The contribution of early Christian vernacular poetry from northern Iraq to Neo-Aramaic dialectology: Preliminary remarks on the verbal system

The language of early Christian Neo-Aramaic poetry from northern Iraq (Alqosh and Telkepe, 17th century) has distinctive features that differ from the modern dialects (Coghill, PhD Diss., Cambridge, 2004). In the present paper, I shall examine the verbal system, listing the archaic verbal paradigms, which are attested in the early poetry (e.g., preterites with incorporated 1st- and 2nd- person objects; intransitive preterites with direct verbal endings) and are marginal in the verbal morphology of the modern dialects. On the other hand a number of verbal constructions involving the use of auxiliary verbs and nominal verbal forms (past participle, preposition b- + infinitive) are vital in the modern dialects, but virtually absent in the poetic language of the 17th and 18th centuries).