Stress in Neo-Assyrian Dialect

In this short article I show how Neo-Assyrian scribes in most cases wrote the nominative and accusative singular forms of dnu as de-e-nu, but only rarely inserted an -e- when the same word in the genitive singular case was followed by the possessive suffix -u, normally writing ina de-ni-. From this I deduce that the addition of the suffix placed stress on the preceding syllable, without making the i a long vowel as it would be if the form was plural, and removed stress from the , without making it a short vowel. This draws attention to the matter of stress, as opposed to vowel length, in Akkadian, and as an Appendix I have included a survey of how the macron as an indication of vowel length is used by Assyriologists.