here a man is reading a fragment of the epic of Gilgamesh and the stress in words Gilgamesh and Enkidu is absolutely unclear to me.
Why does he say gilgAmesh and enkIdu? As it is wrong reading. Some other readers read it in a right way, but not all of them.

[us4-he2-gal2]

Af:



You are truly one with a strangely strong focus when you apply it Now listening to the readings on this page is what people in my class should think of doing. About your question, I think you are correct in that the stress should probably be on the first syllable of these names.

One thing Prof. Beaulieu stated in class was that he did not expect us to get the stress right this year when reading out loud - he says that there are people who have been in the field their entire lives who don't get the stress right so he won't expect us to this year. We are just supposed to be aware of how it works.. I suppose it's more or less easy to figure out one word at a time but at the pace of reading, harder to pronounce correctly (unless you remember how the word sounds). In any case your finding these mistakes is no surprise - I suppose in the end it's more important to the Assyriolgist to nail down syllabification (to work with the cuneiform texts) than stress (for reading out loud).


And then there is also the fact that I am pretty sure Martin West is a Classicist with an interest in the Ancient Near East rather than an Assyriologist himself.