Genetic Subgroupings of the Semitic Languages

GENETIC SUBGROUPINGS OF THE SEMITIC LANGUAGES

ALICE FABER, A.B., M.A.

DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN May

1980

GENETIC SUBGROUPINGS OF THE SEMITIC LANGUAGES

APPROVED BY SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:

A^u^ f. /W^.JU^

(c) Copyright by Alice Faber 1980

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin for a research grant for the 1977-1978 academic year that enabled me to do the computer coding summarized in Chapter Two. This allowed me to analyze more data more carefully than I otherwise could have. I would also like to thank the Linguistics Department for additional funding for the completion of the project. The research on Amharfc ejectives reported on in Chapter Four was supported by University of Texas University Research Institute Project SRF-711 to Robert D. King. I would like to thank Ethiopia Keleta, who first helped me learn enough Amharic to design the study and then patiently read lists of words into a microphone for my benefit. Three of the data chapters of this dissertation have appeared in other guises. Chapter Two began as a term paper for a course in diachronic syntax. I would like to thank Sue SchmerTing and Grover Hudson for their extensive comments on that first attempt. Chapter Three began as a paper that I read at the 1978 Winter LSA meeting. I would like to thank all who commented on that paper, forcing me to justify my conclusions. The first version of Chapter Five was written for a course in historical phonology. I would like to thank Robert Harms for his comments and questions, questions that would not let me rest with my first conclusions. In addition, many people, more than I have room to list here, sat and listened while I was thinking out loud about various of the matters discussed in this dissertation arid about matters that I ultimately decided to omit. I would like to thank them all. Special thanks go to Hatte Blejer, for being interested in many of the same things I am. Hatte and the other

iv

members of the Historical Linguistics Lunch Club (Marianna Di Paolo, Chad Butler, Laura Stalker, etc.) provided a good forum for discussion. Elise Padgug and Ann Helden encouraged me and told me that I could do it, when I wasn't sure I could. Bob Hoberman helped get me interested in the problems of Semitic linguistics. And, Judasarah and Susan C. Williams helped me keep it all in perspective. Special thanks are also due to the members of my dissertation committee. Winfred Lehmann, through his prompt and careful reading of all material I gave him, found many omissions and unclear passages, which I hope I have now eliminated. Sue Schmerling was always available for discussion and advice. Since I have been in grac^ate school, she has been the most supportive professor that I have encountered. Peter Abboud was the only professor I had at the University of Texas whose courses treated directly the material discussed in this dissertation; these classes challenged me and encouraged me to work harder on those problems and stimulated me to want to. My Chairman, Robert King, deserves thanks for his constant encouragement and faith in my abilities to do this work. In different ways, everyone on my committee has contributed tu the final shape of this dissertation. Again, I thank them all. The staff of the Inter!ibrary Loan Service of the University of Texas General Libraries was of enormous help procuring for me library materials not available at the University of Texas. This dissertation could not have been written without them. I would also like to thank my husband Mark, who proofread, edited and provided much-needed emotional support while I was working on the final draft of this dissertation. Of course, I retain all responsibility for any remaining flaws and inaccuracies in this work.

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: Preliminaries

1

1.0 Why This Dissertation

1

1.0.1 The Relationship Between Synchronic and Diachronic Studies

.....

1

1.0.2 External Evidence for Historical Linguistic Hypotheses. 3 1.1.0 Waves and Trees 1.1.1 A Methodology for Distinguishing Wave from Tree Phenomena

5 6

1.2.0 On the Alleged Primacy of Morphological Criteria. . . .10 1.3.0 On the Alleged Impossibility of Comparative Syntactic Reconstruction

13

1.3.1 On an Enriched Notion of Syntactic context

15

1.3.2 The Indo-European Passive

16

1.3.3 Another Notion of Context

17

1.3.4 Summary

IB

1.4 The Need for Detailed Investigation of Semitic Relationships

19

1.5 The Semitic Languages in Brief

20

1.6 The Plan

24

Notes to Chapter One

25

CHAPTER TWO: Word Order

26

2.0 Traditional Views of Semitic Word Order

26

2.0.1 Texts and Method

26 vi

2.1 General Summary of Results

30

2.1.1 Analysis of Word Order in the Languages Surveyed. . .34 2.1.1.1 Moabite

34

2.1.1.2 Ugaritic

44

2.1.1.3 Akkadian

50

2.1.1.4 Official Aramaic

63

2.1.2 Discussions of Word Order in Secondary Sources. . . .67 2.1.2.1 Aramaic

68

2.1.2.2 Phoenician

68

2.1.2.3 Biblical Hebrew

69

2.1.2.4 Arabic

71

2.1.2.5 Epigraphic South Arabian

72

2.1.2.6 Ge'az

72

2.1.2.7 Modern Ethiopian Languages

72

2.1.2.8 Akkadian

75

2.1.3 Summary

75

2.2 Inferences About Earlier Word Order

76

2.2.1 CIiticization and Agreement Marking

76

2.2.2 Considerations for Reconstruction

78

2.2.2.1 Typological Considerations

78

2.2.2.2 Internal Diagnostics for Word Order

79

2.2.2.3 Need for More Data

81

2.2.3 Some Tentative Proposals

82

2.2.3.1 Assuming Original VSO

83 vii

2.2.3.2 Assuming Original SVO

83

2.3 Conclusion

85

Notes to Chapter Two

86

CHAPTER THREE: Agent Phrases

89

3.0 Introduction

89

3.1 Agent Phrases in Hebrew

i;9

3.2 Agent Phrases in Arabic

96

3.3 Agent Phrases in Aramaic

100

3.4 Passives in Other Semitic Languages

102

3.4.1 The Damascus Covenant and the Dead Sea Scrolls. . . . 102 3.4.2 Old Aramaic

103

3.4.3 Ugaritic

104

3.5 Agent barkers

105

3.6 Conclusion

Ill

Notes to Chapter Three

112

CHAPTER FOUR: Emphatic Consonants

114

4.0 Introduction

114

4.0.1 The Notion "Emphasis"

114

4.0.2 Consonant Correspondences

115

4.1 Emphasis in the Modern Semitic Languages

115

4.1.1 Arabic

116

4.1.2 Modern South Arabian

122

4.1.3 Amharic

124 viii

4.1.4 Neoaramaic

131

4.2 Evidence by Inference

136

4.2.1 Early Classical Arabic

136

4.2.2 Biblical Hebrew

139

4.2.3 Akkadian

144

4.2.4 Aramaic

147

4.2.5 Ugaritic

15]

4.3 Summary

152

4.4 Reconstruction

154

4.4.1 The Backing Analysis

155

4.4.2 The Ejective Analysis

159

4.4.3 The Aspiration Analysis

159

4.5 Decision

159

4.5.1 Developments from an Aspiration Contrast

159

4.5.2 Developments Based on the Backing Analysis

160

4.5.3 Developments from an Ejective Contrast

160

4.5.4 Internal Evidence

161

4.5.5 External Evidence

16l

4.6 Subgrouping

162

4.6.1 Chronological Plausibility

163

4.6.2 "Universal" Considerations

164

4.6.3 Changes within the Class of Emphatics

165

4.7 Conclusion

166

Notes to Chapter Four

168 ix

CHAPTER FIVE: Sibilant Phonemes

171

5.0 Introduction

1/1

5.1 The Correspondences in "Standard" Reconstructions. . . 171 5.1.1 A Re-examination of So

176

5.1.2 A Study of the Lexical Material

176

5.2 Reconstructing the System

180

5.2.1 Evidence from Arabic

183

5.2.2 Evidence from Hebrew

187

5.2.3 Epigraphic South Arabian

152

5.2.4 Evidence from Aramaic

193

5.2.5 Akkadian

199

5.2.6 Ugaritic

2C3

5.2.7 s_ - h_ Correspondences in Afroasiatic

204

5.3 A New Reconstruction of the Sibilants

209

5.3.1 Again, Two Sibilants or Three?

214

5.3.2 The Changes Needed

216

5.4 Inferences about Relatedness

219

5.4.1 The *s to /h/ Change

22)

5.4.2 The *9 to / s / Change

222

5.4.3 The Change of *e to Other Things

223

5.4.4 The Change of *ts to / s /

223

5.4.5 The Push Chain of *ts to / s / and *s to IV

224

5.4.6 The *ii

to /£/ Change

225

5.4.7 The * M

to / s / Change

225 x

5.5 Conclusion

226

Notes to Chapter Five

228

CHAPTER SIX: Conclusion

230

6.0 Summary of the Results of the Preceding Investigations 230 6.0.1 Word Order Phenomena

230

6.0.2 Preposition Compounding

231

6.0.3 Emphatic Consonants

232

6.0.4 Sibilant Correspondences

233

6.1 Comparison with Hetzron's Morphologically Based Subgrouping

234

6.1.1 Hetzron's Subgrouping

234

6.1.2 Compatibilities with Hetzron's Subgrouping

235

6.1.3 Incompatibilities with Hetzron's Subgrouping . . . .

236

6.1.4 Partial Compatibilities with Hetzron's Subgrouping . 237 6.2 Tree vs. Wave Phenomena

237

6.2.1 Tree Phenomena 6.2.2 Wave Phenomena

233 ,

233

6.2.3 The Value of Morphological Criteria

239

6.3 Directions for Further Research

240

6.3.1 Word Order Phenomena

240

6.3.2 Other Phenomena

242

6.3.3 The Position and Structure of Ugaritic

244

6.3.4 Language Contact Phenomena

245

6.4 Historical and Archaeological Connections

245

6.5 Conclusion

247

APPENDICES

248

APPENIDX I: Variables for Syntactic Coding

249

APPENDIX II: Amharic Tokens

255

APPENDIX III: Sibilant Correspondences

256

BIBLIOGRAPHY

269

xii

CHAPTER ONE PRELIMINARIES 1.0 Why This Dissertation This dissertation was first conceived of as an exercise in methodology. I wanted to demonstrate, using the history of the Semitic Language family as an example, what could be accomplished by historical linguistics. As is inevitably the case with dissertation plans, my original program was too broad. Instead of the ten or fifteen features of the Semitic languages that I had intended to discuss in detail, I here discuss four: order of major constituents in the sentence, passive agent constructions, problems relating to the sibilant systems of the various languages, and the relationship between pharyngealized consonants in some languages and ejectives in others. Regretfully eliminated were: vowel systems, definiteness markers, relationships between pronouns and verb agreement markers, and relative clause structure, among others. The four areas that are discussed in this dissertation nevertheless serve to illustrate one of the many ways in which historical linguistics can be a productive enterprise. 1.0.1 The Relationship Between Synchronic and Diachronic Studies But, productive of what? For many linguists, the purpose of historical studies is to provide evidence for or against a particular theory of grammars. Categories or constructs to which change is sensitive are somehow more "real" than are categories or constructs that do not appear to be relevant to change. And, linguistic theory must somehow account for the "reality" of these constructs. This is the impression that one gets from much of the historical phonological work of the past fifteen years, and it is essentially the position advocated by Lightfoot (1978, 1979a} for diachronic syntax. However, there 1

2

is an unfortunate tendency, exemplified in many but not all of the papers in the volumes edited by Charles Li (1975, 1976, 1977), to prefer theories of how languages can/should behave to comprehensive illustration of these behaviors in a single language. Lightfoot, too, has been criticized for insufficient attention to detailed analysis of the data that he takes as supporting his claims (Lieber 1979). There is a further danger in allowing the direction of historical investigations to be influenced by the prevailing theoretical assumptions of synchronic linguistics. This is made explicit by Joseph (1978:176) for syntax: " . . . if some aspect of the theory is disproved, revised or abandoned, the account of syntactic change must necessarily be altered." A phonological example is readily available. Explanations of sound change that rely on changes in ordered sequences of phonological rules are valid only if the model of phonological grammar that visualizes phonological processes applying in a well-determined sequence is accepted. If that model is abandoned, the account of phonological change must be modified in accordance with a new model. Another danger of taking current synchronic work too much into account in designing diachronic investigations is that it is likely to lead to incompletemess in the resulting inventory of possible changes and the relative probabilities assigned to each. If a synchronic theory defines a certain class of phenomena as "uninteresting" or "performance-governed," a diachronic investigation operating within the framework of that theory may overlook a whole class of data crucial to understanding the development of a given language. In section 2.1.1.1 on Moabite, an example of this kind of myopia is given in which assuming that the relevant domain for investigating word order variation is the sentence itself would have led to complete ignorance of a word order alternation conditioned by position of the sentence in a narrative. These considerations do not imply that diachronic investigation shrtijiri proceed in a vacuum. Synchronic theoretical tenets can lead to the formulation of hypotheses, hypotheses that can be tested against the facts of various languages. But, care must be exercised. For

3

purposes of testing the hypothesis that all word order change results from the generalization to non-emphatic sentences of patterns developed for emphasizing a particular constituent, it does not suffice to show that a reasonable number of changes can be explained that way. What must be demonstrated that this explanation is the best one for each case examined. 1.0.2 External Evidence for Historical Linguistic Hypotheses In addition to the theoretical considerations, there is another value to diachronic linguistic investigation. That is, "the history of a language is the history of its speakers" (Sapir 1921:207). Linguistic relatedness cannot be distinguished from cultural relatedness, as language is a part of culture. If it is hypothesized on the basis of linguistic data that certain changes in the structure of the English language resulted from contact with Celtic or French, this is equivalent to claiming that there must have been contact between English speakers on the one hand and Celtic or French speakers on the other. It is not necessary to specify the nature of the contact, although it is clear that different types of contact will result in different types of change. The "hypothetical" situation outlined in the previous paragraph can be resolved by means of historical evidence. It is known that Celtic speakers occupied Britain before the Germanic invasions. It is also known that there was a long period of French domination of England following the Norman conquest. So, it is not necessary to speculate. However, at the time depths of ancient Semitic (c. 5000 BC), the evidence will b.e archaeological rather than historical. That is, evidence for cultural contact comes from changes in pottery styles, chemical analyses that can help determine the locus of origin of certain trade goods, changes in funerary practice and changes in fortifications. Gimbutas (1973) has used archaeological evidence of this nature to speculate rigorously about the original Indo-Europeans and their migrations in prehistoric times, as reflected in the Kurgan culture in Bronze Age Europe. Evidence of this sort can perhaps pro-

