Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

elative may have to be equated with both definite and indefinite nouns, it needs to start
out as the equivalent of a bare noun, unmarked for definiteness (or, for that matter,
gender or number). In other words, the HIRC is a noun phrase in the narrow sense of the
generative tradition rather than a determiner phrase.
The process of one-to-one identification where one entity is the HIRC (ßa e¢pußu) and
the other is the topicalized noun (b®tum) seems to be justified, at least to some degree, by
restrictions on many-to-one possessive relations within the HIRC proper. Huehnergard
notes three conditions (two that I deal with here) under which genitive constructions in ßa
must be used rather than the “construct state” genitive, or, in terms of my description of
the Akkadian HIRC up to this point: certain many-to-one possessive relations require that
the head noun be topicalized and resumed by ßa inside the relative clause so that the
HIRC can qualify each topical noun separately as in (52a) or that the possessors be
included within the HIRC and coordinated, so that the topicalized noun can be equated
with each coordinated HIRC independently (Huehnergard 2000, 363).
(52) a. when there is more than one governing noun:
ma¢rum u ma¢rtum [ HIRC ßa ßarrim]
‘the son and the daughter of the king, [lit., as for the son and the daughter,
the one of the king CJ]’
253