Verbs and adverbs: words for actions, events, and states

Verbs, roughly speaking, are words for actions, events, and states of being. "I am learning Akkadian", "Has it stopped raining yet?", and "My head hurts" are all examples of English verbs. But where English often requires two or more words to express a verb, Akkadian very efficiently only ever needs one. The subject and object of the verb can even be embedded in the word, making it even more efficient. However, that means that there is a lot to learn about the way Akkadian verbs behave.

When you have read this page, you might like to test your understanding by trying Cuneiform exercise 3.

Paradigms

As we have already seen, the basic meaning of Akkadian words is carried by their roots, usually consisting of three consonants. Affixes between and around them give the word its grammatical function in a sentence. So that we can concentrate on the shape of words—their morphology—and not worry too much about their meaning, we often use a single typical verb—a so-called paradigm—as an example. The idea is that you thoroughly learn the behaviour of the paradigm verb and use this knowledge to help you deal with other verbs. In particular, when reading texts you can compare the shape of new verbs with the paradigm to help you work out their form.

For instance, the classic Akkadian paradigm verb is parāsum, "to cut (off)". Its root consonants are p, r, and s. When we say that the infinitive form of the verb is parāsum, we mean that all verbs with three strong consonants have the same shape: compare kašādum "to reach, to conquer", šaṭārum "to write", and mahārum "to face, to receive". The only morphological difference between strong verbs is their three root consonants. (We discuss verbs with one or more weak consonants on two other pages.)

The three tenses

We can't do much just with the infinitives of verbs though: we need to be able to show when and for how long an action or event takes place, and who or what is involved in it. We will look at timing and duration first. We use the word tense for forms of the verb that show timing—although Akkadian tenses all mark aspect (duration) too. Akkadian has three main tenses, whose technical names are the preterite, the present-future or durative, and the perfect. Here is a quick overview of what they do; a little further on we shall discuss what they look like in more detail.

The preterite

This tense is used for simple, one-off actions or events in the past or the present, as well as habitual ones (depending on the context). It looks like this: iprus "he/she cut" or "he/she cuts" (similarly ikšud "he/she reached" or "he/she reaches", išṭur "he/she wrote" or "he/she writes", imhur "he/she faced" or "he/she faces"). There is a prefix before the first root consonant, and a vowel between the second and third. Some forms of the preterite also have a long vowel at the very end (e.g., iprusū "they cut").

The present-future or durative

This tense is used for actions or events in the past, present, or future that occur over a period of time. It looks like this: iparras "he/she is/was cutting" or "he/she will cut" (similarly ikaššad, išaṭṭar, imahhar). Like preterite verbs, there is a prefix before the first root consonant (and some forms have a long vowel at the end, e.g., iparrasū "they are/were cutting" or "they will cut"). But unlike preterites, in present-tense verbs the middle root consonant is doubled, with a vowel either side of it.

The perfect

This tense is rarely used on its own. Its role is usually to complete a sequence of actions or events in the preterite. The verb in the perfect tense is often the outcome of the events that preceded it. (We discuss this in further detail on the page about sentence structure). Depending on the context we can either translate it with the simple past ("he did") or with the English perfect ("he has done"). It looks like this: iptaras "he/she has cut" (similarly iktašad, ištaṭar, imtahar). Again, there is a prefix before the first root consonant (and a long vowel at the end of some forms, e.g., iptarsū "they have cut"). The distinctive feature of perfect-tense verbs is the -ta- infix betweeen the first and second root consonants.

In short, it is the infixes between the root consonants that mark tense (plus the doubling of the middle consonant in the present): iprus for the preterite, iparras for the present, and iptaras for the perfect. (But we shall also see that verbal infixes can do other useful things.) The prefixes and suffixes before and after the root are shared by all tenses. This is because they are independent of the tense and instead indicate the subject of the verb.

Showing subjects

In English, we have to use a noun or a pronoun to show who is responsible for the verb. For instance, "bites the dog" is not a sentence, even though the form of the verb tells us that there is just one biter, who is not you or me, and who acts in the present tense. In Akkadian however, it is perfectly normal not to use either noun or pronoun: kalbam iššuk is a complete sentence. (The verb is našākum "to bite", but the adjacent n and š assimilate to šš, as explained on the sound rules page. In Akkadian the verb is almost always right at the end of the sentence.) The i- at the beginning of the verb is enough to signal that the subject is "he/she". Neither a noun, such as awīlum "man", nor a pronoun, such as šū "he", is necessary—and the accusative case ending on kalbam "dog" tells us not to translate the sentence as "the dog bites".

Of course, awīlum kalbam iššuk "the man bites the dog" and šū kalbam iššuk "he bites the dog" are both legitimate Akkadian sentences too. In the second one šū is emphatic, singling out one particular biter from any another possible suspects.

