Abstract
Abstract The article asks whether the morphosyntax of embedded direct object clauses and purpose clauses in Western Neo-Aramaic reflects retention from older stages of Aramaic, or innovation under the influence of contact Arabic. To this end, direct object clauses and purpose clauses are analysed in Western Neo-Aramaic, in older stages of Aramaic, namely, Old, Official, Biblical and Qumran Aramaic, as well as Syriac, the three Western Late Aramaic dialects (CPA, JPA, SA), and in contemporaneous Syrian Arabic. The analysis considers the embedded verb form, the formal means of linking the embedded clause to the matrix clause, and the co-referentiality of the matrix and embedded subjects, and relates these features to tense-aspect-mood. The article compares the constructions in the various sources of Aramaic and Syrian Arabic and finds features that Western Neo-Aramaic has retained from Late Aramaic, which differ from Syrian Arabic, despite the well documented influence of the latter.
Highlights
The widespread asyndetic linking of these direct object complement clauses and purpose clauses constitutes a different development from what Naama Pat-El has found to have characterised adverbial clauses in Late Aramaic
The present article seeks to illuminate the historical development of the morphosyntax of direct object complement clauses and purpose clauses in Western Neo-Aramaic
It provides a historical study of the morphosyntax of direct object clauses and purpose clauses in Aramaic, especially its western branch
Summary
Syriac is a la dialect that is not part of the western branch (see discussion in § 1 above). As noted in §2.2.2, verbs of ability, and possibly one occurrence of the aspectual verb šry ‘begin’ in oa and ofea, appear to reflect a morphosyntactic pattern by which the embedded verbs in asyndetic clauses repeat features of the morphosyntax of the complement taking verb, especially the tense/aspect conjugation (Exs 13–18), and in oa, even the negative particle l- /*lā/ (Ex 15).[72] It was noted in §1 and §2.2.2 that these constructions could be considered svc s At those stages most occurrences are in yiqtol, and only two seem to be attested in qtal (Exs 13–14), but in Syriac the distribution is complete. A somewhat different pattern is found in Syriac, as well as in wla, with the inchoative matrix verb šarī ‘begin’ This aspectual predicate frequently embeds a participial clause, but in contrast to the previous examples, šarī itself is mostly found in qtal.[85] Nöldeke provides three examples (Ex 45). It complements verbs of volition and, somewhat less commonly, verbs of ability, but not aspectual verbs
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