alaššamm(i)-

The sole attestation of this lexeme is found in a mythological passage from the Tauriša tradition (MS).

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Checked against the photographs in the Mainzer Fotoarchiv.

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The lexical item occurs in a row of analogous clauses ending in ki.min ‘ditto’. Each of them contains a direct object designating a topographic feature: zariya- (a moving body of water), āla/i- ḫur.sag-t(i)- ‘distant mountain’, āla/i- alaššamm(i)- ‘distant alaššamm(i)-’, -g]a^?taganan ‘?’, kaskal-wa- ‘path’, and íd-(i)- ‘river’. CLuw. alaššamm(i)- is modified by āla/i- interpreted here as ‘distant’, but formerly taken as the word for ‘sea’. However, both the word order and the additional use with ḫur.sag-t(i)- ‘mountain’ indicate that āla/i- represents the modifier, whereas alaššamm(i)- functions as the head noun designating the topographic feature. The same syntactic analysis is presupposed by Melchert (in CLL:8, followed in HHw:13), who tentatively translates alaššamm(i)- as ‘sea’, instead assuming a “transferred epithet” (contra Meriggi 1957a:215, Starke 1990a:513, Carruba 1962a:66; see also HW:475 ‘Salzflut, Meer (?)’).

            The latest proposal comes from Rieken & Yakubovich 2022a:277 (followed in Steitler 2017a:398), who interpret the word as ‘wilderness’, based on the derivational relationship with alašša/i- ‘wild (?)’ and further with the root al- ‘other’ with its metaphoric meanings ‘distant’, ‘foreign’, ‘hostile’, and ‘wild’. Confirmation comes from the fact that with zariya- (a moving body of water) and íd-(i)- ‘river’, already two kinds of topographic features are mentioned in the six-part-list. A third one would be unexpected.Outdated is Meriggi’s (Meriggi 1957a:215) idea to understand the lexeme as the word for ‘salty’.

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Following Meriggi 1957a:215 and Carruba 1962a:66, Starke 1990a:513 analyzes the word as the participle of a putative imperfective verb *alašša-⁽ⁱ⁾ of unknown meaning. However, a possessive formation ‘having alašša/i-’ built with the suffix -mma/i- (see CLL:8 and Torri 2010a:387) involves only the substantivization of attested alašša/i- ‘wild’ as an unattested intermediary step and is, therefore, to be preferred. In addition, ‘having wilderness’ → ‘wilderness’ conforms well with the expected semantics of the word.

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For the lemma head see CLuw. āla/i-.