4

vide more reliable indications about the homeland of the Indo-Europeans than can examination of the PIE lexicon (Crossland 1971:868ff). Similarly, Hudson (1977, 1977a) uses dialect geography to argue that the accepted explanation for the presence of Semitic languages in Ethiopia is incorrect. This view is that there was a series of migrations from southern Arabia to the Horn of Africa around 700 EC. So, all Semitic languages spoken in Ethiopia are descendants of the language of the original settlers, probably something like the Epigraphic South Arabian attested in inscriptions all over southern Arabia. But, the great diversity of Semitic languages in Ethiopia could not have developed in 2600 years. Dialect geography correlates the greater diversity of English dialects in Britain with the fact that settlement of English speakers in England is much elder than that in the United States. If this is a general pattern, it must be the case that Semitic settlement in Ethiopia is older than Semitic settlement in Syria/ Palestine/Mesopotamia. This analysis has clear implications for historical and ethnographic study, implications of which Hudson is not unaware. It turns out that a body of archaeological evidence, hitherto in the "unexplained anomaly" category, supports his linguistic reconstruction. King (1979) summarizes a comparative study of Germanic dialects in which it is shown that Yiddish has strong affinities with Bavarian dialects. This analysis is incompatible with the traditional historical picture of Jewish settlement in Europe, which has it that Jews settled first in the Rhineland during late Roman times, then migrated eastward under the pressure of pogroms following the First Crusade (1095 AD) and the Black Death (1348 AD). If the majority of Eastern European Jews trace their ancestry to these original migrants, Yiddish should show stronger affinities with Franconian and Alemannic dialects of German. The incompatibility between the view of Yiddish derived from historical evidence and that derived from linguistic evidence leads to two possible conclusions: either the linguistic view, and the methodology from which it is derived, is incorrect, or the historical picture that we have of the development of Eastern European Jewry is

5

incorrect. Only a review of the historical evidence can shed light on the validity of the linguistic hypothesis. In this work, I will not be relying on prehistoric evidence for settlement patterns or cultural contacts to confirm my hypotheses. This is because of the limited scope. It makes more sense to me to wait until there is a greater degree of certainty in the linguistic hypotheses, untli more sub-systems of the Semitic languages have been studied in depth comparable to that in this dissertation) Only when it is clear that the linguistic evidence does in fact point in a certain direction does it make sense to look for extra-linguistic evidence. Extra-linguistic evidence will, however, be used in making decisions about whether an innovation that occurs in two or more languages is in fact a joint innovation on the basis of which it can be assumed that the two languages in question underwent a period of development not shared by the other languages. If it is abundantly clear that a given change took place within the recorded history of one of the languages, joint innovation may be excluded, regardless of the naturalness of the change. While it is unfortunate that hypotheses about the relatedness of languages and dialects can be disproven from outside the discipline, it is precisely this fact about them that renders these hypotheses empirical: it i$_ possible to conceive of falsifying evidence. Furthermore, if outside evidence should fail to disprove a hypothesis about relatedness, that too would be significant, since it would mean that support was coming from a body of data outside the evidence that the linguistic hypothesis was formulated to explain. 1.1.0 Waves and Trees For the past hundred years, there have been two competing models of linguistic relatedness: the tree model and the wave model. The tree model is based on the idealization that there are sharp breaks in continuity between speech communities, that is, that when a group moves away from its original home, there is a sudden and absolute lack of contact between it and its original neighbors. This sharp

6

divergence can be graphically represented by one branching on a tree. Similarities between this model and the biological model of species differentiation are striking and cannot be accidental, given the intellectual climate of the nineteenth century (see Greenberg 1957c). The wave model, in contrast, makes no idealization about sharp breaks between speech communities. Rather, it postulates that linguistic changes spread each from a given locus. It is not necessarily the case that all changes with the same locus spread to cover exactly the same area. 1.1.1 A Methodology for Distinguishing Wave from Tree Phenomena The two models outlined in the previous section predict different sorts of linguistic situations. Thus, it should be possible to distinguish between them by some empirical criterion, based on the types or relationships that we observe among languages. Despite the fact that some investigators work under the assumption that one of the models is right and one is wrong, it is clear that there are elements of truth in both. Greenberg (1957b:53-54) points out that a "pure" wave model cannot be correct: "If linguistic innovations in a speech community spread in a random way . . . then there would be gradual transitions only and no sharp breaks to give rise to distinct groupings." He also notes, (1957a:40) that "borrowing can never be an over-all explanation of a mass of recurrent basic resemblances occurring over a wide geographical area. It is sometimes adduced in this ad-hoc fashion." Neither, according to Hoenigswald (1973:x) is a "pure" tree model sufficient to account for the range of situations that we observe: It is well-known that [the] appropriateness [of tree models] is limited and that there may not be any situations in history where "clear cleavage" of the kind which makes the tree an adequate representation of what happened occurred in all points. Given these uncertainties, the extent to which the tree model is valid is an empirical question, one that can only be approached without any a priori notions about which phenomena are likely to indicate genetic

7

relatedness. It is clear that a methodology must be developed by which wave phenomena can be differentiated from tree phenomena. Given resemblances among languages, resemblances which we are for whatever reason unwilling to attribute to convergent developments, it would be desirable to be able to determine which of these resemblances are the result of innovations that took place before the languages split from their most recent common ancestor and which are the result of more recent innovations spreading throughout several speech communities. I have tried to develop such a methodology in this dissertation. It is clear that, for any phenomenon present in some but not all of a group of languages, there will be one subset of languages that has the phenomenon and a complementary subset that doesn't; the languages of the second subset need have nothing positive in common. Since relic forms are discounted in both models--isoglosses in a cartographic depiction of a wave situation surround innovating areas (although there might be relic areas within them} and subgrouping in a tree model is based on innovation—the initial problem is to decide whether the shared phenomenon in the first subset is an innovation or a retention. If the phenomenon is an innovation, the next task is to determine whether it could have developed independently in two or more languages. There are several types of evidence that can be used to assist in this decision, but, ultimately, it comes down to what level of risk of error a given investigator is willing to run. In the absence of external evidence of any sort, a probability can be computed. If the reconstructed sound (assuming that the procedure is being applied to phonological systems) is one that is "likely" to change, it is possible to list and count the things it could change into. If there are £ possible results (including no change), the a priori probability of any one of these in one language is 1/C_. The probability of the same change in £ languages thus becomes 1/C_—. So, if, for example, the probability that /n/ will assini^ate to alveolar consonants only is k, the probability that this wil'i happen independently

8

in two languages is 1/16, and in three languages 1/64. Faced with the situation in which /n/ is observed to assimilate to alveolar consonants in three languages out of a larger group, an investigator can calculate the probability of independent innovation as follows. The probability that the innovation occurred three times is 1/64. The probability that two out of the three languages jointly and independently of the third is 3/16, since there are three possible pairings of two out of three languages. The sum is 13/64, or 0.203. Thus, there would be approximately a 20% chance of error in any solution that posited /n/ assimilation as a joint innovation. Obviously, the outline of this procedure is dependent on the initial assignment of probability values. However, the largest component of potential error came from the factor assigned to joint innovation in only a subset of the original subset of languages in which the change took place. Furthermore, there is no algorithm by which it can be decided what is an acceptable risk of error. Only the risk itself can be calculated. Often there are factors that affect this probability calculation, sometimes to the extent that there is no need to make it explicit. For example, typological studies of phonological systems show that there are some configurations that are more likely than others. The extreme rareness of pharyngeal!zed or velarized consonants in Ruhlen's (1976) 700 language sample is used in Chapter Four to argue for consideration of the change from ejectives to pharyngealized consonants as a one-time innovation. There is, too, always the possibility that known chronological factors will reduce to 0.0 the probability that two languages shared an innovation. That is, there may be evidence that the change took place within the recorded history of one of the languages. In such cases, there is no alternative but to posit independent innovation. For each phenomenon studied, it should be possible to isolate a list of languages that probably innovated jointly. After a number of phenomena have been treated, there will be available a list of languages, perhaps like those listed in (1).

9

(1) 1. A B (C (D E)) F 2. A (B C D E) F 3. A B C (D E) F 4. (A B) C (D E) F 5. A B (C D E) F 6. A (B C D E) F 7. A (B C) D (E F) 8. A B (C D E) F The list in (1) can be broken down into those changes that arc compatible with one another and those that are incompatible. So, phenomena 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 8 are all compatible with each other: phenomena 4 and 7 are compatible neither with each other nor with the larger group. These data are compatible with the tree in (2); phenomena 4 and 7 represent waves that spread across the linguistic area after the break-up 2 of the original language family. (2)

A

B

C

D

E

>

Such a procedure, when applied to a large enough number of language groups, should yield information regarding the types of phenomena most likely to represent genetically shared innovation and those most likely to result from wave patterns. Assuming that the procedure is valid, it should isolate as potential wave phenomena types of variation that are observed in contemporary language contact situations. Since this dissertation is limited in scope to the Semitic language family, I can not complete here the program outlined above. However, to the extent that the phenomena from the Semitic languages

10

investigated here isolate the same group of innovating languages, they will provide evidence for genetic relationships within the family. But, if each of the four phenomena picks out a different innovating group, one incompatible with the innovators isolated by the other phenomena, that would not be evidence that all four phenomena were most susceptible to wave interpretation. Many more phenomena would need to be studied before such a conclusion could be reached. 1.2.0 On the Alleged Primacy of Morphological Criteria Another of my goals in this dissertation has been to test the claim that morphological innovation is the most reliable indicator of linguistic subgroupings. I first encountered this claim in Hetzron (1976), and it has continued to crop up in various forms in my reading. Hoenigswald (1960:154) claims that morphological and lexical comparisons are preferable to phonological comparisons because there is less chance of independent innovation. In contrast, Meillet (1970:36) states that morphology is the most stable sub-system in a language and vocabulary is the least stable (p. 48). DeMoor (1973:87), in a review of the literature concerning the position of Ugaritic in the Semitic language family, suggests that a lot of the claims made about Ugaritic are faulty, based as they are on phonological and lexical evidence; morphology and syntax are superior criteria. Dixon, in a discussion of Australian languages, refers to the "fact'' that pronouns are "notoriously resistant" to change. Greenberg (1957b:51) prefers to limit reliance on morphological criteria to irregular paradigms. The reasons for rejecting as unreliable other criteria than morphological ones vary from researcher to researcher. Some of the variation is evident in the references in the previous paragraph. In addition, Greenberg (1957b:50) discounts the utility of regular sound change because of the likelihood of independent innovation. Highly conditioned sound changes like metathesis and dissimilation, however, are less susceptible to independent innovation. For Hetzron (1972:11), the danger in relying on phonetic information lies in the

11

possibility that a change might be area! rather than genetic. Aside from deMoor in the passage cited above, the only treatment of syntactic phenomena in the context of determining linguistic relatedness is that of Greenberg (1957a:36): The order of meaningful elements may be considered a formal characteristic, like sound. In syntactic constructions only two possibilities usually occur in the arrangement of forms, A either preceding or following B, as contrasted with the numerous possibilities of sound combinations. Hence, arguments based on word order are of minor significance. This is all the more so because the kinds of constructional meaning which may be significant are necessarilly small, e.g., dependent genitive or actor-action. Historically unconnected occurrences of such resemblances are therefore extremely likely and heavily documented. We have thus several claims, all susceptiDle to testing: i. Morphological innovation is the only valid criterion on which to base genetic subgrouping. ii. The vocabulary is the most unstable part of a linguistic system. iii. Core vocabulary is proof against mass borrowing, and therefore is a reliable guide to subgrouping. iv. Morphology is more useful than phonological or lexical resemblance in determining subgrouping. v. Syntax is not at all useful for the determination of 1inguistic groups. Not all of these claims can be correct. None of the writers cited brings forward unambiguous evidence in favor of his particular claim, but each does suggest reasons for his preference. Unfortunately, however, most of these reasons reduce to "explanations" of the following form:1 it is difficult to filter out independent innovation and chance convergence in our study of phenomena in class A. Therefore, class A phenomena are of no use in establishing linguistic relatedness. This reasoning is clearly specious. If it is difficult to filter out chance convergence in phonological patterning, it is not impossible. There is no reason that methodologies cannot be developed

12

by which this filtering can be done. Work on phonological naturalness whether of systems or processes is clearly relevant. While consideration of the subgroupings induced by examination of a "natural" phonological similification--say, unrounding of front rounded vowels--may be less reliable than that induced by comparison of pronoun systems, it does not follow from this that all subgroupings based on phonological/phonetic criteria are less reliable than any based on morphological criteria. The only way that I know of to test the relative reliabilities of morphological, syntactic, lexical and phonological criteria is to attempt to establish subgroupings based on phenomena from all four classes. When the innovative groups from all four classes are compared, in the manner suggested in 1.1.1, at least one class of phenomena should pick out compatible innovative groups. Thus, it will be possible to differentiate wave from tree phenomena. The hypothesis that morphological criteria are the only ones on which subgroupings can reliably be based reduces in this model to the hypothesis that only morphological phenomena can select innovating groups that are genetically related. All syntactic, morphological and lexical similarities would have to be the result of later contact or convergence. The weaker form of the hypothesis, that morphological innovation is the safest or most reliable criterion on which to base subgrouping, implies that most of the phenomena that select compatible innovating groups will be morphological; lexical, syntactic and phonological phenomena will tend to pick out incompatible innovating groups that must be explained by convergence or contact. It is precisely this latter hypothesis that I want to test in this dissertation. The problem areas within the Semitic languages that are studied here were selected out of a class of syntactic and phonological problems. Hetzron (1974, 1976) has already proposed a genetic subgrouping of the Semitic language family based on morphological criteria. This can serve as a basis of comparison for the results of the investigations presented in the following chapters. Since there are only two phonological and two syntactic investigations

