Basic valency in Akkadian and Modern South Arabian languages

This paper explores basic valency orientation in Semitic languages with a comparative diachronic approach. To do so, we analyse how Akkadian and Modern South Arabian languages (MSAL) formally encode causal and noncausal verb pairs. The study utilises a dataset of 24 verb meanings, distinguishing between animate and inanimate verbs, to identify patterns of augmentation, suppletion, and reduction in both language groups. Results indicate that Akkadian is strongly transitivizing, particularly for animate verbs, while MSAL exhibit a more mixed situation, with noticeable branch-internal variation. Our findings contribute to the understanding of diachronic change in Semitic verbal valency and raise questions regarding the structure of the Proto-Semitic system.