Neo-Mandaic
Encyclopedia
Neo-Mandaic is the modern reflex of Classical Mandaic, the liturgical language of the Mandaean
religious community of Iraq
and Iran
. Although severely endangered, it survives today as the first language of a small number of Mandaeans (possibly as few as 300-500 speakers) in Iran and in the Mandaean diaspora. All Neo-Mandaic speakers are bi- or even tri-lingual in the languages of their neighbors, Arabic and Persian
, and the influence of these languages upon the grammar of Neo-Mandaic is considerable, particularly in the lexicon
and the morphology
of the noun. Nevertheless, Neo-Mandaic is more conservative even in these regards than most other Neo-Aramaic dialects. As the only known surviving modern reflex of any literary dialect
of Aramaic, it has one of the longest continuous histories of attestation of any Aramaic dialect and is therefore potentially of great interest to scholars of Aramaic.
. Already in antiquity, a split had developed between the Western dialects of Aramaic (spoken in primarily in Syria
and Palestine
), and the Eastern dialects (spoken primarily in Mesopotamia
and Iran
) to which Neo-Mandaic pertains. The bulk of scholarship on these modern reflexes of these dialects, collectively described as Neo-Aramaic, has focused primarily on Eastern Neo-Aramaic, particularly the Central Neo-Aramaic
(Turoyo
and Mlahsô
) and Northeastern Neo-Aramaic
(NENA) dialects spoken by Jewish and Christian
communities in Eastern Anatolia
, Iraqi Kurdistan
, and Iranian Azerbaijan. A smaller but still considerable volume of scholarship is dedicated to the more peripheral dialects such as the Western Neo-Aramaic
dialects spoken by Christians and Muslims in three villages near Damascus
, and Neo-Mandaic. Of all the dialects that have thus far been documented, only Neo-Mandaic can be described with any certainty as the modern reflex of any classical dialect of Aramaic.
There are also five diphthongs, ey /ɛɪ/, ay /aɪ/, aw /aʊ/, āy /ɔɪ/, and āw /ɔʊ/. The diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/, which had already collapsed in closed accented syllables to /i/ and /u/ in the classical language, have collapsed in all accented syllables in the dialects of Ahvāz and Khorramshahr, apart from those in words of foreign origin. The collapse of diphthongs appears to be further advanced in the dialect of Ahvāz; compare Khorramshahr gāw /gɔʊ/ ‘in’ with Ahvāz gu /guː/ id. Closely tied to the collapse of the diphthong /aɪ/ in open accented syllables is the breaking of its outcome, /iː/ to /iɛ̆/ in the same environment. For example, classical baita ‘house’ has become bieṯā in Neo-Mandaic. This sound change is today typical of both the contemporary dialects of Ahvāz and Khorramshahr, but is not present in the unpublished texts from Iraq collected by Drower or in Macuch 1989.
The syllable patterns V (ā [ɔ] ‘this’), VC (aḵ [ɑχ] ‘that’), CV (mu [mu] ‘what’), and CVC (tum [tum] ‘then’) are the most common. Slightly less common are syllables containing clusters of consonantal or vocalic segments, such as VCC (ahl [ahl] ‘family’), CCV (klāṯā [ˈklɔː.θɔ] ‘three’), CCVC (ṣṭānye [ˈstɔn.je] ‘he is a boy’), CVCC (waxt [væχt] ‘time’), CVVC (bieṯ [biɛ̆θ] ‘house’), and even CVVCC (šieltḵon [ˈʃiɛ̆lt.χon] ‘I asked you (pl.)’). Permissible consonant clusters in Neo-Mandaic fall into two categories: clusters that form at the beginning or the end of a syllable, and those that span syllable boundaries. The former are strictly limited to certain combination of segments. The latter are less restricted; with few exceptions, Neo-Mandaic tolerates most clusters of two or occasionally even three consonants across a syllable boundary. Consonant clusters consisting of a stop followed by a sonorant, a sibilant followed by a sonorant, or a sibilant followed by a stop, are tolerated in both syllable-final and syllable-initial environments. Consonant clusters consisting of a sonorant and a stop or a sonorant and a fricative are tolerated in word final environment alone. /ə/ is regularly inserted as an anaptyctic vowel to break up impermissible consonant clusters; whenever a sonorant is the second segment in a word-final consonant cluster, the cluster is eliminated by syllabifying the sonorant. Neo-Mandaic does not tolerate clusters of the bilabial nasal /m/ and the alveolar trill /r/ in any environment. The voiced bilabial stop /b/ regularly intervenes between these two segments, e.g. lákamri [ˈlɑ.kɑm.bri] ‘he didn’t return it.’ Clusters of the voiceless glottal fricative /h/ with another consonant are also not tolerated, even across a syllable boundary; /h/ is generally deleted in this environment.
s automatically take the accent, such as the negative morpheme lá-, which causes the accent to shift to the first syllable of the verb which is negated. As in Classical Mandaic and other Aramaic dialects, vowels in open pretonic syllables are regularly subject to reduction.
Despite the collapse of the system of states, and the obsolescence of the most common classical plural morpheme –ia, much of the morphology of the noun has been preserved. While most masculine and feminine nouns alike are marked with the plural morpheme -ān-, the grammar continues to mark a distinction between the two genders. The feminine plural morpheme -(w/y)āṯ- most commonly appears on nouns marked explicitly with the feminine singular morpheme -t-, although it can also be found on the plural forms of many feminine nouns not marked as such in the singular. Most loan words take the plural morpheme -(h)ā, although a few retain the plural forms of their source languages. Additionally, many of the heteroclite plurals attested in the classical language have been retained.