13

reported on here, the results will not necessarily provide conclusive evidence for or against the priority of morphological criteria. However, the degree to which the phenomena I investigated select innovative groups compatible with Hetzron's subgrouping suggests that the hypothesis that morphological criteria are the most reliable needs reevaluation. A complete implementation of this program would include lexicostatistical evidence. In fact, several recent attempts at lexicostatistical determination of Semitic relatedness have been made (D. Cohen 1973, Rabin 1975). The discussion of Rabin's paper included in Bynon and Bynon (197S) suggests that this method has serious problems, including difficulties with the validity of the calculations at time depths greater than 3000 years {for Semitic, one needs at least 6000 years). There is no reason to assume that the rate of lexical replacement is constant for all languages at all times. And, there is the further difficulty that the rate of replacement depends crucially on the specific 100 or 200 item list used. Compounding this problem is the fact that different language groups might best be studied with different core vocabularies. For these reasons, I did not include any lexicostatistical study in this investigation. 1.3.0 On the Alleged Impossibility of Comparative Syntactic Reconstruction Another claim, also relevant to the feasibility of the program outlined above, is that comparative reconstruction of syntactic phenomena is impossible. This claim has been stated most forcefully by Jeffers (1976a). However, the fact that most treatments of the Semitic languages either do not mention syntax at all or treat it superficially suggests either that syntax is considered trivial or that Jeffers' claim is uncontroversial. On the other hand, Greenberg's discussion of the difficulty of basing subgrouping on syntactic innovation (1957a:365 cited above, p. 11) presupposes the feasibility of reconstructing the syntax of the proto-language. And, within the

14

structuralist movement, the feasibility of reconstructing syntax was not in doubt. It is probably possible to achieve more syntactical reconstruction than anyone yet has, but the amount of labor involved is necessarily enormous, and even under the best possible conditions large gaps and uncertainties would remain. —Hcckett (1958:511) The best tack to take in evaluating these conflicting claims, both implicit and explicit, is to examine Jeffers' reasons for claiming thdt comparative reconstruction of syntax is impossible. His argument reduces to the lack of parallelism between phonological and syntactic correspondence. When we apply the comparative method to phonological systems, we examine the phonological correspondences within lexical items. The similarity in form and meaning between the lexical items in two languages being compared provides a check on the reliability of the correspondences. Furthermore, the requirement that correspondences recur differentiates between systematic and sporadic correspondences; only the systematic correspondences are input to reconstruction. Jeffers claims (p. 5) that a straightforward transfer of this methodology to syntax is inappropriate: "differing patterns simply don't compare." The only legitimate correspondence is identity (p. 6). These claims follow from the fact that Jeffers is examining patterns rather than contexts. So, he is correct in saying that there is no equivalent of a Proto-language phoneme that could possibly underlie SVO, VSO and SOV word orders in related languages in the same way that *k can underlie /k/ - /fc7 correspondences. But, the phonemic correspondence is not established on the basis of comparison of phonological systems; rather it is abstracted out of lexical items, the contexts in which phonemes occur. Similarly, any attempt at comparative syntax must begin with comparison of the contexts in which syntactic constructions occur.

15

1.3.1 On an Enriched Notion of Syntactic Context If the particular construction that we are interested in reconstructing is the sentence (word order), an appropriate way to begin is to list all imaginable types of sentences. By this, I mean to suggest that an appropriate set of contexts in which to analyze sentences is the set of contexts in which they are ordinarily uttered. While it is not always possible to uncover discourse related factors in a dead language, it is legitimate to assume, for example, that yes-no questions are ordinarily uttered in different contexts than are conditional sentences. In addition to those contexts that can potentially be isolated on the basis of sentence type (conditional, counterfactual, negative, question, imperative, relative clause, object of perceptual verb, etc.), there are contexts that are relevant to what Chafe (1976:28) refers to as packaging, how a message is sent. Some packaging information relevant to nouns is listed in (3). (3) Is a noun: given or new? a focus of contrast? definite or indefinite? the subject? the topic, as in English "As for X...?" Further contextual information can be derived from paragraph structure. Hopper (1976, 1979) discusses word order differences that can be correlated with a sentence position in a narrative. A sentence that contributes to the narratwt low may have a different word order than a sentence that provides background information, chronologically out of sequence with the story line. It is clearly not the case that word order is the only way in which contextual information of the sort outlined above may be conveyed. Some distinctions are conveyed by the use of morphological marking, without any change in word order. And, there are distinctions that are conveyed by intonation alone; such a distinction would of course be masked in a language known only from texts. If a list is made of the means of expressing each of the categories that can be isolated for each of several languages that are known to lie related, their clusterings can be determined for each

16

language. If the clusters for several languages are identical, regardless of the means for marking any particular category, I submit that that constitutes a legitimate source of inference about the clusterings in the parent language. Within any one language, the clusterings provide a means of representing the conditions under which certain syntactic alternations occur. In diachronic terms, they give us a means of representing conditioned word order change. If two languages have clusters of conditional sentences and relative clauses only, but do not agree on the means of marking them, it may be legitimate to infer that their most recent common ancestor also had that cluster, but it cannot be determined how that ancestor marked the cluster. However, as Jeffers takes pains to point out (1976:16), the comparative method in its pure form ends with postulation of the system. Phonological systems are fleshed out on the basis of Hockett's phonetic realism (1958:506), our knowledge of how phonological systems in general are structured and behave. Similarly, our knowledge of syntactic change and typological information about how syntactic systems are structured and behave can play a role in the reconstruction of the exact syntax of the proto-language clusters that we posit. 1.3.2 The Indo-European Passive The approach advocated in the previous section can profitably be applied to another problem alluded to by Jeffers, that of the Indo-European passive. The problem is that, while all of the attested Indo-European languages have passive constructions, the morphological realizations of the category passive vary from language to language, and it is impossible to reconstruct "the Indo-European passive." Nevertheless, despite the fact that there are attested languages that lack passive sentences, many linguists find it strange to say that Indo-European did not have a passive. One response is to say that Indo-European may well have had a passive construction, but that the precise structure of that passive is beyond the reach of current methodology. This is Jeffers' approach. Lehmann (1974:185), on the

17

other hand, denies that PIE had a passive construction. Both approaches are overly pessimistic. The methodology outlined in section 1.3.1 can shed light on the question. First, the passive constructions in the various IE languages can be studied in great detail. It is necessary to determine the frequency with which passives are used, the extent to which they permit agents, the kinds of agents permitted, the types of style in which passive voice predominates and whether passivization is best treated as a syntactic or a lexical phenomenon (Dowty 1979, and references cited there). If such an investigation of each of the attested passive constructions reveals variation that cannot be filtered out as recent developments, then the probability that the constructions do not have a common source increases. Lehmann predicts that this would in fact be the outcome. But, if the distribution patterns are commensurate, further study of the question is possible. In purely functional terms, passivization acts to reduce transitive (two-place) relations to intransitive (one-place) relations. There are other processes that occur in natural languages that differ from passivization only in details of the nature of the one-place relation. It is not uncommon for intransitivizing morphemes to change function. So, one modern Hebrew passive morpheme /?lt/ is the reflex of a Biblical Hebrew reflexive/reciprocal marker /hit/. This suggests that additional light could be shed on the question of the IE passive by examination of other derived intransitive verbs in the various IE dialects. There is no guarantee that such a procedure would lead to identification of a PIE intransitivizing or passive morpheme. But, implementation of such an extensive investigation would lend greater support to the statement that there was none. 1.3.3 Another Notion of Context In section 1.3.1 I argued that an enriched notion of context should enable identification of at least some conditioned syntactic change and comparative reconstruction of syntax. The limitation on

18

context that I advocated is based on specific information relating to the discourse situation. Using this method, I hypothesize, some but not all of the syntactic features of a proto-language can be reconstructed. In this regard, it is important to note that there is much allophonic variation in sound systems that cannot be reconstructed by means of the comparative method applied to phonology. Watkins (1976) advocates a different restriction on context, controlling for the subject matter of the discourse. On the basis of specific sentences dealing with culturally significant events in IndoEuropean society, he attempts to reconstruct some details of IndoEuropean sentence structure. He motivates his selection on the grounds that there were probably traditional modes of discourse for discussing traditional cultural events. If these traditional modes of discourse conflict with ordinary sentence structure in a language, the traditional mode of discourse is more likely to be archaic. Thus, it is likely to provide more reliable input to comparative reconstruction, since it is a tenet of the method that it is archaisms that should be compared. The traditional modes of discourse, if correlated with a shared cultural heritage, can, according to Watkins, be assumed to come from that heritage. 1.3.4 Summary I want to emphasize that the lack of guarantee that the relationship between the passive constructions in two languages can be determined is not a defect in the methodology that I have outlined. When cognate lists are set up as a preliminary to establishing phonological correspondences, there is no guarantee that words for 'heart' in two related languages will be cognate. Only the aggregate of systematic correspondences isolated will enable a decision as to whether specific items can be treated as cognate. Similarly, the syntactic method that is adopted should have the power to differentiate cases in which one of two related languages has adopted a new way of marking verbs in passive constructions from those in which one of the languages adopted a new passive construction. It is such a

19

methodology that I have tried to sketch. My success can only be determined on the basis of the results of the methodology. 1.4 The Need for Detailed Investigation of Semitic Relationships Despite the fact that the Semitic languages have been under intensive scrutiny as a group ever since their relatedness was demonstrated in the eighteenth century, there is still no consensus as to the exact structure of the family. Structures like that in (4) are commonly assumed, although careful writers like Moscati (1969) and Ullendorff (1970) stress that it is geographical only. (4)

Aramaic

*Proto-Semitic

Canaanite

Arabic

Southeast Semitic

Modern South Arabian There is some controversy about the inclusion of Ugaritic in the Canaanite family (Goetze 1941, Harris 1967, Kutscher 1965). In regard to this, one of the authorities on Ugaritic (Gordon 1965:68) states: "The classification of related languages is largely a matter of temporary convenience rather than enduring truth." More recently, several proposals have been made about the internal structure of the Ethiopian group (Hetzron 1972) and South Semitic in general (Bender 1970; see Hudson 1977 for additional references). The work by Hetzron (1976) already alluded to proposes a Central Semitic group of

20

Canaanite, Arabic and Aramaic; the position of Ugaritic is not specified. Furthermore, there are those who deny the applicability of any tree model at all to the Semitic area (Rabin 1963, Blau 1972, Garbini 1972J. Given this confusion and controversy, any approach that can shed light on the internal structure of the Semitic family will be treading new ground and has the potential of making a significant contribution to understanding of the history and archaeology of the Near East. 1.5 The Semitic Languages in Brief The tree in (4), for all that it is primarily geographical, provides a convenient outline of the languages that will be treated in this dissertation. These are languages that are either spoken today or that have left some written records. It is extremely likely that there were other ancient Semitic languages which were never reduced to writing or whose written records were lost (von Soden 1960:184). The only attested East Semitic language is Akkadian. Dialects of Akkadian are attested from 2300 BC until 600 BC, from modern Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. There are within Akkadian several major dialects, which in other contexts would no doubt be referred to as separate languages. Oppenheim (1964) differentiates between Old Akkadian, which developed in northern Mesopotamia into Assyrian, and Old Babylonian, which was spoken by a group that he claims migrated into Sumerian dominated areas around 2300 BC. Old Babylonian later developed into the literary language that Akkadian formal prose aspired to throughout the life of the language. It can be contrasted with the colloquials that are attested in letters and other informal texts from a wide range of periods and geographical areas. The primary difficulty in working with Akkadian is that it is so heavily influenced by Sumerian. Its writing system was borrowed from Sumerian, its syntax was influenced by Sumerian, and its literary themes were adapted from Sumerian prototypes.

21

Aramaic was the official language of the Achaemenide Empire in the last several hundred years before the beginning of the Christian Era. It was spoken throughout the Near East from around 700 BC until the Arab conquest in 600 AD. The earliest known texts in Aramaic are several inscriptions from inland Syria dating from around 800 BC. In addition, large quantities of papyrus documents dating from around 500 BC have been found on Elephantine Island in Upper (Southern) Egypt. This island was apparently settled by a Jewish garrison, and many of the documents were preserved by the climate. Several parts of the Biblical books of Daniel and Ezra were also written in Aramaic. Some time around the beginning of the Christian Era, Aramaic replaced Hebrew as the major spoken language in Palestine (Cantineau 1955); many Rabbinical writings that are still influential within normative Judaism were written in Aramaic at this time, as were many writings of the Syrian Christian Church. There are still several Neoaramaic dialects spoken in the mountainous area of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. Until about five years ago, it was thought that the earliest attestation of any Canaanite language was found in the Tell El Amarna letters from around 1400 BC. These are letters found in Egypt but originating all over the Middle East. Most of them are in Akkadian, but some contain interlineal glosses in a Canaanite language. Five years ago, an Italian expedition to Tell Mardikh, ancient Ebla, in Syria, uncovered a cache of cuneiform tablets, some from as early as 2200 BC. Although little has been published from this cache, it has been claimed (Pettinato 1975) that they are in Old Canaanite, a precursor of the attested Canaanite languages. The fact that so little information of a linguistic nature is available about Eblaite (Old Canaanite) means that it is possible that some of the linguistic conclusions reached in this dissertation may be refuted, by information already available but not disseminated. Another early language, commonly included under the rubric Canaanite is Amorite. This language was apparently spoken in inland Syria for much of the second millenium before the Christian Era. Virtually our only evidence for the existence of the Amorite people comes

22

from fleeting references to the MAR.TU or Amurru in Akkadian and Sumerian texts. There is relatively little archaeological evidence pertaining to them, since inland Syria is relatively studied compared to southern Mesopotamia. There are no extant texts in Amorite; the only evidence for the structure of the language comes from the structure of personal names in Akkadian that are identified as belonging to Amorites (Gelb 1958, Huffmon 1965). Additional evidence comes from deviations between the Akkadian of documents written in areas that are presumed to have been heavily influenced by the Amorites and the standard Old Babylonian. It should be mentioned that the preliminary lists of names published by Pettinato (1975) are enough to show that Amorite differed from Eblaite in some details concerning the verbal system, at the very least. Ugaritic is represented by a large body of texts found for the most part at the Syrian site of Ras Shamra, but to a lesser extent also throughout northern Palestine. These tablets are written in a consonantal cuneiform script which shows no affinity with the Sumerian (Akkadian, Eblaite) cuneiform syllabary. The Ugaritic corpus consists of economic and literary texts from around 1300 BC. Phoenician is represented by texts from Lebanon and the Syrian coast. These texts date from as early as 1000 BC. A later variety of Phoenician, Punic, is attested in North Africa, in the vicinity of Carthage. Moabite was apparently spoken east of the Jordan River, in the Biblical land of Moab. Only one complete text is known in the language, the Mesha stele, which commemmoratcs the victory of Mesha King of Moab over Omri King of Israel around 300 BC. Hebrew is the best known of the so-called Canaanite languages. Besides being the language of the bulk of the Old Testament, it is represented in inscriptions found in many parts of Palestine, some as early as 800 BC. In addition, there are various extraBiblical texts dating back to approximately the beginning of the Christian Era. The best known of these are the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found shortly after the Second World War in the caves of Qumran on the western shore of the Dead Sea. Also available are some

