Though conditionals have drawn continued interest from numerous disciplines, both broadly philosophical and more narrowly linguistic, and though cuneiform sources offer a wealth of data, the topic has received little attention in Assyriology. If we consider the multitude of interests involved, as well as the central role of conditionals in such texts as the Codex Hammurapi, one of the first which students of Akkadian normally encounter, we begin to see exactly how much is at stake in Eran Cohen's Conditional Structures, the first monographic treatment of conditionals in Akkadian. The book is an offshoot of the author's The Modal System of Old Babylonian (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005), which touched on several of the issues treated here. The basic questions addressed are: the syntactic status of conditionals; semantic relationships between protasis and apodosis; discourse, modality, and causality; and types attested. The work is primarily addressed to Assyriologists: all sources are translated, but only select examples are glossed in the introduction and conclusion.
The brief introduction (pp. 1–28) provides a theoretical overview, illustrated by numerous examples from Semitic and other languages. The chapter includes a general discussion of relevant syntactic relationships and establishes definitions, including a distinction between conditional structures, in which conditionality may be implied, and conditional patterns, which consistently mark conditionality. This distinction also leads the author to reject several constructions as conditional patterns, including ištūma-clauses in letters (p. 100) and inūma- and ūm-clauses in law collections (pp. 145–6).
The core of the book is formed of three chapters, covering the letters (pp. 22–120), law collections (pp. 121–52), and omens (pp. 153–70). The main corpus is restricted to a representative selection of texts from southern Mesopotamia, excluding Mari: the fourteen volumes in the series Altbabylonische Briefe (AbB), the Codex Hammurapi and the Codex Ešnunna, and the omens published in YOS 10. Other texts are sporadically cited throughout, particularly in the chapters on law collections and omens, which are compared to edicts and legal formulations from letters and to omen reports, respectively. Each chapter is arranged according to the construction used in protasis and apodosis. The broadest range is offered by the letters, with šumma-conditionals, paratactic conditionals, constructions with modal particles, conditionals with asseveratives as protasis, and counterfactual conditionals; and the narrowest by the omens, where only šumma-conditionals are attested. All texts cited are conveniently listed in the index (pp. 193–6).
The central argument of the work is that conditionals in individual genres represent distinct paradigms with distinct meanings. Epistolary protases are said primarily to distinguish tense, with lā iprus serving as the negative counterpart to iptaras, a “linguistic non-past perfect” (p. 59), while the apodoses primarily distinguish modality. The law collections, though more difficult to interpret, primarily distinguish modality in the protasis and apodosis, more rarely aspect in the protasis (p. 143). The omens distinguish aspect in the protasis (p. 156) and relative tense in the apodosis (p. 161). Here many readers will be most sceptical: the conclusions lead to three different verbal systems for three different genres.
One of the major disadvantages of the book is the presentation of the theoretical approach used, introduced within the individual sections of the chapters as needed to shore up the argument. The approach is declared to be generally structural in the introduction (p. 5), focusing on the formal division according to the particles and verbal forms used. But the matrices which form the basis of this analysis are only explained on p. 36. Mutual dependency is first discussed on pp. 34 f. The concept of syntactic domains, essential to Cohen's understanding of the letter corpus, is first explained on p. 112. The notion of semiotic systems is introduced on pp. 164–6 to explain the structure of the omina. Other concepts are unevenly applied. Some basic notions of discourse analysis are introduced on p. 9. Topicality is discussed for the letters (pp. 117 f.) and briefly noted for the omens (p. 155), which are then explained in terms of theme and rheme (p. 169). Discourse plays almost no role in the analysis of the law collections. The author's approach to the morphosyntactic interpretation of the verbal system, a major concern of the work, is nowhere discussed.
In numerous cases, a more thorough discussion of individual readings would have been desirable, particularly when they diverge from the published editions. There is no reason given, for example, for rejecting F.R. Kraus’ interpretation of i-[n]a-wi-ir-ma-an in AbB 5, 157, 10’ as a preterite N-stem of amāru(m) in favour of inawwir “he beamed” (p. 102), cited as a sole example of a present form in the apodosis of a counterfactual with -man. The orthographic change of <w> and <m> is paralleled in other texts, discussed by D.O. Edzard in Acta Sumerologica Journal 16, 1994, 10. Both tense and interpretation make better sense in context: the walls of the house are already finished; had the wood been delivered, the carpenter could already have started his work. Even if we consider the additional examples for present in apodoses from Mari (Archives royales de Mari 26/2, 412, 59–65; 10, 74, 10–37), discussed in N. Wasserman's Most Probably (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 120–30, the general tendency seems to remain for Akkadian to mark greater hypotheticality by backshifting tenses. The evidence is certainly not sufficient to conclude that “there are no definite temporal values that can be attributed to the forms” (p. 107). The interpretation of the present iparras for posterior past, present, or future accords with the definition of relative tense, not that “it can denote any temporal category” (ibid.).
Though some objections remain, the author has done a thorough job of reviewing the often involved and disparate discussions of conditionals and amassed an impressive amount of material. Numerous asides and observations on syntactic issues beyond conditionals and modality well deserve a follow-up, particularly the repeatedly noted relevance of adverbials to the analysis of tense and aspect. The work will remain an excellent starting point for any further research.