The appearance of the indefinite and plural morphemes on the noun is determined primarily by its pragmatic status, such as the referentiality and identifiability of the referent. “Referentiality” concerns whether the speaker intends a particular, specific entity, which is thus referential, or whether the entity is designated as non-specific or generic, and thus non-referential. Referential nouns are explicitly marked when plural as well as when they serve as the object of a verb, in which case they are marked with the enclitic morpheme əl and anticipated by a pronominal suffix on the verb. The referent of an unmarked noun such as barnāšā can either be specific (‘the person’) or generic (‘people’) but not non-specific (‘a person’). The “identifiability” of a referent reflects whether the speaker assumes that it is identifiable or unidentifiable to the addressee. The indefinite morpheme –i indicates that the referent is neither generic nor identifiable, but is ambiguous as to whether the referent is specific (‘a particular person’) or non-specific (‘some person’). Macuch (1965a, 207) has noted that this morpheme, originally borrowed from the Iranian languages, is attested already in the Classical Mandaic texts. Nouns and adjectives modified by the indefinite morpheme -i can serve as indefinite pronouns to indicate non-specific or indefinite referents (such as enši ‘someone’ and mendi ‘something’).
There are five types of pronouns in Neo-Mandaic: personal pronouns (both independent and enclitic), demonstrative pronouns, indefinite pronouns (introduced in 3.2. above), interrogative pronouns, and relativizers (introduced in 6. below). The personal pronouns are illustrated to the right.
The independent personal pronouns are optionally employed to represent the subject of a transitive or intransitive verb. Whenever the singular forms appear before a verb, their final vowel is apocopated. The enclitic personal pronouns are in complementary distribution with them; they may represent the object of a transitive verb, a nominal or verbal complement or adjunct in a prepositional phase, or indicate possession on the noun. On nouns of foreign origin, they are affixed by means of the morpheme –d-. On the noun napš- ‘self’ they also serve to form the reflexive pronouns. Neo-Mandaic also has two reciprocal pronouns, ham ‘each other’ and hədādā ‘one another.’
Neo-Mandaic demonstrative pronouns distinguish between near-deixis and far-deixis in the singular, but not in the plural. They also reflect no distinction in gender. The original far-deictic plural demonstrative pronoun ahni ‘those’ (classical hania) has assumed the function of a general plural demonstrative pronoun. It is also often used in the place of the independent third plural personal pronoun. The demonstrative pronouns precede the noun they modify. In this position, the final vowel of the singular demonstratives is apocopated (these are the forms listed as ‘contextual,’ e.g. ā šeršānā ‘these religions’). Note that the plural demonstrative does not appear in the contextual form; instead, the singular forms are used before plural nouns (the plural morpheme indicating plurality on the whole noun phrase). Neo-Mandaic also has two locative demonstrative pronouns, hənā / ehnā ‘here’ and ekkāḵ ‘there.’
The interrogative pronouns are used to elicit specific information beyond a simple yes or no answer (which can be elicited simply by employing a rising intonation, as in English). Of these interrogative pronouns, only man ‘who’ and mu ‘what’ may substitute for either the subject or the object of a verb, obligatorily appearing at the beginning of the interrogative clause. Other interrogatives in Neo-Mandaic include elyā ‘where,’ hem ‘which,’ hemdā ‘when,’ kammā ‘how,’ kaṯkammā ‘how much/many,’ mujur ‘how, in what way,’ and qamu ‘why.’
Verbs that begin with a vowel rather than a consonant are called I-weak. Verbs beginning with the approximants n and y, which were susceptible to assimilation in Classical Mandaic, have been reformed on the analogy of the strong verbs. When they appear as the second or third radical of a consonantal root, the liquids w and y are susceptible to the general collapse of diphthongs described in 2.2. above. The verbs that are thus affected are known as II-weak and III-weak verbs. Those roots in which the second and third radical consonants were identical have been reformed on the analogy of the II-weak verbs; this process had already begun in Classical Mandaic.
A very large and productive class of verbs in Neo-Mandaic consists of a verbal element and a non-verbal element, which form a single semantic and syntactic unit. The non-verbal element is most often a noun such as əḇādā ‘deed’ in the compound əḇādā əḇad ~ əḇod (āḇed) ‘to work or to do something,’ or an adjective such as həyānā ‘alive’ in the compound həyānā tammā ‘to survive,’ although prepositions such as qār ‘at,’ in the compound qār tammā ‘to be born to s.o.,’ are attested. In many of these compounds, the verbal element is a “light” verb, which serves only to indicate verbal inflections such as person, tense, mood, and aspect; the meaning of these compounds is primarily derived from the non-verbal element, which always precedes the verbal element. The most common light verbs are əḇad ~ əḇod (āḇed) ‘to do,’ əhaḇ ~ əhoḇ (āheḇ) ‘to give,’ məhā ~ məhi (māhi) ‘to hit,’ and tammā ‘to become.’ Although phrasal verbs similar to these are attested in Classical Mandaic, most Neo-Mandaic phrasal verbs are calqued upon Persian phrasal verbs, and many non-verbal elements are Persian or Arabic loan words.
The principal parts upon which all inflected forms of the verb are built are the perfective base (represented by the third masculine singular form of the perfective), the imperative base (represented by the masculine singular form of the imperative), and the imperfective base (represented by the active participle in the absolute state). In the G-stem, the second syllable of the perfective base can have one of three thematic vowels: /a/, /e/, and /o/. Transitive verbs predominantly belong to the first, which is the most common of the three, whereas the latter two typically characterize intransitives and stative verbs. Transitive verbs also commonly yield a passive participle, which takes the form CəCil , e.g. gəṭil ‘killed (m.sg.),’ f.sg. gəṭilā and pl. gəṭilen. The D-stem is represented by one passive participle, əmšabbā ‘praised,’ which belongs to the III-weak root consonant class. The C-stem is also represented by a single III-weak passive participle, maḥḇā ‘kept.’