23

uncanonized Jewish religious works that were preserved in special storage areas (genizot) to prevent the destruction of any material with God's name on it. To a certain extent, even copied documents found in genizot, the most famous of which was in Cairo, are better representations of "true" Biblical Hebrew than the Biblical text itself, since they have not been subject to the same exegetical and editorial reworkings as the Biblical text. The earliest Arabic texts are some Pre-Classical poems and graffiti found in the Arabian desert, and the Qur'an, dating from around 550 AD. Although the Arabic dialects spoken throughout the Arab world show a high degree of similarity to Classical Arabic in certain respects, it is likely that they are descended from the various dialects spoken in the Arabian peninsula around the time of Mohammad rather than from the Classical language. Epigraphic South Arabian is attested in inscriptions from the southern part of the Arabian peninsula from around 100 BC to 500 AD. The oldest Ethiopian texts are in Ge'ez, the language of the Coptic Christian Church. The oldest texts are from around 1400 AD, but probably represent a language state a millenium older. The best known of the modern Ethiopian Semitic languages is Amharic, the national language of Ethiopia. Other Semitic languages spoken in various parts of Ethiopia include Tigre, Tigrinya, Harari, Argobba and Gurage. In addition to these Semitic languages, there are many Cushitic (non-Semitic but closely related) languages spoken in various parts of Ethiopia, and it is generally, but not universally, accepted that these languages exerted a strong influence on the development of the Semitic languages in Ethiopia (Leslau 1945). There are also four modern South Arabian languages, Socotri, Harsusu, Mehri, and Shauri, that appear not to be direct descendants of Epigraphic South Arabian. These languages are spoken in southern Arabia; Socotri is spoken on an island in the Indian Ocean. There are few speakers of these languages left and the languages have been under heavy Arabic influence for some time (Leslau 1947).

24

1.6 The Plan The plan for the rest of this dissertation is as follows: each of the next four chapters is devoted to an intensive study of the manifestations of one phenomenon in each of the above described languages. In each case, an attempt is made to reconstruct the phenomenon in Proto-Semitic and th chart the developments to the presently attested language states. On the basis of these developments, some potential innovating groups are isolated. In chapter Six, the innovating groups are compared with each other and with the recent proposals of Hetzron (1974, 1976). The fact that these innovating groups are compatible with each other is then discussed, together with its implications for both linguistic theory and the study of the ancient Near East.

25

Notes to Chapter One This does not mean that the Ethiopian Semitic languages are necessarily conservative relative to the rest of Semitic. 2 Number 4 could have been an earlier wave than 7. It would have affected languages A and B, as well as DE before the latter split. Number 7 necessarily occurred after the D-E split. According to Watkins (1976:321), it is unreasonable to assume that IE had no passive.This is prejudging the case as much as is the assumption that there couldn't have been a passive in PIE. Neither prior assumption is a substitute for a methodology by which one can reconstruct a passive only if there was one at the shared stage.

CHAPTER TWO WORD ORDER 2.0 Traditional Views of Semitic Word Order Kaufman (1974:32) makes the following statement about Old Aramaic word order: it is of the "expected ancient Semitic type"-VSO, with variations for emphasis. That VSO is, in fact, the "ancient Semitic type" has, with the exception of works by Talmy Givon, achieved the status of fact in the thinking of many Semiticists. It is the purpose of this chapter to evaluate the evidence regarding Proto-Semitic word order, in an attempt to determine the extent to which there is support for this notion that Proto-Semitic was VSO. Further motivation for re-examining the question of PS word order is found in recent works by Talmy Givon (1976, 1976a, 1977}. He suggests that PS was an SOV language; his evidence is based on his assumptions about the way verb agreement paradigms develop. This set of assumptions will be evaluated below (section 2.2.1). In the meantime, actual evidence is needed, independent of theoretical preconceptions. This evidence will be presented and discussed in section 2.1. 2.0.1 Texts and Method For this investigation, I surveyed approximately 500 sentences from published texts in various of the ancient Semitic languages. In all cases, I was guided in my interpretations by the editor(s)1 translations and commentary, but did not feel bound by them in cases of conflict with my knowledge of other, related languages or lack of consistency with the cultural context. I copied each text, sentence by sentence, onto IBM computer cards. Each sentence was accompanied by a morpheme-by-morpheme gloss and, if it seemed necessary, a free translation. I then coded each sentence for the variables listed in

26

27

Table I. Word Order Presence and Location of Adverbials Indications of Topicalization; Pronouns Presence of Initial Particles Presence and Location of Negative Markers Presence and Location of Conjunctions Verb Voice External Time Reference Verb Conjugation Form Mood Presence and Position of Nominal Modifiers (Demonstratives, adjectives, construct and periphrastic genitives, number words) Clause Type Grammatical Relation of a Relative Clause Head within the Clause Table I: Variables that each sentence in the corpus was coded for. A complete list of the possible values for each variable is given in Appendix I. The only sentences in the corpus that were discarded were those that were incomplete in the texts, generally as a result of imperfect preservation, and those containing enough lexical items of uncertain etymology that any interpretation was open to doubt. Each variable was assigned a numerical value, in order to facilitate computer processing of the data. Using the University of Texas Control Data Corporation 6600-6400 computer system and the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, I generated tables of statistical information about the distribution of the variables listed in Table I in the various languages. I also generated lists of correlations between, say, word order and verb conjugation pattern. In this investigation, the Old Akkadian period was represented by a love chant that was found in the archives of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. Its provenience in Mesopotamia is unknown. I used Gelb's (1970) transliteration of the text and was guided by his translations. The text is probably from around 2500 BC. The Old Babylonian period of Akkadian, around 2000 BC, is rep-

28

resented by letters from the Mari Archives. I used the Archives Royales de Mari publications (Jean 1950, additional citations from Dossin 1978) and was aided in my interpretation both by the French translations accompanying each transliterated text and by Finet (1956) and Bottero and Finet (1954). The Old Aramaic period is represented by two texts. The first of these is a victory stele erected by King Zakir of Hamath and Luath and the second is a treaty between the kings of Arpad and Ketek, the Sefire treaty inscription, in which it seems that Arpad is doing all the conceding. I have basically followed Gibson's (1975) translations; the transliterations are my own, as Gibson uses the modern Hebrew alphabet. These two texts are referred to as Zakir and Sefire respectively. The Official Aramaic period (c. 500 BC) is represented by some of the documents found at Elephantine in Upper Egypt, as published by Cowley (1923) and Kraeling (1953). Cowley 32 is the report of a messenger sent to Jerusalem to enquire about the possibility of rebuilding the temple in Yev (Elephantine) that had been destroyed. Cowley suggests that the papyrus is actually the notes jotted down by the messenger so that he would remember the substance of his talks. From Kraeling, I used documents 2 and 8, one the marriage contract between Ananiah, a priest, and Tamut, a slave girl, and the other the record of the adoption of a slave boy by one Uriah. In addition to the commentary with the original publication of these documents, I also consulted the commentary in Porten (1976) for guidance in my interpretations. The transliterations are my own, based on the printed versions in the Hebrew script, not the original documents. Ugaritic is represented by two religious texts, both published by Driver (1956). Nikkal is a wedding poem, apparently equating the bride, Probhit, with one of the Kathirat, or love goddesses. Keret deals with the vicissitudes of one Prince Keret. I have used Driver's transliterations of the Ugaritic cuneiform. In addition, I consulted Gray (1964), Aistleitner (1954), Ginzberg (1946) and Gordon (1949, 1965), all of which deal with the Ugaritic literary texts in general.

I also consulted several works that deal with details of interpretation. Moabite is represented by the Mesha stele, commemorating the victory of Mesha King of Moab over Omri King of Israel. As far as I know, it is the only extant Moabite text. I used Gibson's (1971) translation as a guide, but also consulted F. Anderson (1971) and Lipinski (1971). The transliteration is my own. In addition, I used three early Hebrew texts. The first of these is the Siloam inscription, that was sealed with the completion of the water tunnel in Jerusalem during the reign of King Hezekiah (c. 715-687 BC); the tunnel was built to make Jerusalem self-sufficient in the event of a siege. The second text is a desperate plea for reinforcements from the commander of the besieged city of Lachish in southern Israel. And, the third is the Yavne Yam text, named after a kibbutz near where it was found. It is the deposition of a contract field worker who feels that he has been cheated by the overseer of the man he was working for. For all three of these texts, I was guided in my interpretations by Gibson's (1971) comments; the transliteration is my own. Biblical Hebrew was represented in the study by the Song of Hoses (Exodus 15). I selected this portion because it is considered by advocates of the critical theory, the theory that the Biblical text as we know it was created in the second half of the first millenium BC by pasting together documents from various periods and various traditions, to be one of the oldest parts of the Bible. Critical theory aside, it is well-known that poetry exhibits conservative traits relative to prose (Segert 19&9); thus, the Song of Moses should exhibit archaic characteristics of Early Biblical Hebrew. I also analyzed approximately the first third of the Damascus Covenant, a document detailing the history and guiding principles of an ascetic splinter group of Jews from around the beginning of the Christian Era (perhaps the Essenes referred to in the New Testament). Although the document was found in the Cairo Geniza, it is conceptually and linguistically much more closely related to the Dead Sea

30

Scrolls than to anything else found in the Geniza. I used Haberman's (1959) text and was guided in my interpretations by his vocalization and notes and by Dupont-Sommer's (1961) notes and translation. The transliterations are my own, based on Haberman's vocalization; vowel symbols were not found in the original document, but Haberman added orthographic symbols for them, based on the vocalization patterns of the Hebrew Bible. 2.1 General Summary of Results TEXT WORD ORDER

Dam. Cov.

Moab.

Heb. Insc.

Exod.

Old Off. Old Ugar. Akk. Aram. Aram. 6/3

P Norn-Noun Noun-P Norn

3/6

7/2 4/4 4/4

10/3

V Only V S V DO V OBL

Mari Akk.

25/2 35/1

8/2 7/3

8/5

6/4

8/1 6/3

6/1

4/3 3/4 13/1

4/4

3/4

12/1 8/2

4/3

4/2 4/2 4/2

9/1

6/2

2/2

6/1

V S DO V DO OBL

3/4 7/2

V S OBL

4/4

V 10 DO

3/4

V OBL 10

12/1

S V DO S VO OBL

10/3

4/4

4/4

S V

18/1

11/1 4/4

DO V

17/2 8/4

10 V

11/3 8/4

S 10 V DO 10 V # i n Corpus

190

63

58

36

58

82

60

18

124

Table II: Most frequent word orders in the languages surveyed by Percentage and Rank.

31

Table II shows the most common sentence types in each of the languages surveyed, by percentage. On the basis of the listing of dominant word orders in Table II, the following statements can be made about the languages surveyed: i. The Damascus Covenant is in a language with strong VO word order. ii. Moabite is S V (0). iii. In the Hebrew Inscriptions, the V precedes any Object. The S, when there is one, only precedes the V if there is some other constituent following the V. iv.

Exodus is in a V (5) (0) language.

v. Old Aramaic is V (S) (0). vi. Official Aramaic is definitely VO. The position of S seems to vary, though; S V 0 and V S are both found. vii. Ugaritic is S V 0, with some VS. viii. Old Akkadian is VO. ix. Mari Akkadian is (S) (0) V. Although there is a clear tendency towards VO word order (Mari Akkadian is the only exception), these figures are not that illuminating. The problem is the neglect of the constituent Subject. Clearly, languages differ in the extent to which subjects are required. None of the languages that I surveyed is as strong in the requirement of subjects as is English—I found no sentences in any of the languages with dummy subjects like the "it" in English "It is raining" or "It's strange the way he did that." One way of measuring the extent to which subjects are required is to determing the percentage of sentences in a given language which contain subjects. The relevant figures are given in Table III. The range is from 33% in the Damascus Covenant to 67% in Old Aramaic. Because not all languages require subjects, the initial phrase structure rules in their grammars cannot meaningfully be compared: S in one language might be expanded as (NP) VP and in another as NP VP. But, we can compare the maximal expansion of the initial rule. The two languages in the previous example differ in that one requires

32

a subject, while that constituent is optional in the other. However, they are the same in that their subjects precede their verbs. So, the relevant question to ask about each of the languages surveyed here is: where does the subject go in the sentence, if there is one? The answer requires examination of the word orders for that subset of sentences in each language that contain subjects. The results of that count are given in Table III. TEXT WORD ORDER

Dam. Cov.

Total in Sample

190

63

58

36

58

34

41

41

66

68

S V

3 5.2

2 8.0

V S

7 12.1

1 4.0

4 19.0

S V 02

15 25.9

17 68.0

6 28.6

V S 0

20 34.5

3 12.0

V 0 S

4 6.9

2 3.0

S 0 V

6 10.3

0 S V

2 3.4

0 V S

1 1.7

t Containing Subj.

Moab.

Heb. Insc.

Ugar.

Old Akk.

82

60

18

124

37

66

20

46

3 12.0

11 30.1

10 43.5

8 4 22.2 16.0

4 11.1

1 4.4

6 10 16.7 40.0

11 30.1

5 11 23.8 47.8

12 7 33.3 28.0

4 11.1

4 19.0

Exod.

2 8.7

Old Off. Aram. Aram.

3 8.3

1 4.0

2 9.5

4*3

2 5.6

18 34.0

2 66.7

4 7.6

1 2.8 2 5.6

1 4.3

Mari Akk.

1 33.3

24 45.3

1 2.8

6 11.3

.

1 2.8

1 1.9

.

Table III: Raw figures and percentages for the distribution of word order types in the sentences in the languages sampled that contained subjects. The following conclusions can be drawn based on the data presented in Table III.

