Neo-Assyrian Metaphors through the Telescope: Linguistic Patterns involving Body Part Constructions in the State Archives Letter Corpus
We present findings from a semi-automated linguistic analysis of the letter corpus of the online State Archives of Assyria project (SAAo), focusing on a specific grammatical configuration we dub a Body Part Construction (BPC). Based on a verb with a compound prepositional phrase involving a simple...
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Firenze University Press
2024-12-01
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| Series: | Asia Anteriore Antica |
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| Online Access: | https://riviste.fupress.net/index.php/asiana/article/view/2543 |
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| author | Matthew Ong Shai Gordin |
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We present findings from a semi-automated linguistic analysis of the letter corpus of the online State Archives of Assyria project (SAAo), focusing on a specific grammatical configuration we dub a Body Part Construction (BPC). Based on a verb with a compound prepositional phrase involving a simple human body part (e.g., alāku ina muhhi), the BPC is a basic construction for extending the semantic range of prepositional expressions in first millennium Akkadian, particularly metaphors. While specific instances of this construction have been documented in the literature, no large scale survey of them has been conducted until now. Here we present basic distributional facts about BPCs in the SAAo letter corpus, and discuss certain features of a linguistic nature and their role in constructing metaphors. We observe that most BPCs express directed motion or metaphorical variants thereof, and that such BPCs also exhibit a minor dialectal difference depending on whether they appear in Neo-Assyrian or Neo-Babylonian texts. This paper should be of interest not only for its specific findings about BPCs, but also because of the semi-automated methods used to generate its survey data that benefit from a new machine learning based computational approach.
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| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-628a4dc4a11f48568dd4e1cddb28042f |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 2611-8912 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2024-12-01 |
| publisher | Firenze University Press |
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| series | Asia Anteriore Antica |
| spelling | doaj-art-628a4dc4a11f48568dd4e1cddb28042f2025-08-20T03:21:26ZengFirenze University PressAsia Anteriore Antica2611-89122024-12-01610.36253/asiana-2543Neo-Assyrian Metaphors through the Telescope: Linguistic Patterns involving Body Part Constructions in the State Archives Letter CorpusMatthew Ong0Shai Gordin1University of Helsinki, FinlandDepartment of the Land of Israel and Archaeology, Ariel University, Israel We present findings from a semi-automated linguistic analysis of the letter corpus of the online State Archives of Assyria project (SAAo), focusing on a specific grammatical configuration we dub a Body Part Construction (BPC). Based on a verb with a compound prepositional phrase involving a simple human body part (e.g., alāku ina muhhi), the BPC is a basic construction for extending the semantic range of prepositional expressions in first millennium Akkadian, particularly metaphors. While specific instances of this construction have been documented in the literature, no large scale survey of them has been conducted until now. Here we present basic distributional facts about BPCs in the SAAo letter corpus, and discuss certain features of a linguistic nature and their role in constructing metaphors. We observe that most BPCs express directed motion or metaphorical variants thereof, and that such BPCs also exhibit a minor dialectal difference depending on whether they appear in Neo-Assyrian or Neo-Babylonian texts. This paper should be of interest not only for its specific findings about BPCs, but also because of the semi-automated methods used to generate its survey data that benefit from a new machine learning based computational approach. https://riviste.fupress.net/index.php/asiana/article/view/2543 Akkadian metaphorsNeo-Assyrian lettersbody partscomputational linguistics |
| spellingShingle | Matthew Ong Shai Gordin Neo-Assyrian Metaphors through the Telescope: Linguistic Patterns involving Body Part Constructions in the State Archives Letter Corpus Asia Anteriore Antica Akkadian metaphors Neo-Assyrian letters body parts computational linguistics |
| title | Neo-Assyrian Metaphors through the Telescope: Linguistic Patterns involving Body Part Constructions in the State Archives Letter Corpus |
| title_full | Neo-Assyrian Metaphors through the Telescope: Linguistic Patterns involving Body Part Constructions in the State Archives Letter Corpus |
| title_fullStr | Neo-Assyrian Metaphors through the Telescope: Linguistic Patterns involving Body Part Constructions in the State Archives Letter Corpus |
| title_full_unstemmed | Neo-Assyrian Metaphors through the Telescope: Linguistic Patterns involving Body Part Constructions in the State Archives Letter Corpus |
| title_short | Neo-Assyrian Metaphors through the Telescope: Linguistic Patterns involving Body Part Constructions in the State Archives Letter Corpus |
| title_sort | neo assyrian metaphors through the telescope linguistic patterns involving body part constructions in the state archives letter corpus |
| topic | Akkadian metaphors Neo-Assyrian letters body parts computational linguistics |
| url | https://riviste.fupress.net/index.php/asiana/article/view/2543 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT matthewong neoassyrianmetaphorsthroughthetelescopelinguisticpatternsinvolvingbodypartconstructionsinthestatearchiveslettercorpus AT shaigordin neoassyrianmetaphorsthroughthetelescopelinguisticpatternsinvolvingbodypartconstructionsinthestatearchiveslettercorpus |