Methodology

Selection of entries

LAD includes words found in Akkadian texts (see The Akkadian Language) from all regions, periods, and text genres, including the texts from Ebla. Exceptions are made in the following cases:

• Proper nouns (names of gods, places, persons, etc.) are usually not included, with the exception of month names and names of celestial bodies. Proper nouns and names may also appear among the attestations for words from which they derive.
• Foreign words are not included when they are marked as foreign glosses with a Glossenkeil. This mostly concerns ‘peripheral’ Akkadian material from the Middle Babylonian period (e.g. the Amarna letters and texts from Qaṭna). Unmarked foreign words are included.
• Nisba adjectives deriving from geographical names used as demonyms (‘people/person from GN’) are currently not included. Demonyms are typically accessible via reference works on geographical names. This type of adjective is only included when referring to languages or realia, such as plants, clothing, or vessels.

Criteria for determining lemma headwords

The determination and formalization of the lemma headword is an integral but by no means straightforward step in historical lexicography.1 Regular users of the existing Akkadian dictionaries have no doubt observed this difficulty, as the differentiation of homonyms and parsing of headwords are some of the aspects in which CAD and AHw diverge most. The underlying reasons can be summarized as the application of different philological principles and lexicographical criteria to the material at hand.

On the form of the lemma headword in LAD, see Conventions, Citation Form.

The determination of lemma headwords in LAD, as well as the differentiation of homonyms, are based on just two primary criteria: morphology and etymology. In practice, this means that morphologically distinct forms are granted lemma status, and homonyms are differentiated on etymological grounds. As a general tendency, the focus on etymology means that LAD differentiates fewer homonyms than CAD and aligns more closely with AHw. In some cases, LAD differs from both dictionaries: participles, feminine nouns, and adverbial derivatives are consistently considered independent entries in LAD.

The following criteria have no impact on the differentiation of homonyms:

• Semantic differentiation in the language of translation.
• Period of attestation and dialectal variants.
• Orthographic and phonetic variants.
• Sumerian correspondences in lexical texts, or differing logograms.

The following criteria may influence the creation of separate entries, but decisions are made on a case-by-case basis:

• Vowel class (verbs only): in some cases, a verb may have multiple or changing vowel classes, but usually the vowel class can be used as an argument in favour of differentiating two or more homonymous verbs.
• Syntactic use (part of speech): lemmata may have different syntactic functions, particularly in the case of particles that are used as both subjunctions and prepositions, or adjectives that can be used attributively as well as independently. Processes of conversion and lexicalization are often difficult to pinpoint,2 resulting in cases where pragmatic decisions are made:
  • Nominalization: infinitives and adjectives that are used as nouns are sometimes assigned lemma status. An example for infinitives is epēšu I, “action”, which is separated from epēšu II, “to do”, in accordance with both CAD and AHw. An example for a nominalized adjective is damiqtu, “goodness”, albeit morphologically and etymologically identical to the feminine form of the adjective damqu.
  • Grammaticalization: many particles and adverbs derive from nouns. They are sometimes treated under the respective noun, sometimes as individual entries. An example is the subjunction ašar, “where”, deriving from ašru, “place”, which in LAD and CAD is considered an independent entry, whereas AHw assigned it a separate section under the noun (ašrum III B).