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i. The Damascus Covenant is almost evenly split as to whether the S precedes or follows the V when the sentence contains an 0. However, when there is no 0, there is a tendency towards VS. ii.The Hebrew Inscriptions are strongly V initial. iii. Exodus is VSO. iv. Old Aramaic is VSO. v. Official Aramaic is split; SVO is dominant over VSO, but only slightly. vi. Ugaritic is strongly SVO, but there seems to be much more variation allowed than in the other languages. This makes the dominance of SV(0) all the more striking. vii. Old Akkadian is SVO, for what it's worth, given the small corpus. viii. Man' Akkadian is SOV. At this level of analysis, the differences in word order patterns are not necessarily directly correlated with differentiation between two or more languages. Two texts that are reasonably close in content and style, the Moabite Inscription and the Song of Moses in Exodus, differ not only in the predominant surface word order--Exodus is VSO and Moabite is SVO—but also in the extent to which subjects are required; Moabite has subjects in 41% of its sentences and Exodus in 56%. But, unless there were major phonological differences, inaccessible to a modern linguist, it would be surprising if the two were not mutually intelligible. This investigation was begun in response to the commonly held view among Semiticists that Proto-Semitic was VSO. Since the study is being conducted to determine whether or not the best available evidence supports that view, one reasonable way of proceeding would be first to treat those languages that do not appear to be VSO. If it turns out that SOV and SVO word order can in all cases be explained as a recent development, this would not contradict the VSO hypothesis. On the other hand, if it were to turn out that there is no way to explain SVO order as a recent innovation from *VSO, it would be necessary to examine the VSO lanyuages to see what evidence they might pro-

34

vide for an earlier, not directly attested word order. 2.1.1 Analysis of Word Order in the Languages Surveyed 2.1.1.1 Moabite The counts that I made for Moabite show that 41% of all sentences contain subjects. Table IV shows the word order patterns that were observed for these sentences. Pattern

Number of Tokens

SV VS

2 1 17 3 2

SVO V S 0 V 0S

1 of Sentences

8 4 68 12 8

Table IV: Word order patterns in Moabite sentences containing subjects. Percentages are based on the total number of sentences containing subjects, not the total number of sentences in the survey. The most frequent word orders in Moabite, overall, are given in Table V. Order S V V V

V DO DO OBL DO OBL

Number of Tokens 12 8 7 6

Table V: Most frequent word orders in Moabite. Based solely on the distributional data, there is a strong temptation to conclude that Moabite was an SVO language, in other words, that SVO was the basic word order. However, a closer examination of the subjects that precede the verb, compared with those that follow, indicates rather that Moabite was a VSO language with discourse conditioned fronting of certain subjects. This fronting interacts in interesting ways with the sequencing of verb forms within a narrative.

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Mcabite sirjrea with Bil'i ;'~.a"! Hebrew the phenomenon generally referred to as "conversivs waw." W.'v.";t the conjunction wa_-, normally meaning 'and,' is prefixed to a verb in the prefix conjugation, in Hebrew an imperfect with present/future time reference, the resultant verb is used to refer to events in the past. And the perfect (suffixed) verbs in general refer to past activity, but, with the wa_- prefixed, 3 they refer to the future. This distribution is illustrated in the verb forms in (1). (1) a. ?omarto

'you said'

b. wa?3marto 'you will say' c. yomer 'he will say' d. wayyomer 'he said' Verbs like (1) d. way_yomer are used within the body of a narrative of events in the past. Use of a form like (1) a. ggmarto indicates a break in the narrative sequence. A past narrative generally begins with a form like (1) a., then switches to forms like (1) d. In Moabite, as is the case in the Song of Moses, prefix conjugation forms, that is, forms like (1) c. and d., only occur in main clauses.

Main—Prefix Suffix Participle Relative—Suffix Part. Subordinate—Suffix Part.

Moabite

Exodus

33 17

9 10 1 3 2 4 2

1 6 1

Table VI: Correlations of clause type and verb conjugation forms in Moabite and Exodus. Note the absence of prefix forms in relative and subordinate clauses. There is a strong correlation between the verb form in Moabite and the word order in main clauses, as shown in Table VII. With two exceptions, any time a subject precedes the verb, the verb is in the suffixed form.

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Order

Prefix

V 0 S V0 V 0 S

26 1 2

V S 0 V only

1 1

S V

1

Suffix 1 15

1

Table VII: Correlation of verb conjugation and word order in Moabite. (2) ky

kl

dbn

msntft

because all Dibon obeys-PARTICIPLE-me Mesha 28 Sentence (2), perhaps not a valid counterexample, as it is a subordinate clause, contains the only example of a quantified NP as subject in the inscription. The emphasis implied by universal quantification lends credence to the suggestion that Moabite had a rule fronting focussed elements. But, there is some doubt that the word msm?t should be interpreted as a participle of the root sm^ 'hear, obey' with a clitic object pronoun -t 'me.1 Lipinski (1971:339) suggests that it is a noun meaning 'bodyguard.' If this suggestion is correct, (2) would be translated 'for all Dayban was a bodyguard.' This interpretation is strengthened by the fact that the preceding sentence, again according to Lipinski, refers to armed men. (3) w?nk

bnty

bsr

ky

?yn

h? b?s

and-I built Bazar because destroyed it with-men-(of) dbn

hmsn

Dibon armed

Mesha, 27-28

The only alternative to Lipinski's interpretation of hmsn would be to treat it as the number 'fifty.' This provides two possible interpretations of the sequence of sentences. These are given in (4). (4) a. And I fifty b. And I armed

rebuilt Bazar, which had been destroyed, with men of Dibon, because all Dibon obeys me. rebuilt Bazar, which had been destroyed, with men of Dibon, because all Dibon is in my guard.

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While some combination of the clauses from the two interpretations would probably also provide a reasonable interpretation, of the two presented, Lipinski's in (4) b. and the standard one in (4) a., the former clearly exhibits a more reasonable notion of cause and effect. Of course, if msmTt is a noun and not a participle, (2) is not a counterexample to the generalization about the relationship between position of the subject and form of the verb. (5) Tmry mlk ysr?l wyfnw * ?t Omri king-(of) Israel oppressed-they4 ACCUSATIVE m?b

ymn

rbn

Moab days many

Mesha, 5

Sentence (5) is anomalous because the verb is preceded by w_- as in the conversive waw phenomenon despite the fact that the verb is not the initial element in the sentence. This is one of approximately four such examples that I found in any of the texts. I think that it is caused by two conflicting pressures in Moabite. The sentence is within the narrative section in which Mesha, King of Moab, establishes the background to his victory over Israel. This would lead to the w-. But, 7mry mlk ysr?l is fronted because this is Omri's first mention in the inscription; nouns that have not previously been mentioned are fronted in Moabite. Both of these claims about (5) are clear, when it is read in context. (6) is the immediately preceding sentence. (6) w??s

hbmt

I-built •••ky

z?t

I kms

bqrhh

the-altar this to-Chemosh in-Qarho hsYny

mkl

hslkn

because he-CAUSATIVE-save-me from-all the-onslaughts whr?ny and-CAUS-see-me

bkl sn?y in-all hate-PARTICIPLE-me

Mesha, 3-4

'I built this altar to Chemosh in Qarho...because he saved me from all onslaughts and made me victorious over (lit. showed me in) all my enemies.' Gibson's translation: 'I built this high place for Chemosh in Qarho...because he delivered me from all assaults and because he let me see my desire on all my adversaries.'

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My second claim, that new subjects are fronted, can easily be demonstrated by examining each SV sentence in the context of the preceding sentences. I f a subject that does appear as the subject of the preceding sentence is fronted, that would be counter-evidence. (7) ?nk m§? bn I Hesha son-of

kmisyt mlk m?b hdybny Chemoshyat king-(of) Moab the-Dibonite —Mesha, 1-2 'I am Mesha, son of Chemosh-yat, King of Moab, the Dibonite.'

(8) ?by

mlk

?l

m?b

slsn

st

father-my ruled over Moab thirty years Hesha, 2 'My father was king over Moab for thirty years.' Gibson takes ml_k_ in (8) as the noun 'king1 rather than as the verb 'ruled' because of the SV word order that the latter interpretation would entail. I don't think that this interpretation is reasonable, since the similarities between Moabite and Biblical Hebrew would lead us to expect some form of the verb hyj^ 'be' in a past tense equational sentence to mark the tense. Admittedly, this lack is not conclusive in the absence of examples of this copular use of hyy in the Moabite text, since it is possible that Moabite and Hebrew could have differed in this regard. In any case, there is another explanation available for the "deviance" of (7) and (8) in the mechanism by which the narrative is constructed. As will be shown below, this explanation is more general, and, therefore, is to be preferred. (9) w?r? bh wbbth I-CAUS-see in-him and-in-house-his ' I saw my desire upon him and his house.' (10) wysr?l ?bd ?bd ?lm and-Israel was-lost world

Mesha, 7

Mesha, 7

'And Israel perished forever. 1 2bd_ ^bd_ in (10) is probably an absolute i n f i n i t i v e construct i o n , l i k e those attested in Biblical Hebrew.

For example, the phrase

moQ tomuB (Gen. 2:17) means 'you w i l l surely d i e , ' although the verb -tjmue by i t s e l f means ' d i e ' ; the construction i t s e l f provides the

39

emphasis (see Williams pp. 37-38 for further details). Assuming that the normal Hebrew syntax was also normal for Moabite (that is, that the infinitive preceded the inflected verb), it is likely that the verb in (10) was pronounced something like ?abod ?abad (Hebrew spirantization and the change of *a to [ D ] in open syllables post date this period). It should be noted that ^bd_ is one of the few Hebrew verbs that is morphologically active while semantically passive. (11) w?bn

?t

artyn

I - b u i l t ACCUSATIVE cities-two ' I r e b u i l t Qiryatayim.' (12) w?s

gd

ysb

b?rs

Mesha, 9-10 Tlri

m?lm

and-men-(of) Gad settled in-land-(of) Atarot forever -Mesha, 10 'Then the men of Gad had settled in the land of Ataroth from of old.' (13) w?kh

m§m

I-took hm

Ifny

?(t kl )y

ytiwh

w?shb

from-there ACC vessels-(of) Jehovah and-Icarried kms

them before Chemosh Mesha, 17-18 'I took from thence the vessels of Yahweh and dragged them before Chemosh.' (14) wmlk ysr?l bnh ?t yhs and-king-(of) Israel built ACC Yafiaz Mesha, 18-19 'Then the King of Israel had fortified Yahaz.' Gibson notes that the writing of the accusative object pronoun im_ 'them' as a separate word in (13), while anomalous for Hebrew, is normal for Aramaic or Syriac. Lipinski interprets the unclear kly in (13) as ?1y 'rams-(of)' and interprets the sentence as referring to sacrificial animals rather than sacred objects. The remaining sentences in which the subject precedes the verb contain the subject pronoun ?nk_ "I. 1 There are twelve such sentences in the inscription. These sentences differ from those already presented in which the subject precedes the verb in another respect. In those, the subject that preceded the verb was new to the discourse. Here, in the sentences in which a subject pronoun precedes the verb, the

40

narrator Mesha cannot be considered new to the discourse in the same way that 2 1 . 2 ! ' m e n o f Gad ' "in (12) can. However, a case can be made that, in a language in which subject pronouns are optional, the presence of a subject pronoun will suggest a certain degree of emphasis, although not focus. What this indicates is somewhat subtle: if the factor conditioning subject placement in Moabite is sensitive to things like new and old information and degree of emphasis on the subject, then the fronting of NP subjects and the presence of SV word order in sentences with pronominal subjects are two different phenomena. While there is no particular reason not to treat these as two separate phenomena, alternatives are possible. In order to examine one option, it is first necessary to examine tkeidea: what does it mean to change the subject in a discourse? Clearly, it means that one is talking about something new. But, it is the linguistic not the pragmatic phenomena that are of interest here. In Moabite, changing the subject has two linguistic concomitants: the verb appears in the suffix conjugation rather than the prefix conjugation with w_-. And the subject, presumably new to the discussion is fronted. The question really is which of these three manifestations is primary and which follow necessarily from some other decision the speaker has made. The three possible decisions are: i. talk about something new, ii. alter the normal verb selection rule, and, iii. put the subject before the verb. It makes no sense to say that either of the structural decisions is primary, since that provides motivation neither for the linguistic differences nor for the differences in interpretation that will ensue from the structural changes. But, because of the correlation among the three phenomena, it is clear that any sentence with SV word order will be interpreted as being about something new, even if there is no emphasis intended. In this view, the primary decision made by a Moabite speaker was whether he/she was talking about something new or not. The form of the verb results from this. And, the position of the subject before the verb does too. I do not think that the Moabite of the Mesha inscription had a fronting rule for nouns that are new to the discourse,

which, presumably, would crop up more often when the subject was changed. This is not to say that earlier stages of Moabite did not have such a fronting rule. At the time that subject pronouns, which, by their nature, convey old rather than new information, became obligatory in paragraph initial position, the relevant conditioning factor could not have been newness in the discourse. If it had been, the subject pronouns would have appeared post-verbally or been omitted. It may be that SV word order for new subjects became reanalyzed as being a consequence of the discourse position {paragraph or episode initial) of the sentence. In that case, an overt subject would have had to be found for sentences with first person subjects, which ordinarily would have been unexpressed. The most reasonable candidates would have been the subject pronouns, and they are what is found. (15) a. ?nk bnty

I

qrhh

hmt

hyTrn

whmt

built Qarho walls-(of) the-forests and-walls-of

Mpl the-Acropolis

Mesha, 21-22

' I carried out repairs at Qarho, on the parkland walls as well as the walls of the Acropolis.' b. w?nk

bnty

s?ryh

and-I b u i l t gates-its Mesha, 22 'And I repaired i t s gates. 1 C. w?nk

bnty

mgdlth

and-I b u i l t towers-its Mesha, 22 'And I repaired i t s towers. 1 d. w?nk

bnty

bt

ml k

and-I built house-(of) king Mesha, 22-23 'And I repaired the King's residence.' The presence of the subject pronouns in the sentences of {15) is a consequence of the writer's decision to treat the events described in {15} as separate episodes rather than as aspects of the same rebuilding episode. In a way, this is a paragraph structure device. Although the sentences in (15) all represent things that the writer did (or supervised) at more or less the same time, it is not necessarily

42

the case that they occurred in sequence; the writer has chosen to treat them in separate paragraphs, rather than in one large paragraph with the theme of rebuilding. Once this decision was made, it was necessary to use the verb form bnty rather than w?bn, and it was necessary that there be a subject before the verb. Since there was no subject noun already in the sentence, the only option available was to insert the appropriate pronoun. If this analysis is correct, then the sentences in (15) are not clefts, as Anderson (1968:98) would have it. Rather, the presence of tne subject pronoun results from the speaker's decision to treat the events described in (15) as distinct episodes instead of as events in the same episode. The opposite decision could as easily have been made. (16) a. wysbh he-inhabited-it

kms bymy Chemosh in-day-my

Mesha, 8-9

'And Chemosh inhabited i t in my days.' b. w?bn

?t

b?lm?n

I - b u i l t ACC Baalmaon ' I rebuilt Baalmaon.' C. w??s

bh

Mesha, 9

h?swh

I-made in-it the-reservoir Mesha, 9 'I repaired the reservoir there.' d. (=(11)) w?bn

?t

qrytn

I-built ACC Qiryatayim 'I rebuilt Qiryatayim.'

