| The morphological marking, or non-marking, of the definiteness of a noun phrase in the Aramaic language has changed over time. At the time of Imperial Aramaic (IA) the emphatic state of the noun was used to indicate definiteness, a usage that was passed on to other dialects due to the pervasive influence of IA. By the time of at least some later Aramaic dialects, such as Syriac, however, the emphatic state clearly had lost such a function. This breakdown occurred at different paces in different Aramaic dialects. This study analyzes how nominal states do or do not correlate with the definiteness of the noun phrase in Qumran Aramaic (QA), a dialect stemming from the Middle Aramaic (MA) period. Each QA noun phrase is morphologically categorized according to the state of the noun or nouns in the phrase and semantically categorized according to the definiteness of the phrase. The combination of these two categorizations reveals the continued categorical dependence of state upon definiteness in QA. By and large, the emphatic state is used for semantically definite nouns and the absolute state for semantically indefinite nouns. The exceptions to this connection are in the area of semantically definite absolute nouns but almost never in the area of semantically indefinite emphatic nouns, indicating that the emphatic state had not begun to encroach upon the domain of the absolute state in any real way. Various types of the noun phrase are considered separately, including abstract nouns, generic nouns, and genitive phrases. The behavior of state and definiteness is also considered in relationship to various other factors, including genre; translational versus non-translational texts; and the gender, number, and other characteristics of the noun phrase. Finally, the implications of this study for the Aramaic background of the New Testament phrase "the son of man" are considered, as they cast doubt on Maurice Casey's proposed "Solution to the Son of Man Problem.". |
