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A Glossary of Old Syrian: l-z is the second of two volumes that aim to map the lexicon of Old Syrian as it can be extracted and reconstructed from the (Old Akkadian) Eblaite through the Old and Middle Babylonian corpora.
Referring to a continuum of dialects spoken in the Syrian-Levantine and Syrian-Mesopotamian regions through the third and second millennia BCE, "Old Syrian" is a diachronically conservative, geographically pluricentric, and pragmatically multilayered linguistic cluster. As such, the
Glossary pays special attention to the distribution of lexical data along diachronic, diatopic, and diastratic criteria. Given the extent and widely dispersed nature of this data, entries are supported by the most representative corpora of the Old Syrian linguistic landscape. Each entry is headed by an etymon, a kind of prelinguistic consonantal skeleton, and further information about different lexemes, their roots, and their derivations is provided in subentries. As the lexicography of Old Syrian remains uncertain, the
Glossary includes leading interpretative opinions alongside the most relevant Semitic material to corroborate the lexical choices it adopts
. Bibliographical references are succinct and restricted, as a rule, to texts easily found in any Assyriological or Semitic library.
Intended as a reference work in support of future study,
A Glossary of Old Syrian offers a clear view of the state of the field.
About the author
Joaquín Sanmartín is Professor Emeritus at the University of Barcelona. He is the author or coauthor of multiple books and studies on Akkadian, Hurrian, and Old Syrian lexicography and grammar, including
A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition and
Die keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani und anderen Orten.