The inflected forms of the verbs are produced by adding personal suffixes to the principal parts. The forms given in parentheses were cited by Macuch, who noted that they were infrequently found and not consistently used. The feminine plural forms were not present at all in the texts collected by Häberl, and it would appear that the paradigm is in the process of being leveled towards the masculine forms. Before personal morphemes beginning with a vowel, the vowel of the syllable immediately preceding the suffix is deleted and the former coda becomes the onset for the new syllable. The addition of the morpheme may also cause the accent to shift, resulting in the reduction of vowels in pretonic syllables noted in 2.4. Enclitic object suffixes, introduced in 4. above, also have the same effect upon preceding syllables, affecting the form of the personal morpheme. All third person imperfective forms take the enclitic object marker -l- before the object suffix. The final consonant of the third plural personal suffix -en regularly assimilates to this enclitic object marker, producing the form -el(l)-. Additionally, the second singular and first plural morphemes assume the forms -āt- and -nan(n)- respectively before object suffixes.
The indicative is used to make assertions or declarations about situations which the speaker holds to have happened (or, conversely, have not happened), or positions which he maintains to be true. It is also the mood used for questions and other interrogative statements. The perfective, by its very nature, refers to situations that the speaker holds to have happened or not to have happened, and thus pertains to the indicative, apart from explicitly counterfactual conditional clauses, e.g. agar an láhwit, lá-aṯṯat əl-yanqā ‘if I hadn’t been there, she wouldn’t have brought (=given birth to) the baby.’ The imperfective, on the other hand, is used to describe situations which are ongoing, have yet to happen, or about which there may exist some uncertainty or doubt. When marked by the morpheme qə-, it is used to express the indicative, but when it is not thus marked, it expresses the subjunctive. The subjunctive is most commonly used to indicate wishes, possibilities, obligations, and any other statements which may be contrary to present fact. As in the other Semitic languages, the subjunctive must be used in the place of the imperative for all negative commands and prohibitions.
In Neo-Mandaic, the relationship of the action or state described by the verb to its arguments can be described by one of three voices: active, middle voice, and passive. When the action described by the verb is initiated by its grammatical subject, the verb is described as being in the active voice, and the grammatical subject is described as its agent. The t-stems introduced above express the middle voice. The agents of verbs in these stems, which are syntactically active and intransitive, experience the results of these actions as if they were also the patient; in many cases, the action of the verb appears to occur on its own. As a result, verbs in these stems are often translated as if they were agentless passives, or reflexive actions that the subject takes on its own behalf, e.g. etḇer minni wuṣle ‘a piece broke off / was broken from it.’ In the passive voice, the grammatical subject of the verb is the recipient of the action described by it, namely the patient. There are two ways of forming the passive voice in Neo-Mandaic: the analytic passive, in which the passive participle (see 5.1. above) is combined with the copula (see 6. below), and the much more common impersonal passive, in which an impersonal third plural form is used, e.g. əmaryon ‘it is said,’ literally ‘they said.’
[Insert Table 9]
Compound sentences combine two or more simple sentences with coordinating conjunctions such as u ‘and,’ ammā ‘but,’ lo ‘or,’ and the correlative conjunction -lo … -lo ‘either … or.’ Complex sentences consist of a main clause and one or more dependent clauses introduced by a relative pronoun, provided that the referent of the antecedent of the clause is definite—if it is indefinite, no relative pronoun is used. The Classical Mandaic relative pronoun d- has not survived, having been replaced by illi, an Arabic loan that introduces non-restrictive relative clauses, and ke, a Persian loan that introduces restrictive relative clauses, both of which appear immediately following the antecedent of the clause. The antecedents of restrictive relative clauses are marked with the restrictive morpheme –i, which resembles the indefinite morpheme in form alone, e.g. ezgit dukkāni ke həzitu awwál ‘I went to the places which I saw before.’ If the antecedent is the object of the relative clause, it will be represented within the relative clause by a resumptive relative pronoun, as in the example above (həzitu ‘I saw them’).
Mandaeism
Mandaeism or Mandaeanism is a Gnostic religion with a strongly dualistic worldview. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enosh, Noah, Shem, Aram and especially John the Baptist...
religious community of Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
and Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
. Although severely endangered, it survives today as the first language of a small number of Mandaeans (possibly as few as 300-500 speakers) in Iran and in the Mandaean diaspora. All Neo-Mandaic speakers are bi- or even tri-lingual in the languages of their neighbors, Arabic and Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, and the influence of these languages upon the grammar of Neo-Mandaic is considerable, particularly in the lexicon
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
and the morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
of the noun. Nevertheless, Neo-Mandaic is more conservative even in these regards than most other Neo-Aramaic dialects. As the only known surviving modern reflex of any literary dialect
Literary language
A literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others...
of Aramaic, it has one of the longest continuous histories of attestation of any Aramaic dialect and is therefore potentially of great interest to scholars of Aramaic.
