The noun for “ship”, attested only in the plural (
balîk) and objective (
balku) forms (SD/247, PM/151). Its plural form indicates that it is a
strong-noun (Strong I), so its final vowel must be short. In theory its final vowel could be any of
a,
i or
u, each of which would be replaced by long
î in
plural nouns. However, its attested
objective form uses the variant objective-with-syncope form
balku instead of ordinary *
baluk. Since the Adûnaic
syncope seems only to occur for nouns with two identical short vowels, this indicates the singular form of this word is
balak.