4 Giorgio Buccellatiparallel with a modern situation is found in Polomi 1981, concerning theinfluence on the phonology of hitherto unwritten languages of "educated"transcriptions introduced by non-native speakers.)(B) A second major filter affects <strong>Amorite</strong>. It seems certain that <strong>Amorite</strong>was never written down as such, i.e., there was no <strong>Amorite</strong> scribal tradition<strong>and</strong> accordingly, no <strong>Amorite</strong> texts. We only have <strong>Amorite</strong> personal names(plus a few technical terms), which were written down by Sumerian <strong>and</strong><strong>Akkadian</strong> scribes, who developed their own conventions for rendering inwriting the sounds of a language they did not normally speak, though presumablythey did underst<strong>and</strong> it (the existence of <strong>Amorite</strong> "interpreters" ispresumably applicable ,only to the Sumerian south, at a time when <strong>Amorite</strong>was still something of a novelty).1.1.2. The wm'ting systemInasmuch as we are dealing with a dead language, considerations about phonologyare fundamentally affected by our underst<strong>and</strong>ing of the cuneiformwriting system. Here are some of the most significant.(A) There is a heavy reliance on various LOGOGRAPHIC subsystems, whichapply especially to certain nouns <strong>and</strong> numerals, <strong>and</strong> exhibit considerable differencesdepending on time periods <strong>and</strong> text types (in modern transliterations,logograms are generally rendered in small capitals with their Sumerianvalue, e.g., URU for iilum 'city'). Logograms are of no value for phonologicalreconstruction-so much so that one might question whether they aregraphemes at all (see S 1.1.4). This, however, does not seriously affect ouroverall underst<strong>and</strong>ing of phonology since there are sufficient syllabic correspondencesof words as lexical items to compensate for the widespread useof logograms as textual items.(B) The use of HISTORICAL WRITINGS is more problematic, <strong>and</strong> it affects especiallyour ability to determine the time period at which a certain phonologicalchange first occurred. For instance, the loss of final short vowelsbegins to be attested towards the end of the second millennium, but vowelsin this position continue to be marked in the writing all the way down to theend of the documentation. In such cases we may assume that the linguisticphenomenon (as distinct from its graphemic representation) became operativeacross the board when first attested--a conclusion which is confirmed,in the particular case mentioned, by the fact that a short vowel in word-finalposition, written to indicate a presumed case ending, is often incorrect bymorphological st<strong>and</strong>ards (e.g. iilu, iila, or iili are used indiscriminately for
<strong>Akkadian</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Amorite</strong> <strong>Phonology</strong> 5d), which indicates that the proper vowel was no longer supplied by anyactive linguistic competence.(C) ORTHOGRAPHIC CONVENTIONS correspond to certain phonological regularitieswhich we must define inferentially. For instance, while there are cuneiformsigns used to render the presence of glottal stop, they do notnormally occur in word-initial position; thus the word for 'city' may be writtenwith the two signs , but not with the signs *
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