General information
Neo-Mandaic (ISO 639-3: mid) represents the latest stage of the development of Classical Mandaic, a language of the Middle East which was first attested during the period of Late Antiquity and which continues to be used to the present date by the Mandaean religious community of Iraq and Iran. While the members of this community, numbered at roughly 70,000 or fewer adherents throughout the world, are familiar with the classical dialect through their sacred literature and liturgy, only a few hundred Mandaeans, located primarily in Iran, speak Neo-Mandaic (known to them as the raṭnā) as a first language. Two surviving dialects of Neo-Mandaic have thus far been documented, those of Ahvāz (in Macuch 1965a, Macuch 1965b, Macuch 1989, and Macuch 1993) and Khorramshahr (in Häberl 2008). These dialects are mutually intelligible to the extent that speakers of either dialect will deny that there are any differences between the two.Genetic Affiliation
Neo-Mandaic is a dialect of Aramaic, a Northwest Semitic language that was formerly spoken throughout the Middle EastMiddle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
. Already in antiquity, a split had developed between the Western dialects of Aramaic (spoken in primarily in Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
and Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
), and the Eastern dialects (spoken primarily in Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
and Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
) to which Neo-Mandaic pertains. The bulk of scholarship on these modern reflexes of these dialects, collectively described as Neo-Aramaic, has focused primarily on Eastern Neo-Aramaic, particularly the Central Neo-Aramaic
Central Neo-Aramaic
Central Neo-Aramaic is a term used differently by different semiticists. In its widest sense it can refer to all Neo-Aramaic languages except for Western Neo-Aramaic and Neo-Mandaic. A narrower definition includes only the Turoyo and Mlahsô languages, and any yet undiscovered varieties related to...
(Turoyo
Turoyo language
Turoyo/Surayt is a variety of Aramaic traditionally spoken in eastern Turkey and north-eastern Syria by the Assyrian/Syriac people. Turoyo is to a lesser extent mutually intelligible with Assyrian Neo-Aramaic and Chaldean Neo-Aramaic.-Etymology:...
and Mlahsô
Mlahsö language
Mlahsô is a Modern West Syriac language, a dialect of Aramaic. It was traditionally spoken in eastern Turkey and north-eastern Syria by members of the Assyrian/Syriac people....
) and Northeastern Neo-Aramaic
Northeastern Neo-Aramaic
Northeastern Neo-Aramaic is a term used by semiticists to refer to a large variety of Modern Aramaic languages that were once spoken of a large region stretching from the plain of Urmia, in northwestern Iran, to the plain of Mosul, in northern Iraq.As of the 1990s, the NENA group had an estimated...
(NENA) dialects spoken by Jewish and Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
communities in Eastern Anatolia
Anatolia
Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...
, Iraqi Kurdistan
Iraqi Kurdistan
Iraqi Kurdistan or Kurdistan Region is an autonomous region of Iraq. It borders Iran to the east, Turkey to the north, Syria to the west and the rest of Iraq to the south. The regional capital is Arbil, known in Kurdish as Hewlêr...
, and Iranian Azerbaijan. A smaller but still considerable volume of scholarship is dedicated to the more peripheral dialects such as the Western Neo-Aramaic
Western Neo-Aramaic
Western Neo-Aramaic is a modern Aramaic language. Today, it is spoken in three villages in the Anti-Lebanon mountains of western Syria. Western Neo-Aramaic is the only modern living Aramaic language drawn from the branch of Western Aramaic languages...
dialects spoken by Christians and Muslims in three villages near Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
, and Neo-Mandaic. Of all the dialects that have thus far been documented, only Neo-Mandaic can be described with any certainty as the modern reflex of any classical dialect of Aramaic.
History of Scholarship
The first attempt at documenting Neo-Mandaic, a polyglot glossary including a column of lexical items from the Neo-Mandaic dialect of Basra, was produced roughly three hundred and fifty years ago by a Carmelite missionary whom Borghero has identified with Matteo di San Giuseppe. This Glossarium was to have a perennial influence upon subsequent generations of Mandaeologists; it was consulted by Theodor Nöldeke and Rudolf Macuch in the preparation of their grammars, and the contents of its Neo-Mandaic column were incorporated into Drower and Macuch's 1963 dictionary. No complete Neo-Mandaic text was published until the beginning of the twentieth century, when de Morgan published five documents collected in Iran (transliterated and translated by Macuch). The last few decades have seen a marked increase in the number of Neo-Mandaic texts available to scholarship (Macuch 1965b, 1989, and 1993) and a descriptive grammar (Häberl 2008).Writing System
Neo-Mandaic is generally unwritten. On the rare occasions on which it is written, in personal letters and in the colophons that are attached to manuscripts, it is rendered using a modified version of the classical script. With the exception of /ə/, all vowels are represented, but without any indication of length or quality. The letter ʕ consistently represents an epenthetic vowel, either /ə/ or /ɛ/. Additionally, the Arabic letter ع has been borrowed to indicate the voiced pharyngeal fricative as well as the glottal stop. The letters b, g, k, p, and t may represent stops (/b/, /ɡ/, /k/, /p/, and /t/) or fricatives (/v/, /ʁ/, /χ/, /f/, and /θ/). Formerly the fricatives were not distinctive segments but merely allophones of the stops after a vowel; the sound rule governing this alternation is now defunct. Neo-Mandaic orthography differs from that of Classical Mandaic by using u to represent /w/ even when it is a reflex of Classical Mandaic b. As Neo-Mandaic contains several phonemes not found in Classical Mandaic, several letters from the original script have been modified with two dots placed below to represent these phonemes: š may represent /tʃ/, /ʒ/, or /dʒ/, d represents /ðˤ/, and h represents /ħ/. The private Mandaic schools in Iran and Australia employ a version of this same script with a few further pedagogic modifications.Phonology
There are 35 distinctive segments in Neo-Mandaic: 28 consonants (§2.1) and seven vowels (§2.2). For most of these segments, there is a relatively wide degree of allophonic variation. The transcription system, which is phonemic, does not reflect this variation; nor does it reflect sporadic assimilations, deletions, and other features that are typical of allegro speech.Consonants
Neo-Mandaic has 28 distinctive consonantal segments, including four loan-phonemes: the postalveolar affricates č /tʃ/ and j /dʒ/ and the pharyngeal fricatives ʕ and ħ, which are found only in vocabulary of foreign origin, particularly Arabic and Persian. Two pharyngealized segments (a voiced alveolar stop ðˤ and a voiced alveolar fricative zˤ) are found in a few Arabic loan words. They have been excluded from the phonemic inventory of Neo-Mandaic due to their marginal status. The fricatives f, v, χ and ʁ are assigned the values f, v, x, and when they appear in loan words rather than p, , , and , due to their different distribution in these words.| Stops and Affricates: | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Labiodental Labiodental consonant In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Interdental | Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Uvular Uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and... |
