Forthcoming: A corpus linguistic study in Syriac: Definiteness and change in the noun phrase

This study is the first thorough investigation of definite article loss in the Late Aramaic dialect Classical Syriac using corpus linguistic methods. A diachronic corpus is built comprising approximately 400,000 words and structured across ten authors spanning thirteen centuries. A number of key findings emerge from corpus searches on the distribution of nouns with and without a definite article suffix. A clear statistical preference for nouns with the definite article suffix in Cardinal and Nominal Negation phrases signals the functional loss of the definite article in these environments and its generalisation to a marker of the new bare noun form. In Quantifier phrases, the function of the definite article is similarly lost, with pronominal clitics and analytical syntax eventually replacing its function in later manuscripts. While the historical bare noun form continues to be attested, its frequency in non-productive contexts suggests it plays an outsized role in Syriac grammars.

The volume demonstrates the value of corpus linguistics for studies in historical syntax in Aramaic, and Semitic broadly, while also contributing fresh evidence in support of mechanisms of syntactic change in human languages of an under-represented historical variety. It paves the way for future research in corpus linguistics in historical Aramaic and Semitic with a view to addressing the century-old question of article loss in Aramaic, while also filling a lacuna in the typological and diachronic literature with respect to definite article loss in human languages generally.