Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

Clearly, however, by the time Akkadian appears in the text-artifactual record, it has
largely been assimilated to the familiar form of head-external relative clause that we find
in English and other dependent-marking languages.
With the foregoing discussion of the head-internal relative in Akkadian still in mind,
I return to the *mini-√ construction. If the *bi-√ prefix in its existential (NOUN-e
NOUN Bare bi-√) configuration indicates that the bare noun that immediately precedes the
*bi-√ prefix is an indefinite noun in a definiteness effect environment, then verbs of the
form *mini-√ can be interpreted as a head-internal relative (bi-√) that has been made
definite through the suffixation of the third person animate possessive pronoun, namely
*-ni, so as to form a topicalized phrase. Note, therefore, the several differences between
the Akkadian HIRC and the Sumerian one: (a) the Akkadian HIRC can occur with a
distinct, topicalized noun that is coreferential with the head of the HIRC, but the
Sumerian HIRC cannot; (b) if the Sumerian HIRC needs to be topicalized or made
definite for some other reason, the HIRC itself is made definite through the addition of
the third person animate possessive pronoun, *-ni. At a fairly rough level of granularity,
this allows us to draw a parallel between the HIRC in Akkadian and Sumerian due to the
fact that, in both cases, topicalization plays a central role in the formation of HIRCs that
are definite.
(53) a. Ø b®t e¢pußu // igi bi.in.du 8
b. (b®tum) ßa e¢pußu // igi mi.ni.in.du 8
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