Pharyngeal Pharyngeal consonant A pharyngeal consonant is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx.-Pharyngeal consonants in the IPA:Pharyngeal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet :... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|
| Voiceless Voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of... |
p | t | tʃ (č) | k | q | |||||
| Voiced Voice (phonetics) Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate... |
b | d | dʒ (j) | ɡ | ||||||
| Emphatic | tˤ | |||||||||
| Fricatives: | ||||||||||
| Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Labiodental Labiodental consonant In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Interdental | Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Uvular Uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and... |
Pharyngeal Pharyngeal consonant A pharyngeal consonant is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx.-Pharyngeal consonants in the IPA:Pharyngeal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet :... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
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| Voiceless Voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of... |
f (p / f) | θ | s | ʃ (š) | χ ( / x) | ħ | h | |||
| Voiced Voice (phonetics) Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate... |
v | z | ʁ ( / ) | ʕ () | ||||||
| Emphatic | sˤ | |||||||||
| Sonorant Sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; fricatives and plosives are not sonorants. Vowels are sonorants, as are consonants like and . Other consonants, like or , restrict the airflow enough to cause turbulence, and... s: |
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| Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Labiodental Labiodental consonant In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Interdental | Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Uvular Uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and... |
Pharyngeal Pharyngeal consonant A pharyngeal consonant is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx.-Pharyngeal consonants in the IPA:Pharyngeal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet :... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
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| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m | n | ||||||||
| Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... |
l | |||||||||
| Apical Apical Apical, from the Latin apex meaning to be at the apex or tip, may refer to:*Apical , an anatomical term of location for features associated with the base of an organism or structure... |
r | |||||||||
| Approximant | w | j (y) | ||||||||
Vowels
The vowel system in Neo-Mandaic is composed of seven distinct vowels, of which six (i /i/, u /u/, e /e/, o /o/, a /a/, and ā /ɒ/) are principal phonemes, and one (ə /ə/) is marginal. The vowels are distinguished by quality rather than quantity. Three of the principle vowels, the “tense” vowels i, u, and ā, are lengthened in open accented syllables to [iː], [uː], and [ɔː] or [ɒː]. /i/ and /u/ are realized as [ɪ] and [ʌ] whenever they occur in closed syllables, either accented or unaccented. The other three principle vowels, the “lax” vowels o, e, and a, appear only exceptionally in open accented syllables. e is realized as [e] in open syllables and [ɛ] in closed syllables. a is realized as [ɑ] in closed accented syllables, and as [a] or [æ] elsewhere. Schwa (ə) has the widest allophonic variation of all the vowels. It is regularly fronted, backed, raised, or lowered in harmony with the vowel of the following syllable. When it is followed by w, it is regularly raised and backed to [ʌ]. When the accent falls on a closed syllable containing schwa, it becomes fronted and raised to [ɛ].There are also five diphthongs, ey /ɛɪ/, ay /aɪ/, aw /aʊ/, āy /ɔɪ/, and āw /ɔʊ/. The diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/, which had already collapsed in closed accented syllables to /i/ and /u/ in the classical language, have collapsed in all accented syllables in the dialects of Ahvāz and Khorramshahr, apart from those in words of foreign origin. The collapse of diphthongs appears to be further advanced in the dialect of Ahvāz; compare Khorramshahr gāw /gɔʊ/ ‘in’ with Ahvāz gu /guː/ id. Closely tied to the collapse of the diphthong /aɪ/ in open accented syllables is the breaking of its outcome, /iː/ to /iɛ̆/ in the same environment. For example, classical baita ‘house’ has become bieṯā in Neo-Mandaic. This sound change is today typical of both the contemporary dialects of Ahvāz and Khorramshahr, but is not present in the unpublished texts from Iraq collected by Drower or in Macuch 1989.
Syllable Structure
Neo-Mandaic words range in size from one to five syllables. Each syllable consists of an onset (which is optional in word-initial syllables) and a rime. The rime consists of a nucleus (usually a vowel or a syllabic consonant) with or without a coda. The onset and the coda which frame the nucleus consist of consonants; the onset is mandatory for all word-internal syllables, but the coda is optional in all environments. Whenever an enclitic pronominal suffix (see 3.3. below) lacking an onset is added to a closed accented syllable, the coda of the syllable is geminated to form the onset of the following syllable. Whenever the voiceless interdental fricative /θ/ is geminated in this environment, its outcome is the cluster [χt] rather than the expected [θθ]. For example, when the pronominal suffixes are appended directly to the existential particle *eṯ [ɛθ] (Classical ‘it), it regularly takes the form eḵt- [ɛχt]. This rule affects the conjugation of the verb meṯ ~ moṯ (māyeṯ) ‘to die,’ e.g. meṯ ‘he died’ but meḵtat ‘she died.’ It is also responsible for the modern form of the abstract ending uḵtā (Classical -uta).The syllable patterns V (ā [ɔ] ‘this’), VC (aḵ [ɑχ] ‘that’), CV (mu [mu] ‘what’), and CVC (tum [tum] ‘then’) are the most common. Slightly less common are syllables containing clusters of consonantal or vocalic segments, such as VCC (ahl [ahl] ‘family’), CCV (klāṯā [ˈklɔː.θɔ] ‘three’), CCVC (ṣṭānye [ˈstɔn.je] ‘he is a boy’), CVCC (waxt [væχt] ‘time’), CVVC (bieṯ [biɛ̆θ] ‘house’), and even CVVCC (šieltḵon [ˈʃiɛ̆lt.χon] ‘I asked you (pl.)’). Permissible consonant clusters in Neo-Mandaic fall into two categories: clusters that form at the beginning or the end of a syllable, and those that span syllable boundaries. The former are strictly limited to certain combination of segments. The latter are less restricted; with few exceptions, Neo-Mandaic tolerates most clusters of two or occasionally even three consonants across a syllable boundary. Consonant clusters consisting of a stop followed by a sonorant, a sibilant followed by a sonorant, or a sibilant followed by a stop, are tolerated in both syllable-final and syllable-initial environments. Consonant clusters consisting of a sonorant and a stop or a sonorant and a fricative are tolerated in word final environment alone. /ə/ is regularly inserted as an anaptyctic vowel to break up impermissible consonant clusters; whenever a sonorant is the second segment in a word-final consonant cluster, the cluster is eliminated by syllabifying the sonorant. Neo-Mandaic does not tolerate clusters of the bilabial nasal /m/ and the alveolar trill /r/ in any environment. The voiced bilabial stop /b/ regularly intervenes between these two segments, e.g. lákamri [ˈlɑ.kɑm.bri] ‘he didn’t return it.’ Clusters of the voiceless glottal fricative /h/ with another consonant are also not tolerated, even across a syllable boundary; /h/ is generally deleted in this environment.
