The Relative Pronoun d- and the Pronominal Suffixes in Mandaic

Abstract

The enclitic pronominal suffixes in Neo-Mandaic are affixed to nouns and prepositions via two separate strategies. Nearly all nouns and prepositions inherited directly from Classical Mandaic take pronominal suffixes directly. All loanwords, and an extremely circumscribed set of original Mandaic words, receive pronominal suffixes after an enclitic particle, -d-. Rudolph Macuch suggested in his Handbook of Classical and Modern Mandaic that this particle is derived from the Classical Mandaic relative pronoun, d-. The evidence, however, suggests that this particle is an innovation, which ultimately derives from the metathesis of the final two root consonants of Classical Mandaic qam / qadmia 'to, for' (Neo-Mandaic qam I qamdi-), from which it spread by analogy to new lexical items.