About this project
The Babylonian Verb Conjugator and Analyser (BVC, BVA) provides information
the conjugation, construction and meaning of ideally all Akkadian verbs based on the following dictionaries:
- J. Black, A. George, N. Postgate, A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian (2000) (abbreviated as CDA).
- W. von Soden, Akkadisches Handwörterbuch, 3 volumes, 1965-1981 (abbreviated as AHW).
- The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 26 volumes, 1956-2010 (abbreviated as CAD).
Advantages of this tool:
- It offers a very fast lookup of verbs their meaning, construction, and conjugation
using the search field. You can
- search infinitives or just the radicals; the tool then shows all verbs
with the same three (or four) radicals. Use "x" as a wild card if, e.g.,
you do not know if the first radical is an n or ' or w.
- search logograms by entering, e.g., :MU4 ; use the colon : to indicate that
you are searching a logogram.
- search English meanings, e.g. "to love" or just "love" ; use the " to indicate
that you are searching an English meaning. In the same way you can search for
all verbs that have a DRt stem; just enter "DRt:". (Do not forget the ".)
- It allows you to avoid tedious search of paradigms and conjugation tables in a
printed work.
- You can easily experiment with suffixes, accusative, dative, ventive, subjunctive.
Printed works do not offer that.
- To help you find a verb in a dictionary, BVC provides page numbers for CAD, AHW, and CDA.
- BVC also refers to page numbers in von Soden and Huehnergard where information on the
selected verb or its paradigm is given.
BVC should not be considered a dictionary of verbs. If you want to determine the exact
meaning of a verb, please look it up in the dictionaries above.
Further plans
BVC could be improved considerably:
- A Babylonian Verb Analyser could be developed, based on the information contained in BVC.
A verb could be entered either in raw transliteration, even with logograms, or normalized,
and BVA would determine the verb, the verb form and provide an English translation.
- An Assyrian option could be added.
- The tool could be edited by a native English speaker.
- The dictionary of BVC could be improved.
Currently, we cannot do this due to a lack of finances. Any help is appreciated.
Release history
Version of 29 October 2021
- Bug fix: Dative suffix now possible without ventive.
Version of 20 October 2021
- Some errors in verb data corrected.
Version of 14 October 2021
- Verbs (CDA) complete, except some for which only statives or infinitives are attested.
- Search function further improved. Radicals can be entered instead of infinitive. Wildcard "x" can be used.
- For each verb, the paradigm in Huehnergard is indicated, if existing, with page number in the 2nd and 3rd editions (2005 and 2011).
- Some errors in verb data (babverbdata.js) corrected.
Version of 7 October 2021 (2)
- Some verbs now have active stative automatically.
English translations of stative forms usually do not express the stative character well.
However, activity and passivity should be handled correctly.
Version of 1 October 2021
- Search function further improved: radicals can be entered in search field.
Version of 26 September 2021
- Ntn stem of verbs primae n now without assimilation of n (Huehnergard p. 450).
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