Stress
The accent preferably falls upon a tense vowel within a closed syllable. The placement of the accent is determined from the final syllable. Any final syllable (or ultima) that is closed and contains a tense vowel automatically receives the accent, e.g. qəmahrəḇāti [qə.ˌmæh.rɛ.ˈwɔː.ti] ‘you are destroying it.’ If the final is open or contains a lax vowel, the accent will fall upon the penultimate syllable, provided that it is closed or contains a tense vowel, e.g. gaḇrā [ˈgæv.rɔ] ‘man.’ Otherwise, the stress will fall on the final syllable, e.g. əχal [a.ˈχɑl] ‘he ate.’ In words of three or more syllables, if neither the ultima nor the penultima is closed and contains a tense vowel, then the accent recedes to the antepenultimate syllable, e.g. gaṭelnāḵon [ga.ˈtˤɛl.nɒ.ˌχon] ‘I will kill you.’ Several morphemeMorpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s automatically take the accent, such as the negative morpheme lá-, which causes the accent to shift to the first syllable of the verb which is negated. As in Classical Mandaic and other Aramaic dialects, vowels in open pretonic syllables are regularly subject to reduction.
The Noun
The morphology of the noun has been greatly influenced by contact with Persian. The classical system of states has become obsolete, and only vestiges of it survive in some frozen forms and grammatical constructions. As a result, the most common inflectional morphemes associated with the states have been replaced by morphemes borrowed from Persian, such as the plural morphemes ān (for native and nativized vocabulary) and -(h)ā (for words of foreign origin), the indefinite morpheme -i, and the ezāfe. This last morpheme indicates a relationship between two nouns (substantive or adjective) corresponding to a variety of functions (generally attributive or genitive). In Neo-Mandaic, the attributes of both the Iranian ezāfe and its Classical Mandaic analogue are reconciled. Whenever a noun bearing the nominal augment –ā is immediately followed by another noun or adjective expressing a genitive or attributive relationship, the augment is regularly apocopated, e.g. rabbā ‘leader’ but rab Mandayānā ‘leader of the Mandaeans’ and kədāḇā ‘book’ but kədāḇ Mandāyí ‘a Mandaic book.’Gender and Number
| Gender | Singular | Gloss | Plural | Gloss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| m | kədāḇ-ā | book | kədaḇ-ān-ā | books |
| f | id-ā | hand | id-ān-ā | hands |
| f | Tur-t-ā | cow | Tur-āṯ-ā | cows |
| f | bieṯ-ā | house | bieṯ-wāṯ-ā | houses |
| m | gaḇr-ā | man | goḇr-ā | men |
| f | eṯṯ-ā | woman | enš-ā | women |
| m | jihel | child | jihel-ā | children |
| m | waxt | time | awqāt | times |
Despite the collapse of the system of states, and the obsolescence of the most common classical plural morpheme –ia, much of the morphology of the noun has been preserved. While most masculine and feminine nouns alike are marked with the plural morpheme -ān-, the grammar continues to mark a distinction between the two genders. The feminine plural morpheme -(w/y)āṯ- most commonly appears on nouns marked explicitly with the feminine singular morpheme -t-, although it can also be found on the plural forms of many feminine nouns not marked as such in the singular. Most loan words take the plural morpheme -(h)ā, although a few retain the plural forms of their source languages. Additionally, many of the heteroclite plurals attested in the classical language have been retained.
Identifiability and referentiality
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| barnāš-ā | - | + | people / the person | ||
| barnāš-i | - | - | a person | ||
| barneš-ān-ā | - | + | the people | ||
| barneš-ān-i | - | - | some (of the) people | ||
| əl-barnāš-ā | + | + | the person / people | ||
| əl-barnāš-i | + | - | a (specific) person | ||
| əl-barnaš-ān-ā | + | + | the (specific) people | ||
| əl-barnaš-ān-i | + | - | some (specific) people |
The appearance of the indefinite and plural morphemes on the noun is determined primarily by its pragmatic status, such as the referentiality and identifiability of the referent. “Referentiality” concerns whether the speaker intends a particular, specific entity, which is thus referential, or whether the entity is designated as non-specific or generic, and thus non-referential. Referential nouns are explicitly marked when plural as well as when they serve as the object of a verb, in which case they are marked with the enclitic morpheme əl and anticipated by a pronominal suffix on the verb. The referent of an unmarked noun such as barnāšā can either be specific (‘the person’) or generic (‘people’) but not non-specific (‘a person’). The “identifiability” of a referent reflects whether the speaker assumes that it is identifiable or unidentifiable to the addressee. The indefinite morpheme –i indicates that the referent is neither generic nor identifiable, but is ambiguous as to whether the referent is specific (‘a particular person’) or non-specific (‘some person’). Macuch (1965a, 207) has noted that this morpheme, originally borrowed from the Iranian languages, is attested already in the Classical Mandaic texts. Nouns and adjectives modified by the indefinite morpheme -i can serve as indefinite pronouns to indicate non-specific or indefinite referents (such as enši ‘someone’ and mendi ‘something’).
