Distributed Vowels and (Non)concatenative Morphology in Akkadian

Abstract

This thesis investigates the root-and-pattern, nonconcatenative morphology of Akkadian finite verbs. Like other Semitic languages, Akkadian’s root-and-pattern morphology poses many challenges to concatenative theories of morphology like DM. I present a novel account of root-internal vowels in Akkadian, leveraging the previously described but underutilized phonological processes of epenthesis, syncope, and featural overwriting to argue for the distribution of vocalic featural morphemes across multiple nodes in an underlying syntactic structure. The approach I develop and call distributed vowels is a synthesis of previous DM and stem-based accounts of Semitic nonconcatenative morphology. My analysis has many implications for morphophonological analyses of Semitic languages as it argues for the presence of underlying vowels in Akkadian roots and expands the use of featural overwriting presented in previous DM approaches to root-and-pattern morphology.