Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

deal of sense that two members of that paradigm might well migrate to the verb in the
same morphosyntactic position.
(19) The Exploits of Ninurta [1.6.2], ll. 348-352
348. d nin.urta dumu d en.lil 2.la 2.ke 4
gal.bi i 3.œa 2.œa 2
349. gu.ru.um na 4
215
Ninurta, the son of Enlil, wanted to do
something big,
As for the pile of stones that had been
kur.ra mi.ni.in.ak accumulated in the mountains,
350. dungu diri.ga.gin 7
Since it (pile of stone) stretched across them
a 2 bi 2.in.su 3.su 3.ud (mountains) like floating clouds,
351. bad 3 ma˙.gin 7 kalam.ma Blocking the view of the land like a huge
igi.ba bi 2.in.tab.≠ba± wall,
352. œiß bala ki.ßar 2.ra He is the one who installed a spigot (?) at
mu.ni.in.œar the horizon,
This is a nice example of a topicalized *bi-√ verb. The underlying form of line 349 is
probably something like *[gu.ru.um na 4 kur.ra bi 2.in.√ak].ni “his (= Ninurta’s) pile of
rocks which he caused to accumulate in the mountains,” which is marked as topic
through the use of the possessive pronoun topic-marking construction. The problem is
that the third person animate possessive pronoun, *-ni, apparently cannot directly follow
a finite verb, when it is functioning as an indefinite relative construction, therefore I
would argue that the third person animate possessive pronoun incorporates into the verbal
prefix: /bin/ + /ni/ > /bi ... n/ + /ni/ > /bi-ni-n/-√ (LoAp-3AnPoss-3AnimAgr-√). I should