Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

. when there is more than one governed noun:
eqlum [ HIRC [ HIRC ßa dayya¢nim] u [ HIRC (ßa) a˙®ßu]]
‘the field of the judge and his brother, [lit., as for the field, the one of the
judge and (the one) of his brother CJ]’
(unless the governed nouns are seen as a unit by the writer: be¢l ßamê u
er≈etim)
Thus, constructions in which the possessed noun and the possessor cannot be treated as a
single entity are blocked within the HIRC and a periphrastic construction involving
topicalization is forced in which either the multiple head nouns are topicalized (ma¢rum u
ma¢rtum) and resumed by a single head-internal relative, the head of which of unmarked
for number (ßa ßarr®m), 34 or the single entity is topicalized (eqlum) and resumed by two
distinct, coordinated HIRCs. In both cases each HIRC refers to a single entity that can
then be equated with one or more topics. Huehnergard’s caveat to the rule in (52b) is the
exception that proves the rule: where “the governed nouns are seen as a unit”
(Huehnergard 2000, 363), the HIRC can be used since the cardinality and the definiteness
of the possessed noun and the possessor is equivalent; the same goes for plurals that
make use of the HIRC. The “topic-plus-focus” articulation of the HIRC that I describe
here can, presumably, be assimilated to, for example, Basilico’s description of
topicalization in small clauses (2003) on the assumption that the marker of subordination
*-u originated as a resultative suffix that formed an adjectival small clause (see below).
34 In Old Akkadian, however, we find an older form of the construction in which the head of the HIRC, an inflected
form of ßa, agrees with the topical noun in terms of case, number and gender.
254