Mesha, 9-10

The sentences in (16) are similar to those in (15). The main difference is that the writer chose to treat the items in (16) as aspects of the same event, in contradistinction to the treatment of the items in (15) as separate events. The difference between narrative-initial and narrativemedial sentences, along with the differences in verb form and word order, outlined here, is compatible with the sort of situation described in Hopper (1976, 1979). In a survey of the differences between various verb forms in languages as unrelated as Malay and Old English, Hopper

43

concludes that languages use various devices to distinguish between events that are sequenced in a narrative and events that are essentially independent of such sequencing. Certain verb forms tend to be correlated with one or the other of these types. Paradoxically, the Moabite suffix conjugation, or perfect, belongs to Hopper's imperfective type, while the w_-imperfect of sentences like those in (16} belongs to his perfective type. Perfective verbs typically denote a strict sequencing of events, an unmarked distribution of focus in the sentence (i.e., that the subject is given and the predicate is new), that the subject (in a grammatical sense) tends not to change throughout the episode, that the event being described is viewed as a whole whose completion is necessarily prerequisite to subsequent events, and the sentence expresses a foregrounding, in other words, that it contributes to the flow of the narrative. In contrast, tne imperfective (Moabite perfect) allows overlapping, does not require that an event be completed before the beginning of the event described in the next sentence, allows for frequent changes of subject (again, in the grammatical senre), denotes a marked (non-normal) distribution of focus (the subject expressing new rather than old information) and expresses background information that sets the scene for the narrative but is not essential to the flow of events described. In the state of affairs that Hopper describes, the marked word order, in the case of Moabite, SVO, describes a non-normal focus situation. In other words, the grammatical subject, which usually expresses old, given information, in a particular sentence expresses new information. This is true for the SVO sentences in (2) through (15). However, the extension of SVO word order to sentences like those in (16) cannot be conditioned by the given-new distinction. Thus, the existence of sentences like (16) is an indication that, to the extent that Hopper's hypotheses are correct, SVO word order has been grammatical ized in episode-initial position in Moabite. One would expect that, in later, unfortunately unattested, stages of Moabite, SVO order would have spread to episode-internal sentences as well. This direction of

44

change follows from Hopper's claim (1976:17-18) that the narrative (perfective] type is more resistant to change. The conclusion to be drawn from this discussion is that Moabite, at the stage of the Mesha inscription, was still an underlying VSO language. SVO sentences occur in well-defined narrative contexts. At the hypothesized stage of the unattested extension of SVO word order to all sentences in a narrative, it would not make sense, however, to describe Moabite as a VSO language; only then would it be appropriate to refer to a basic SVO word order. 2.1.1.2 Ugaritic The situation in Ugaritic is not nearly as clear as that in Moabite. SVO word order clearly predominates, as shown in Table II. However, with one exception, I have been unable to find any feature with which this SVO word order can be correlated; nor is there any obvious conditioning factor for VSO order. Part of the difficulty may be due to the fact that the Ugaritic texts surveyed, Nikkal and Keret, are works of literature, while the Moabite text is a victory inscription; this difference could reasonably be expected to have affected the language. However, this chapter began with the hypothesis that the "normal" Semitic word order was VSO and that deviations from this norm could somehow be explained away. And, the expectation about literary, especially poetic, texts is that they will reflect a more archair state of the language than will contemporary prose (Segert 1969). If this is true, then the SVO word order in Ugaritic poetry was probably the normal prose order as well, at least at an earlier stage of Ugaritic than that attested in the literary texts. The only alternative to the conclusion expressed in the previous paragraph is to attribute the "non-Semitic" SVO word order to influence from other languages. In fact, both of the texts that I surveyed have been treated as borrowings or importations. Albright (1969) treats the Nikkal poem as a translation from Hurrian into Ugaritic. In this regard, it should be pointed out that the name Nikkal is probably

45

the same as that of the Sumerian moon-goddess Nin-gal (Gordon 1949:63). The alternative name by which Nikkal is referred to in the poem, lb, is related to the Semitic word enbu 'fruit' (Tsevat 1953:61). This SumeroAkkadian etymology for the name of the heroine makes Hurrian origin for the story unlikely, unless Hurrian had a similar story about a moon goddess. Then it would be possible to claim that the Semitic name had been substituted for a non-Semitic name so that Ugaritic listeners would identify better with the story. Astour (1973) places the origin of the Keret epic in northwest Mesopotamia, on the basis of personal and geographical names contained in the story. This area was the home of the Amorites, a group of Semitic nomads, known mostly from Akkadian records. Astour does not make any claim as to whether the story of Keret is a translation from Amorite or whether it merely takes place in an Amorite milieu. In any case, the difference between borrowing a theme, and possibly a set of characters, and borrowing an entire story should be emphasized. In the one case, a minimum of linguistic interference is likely; in the other a great deal of interference would not be surprising. At this case, it behooves us to examine the worst case: suppose that both Nikkal and Keret are direct translations, from Hurrian and Amorite, respectively. What kinds of effects would the source language be likely to have on the Ugaritic in which these stories are told? In the case of Amorite, it is difficult to say. All of what is known of Amorite is based on the study of names described as belonging to Amorites in Akkadian texts and on a (possibly) arbitrary division of Akkadian written in areas where Amorites are known to have been a political factor into "normal" and "Amoritizing" features. In neither case are the resulting inferences necessarily reliable. It should further be noted that one of the few attempts at a detailed linguistic analysis of the Amorite material, Gelb (1953), makes no attempt to deal with the syntax of the language. With Hurrian, the picture is clearer. Hurrian was an ergative language with the unmarked word order (ERGATIVE)-ABSOLUTIVEVERB. Speiser (1941:205) describes anomalies in Akkadian written in

46

areas known to have been under Hurrian influence that can best be explained as having resulted from Hurrian interference. For example, instead of the expected legal requirement that a man's surviving children honor (and, presumably, support) his widow, one text states that the widow should honor the children. This confusion is based on the erroneous identification of the Hurrian absolutive with the Akkadian nominative. Since Ugaritic does not have any consistent orthographic means of marking case (although it is presumed that it had the nominative, accusative, genitive distinction attested in Akkadian and Classical Arabic) confusions of this sort would only be detectable if the verb seemed to agree with the "wrong" noun in a sentence. Another possible error that would be attributable to Hurrian influence would be confusion in Ugaritic between masculine and feminine nouns; Hurrian has no noun classes of any sort (Speiser 1941:199). This particular error would be most likely if Hurrian dominant individuals attempted to write Ugaritic without being fully aware of the language's grammatical distinctions. On the other hand, confusion of subject and object in Ugaritic could just as easily result from an Ugaritic-dominant individual's translating from a Hurrian prototype without understanding the lack-of match-up between the syntactic categories of Ugaritic and Hurrian; such an individual would, however, be unlikely to assign an Ugaritic word to the wrong gender class. One further error that could have resulted from Hurrian contact is verb-final word order. However, this could just as easily have resulted from contact with Akkadian, Sumerian, or Hittite. Thus, finding verb-final word order in Ugaritic would tell us nothing about the source of the influence. Position in narrative does not seem to play a role in Ugaritic in the way that it does in Moabite. 66% of all Ugaritic sentences contain subjects. The word order types represented in these sentences are illustrated in Table VIII. The most frequentword orders over-all are listed in Table IX. The sentences included in Table IX account for nearly half (49%) of the Ugaritic sentences sampled. In addition to these, there were 15 sentences (25%) with unique word orders.

47

Order S V

Number of Tokens

Perc g"> v/ condition pharyngealized allophones of the following phonemes: /I r s t d 5 g z/. The examples provided by Malaika show that this pharyngealization affects at least one syllable of many

134

words, often more (p. 7 ) . For example, in the word [s"ol"-t'Sn] 'sul- , tan,' the only sound not treated as pharyngealized by Malaika is the final /n/. In the corresponding Biblical Hebrew/Biblical Aramaic noun si iton 'power,' the only emphatic sound is the /t/. As far as I can tell, the only difference between the Arabic pharyngealization spreading and Aramaic flatness assimilation is in the descriptive apparatus brought forth to deal with the two phenomena. There is an Arabic grammatical tradition over 1000 years long that deals with the effects of pharyngealization in Classical Arabic, especially the backing of /a/ to [n] or [a]. Aramaic does not have that kind of grammatical tradition, so investigators are not likely to feel bound by well-known descriptive mechanisms. On the other hand, neither are they likely to propose radically new analyses out of perversity and/or rebelliousness. In any case, if we are willing to accept the facts of Iraqi Arabic as a possible autonomous development, we must make the same allowance for Jewish Neoaramaic dialects. Alternatively, if we feel that the facts of Neoaramaic are so arcane that they could not have resulted solely from internal developments, we must also seek a likely substratum for the Arabic. The fact that similar developments are found in all Arabic dialects in which pharyngealization is maintained indicates that substratum is not a likely explanation; we would have to find substrata for all of the Arabic dialects, substrata that agree with Arabic, Neoaramaic and Kurdish in having a consonantally conditioned harmonic phenomenon. The unlikelihood of there being such a language, together with the plausibility of an internal/assimilation account, suggests that substratum is not the answer for either Arabic or Aramaic. Only further investigation can determine, however, whether we might not in fact be dealing with a Kurdish/Aramaic/Arabic area! phenomenon, fostered by internal conditions in all three languages. If we accept the flatting assimilation in Eastern Aramaic as an internal development, we then have to deal with the glottalized consonants that developed in the wake of flatting assimilation in the Ur-

135

mi'an and Kurdistani dialects of Neoaramaic. The question is: can we assume from the appearance of ejectives as reflexes of Proto-Semitic emphatics in at least some instances that an ejective pronunciation was maintained form PS? Dolgopolsky uses the alleged maintainance of ejectives in pronunciation traditions for liturgical Hebrew found among Kurdistani Jews to argue for ejectives rather than backed consonants in Biblical Hebrew (c.f. p. 143, below). However, if the ejective pronunciation in that area is secondary, then it cannot be used to argue about earlier stages of Hebrew or Aramaic. Tsereteli (1961:223-226) indicates that Eastern Neoaramaic has developed an ejective [p'3, used in Russian loan words. The ejective [t 1 ] is sometimes a reflex of *t, sometimes of *d and sometimes of *t. [k'] is used primarily in loan words; in urban areas, it is also a reflex of *k, which is realized as a uvular [q] in rural areas. In the dialect of Tur Abdin (Central Neoaramaic), the ejectives replace etymological voiceless stops (Tsereteli 1970:14), but in the Eastern dialects, the plain voiceless stops are aspirated. The random nature of the correspondences both between Eastern Aramaic and PS and between Eastern and Central Neoaramaic suggest that, whatever the source of the glottalization, it is not a retention from earlier stages of the language. Tsereteli doesn't discuss any of the Caucasian languages at all, so it is not possible for me to evaluate the possibility that the Russian borrowings in Aramaic that have ejective consonants were borrowed through one or another of the Caucasian languages. If this indirect transmission is a real possibility, it would account in a natural manner for the presence of ejectives in the Aramaic words. However, investigation of such a possibility is beyond the scope of this work. We can merely state that there is no evidence for connecting Aramaic ejectives with ejectives that we might want to reconstruct for Proto-Semitic. And, there is evidence in all modern Aramaic dialects, whether direct evidence, as in Western Neoaramaic, or indirect evidence from systematic assimilatory phenomena, as in Western Neoaramaic, for pharyngealization.

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4.2 Evidence by Inference Since our interest in this study lies in determining, to the extent that it is possible, what class of consonants, ejectives or backed consonants, is a retention from Proto-Semitic, it would be useful if we could somehow know which of the cues discussed for Aramaic, Arabic and Amharic is primary. Unfortunately, even if we had such information for the modern languages, we would have no way of knowing whether the same cues were primary at earlier stages in the development of these languages. Furthermore, we must consider the possibility that the third class of consonants in PS was characterized primarily neither by glottalization nor by backing coarticulation, but by some other feature. In that case, we would have to evaluate all of the other characteristics discussed above as possible retentions from PS. But, before we consider this question more seriously, we must determine, to the extent that we can, exactly how cognates to these consonants were pronounced in other languages for which we have no direct evidence. 4.2.1 Early Classical Arabic We are fortunate in that some of the early Arab grammarians were astute phonetic observers. Sibawaihi, writing in the eighth century AD, provides the following description of the emphatic consonants (translated from Cantineau's (1960) French translation). The mutbaga consonants are s, d_, t_, 3_; the munfat; iha are all other consonants As for the TOUT consonants 1isted above, if one places the tongue at their points of articulation, the tongue is aligned from the point of articulation to the point at which the soft palate is opposite the tongue: one raises it toward the palate, and when one has thus placed the tongue, the voice is compressed in the space between the tongue and the palate toward the place of articulation of these consonants. Without ? it bag, t would be d_, s_ would be s_, 5_ would be $_, and as for d_, it would not be part" of the language because it is alone at its place of articulation. It should be noted that Sibawaihi does not classify /k/ among the mutbaga.

