The Old Aramaic “Feminine” Suffix -t as an Accusative Case Marker* By Benjamin D. Suchard, Leiden/Leuven Summary: A small number of Old Aramaic words attest a spelling of the inherited “feminine” suffixes as -t. Strikingly, all of these words occur in syntactic contexts where Proto-Semitic would use the accusative case. Wherever the nominative or genitive case is expected instead, the “feminine” suffix is not spelled with -t. This includes several forms that are here argued to showcase a development of the “feminine” plural ending *-āt- into *-ā, spelled -h in the Sefire inscriptions and left unspelled in the Tell Fekheriye inscription. This identification of -h and zero as spelling the “feminine” plural suffix provides us with enough evidence to establish the syntactic conditioning of -t in accusative contexts vs. -h or zero in other contexts. The retention of t in the accusative follows naturally from the longer retention of word-final *-a in Proto-Aramaic compared to *-u and *-i, which is supported by morphological developments in the verb. Together with the plene spelling of the “masculine” plural ending as -wn in nominative contexts and as -yn elsewhere in the Tell Fekheriye inscription, the identification of a separate accusative form of the “feminine” suffixes shows that Old Aramaic retained a partial contrast between the three Proto-Semitic cases. Later on, this case distinction was lost, while accusative forms in -t became lexicalized adverbs. Many varieties of Aramaic attest an adverbial suffix -t. Examples include Im- perial Aramaic rḥm-t “gratis,” which alternates with b-rḥm-h and b-rḥm-n;1 Biblical Aramaic ṭəwā-ṯ “fasting” and, with a longer suffix, tinyān-ūṯ “again, a second time”;2 Nabataean mṣry-t, probably “in Egyptian,” where the -t follows the nisbe suffix *-āy-;3 and Syriac rabb-aṯ “greatly” and many other instances, especially in combination with the nisbe suffix as in šarir-åiṯ “tru- ly.”4 This suffix is commonly associated with the shared Semitic “feminine” * I am very grateful to Margaretha Folmer for sharing her scan of Wesselius 1980 with me, without which I could not have completed this article, and to Holger Gzella, Marijn van Putten, and Fokelien Kootstra for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. Naturally, I do not mean to imply their agreement with the contents of this paper or any responsibility of theirs for remaining errors and infelicities. 1 Folmer 1995, pp. 255–256. 2 Rosenthal 2006, §§ 88.1–2. 3 Jones/Hammond/Johnson/Fiema 1988, l. 4. 4 Brockelmann 1908, p. 493. Syriac forms are given according to the East Syriac pronunciation, following the transcription suggested by Rudolf/Waltisberg 2020. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Volume 174 (2024), Issue 1 © 2024 Harrassowitz Verlag