Reflexes of laryngeals in the Akkadian loanwords from the West-Semitic Languages in the 1st millenium BCE

The aim of this work is to determine the patterns used by the speakers of Akkadian to adapt laryngeal phonemes in loanwords from West-Semitic languages by analysing the reflexes of these phonemes in the Akkadian words. Corpus used for analysis is taken mainly from already existing lists of West-Semitic loanwords in Akkadian (von Soden 1966, 1968, 1977; Cherry 2017; Zadok 2021, 2022) subsequently reduced using criteria based on Abraham - Sokoloff (2011) and supplemented by additional lexemes (mainly from CAD). The results of this analysis are further corroborated by analysing transcriptions of West-Semitic personal names occurring in RINAP 1 - 5 containing laryngeals into cuneiform. Findings of these analyses are then presented in the final part of the work. It was possible to determine quite unambiguously the individual patterns of adaptation of the respective laryngeal phonemes. Original /ḥ/ and /ḫ/ were adapted as /ḫ/, original /ˤ/ and /ˀ/ as /ˀ/ or ∅, depending on its position. Original /h/ and /ġ/ were not present in the studied corpus, thus precluding any possibility of determining their adaptation patterns. The results of this work may be applied to better understand strategies employed by Akkadian speakers in adapting loanwords and they give a systematic survey of these patterns when applied..