It is clear from the description above that for Sibawaihi

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?.'.t.bag refers to some kind of velarization; there is no mention of the phonetic quality of [?] or [h], voiced and voiceless pharyngeal fricatives, in his discussion. If ?it bag was velarization, a secondary articulation, one reason for *k's non-classification as mutbaga could be that it was simply a uvular rather than a velar stop for Sibawaihi. In other words, if *k was differentiation by place of articulation from *k, the fact that this different place of articulation had something in common with ?it bag (velarization) would have been irrelevant. Implicit in Sibawaihi's identification of the velarized consonants with their non-velarized counterparts is a claim as to whether or not the mutbaga were voiced. However, since we do not know to what extent the plain voiceless consonants were aspirated, we are not in a position to definitively evaluate these identifications. For example, if it were the case that the voiceless stops were heavily aspirated, that is, with a long VOT lag, while the velarized consonants were unaspirated and the voiced consonants had a slight lead, it is altogether possible that the velarized consonants would appear to be more similar to the voiced consonants than to the voiceless ones. This view can be strengthened by recourse to the Arab grammarians' categories of mahmusa and majhura sounds. For the most part, the first term refers to voiced sounds and the second to voiceless ones. There are three exceptions, however: / ? / , /k/ and l\l are classified among the majhura. Cantineau (1960:22) argues from this classification that /k/ and /t/ must have been voiced at this time. Since there are dialects spoken by nomadic Arabs in which *k is pronounced [g] and *g is pronounced [j], this is not an implausible claim. However, it is not possible to blithely ignore the /?/, as Cantineau does, claiming that the fact that it is written with the same letter as [a] might cause it to be erroneously classified as a voiced sound. I would rather equate Sibawaihi's category of mahmusa consonants with our modern category of "aspirated" consonants. It should not surprise us if /?/, by definition voiceless, is classified in early Arabic as an unaspirated stop. This, then, confirms what we have been lead to suspect on other grounds: l\l and /t/

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were unaspirated stops in Sibawaihi's Arabic. The classification of /s/ as aspirated can be explained by the high energy of dental/alveolar fricatives as compared with interdentals. Whether or not they were distinguished by voicing as well as by place of articulation, /s/ would surely have seemed louder than /5/. The above discussion has been designed to demonstrate that we cannot infer from the descriptions provided by Sibawaihi and other early Arab grammarians that any of the emphatic consonants were voiced. But, neither can we demonstrate that they were not voiced. All we know for sure is that At/, /§/, /s/ and /d/ had a secondary articulation in common, probably velarization, and that /k/ did not share this secondary articulation. I think that it is also safe to say that there was no pharyngeal constriction involved with the velarization. We also know that /k/ and /t/ had noticeably less energy than their non-emphatic counterparts. Furthermore, there was not a noticeable energy difference between /s/ and /s/ or between /5/ and /5/. Furthermore, it is probably not the case that these emphatics were glottalized; Sibawaihi mentions no characteristic for which glottalization is the obvious modern equivalent. Notable by its absence from the above discussion is /d/. Although this sound is realized in virtually all reading traditions of the Qoran and in virtually all modern dialects as [d"], it is clear from Sibawaihi's descriptions that it was a lateral sound. However, it was not merely an emphatic / ] / , since Sibawaihi clearly states in the passage quoted on page 136 that /d/ is "alone at its place of articulation." If Cantineau's and Steiner's claims that PS *s was actually * 4 , the voiceless counterpart of *\i, are correct, it may be that the place of articulation of the latter as late as the eighth century was palatal. Fishar (1970), in fact, reconstructs *s for this sound and suggests that it was maintained until the writing system was adopted, as does Greenberg (1970). Fischer seems unaware, however, of the evidence for PS laterals. This will be returned to in the following chapter. Another question that needs to be considered is that of

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whether /s/ was part of the original set of emphatic consonants. It is clear from Sibawaihi's descriptions that, for the dialect of Arabic that he was describing in the eighth century, /s./ was a velarized consonant. However, Cardona (1968) provides evidence that this was a recent state of affairs in Arabic. Various of the Romance languages, notably Spanish, Italian, and Sardinian, have toponyms borrowed from Arabic. In these words, Arabic /s/ is spelled ;ts_; Late Latin has some spellings sjt. Furthermore, when the Arabs borrowed the Latin castrum 'fortress,' they interpreted the /st/ cluster as /s/. The Arabic /s/ was also used to spell the affricate /£/ in borrowings from Persian. For instance, the Persian word cang 'cymbol' appears in Arabic as sang a". These data make it extremely unlikely that the Arabic of the years immediately following the Islamic conquests had a simple velarized alveolar fricative [s"L Rather, an affncated [ts3, with the voicelessness non-distinctive, is much more likely. According to Cardona, the pharyngealized articulation of /s/ developed in order to prevent neutralization of the /s/ - /s/ contrast {p. 14). Further evidence for [ts] in other Semitic languages and in PS will be given later in this chapter and in the following chapter. 4.2.2 Biblical Hebrew It is clear from the orthography that Biblical Hebrew had variants of /k/, /s/ and /t/ with some secondary articulation, although what that articulation was is not altogether clear. However, several inferences can be made, based on the linguistic structure of Biblical Hebrew. One argument is based on the process of spirantization. In Massoretic Hebrew {the Hebrew reflected in the vocalization system for the Hebrew Bible developed in Tiberias in the eighth-ninth centuries AD) post-vocalic tokens of /p t k b d g/ spirantize to [f 6 x v 5 y] (for discussion of some morphological complications that are outside the scope of this investigation, see Faber 1976:12-15). In contrast, /k/ and /t/ do not spirantize. In other words, whatever their secon-

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dary articulation was, it inhibited spirantization. Barr (1967), based on analysis of St. Jerome's statements about Hebrew in the fourth century AD, claims explicitly that /t/ and /t/ were differentiated by aspiration. He makes it clear that this was not necessarily the only difference between the two sounds. There is one other process that can help determine the nature of the emphatic sounds in Biblical Hebrew. This is an assimilation reflected in the consonantal text of the Bible, dating from around the beginning of the Christian Era, when the Biblical text was canonized. This assimilation affects the prefix hit-, used to form reflexive/ reciprocal verbs. Some representative forms are presented in (2). (2) tiebsrex hiehazzek

'you will be blessed' 'he strengthened himself

When the initial consonant of a verb stem is a sibilant, this sibilant metathesizes with the 9_ (or t) of the prefix, as illustrated in (3). (3) tistatter mistaggea?

'you will hide yourself 'goes crazy'

In Modern Hebrew, /z/ in stem initial position also metathesizes with ;t of the prefix. However, the only relevant root that is listed in Mandelkern's Concordance exhibits total assimilation, as illustrated in (4). (4) hizzakku

'make y o u r s e l v e s w o r t h y

of!1

/s/, as a sibilant, also metathesizes with /9/ of the prefix in Bibli12 cal Hebrew. In addition, /t/ replaces /t/, as shown in (5). (5) histaddek hisfayyaSnu

'he made himself righteous' 'we set out'

Roots with initial /t/ also show this assimilation. (6) hittaharnu hittmo?D

'we purified ourselves' 'he became defiled'

However, roots with initial /k/ show no assimilation at all. (7) hiekaddisti hiekasser

'I made myself holy' 'he got in touch, rebelled'

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These data strongly suggest that the secondary articulation associated with emphatics in at least one dialect of Hebrew around the beginning of the Christian Era must have been of a suprasegmental nature. In other words, it must have been something susceptible to prolongation during the articulation of several segments and not merely a characteristic of the release of a given consonant. Mere lack of aspiration is not sufficient. Aspiration, or the lack thereof, is a feature of a cluster. If the initial consonant in a cluster is not released, it clearly is not aspirated. But, given the lack of release, this lack of aspiration could not be contrastive. Lack of necessary release of the first element in a cluster precludes emphasis having been realized in this dialect of Hebrew as glottalization. However, the studies of pharyngealization in Arabic and flatting assimilation in Aramaic cited earlier in this chapter show that it would be unusual for backing not to spread throughout a cluster. Thus, these facts suggest that Biblical Hebrew had [t"] and [s"] s although it cannot be determined whether the backing was realized as pharyngealization or as velarization. The facts also suggest that /k/ was differentiated from /k/ not by any secondary coarticulation but by its lack of aspiration and by having a different place of articulation: [g] vs. [ k h ] . It will be noted that I have not referred in this section to liturgical pronunciations of Hebrew among modern Jewish communities, even though it is the case that these pronunciations come from a long tradition. This is because Jews from Arab countries tend to have pharyngealized emphatics, Jews from Europe (where most languages have neither backed nor ejective consonants) tend to merge /k/ with /k/, /t/ with /t/, and realize /s/ as /ts/, and Jews from southern Russia, especially Georgia, tend to have ejectives (Garbell 1954:234). But, evidence based on liturgical pronunciations is suspect because there is no way of knowing whether a given feature in, say, the Moroccan pronunciation tradition might have been found in some language that the ancestors of the Moroccan Jews might have had contact with at some time in the past. In other words, it is impossible to evaluate the significance of a given feature unless we know for sure

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whether or not that feature could have originated in a coterritorial language any time in the past 2000 years. And, we cannot know that unless we know the complete linguistic history of an area and the migration histories of the Jews who live(d) there. So, any evidence must be taken with a grain of salt. In any case, Jews from Arabic speaking areas have [s"] for /s/, while all other groups whose traditions I am aware of have [ts]. This latter group includes not only Jews from Germanic and Slavic speaking areas, but Persian and Daghestani Jews as well. Persian could not have been the source of [ts] in these pronunciation traditions. And, we can make no claims based on Aramaic and Akkadian, since the phonetic nature of their cognates with /s/ is also unknown. The evidence in the previous paragraph suggests that at least some dialects of Biblical Hebrew had /ts/. Of course, this does not mean that affrication was present in the dialect in which the Bible was written, the dialect that we argued above had /s"/. However, we can argue on chronological grounds that there must have been a dialect that had [ts"], in other words, a backed affricate. The Persian communities (Babylonian) originated with the exile of defeated Israelites to Assyria by Tiglath-Pileser in 732 BC and again by Nebuzaradan in 586 BC. If we are to assume, on the basis of the argument in the previous paragraph, that /s/ was originally pronounced [ts], with or without backing, and that the non-affricated pronunciation is a later development, we must assume that the earlier pronunciation [ts] was maintained until after the Exile. On page 140, the assimilation of emphatic consonants in certain verb forms was illustrated. This assimilation must have entered the language prior to the phonologization of post-vocalic spirantization, since original sequences of *hits result in [hist], not *[hiss] or *[hiet]. Harris (1967:66} shows that the spirantization was necessarily earlier than a deletion of unstressed vowels, which, in turn, preceded a shift from initial stress in verbs to stress on the final closed syllable. Harris places the entire complex of changes in the period 1000-800 BC. Since spirantization is the earliest of these changes that Harris is establishing a chronology for,

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we can conclude that /s/ was pronounced [s"] by approximately 1000 BC. These two lines of reasoning, taken together, tell us that, for a sub* stantial period, at least some dialects of Hebrew had a backed affricate [ts"]. The only other attempt to specify the nature of the emphatics in Hebrew is that of Dolgopolsky (1977). Unfortunately, his conclusion is in error, because of his reliance on external facts alone. He claims that Hebrew must have had ejectives, since earlier stages of Semitic had ejectives and some modern Hebrew pronunciation traditions maintain them. He does not consider contact explanations at all, despite the fact that the only Hebrew pronunciation traditions with ejectives are those maintained in areas where ejectives are found in indigenous languages; glottalization in the Caucasian languages is a wellknown phenomenon, and Dolgopolsky himself (p. 1) refers to the Neoaramaic dialects discussed in section 4.1.4 (1977:20,ff). Furthermore, if we accept, for the sake of argument, Dolgopolsky's conclusion that Biblical Hebrew had ejectives, and not backed consonants, we are left with no explanation for the assimilation phenomena discussed earlier in this section. Given the availability of alternative (contact) explanations for the ejectives in the Georgian and Kurdistani pronunciation traditions, this anomaly is reason enough to reject Dolgopolsky's analysis. It could, however, be argued that, with proper manipulation of chronology, both accounts, Dolgopolsky's and mine, could be maintained. However, this is not the case. The bulk of Mesopotamian Jews trace their ancestry to the exiles of 732 BC and 586 BC. It could even be argued that the split between Babylonian/Mesopotamian Jewry and Palestinian Jewry did not arise until after the return of many of these exiles to Palestine with the rise to power of Cyrus the Great in 532 BC. In any case, we are dealing with a period of approximately 200 years. If the ejectives found in Kurdistani and Georgian pronunciation traditions are retentions from some earlier period in the development of the Semitic languages and of Hebrew, it must be the case that they were still present at the time that the split took place and

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that they were subsequently modified to backed consonants in all other dialects of Hebrew. However, it was argued earlier in this section that Hebrew must have had backed consonants by around 1000 BC, and it might have been much earlier. While it is possible that the change to backed consonants only occurred in some dialects, it would be foolhardy to use the existence of glottalized consonants in two pronunciation traditions whose adherents have been in contact with other languages in which glottalized consonants are the norm without independent evidence. In the absence of such evidence, we must conclude that Biblical Hebrew had backed consonants [ts"J and [t"]. We also conclude, albeit with weaker support, that *k was realized as a uvular stop [q]. 4.2.3 Akkadian It is extremely difficult to make any phonetic inferences at all about Akkadian. This is because the Akkadians borrowed their syllabic cuneiform writing system from speakers of Sumerian. Sumerian apparently had a much more limited consonant inventory than did Akkadian. The first reaction of the student trained in Hebrew or Arabic to transliterations of early Akkadian texts is that Akkadian had an impoverished consonant inventory. In actuality, what happened was that the Akkadians used the same Sumerian syllable series for syllables containing /s/, /z/ and /s/ (von Soden 1952:19). The fact that this was merely a matter of orthographic convention is indicated by the emergence in later stages of Akkadian (c. 2000 BC) of distinct series of symbols for syllables containing voiced, voiceless and emphatic consonants. This means that only in the later stages of Akkadian do we have a hope of uncovering evidence regarding the pronunciation of any of the emphatic stops. On the basis of the meager evidence presented in the Akkadian handbooks, a good case can be made that in Akkadian, too, emphatics were distinguished from their corresponding voiceless stops by their lack of aspiration. Lipin (1973:49) states that as separate symbols were being developed for the voiced, voiceless and emphatic consonants,

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in the Old Babylonian dialect, syllables containing /k/ and /g/ were written with one series of symbols, while another was used for /k/. This phenomenon is also noted by von Soden (1952:28-29), who interprets it as evidence that /k/ and /t/ were on occasion voiced. However, the spellings could equally well be explained by assuming that the voiceless stops were heavily aspirated while the emphatics were voiceless unaspirated stops. This conclusion is bolstered by the absence of references to /s/ - /z/ interchanges in the literature; aspiration would be less likely to be distinctive in the fricative. Alternatively, we could assume, as does Cardona, that /s/ was an affricate in Akkadian, as well as in Arabic; in Old Persian, the Akkadian series for /s/ is used for syllables containing [c] (1968:4). The evidence presented above, meager though it is, indicates that Akkadian had a distinction between voiceless aspirated and voiceless unaspirated stops. However, it says nothing about whether either of these series was characterized by any additional articulatory feature such as glottalization or backing. But, there is some evidence suggesting that the unaspirated stops were glottalized as well. This evidence is referred to in the literature as Geers' Law after the initial observations contained in Geers (1945). Where other Semitic languages have two emphatic consonants in the same root, only one of these is maintained as an emphatic in Akkadian. The three emphatic consonants are hierarchically arranged so that /k/ forces dissimilation of /t/ and /s/ forces dissimilation of /k/ and /t/. A constraint of this nature would be unlikely if the consonants in question were characterized by backing coarticulation. However, similar constraints are not uncommon in languages with a full series of ejective consonants. For example, Cochababamba Quechua allows only one ejective per word (Ryan 1977:21). And, K'ekchi, a Mayan language of Guatemala, has strong constraints on cooccurrence of ejectives in a morpheme (Pinkerton 1976:13-14). Thus, this particular set of dissimilations in Akkadian may be evidence that Akkadian had glottalized emphatics, although it is certainly not conclusive evidence.

