The ‘Ventive’ as a Benefactive Marker: the Case of Old Assyrian

Abstract The Akkadian ventive developed benefactive meanings in both Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian. In this corpus-based study of Old Assyrian, we analyze the autobenefactive (or reflexive-benefactive) usage of the etymological ventive hosted on transitive verbs with animate subjects and the benefactive/malefactive sense of the ventive on both transitive and intransitive verbs. We found that four verbs of taking—laqāʔum ‘to take, to obtain, to buy’, aḫāzum and agārum ‘to hire (an attorney)’, and lapātum ‘to book (a certain commodity)’ can host the autobenefactive marker. We further found that non-reflexive benefactive markers flag a beneficiary in the verb phrases of šakānum ‘to pay (at accounting)’, kašādum ‘to reach (an amount to be paid or received)’, batāqum ‘to go below a certain price or rate of exchange’, šeātum ‘to leave’ and ‘to remain’, riāḫum ‘to remain’, and zakāʔum ‘to get cleared (about clearing goods through customs)’.