Dāmeḵ, dmeḵ, and dammīḵ in Syriac

P. 430–437.

Гришин Н. К.

The present study1 is inspired by Eugene Barsky and Sergey Loesov’s paper “A History of the

Intransitive Preterite of Ṭuroyo.” It focuses on the diachronic path of the *qattīl pattern

throughout Aramaic.

In this study, I compare the grammatical meanings of three deverbal predicates of Syriac, dāmeḵ,

dmeḵ, and dammīḵ, all of them being derivations of the verb root dmk “to sleep.” By its pattern

dāmeḵ is the productive G-stem active participle. This pattern was inherited from the Proto-

Semitic *qātil.  Dmeḵ goes back to the Proto-Semitic verbal noun pattern *qatil.  In Syriac, this

pattern is represented only by a few nouns derived from static verbs, such as ʿ

seq (MS) ~ ʿasqā

(FS) “difficult,” greḇ ~ garḇā “leprosy.”  These are all relics of a pre-Aramaic stage in the

history of Semitic languages.

The origin of the derivational pattern of dammīḵ, i.e. *qattīl, can be shown as follows: *qatil >

*qatīl > qattīl. In Aramaic, qattīl became the productive pattern of adjectives derived from

intransitive verbs, and eventually ended up as the base of deverbal adjectives and the

intransitive preterite in the Modern Eastern Aramaic language Ṭuroyo: damixo “asleep”

(<*dammīḵā), damǝx “he slept” (<*dammīḵ).

As Barsky and Loesov demonstrate, “dammīḵ is an inner-Syriac innovation that had not existed

in earlier Aramaic.”10 Thus, my study aims to analyse the situation within Syriac, where we find

first instances of dammīḵ as a verbal predicate.

Keywords: Historical Linguistics, Syriac language

Publication based on the results of: Грамматика современных арамейских языков (2024)

In book

From Moscow to Baghdad: Studies on Middle Eastern Christianity in Memory of Nikolai Seleznyov

Brill, 2026.