Here are all the subject prefixes and suffixes with the three main tenses. As you will see, they really are the same from tense to tense. We use the paradigm verb parāsum as usual, but you can experiment with other verbs simply by substituting the root consonants.

Note how the root vowel is squeezed out of perfect-tense forms with suffixes, as explained on the Sound rules page.

In short, all tense verbs take person prefixes—in fact this is a convenient way of recognising a verb in a sentence—and all person prefixes have short vowels. But only some take suffixes too, all of which consist of long vowels.

Akkadian also uses the present and preterite tenses to form various wishes, questions and commands. We do not have space to discuss those here, but all good textbooks of the language cover them in detail.

Vowel classes

However, it's not quite true to say that all strong verbs behave in exactly the same way. In fact there are four classes of strong verbs, distinguished by the vowel between the second and third root consonants. (In the present and perfect tenses the vowel between the first and second root consonants is always a.) In dictionaries and vocabulary lists, we write the class vowels (also called theme vowels) of the verb after its infinitive, like this: parāsum (a/u). This means that verbal forms of parāsum take a between the second and third root consonants in the present and perfect tenses and u in the preterite (as we have already seen).

The four vowel classes are:

a/u verbs

These include parāsum, kašādum, mahārum, našākum and šakānum, with preterite iprus, present iparras,and perfect iptaras.

a/a verbs

These include lamādum "to learn", mahāṣum "to hit", and ṣabātum "to seize", with preterite ilmad, present ilammad, perfect iltamad.

i/i verbs

These include nadānum "to give", našāqum "to kiss", šalāmum "to be healthy", and šarāqum "to steal", with preterite išriq, present išarriq, perfect ištariq.

u/u verbs

These include balāṭum "to live", dabābum "to talk", lasāmum, "to run", and napāšum "to breathe"), with preterite ibluṭ, present iballuṭ, perfect ibtaluṭ.

These class vowels help to distinguish otherwise similar verbs. For instance, it would be all too easy to confuse verbs from the infinitives našāqum "to kiss" and našākum "to bite" if they did not have different class vowels. As it is, awīlum kalbam iššuk and awīlam kalbam iššiq are different enough to avoid ambiguity. We can see the point when we remember that cuneiform often does not distinguish between consonants in the same phonological group. So the sign for both uk and uq is 𒊌, while the sign for both ik and iq is 𒅅. It is important, then, to always learn vowel class along with the root as a key feature of any new verb.

Indicating objects

We've just seen that Akkadian verbs automatically show their subjects. They can also show their objects, as suffixed pronouns. So where in English "the dog bites him" can substitute for "the dog bites the man", Akkadian can say kalbum iššukšu instead of kalbum awīlam iššuk or emphatic kalbum šuāti iššuk "the dog bites him (and nobody else)".

In fact, Akkadian has two sets of suffixed pronouns:

• accusative suffixes, which stand in for direct objects in the accusative case
  (e.g., -šu "him" for awīlam in the example above);
• dative suffixes, which stand in for indirect objects in the genitive, with their associated prepositions, especially ana "to, for"
  (e.g., ašṭuršum, "I wrote to him", for ana awīlim ašṭur, "I wrote to the man", or ana šuāti ašṭur, "I wrote to him").

Here are the most important pronominal suffixes, attached to the verb iprusū "they (masc.) decide". (The singular iprus might confuse matters here, because the final root consonant s assimilates with the initial š of some of the suffixes. It is a common phenomenon though, and worth looking out for when you are reading.) Note that there are two forms of the "to/for me" suffix, depending on whether the verb ends in a consonant or vowel.

When both accusative and dative pronoun suffixes are used on the same verb, the dative comes first, whereas in English we would put the accusative first. So where in English we would say, "he gave it to me", Akkadian has inaddinaššu (*inaddin-am-šu), literally, "he gave to me it". (See the Sound rules page for the assimilation of m with an adjacent consonant.)

You may like to compare these suffixes with their corresponding independent pronouns.

Adverbs

Finally a few words about adverbs. We usually think of adverbs as words that modify or further qualify verbs, just as adjectives relate to nouns. For example, in that last sentence "usually" is an adverb. But in fact they can qualify adjectives too: "the dog is usually good".

As in English, Akkadian adverbs immediately precede the word they belong to. They have the same pars- shape as Akkadian adjectives, but they always end in -iš instead of a case ending. Compare the adjective in awīlum kalbam dannam iṣbat "the man seized the strong dog" with the adverb in awīlum kalbam danniš iṣbat "the man strongly seized the dog". (Both dannum and danniš are related to the verb danānum, "to be strong" (i/i). So although the nn looks like a doubled consonant, in fact it comprises two root consonants which happen to be identical.)

Content last modified on 07 Jul 2012.

Eleanor Robson

Eleanor Robson, 'Verbs and adverbs: words for actions, events, and states', Knowledge and Power, Higher Education Academy, 2012 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/knpp/cuneiformrevealed/akkadianlanguage/verbsandadverbs/]