Paper argues that internal changes in Assyrian, not contact with Aramaic, explain direct object marking.
During its long history, Akkadian typically did not mark its direct objects syntactically, until Neo-Assyrian. This dialect inconsistently marks direct objects with the preposition ana, a preposition that otherwise marks direction. Many scholars have suggested that this development must be a result of contact with Aramaic, where direct objects may be marked with the directional preposition l-. In this paper I will argue that an internal change in Assyrian explains this development better.
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Na’ama Pat-El (2026) studied this question.
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