Authors:
Alexander Andrason Department of Ancient Studies, Stellenbosch University, 7602, South Africa

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Hans Lange Department of Ancient Studies, Stellenbosch University, 7602, South Africa

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This article analyses Biblical Aramaic (BA) performatives within a prototype approach. The authors demonstrate that BA performatives largely comply with the crosslinguistic prototype and its grammatical and extra-grammatical features. Crucially, although the two ‘tenses’ used, Suffix Conjugation (SC) and Active Participle (AP), exhibit similar frequency in performatives, they differ in distribution: the performative SC is more conventionalised/archaic/typical of Ezra while the performative AP is more productive/innovative/ typical of Daniel. These differences reflect the gradual replacement of SC by AP in performatives due to the profound advancement of the two ‘tenses’ along their respective grammaticalisation paths: the resultative and imperfective paths.

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Editor(s)-in-Chief: Gábor KÓSA

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  • Benedek PÉRI (Eötvös Loránd University)
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  • István VÁSÁRY(Eötvös Loránd University)
  • Yutaka YOSHIDA (Kyoto University)
  • Peter ZIEME (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities)

 

Dr. Gábor Kósa
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Eötvös Loránd University
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kosa.gabor@btk.elte.hu

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Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae
Language English
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1950
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