Pronouns
| person | m.sg. | f.sg. | pl. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3rd | huwi / -i | hidā / -a | honni / -u |
| 2nd | āt / -aḵ | āt / -eḵ | atton / -ḵon |
| 1st | anā / -e | ani / -an | |
The independent personal pronouns are optionally employed to represent the subject of a transitive or intransitive verb. Whenever the singular forms appear before a verb, their final vowel is apocopated. The enclitic personal pronouns are in complementary distribution with them; they may represent the object of a transitive verb, a nominal or verbal complement or adjunct in a prepositional phase, or indicate possession on the noun. On nouns of foreign origin, they are affixed by means of the morpheme –d-. On the noun napš- ‘self’ they also serve to form the reflexive pronouns. Neo-Mandaic also has two reciprocal pronouns, ham ‘each other’ and hədādā ‘one another.’
| Near Deixis | Far Deixis | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isolated | Contextual | Gloss | Isolated | Contextual | Gloss |
| āhā | ā | this | aḵu | aḵ | that |
| ahni | these | ahni | those | ||
The interrogative pronouns are used to elicit specific information beyond a simple yes or no answer (which can be elicited simply by employing a rising intonation, as in English). Of these interrogative pronouns, only man ‘who’ and mu ‘what’ may substitute for either the subject or the object of a verb, obligatorily appearing at the beginning of the interrogative clause. Other interrogatives in Neo-Mandaic include elyā ‘where,’ hem ‘which,’ hemdā ‘when,’ kammā ‘how,’ kaṯkammā ‘how much/many,’ mujur ‘how, in what way,’ and qamu ‘why.’
The Verb
The Neo-Mandaic verb may appear in two aspects (perfective and imperfective), three moods (indicative, subjunctive, and imperative), and three voices (active, middle, and passive). As in other Semitic languages, the majority of verbs are built upon a triconsonantal root, each of which may yield one or more of six verbal stems: the G-stem or basic stem, the D-stem or transitivizing-denominative verbal stem, the C-stem or causative verbal stem, and the tG-, tD-, and tC-stems, to which a derivational morpheme, t-, was prefixed before the first root consonant. This morpheme has disappeared from all roots save for those possessing a sibilant as their initial radical, such as eṣṭəḇā ~ eṣṭəḇi (meṣṭəḇi) ‘to be baptized’ in the G-stem or eštallam ~ eštallam (meštallam) in the C-stem, in which the stop and the sibilant are metathesized. A seventh stem, the Q-stem, is reserved exclusively for those verbs possessing four root consonants.Verbs that begin with a vowel rather than a consonant are called I-weak. Verbs beginning with the approximants n and y, which were susceptible to assimilation in Classical Mandaic, have been reformed on the analogy of the strong verbs. When they appear as the second or third radical of a consonantal root, the liquids w and y are susceptible to the general collapse of diphthongs described in 2.2. above. The verbs that are thus affected are known as II-weak and III-weak verbs. Those roots in which the second and third radical consonants were identical have been reformed on the analogy of the II-weak verbs; this process had already begun in Classical Mandaic.
A very large and productive class of verbs in Neo-Mandaic consists of a verbal element and a non-verbal element, which form a single semantic and syntactic unit. The non-verbal element is most often a noun such as əḇādā ‘deed’ in the compound əḇādā əḇad ~ əḇod (āḇed) ‘to work or to do something,’ or an adjective such as həyānā ‘alive’ in the compound həyānā tammā ‘to survive,’ although prepositions such as qār ‘at,’ in the compound qār tammā ‘to be born to s.o.,’ are attested. In many of these compounds, the verbal element is a “light” verb, which serves only to indicate verbal inflections such as person, tense, mood, and aspect; the meaning of these compounds is primarily derived from the non-verbal element, which always precedes the verbal element. The most common light verbs are əḇad ~ əḇod (āḇed) ‘to do,’ əhaḇ ~ əhoḇ (āheḇ) ‘to give,’ məhā ~ məhi (māhi) ‘to hit,’ and tammā ‘to become.’ Although phrasal verbs similar to these are attested in Classical Mandaic, most Neo-Mandaic phrasal verbs are calqued upon Persian phrasal verbs, and many non-verbal elements are Persian or Arabic loan words.
Principal parts of the verb
[Insert Table 8]The principal parts upon which all inflected forms of the verb are built are the perfective base (represented by the third masculine singular form of the perfective), the imperative base (represented by the masculine singular form of the imperative), and the imperfective base (represented by the active participle in the absolute state). In the G-stem, the second syllable of the perfective base can have one of three thematic vowels: /a/, /e/, and /o/. Transitive verbs predominantly belong to the first, which is the most common of the three, whereas the latter two typically characterize intransitives and stative verbs. Transitive verbs also commonly yield a passive participle, which takes the form CəCil , e.g. gəṭil ‘killed (m.sg.),’ f.sg. gəṭilā and pl. gəṭilen. The D-stem is represented by one passive participle, əmšabbā ‘praised,’ which belongs to the III-weak root consonant class. The C-stem is also represented by a single III-weak passive participle, maḥḇā ‘kept.’
