Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

pronoun topicalization system or the equative postposition, *-gin 7, while the presupposed
material to the right of the focused constituent consists of a *bi-√ prefix verb.
Before turning to the particular examples of this distributional class, it needs to be
carefully differentiated from a distinct class that bears a superficial resemblance to it,
namely predicates of the form *XP nam.mi-√. Whereas the *XP nam bi-√ construction is
always written in the Old Babylonian period with the graphemes NAM and NE, yielding
the sequence *nam bi 2-√, the members of the *XP nam.mi-√ class, in which there is no
copula to the right of *na-/*nu-, are typically written with the graphemes NAM and MI,
yielding *nam.mi-√. Of the 95 examples of *XP nam.mi-√ and the 25 examples of *XP
nam bi-√ in the composite texts made available through ETCSL, only one simple verbal
root or compound verb occurs in both constructions: √˙u.lu˙. The decisive piece of
evidence in favor of differentiating the two constructions, however, is that fact that *XP
nam bi-√ regularly occurs with a marû root, whereas *XP nam.mi-√ never occurs with a
marû root. If some degree of variation were present, it might provide some evidence in
favor of arguing that the two forms exist in a paradigmatic opposition, but strict
differentiation of the two classes and the nature of the two orthographies would seem to
suggest that they are fundamentally different. Given the usual orthographic conventions
for cuneiform, I would suggest that *nam.mi-√ represents the morpheme *na- prefixed to
a verbal prefix of the form *bi-√, whereas the difference between the final consonant of
/nam/ and the initial consonant of /bi/ presumably indicates that no prefixation is present
in the *XP nam bi-√ construction.
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