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Akkadian ( ''akkadû'', }} ak-ka-du-ú; logogram: }} URIKI )〔John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite," ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218-280〕 is an extinct East Semitic language (part of the greater Afroasiatic language family) that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language,〔John Huehnergard and Christopher Woods, Akkadian and Eblaite, in Roger D. Woodard, ed., ''The Ancient Languages of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Aksum'', Cambridge University Press, 2008, p.83〕 it used the cuneiform writing system, which was originally used to write ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate. The language was named after the city of Akkad by linguists, a major center of Semitic Mesopotamian civilization during the Akkadian Empire (ca. 2334–2154 BC), although the language itself predates the founding of Akkad by many centuries. The mutual influence between Sumerian and Akkadian had led scholars to describe the languages as a ''sprachbund''. Akkadian proper names were first attested in Sumerian texts from ca. the late 29th century BC.〔() Andrew George, "Babylonian and Assyrian: A History of Akkadian", In: Postgate, J. N., (ed.), Languages of Iraq, Ancient and Modern. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, pp. 31-71.〕 From the second half of the third millennium BC (ca. 2500 BC), texts fully written in Akkadian begin to appear. Hundreds of thousands of texts and text fragments have been excavated to date, covering a vast textual tradition of mythological narrative, legal texts, scientific works, correspondence, political and military events, and many other examples. By the second millennium BC, two variant forms of the language were in use in Assyria and Babylonia, known as Assyrian and Babylonian respectively. Akkadian had been for centuries the native language in Mesopotamian nations such as Assyria and Babylonia, and indeed became the lingua franca of much of the Ancient Near East due to the might of various Mesopotamian empires such as the Akkadian Empire, Old Assyrian Empire, Babylonian Empire and Middle Assyrian Empire. However, it began to decline during the Neo Assyrian Empire around the 8th century BC, being marginalized by Aramaic during the reign of Tiglath-pileser III. By the Hellenistic period, the language was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia. The last Akkadian cuneiform document dates to the 1st century AD.〔Marckham Geller, "The Last Wedge," ''Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasitische Archäologie'' 86 (1997): 43–95.〕 A fair number of Akkadian loan words, together with the Akkadian grammatical structure, survive in the Mesopotamian Neo Aramaic dialects spoken in and around modern Iraq by the indigenous Assyrian (aka Chaldo-Assyrian) Christians of the region. ==Classification== Akkadian belongs with the other Semitic languages in the Near Eastern branch of the Afroasiatic family of languages, a language family native to East Africa (South-, East- and Central Cushitic, Omotic, Beja, Semitic), which then spread to West (Haussa), Northwest (Berber) and Northeast Africa (Ancient Egyptian). Semitic is most diverse in East Africa, followed by Southern Arabia, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. Within the Near Eastern Semitic languages, Akkadian forms an East Semitic subgroup (with Eblaite). This group distinguishes itself from the Northwest and South Semitic languages by its SOV word order, while the other Semitic languages usually have either a VSO or SVO order. This novel word order is due to the influence of the Sumerian substratum, which has an SOV order. Additionally Akkadian is the only Semitic language to use the prepositions ''ina'' and ''ana'' (locative, English ''in''/''on''/''with'', and dative-locative, ''for''/''to'', respectively). Other Semitic languages like Arabic and Aramaic have the prepositions ''bi/bə'' and ''li/lə'' (locative and dative, respectively). The origin of the Akkadian spatial prepositions is unknown. In contrast to most other Semitic languages, Akkadian has only two non-sibilant fricatives: (unicode:ḫ) and r (). Akkadian lost both the glottal and pharyngeal fricatives, which are characteristic of the other Semitic languages. Up until the Old Babylonian period, the Akkadian sibilants were exclusively affricated.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Akkadian language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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