Inflected Forms of the Verb
[Insert Table 8]The inflected forms of the verbs are produced by adding personal suffixes to the principal parts. The forms given in parentheses were cited by Macuch, who noted that they were infrequently found and not consistently used. The feminine plural forms were not present at all in the texts collected by Häberl, and it would appear that the paradigm is in the process of being leveled towards the masculine forms. Before personal morphemes beginning with a vowel, the vowel of the syllable immediately preceding the suffix is deleted and the former coda becomes the onset for the new syllable. The addition of the morpheme may also cause the accent to shift, resulting in the reduction of vowels in pretonic syllables noted in 2.4. Enclitic object suffixes, introduced in 4. above, also have the same effect upon preceding syllables, affecting the form of the personal morpheme. All third person imperfective forms take the enclitic object marker -l- before the object suffix. The final consonant of the third plural personal suffix -en regularly assimilates to this enclitic object marker, producing the form -el(l)-. Additionally, the second singular and first plural morphemes assume the forms -āt- and -nan(n)- respectively before object suffixes.
Tense, aspect, mood, and voice
Aspect is as basic to the Neo-Mandaic verbal system as tense; the inflected forms derived from the participle are imperfective, and as such indicate habitual actions, progressive or inchoative actions, and actions in the future from a past or present perspective. The perfective forms are not only preterite but also resultative-stative, which is most apparent from the verbs relating to a change of state, e.g. meḵtat eštā ‘she is dead now,’ using the perfective of meṯ ~ moṯ (māyeṯ) ‘to die.’The indicative is used to make assertions or declarations about situations which the speaker holds to have happened (or, conversely, have not happened), or positions which he maintains to be true. It is also the mood used for questions and other interrogative statements. The perfective, by its very nature, refers to situations that the speaker holds to have happened or not to have happened, and thus pertains to the indicative, apart from explicitly counterfactual conditional clauses, e.g. agar an láhwit, lá-aṯṯat əl-yanqā ‘if I hadn’t been there, she wouldn’t have brought (=given birth to) the baby.’ The imperfective, on the other hand, is used to describe situations which are ongoing, have yet to happen, or about which there may exist some uncertainty or doubt. When marked by the morpheme qə-, it is used to express the indicative, but when it is not thus marked, it expresses the subjunctive. The subjunctive is most commonly used to indicate wishes, possibilities, obligations, and any other statements which may be contrary to present fact. As in the other Semitic languages, the subjunctive must be used in the place of the imperative for all negative commands and prohibitions.
In Neo-Mandaic, the relationship of the action or state described by the verb to its arguments can be described by one of three voices: active, middle voice, and passive. When the action described by the verb is initiated by its grammatical subject, the verb is described as being in the active voice, and the grammatical subject is described as its agent. The t-stems introduced above express the middle voice. The agents of verbs in these stems, which are syntactically active and intransitive, experience the results of these actions as if they were also the patient; in many cases, the action of the verb appears to occur on its own. As a result, verbs in these stems are often translated as if they were agentless passives, or reflexive actions that the subject takes on its own behalf, e.g. etḇer minni wuṣle ‘a piece broke off / was broken from it.’ In the passive voice, the grammatical subject of the verb is the recipient of the action described by it, namely the patient. There are two ways of forming the passive voice in Neo-Mandaic: the analytic passive, in which the passive participle (see 5.1. above) is combined with the copula (see 6. below), and the much more common impersonal passive, in which an impersonal third plural form is used, e.g. əmaryon ‘it is said,’ literally ‘they said.’
Syntax
Neo-Mandaic preserves the SVO word order of Classical Mandaic, despite its longstanding contact with Persian (which follows SOV word order). Topic-fronting, which tends to obscure the word order, is typical of all three languages. Simple sentences consist of a subject, which may be implied in the verb, and a predicate, which is headed by a verb or the copula (see Table 9 below). The independent forms of the copula introduce predicate nominal and predicate locative constructions, and the enclitic forms introduce predicate adjectives. Much like other Semitic languages, Neo-Mandaic employs a predicate locative construction to express the notion of possession. In the simple present tense, this construction uses the independent form of the existential particle *eṯ and the preposition l- ‘to/for,’ which takes the enclitic suffixes introduced in Table 5. Before l-, the existential particle assumes the form eh-, yielding the forms ehli ‘he has’ (lit. ‘there is for him’), ehla ‘she has,’ and so forth. In tenses other than the simple present, the copular verb həwā ~ həwi (hāwi) is used in the place of the existential particle, e.g. agar pərāhā həwāle, turti zaḇnit ‘if I had money, I would have bought a cow.’[Insert Table 9]
Compound sentences combine two or more simple sentences with coordinating conjunctions such as u ‘and,’ ammā ‘but,’ lo ‘or,’ and the correlative conjunction -lo … -lo ‘either … or.’ Complex sentences consist of a main clause and one or more dependent clauses introduced by a relative pronoun, provided that the referent of the antecedent of the clause is definite—if it is indefinite, no relative pronoun is used. The Classical Mandaic relative pronoun d- has not survived, having been replaced by illi, an Arabic loan that introduces non-restrictive relative clauses, and ke, a Persian loan that introduces restrictive relative clauses, both of which appear immediately following the antecedent of the clause. The antecedents of restrictive relative clauses are marked with the restrictive morpheme –i, which resembles the indefinite morpheme in form alone, e.g. ezgit dukkāni ke həzitu awwál ‘I went to the places which I saw before.’ If the antecedent is the object of the relative clause, it will be represented within the relative clause by a resumptive relative pronoun, as in the example above (həzitu ‘I saw them’).