14 6

In our discussion of Hebrew, we treated the assimilation of backed consonants in certain sequences of C-t. A similar, but not identical, phenomenon is found in Assyrian (northern) dialects of Akkadian. Ryckmans reports (1960:21) that certain instances of /t/ in grammatical morphemes, when they follow /t/ or /k/, may become /t/. So, the infixed perfect marker /t/, in conjunction with the root kibi 'say,' gives iktabi 'he said.' However, the form iktabi, with no assimilation, is also found. I have not seen any mention of similar facts for the Babylonian dialect group of Akkadian. And the fluctuation in orthography suggests that this is not a simple assimilation like that in Hebrew, but rather that it has something to do with the release or non-release of the first consonant in a cluster. It was suggested above that the Akkadian emphatics were ejectives, on the basis of Geers' Law. Knudson (1961:88} states: "The emphatic feature in the pronunciation of these consonants is probably the phonetic characteristic that they are articulated with greater muscular tension than the corresponding non-emphatics." Knudson apparently equates this "greater muscular tension" with production of glottalized ejective consonants, and gives several arguments for positing ejectives in Akkadian. In the discussion of Arabic in section 4.1.1, the backing effects that the emphatic consonants have on adjacent vowels were referred to several times. Knudson uses the lack of such an effect in Akkadian to argue that the emphatics in the language could not have been backed consonants. However, this is a spurious argument. If we had never heard Arabic spoken, that is, if our only access to Arabic was through written records, we would not know of this backing effect on vowels; the Arabic orthography does not distinguish, for example, the [x>] found in the vicinity of pharyngeal ized consonants from the [s] found in other environments. Thus, the fact that the Akkadian orthography does not reflect a backing effect on vowels does not mean that there was no such sub-phonemic effect. Knudson's second argument that Akkadian had ejectives lies in the nature of the signs that were created to represent the emphatics in the cuneiform syllabary. These signs were signs that had previously

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been used for syllables of the form CVN; in the Middle Assyrian/Middle Babylonian period (c. 2000 BC), they came to be used for syllables of the form CV. This testifies to Knudson for a double articulation of some sort. However, it is just as easy to construct a case for backed consonants from this evidence. The final nasal in the syllable could just as easily have represented a nasalized vowel as a full nasal consonant; thus use of the CVN sign for syllables containing emphatics would indicate the presence of some acoustic effect like vowel nasalization across the entire syllable. This posited effect is like that of pharyngealized consonants in Arabic on adjacent vowels; thus, this interpretation argues for backed emphatics in Akkadian. If the syllable signs used for syllables containing emphatics can be made to argue for either backed consonants or ejectives, obviously, they do not constitute a good argument for either. Nevertheless, the actual assimilation stated in Geers' Law provides meager, but not conclusive, evidence for ejectives in Akkadian. 4.2.4 Aramaic When we come to discuss Aramaic, we have a rather tangled set of facts to contend with. This is caused in part by the multitude of dialects, both ancient and modern, subsumed under the label Aramaic. In addition to the Old Aramaic and Official/Biblical Aramaic that were discussed in Chapters Two and Three, there are the Palestinian J, and C. Aramaics. Furthermore, there are the Neoaramaic dialects already discussed in section 4.1.4. It is not necessarily the case that we have any information at all about ancestors of a particular Aramaic dialect from any period. Thus, it would not be a contradiction to say that one of the Neoaramaic dialects is archaic with respect to the Official Aramaic of the Persian Empire. This Official Aramaic in turn is demonstrably archaic in certain respects relative to the oldest Aramaic inscriptions, inscriptions that antedate it by at least 300 years (Garbini 1972:53). This section will deal primarily with the facts of Old Aramaic, Official Aramaic, and Post-Biblical Palestinian

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Aramaic. One of the difficulties in dealing with Old Aramaic inscriptions is that they are written in an alphabet borrowed from the Phoenicians. Phoenician had, like Hebrew, reduced the inventory of emphatic consonants to /s t k/. Apparently, however, Aramaic had not. The evidence for this is indirect, as Aramaic was limited to the consonant inventory of Phoenician in the distinctions that could be expressed. But, certain inferences can be made from changes in "standard" spelling of words containing the fricative in set #1 in Table II (p. 115). In the earlier Aramaic inscriptions, these words are spelled with the /s/ of set #4, while in later inscriptions, they are spelled with the ft/ of set #3. Degen suggests that this represents a state of affairs in which /e/ and /s/ were spelled with the same letter; later, /e/ merged with Itl (1969:33-34). This means that four emphatics, /t s k e/ can be reconstructed for earlier stages of Akkadian. What is not so clear is the status of the fifth correspondence set, #2, the lateral l\\l. This set merges with /s/ in Hebrew, Akkadian, Ethiopic, and Ugaritic, is maintained distinct in Epigraphic South Arabian, and is attested as a lateral in early Arabic (see sec. 4.2.1). In the earliest Aramaic, this sound is spelled with the same symbol as /k/; in later Aramaic, the symbols used for the pharyngeal fricative /?/ appears (Rosenthal 1968:15). In addition, Steiner (1977, Chapter XX) provides evidence for a conditioned sound change of sounds in this set to /s/, just in case there is a resonant in the word. I would like to suggest that the earliest Aramaic pronunciation of this sound was, like the Arabic ["UL a lateral fricative, but with velar rather than alveolar constriction: [k+]. This would account for the fact that the sound is written with the same letter as /k/ in the early inscriptions. It should be noted that nothing has been said about the phonetic exponent of emphasis in early Aramaic. This is because of the paucity of the evidence. Degen (1969:42) gives one example of a word containing /s/ in which /k/ is spelled /k/: kys? 'summer,1 c.f. Hebrew kayis, with the same meaning. But, since this is the only example that

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he can find in the inscriptions, and since there are words in which such dissimilation could take place but doesn't, he claims that this is not evidence for a systematic dissimilation of emphatics similar to the Akkadian Geers1 Law. More evidence will emerge, however, for Official/ Biblical Aramaic. First, however, let us summarize the inferences regarding the phonetic inventory of Old Aramaic. In Table IX, each sound is listed, together with its "partner" from Arabic. Set 1

Arabic 9"

Old Aramaic 9

2

U"

kt

3 4 5

t" s" q"

t* s k

Table IX: Emphatic consonants in Arabic (c. 800 AD) and Old Aramaic {c. 800 BC). These are the oldest attested stages for the two languages. The correspondence sets are numbered in accord with Table I, p. 115. In Official/Biblical Aramaic, /e/ and l\J have merged into /t/; this is part of a general merger of interdental fricatives and dental/alveolar stops (Rosenthal 1968:14). And, /k4/ has merged with the pharyngeal fricative /?/. It is difficult to see how this second merger could have taken place if the secondary articulation for the emphatics had been glottalization rather than backing. However, it is possible that the change would have accompanied the change of ejectives to backed consonants. One can assume that a velar lateral (fricative or affricate) ejective would necessarily have very little acoustic energy. So, if a general change from glottalization to backing took place, the back component of the pronunciation of this sound would have overpowered the velar lateral component. It if were the case that the voiceless stops in Aramaic were heavily aspirated (a not unreasonable proposition), then it is possible that the emphatics would have been thought of as voiced consonants with something extra; this would account for the fact that /k4/ merged with the voiced rather than the voiceless pharyngeal fricative. Further evidence for backing coarticulation in Biblical

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Aramaic comes from reflexive/passive verbs with prefix hit-; these forms are cognate with the Hebrew forms discussed above (p. 140). The same metathesis as in Hebrew takes place in Aramaic when the initial consonant of the verb stem is a sibilant. So, the forms hiStaxah 'he/ it was found' and tistabik 'she/it will be late' are found. When the initial root consonant is /s/, the /t/ of the prefix is assimilated to it, as in Hebrew: yistabbaf 'he/it will be wetted.' To the extent that the argument that backing assimilation must have preceded post-vocalic spirantization in Hebrew is valid, it is also valid for Aramaic. It seems well accepted that Aramaic spirantization must have been under way by the sixth century BC, at the latest (Kutscher 1970:374). For Biblical/Official Aramaic, we are dealing with a slightly later period, the fifth-fourth century BC. So, it is eminently reasonable to assume that such emphatics as were left in Biblical/Official Aramaic were characterized by backing. Backing assimilation is also found in other dialects of Aramaic in the centuries around the beginning of the Christian Era. Stevenson (1974:45) cites the following forms from early Palestinian Aramaic translations (Targums) of the Old Testament: ?istammar 'it was heard,1 ?i sterax 'he needed,' ?i zdara? 'it was sown.' Kutscher (1976: 17) cites an example which seems, paradoxically, to indicate both assimilation and dissimilation. The word that is etymologically /kstym/ 'archers' appears in one of his texts as kstyjH- In other words, the emphasis has transferred from the /k/ to the /t/. Kutscher posits an intermediate stage for this, *kstyn, in which both consonants were emphatic. He then explains the loss of emphasis on the /k/ as a dissimilation, "since, as, for example, in Akkadian, two emphatic consonants cannot cooccur in the same root." Kutscher refers to this as a dialect feature, and alludes, parenthetically, to a similar phenomenon in 14 Elephantine Aramaic. Margolis (1910:9) indicates that, in the Aramaic of the Babylonian Talmud, the /t/ of the verbal ?it- forms, cognate with the Hebrew hit-) metathesizes with the first consonant in a root, if that consonant is a sibilant. However, the example that he cites in which

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the consonant is /s/ does not indicate any assimilation. Since his is an introductory textbook, I do not want to come to any conclusions on the basis of forms not given, since it makes no pretense of being complete. However, these data suggest that backing assimilation was confined to Western Aramaic. In summary, there is evidence for a pharyngealized or velarized coarticulation for the emphatics in Biblical/Official Aramaic and in Palestinian Jewish Aramaic as well, although to a lesser extent. It should be noted that there is no guarantee that Palestinian Jewish Aramaic is a direct descendant of Biblical Aramaic, even though it was spoken in approximately the same part of the world as was Biblical Aramaic several centuries earlier. The consonant inventory of Old Aramaic included /t s M e k/. These sounds were probably backed, although there is no evidence for that prior to the Official Aramaic period,in which /?/ had merged with /%/ and / H / with /?/. It will be recalled from section 4.1.4 that in modern Aramaic the backing coarticulation has been reanalyzed as a suprasegmental feature conditioning flat and non-flat variants of virtually all sounds in the language, not merely the reflexes of the Proto-Semitic emphatics. 4.2.5 Ugaritic After the complications found in Aramaic, the facts regarding the emphatics in Ugaritic are quite straightforward. Ugaritic maintains distinct / s t 8 k/; * U has already merged with /s/, although there are a few instances in which it is represented by /9/ (Gordon 1965:27). /§/ is, for the most part, maintained, although Gordon gives a few words in which it is represented by /v/. Except in a few words in which it is apparently replaced by /9/, /t/ is maintained. Evidence for the phonetic realizations of these phonemes is meager and difficult to evaluate. Gordon presents variant spellings of several forms of the root /sdk/ 'just, righteous,' that may indicate an uncertainty as to where in the word to mark emphasis. The personal name sdkslm has the variant stkslm. Another name, based on

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the same root, has the variants st_kn_ and sd_kn (Gordon 1965:33). Difficulty in deciding where to mark the emphasis in a given word would be more expected if the emphasis were realized as backing than if it were realized as glottalization of one or more consonants. Ugaritic has a t_- verbal form cognate to the Hebrew and Aramaic reciprocal/reflexive/passive forms discussed above. However, Gordon does not list in his glossary any verbs with initial emphatics that occur in this verb form. Thus, the fact that there is no assimilation of emphatics attested in Ugaritic is not conclusive. 4.3 Summary Given the assumption that Proto-Semitic had five emphatic phonemes, /s H 8 k t/, the developments discussed in sections 4.1 and 4.2 can be summarized in the following manner: i. AKKADIAN: *s, *t4 and *9 merge into /s/. probably realized as glottalic release.

Emphasis was

ii. AMHARIC/ETHIOPIC: *s merges with *9; *t4 and *s are written with different letters in the earliest Ge'ez orthography, but both are pronounced [s 1 ] in Amharic. Since the letter for etymological *ti closely resembles the Greek theta, it is likely that the Ge'ez reflex of this sound was some kind of voiceless dental fricative. In all of the modern Ethiopian Semitic languages, the emphatics are characterized by glottalic release. Leslau (1958:148,ff) argues on the basis of the treatment of Arabic loanwords that contain emphatics that this was true of Ge'ez, the earliest recorded Ethiopian Semitic language, as well. iii. ARABIC: In the earliest recorded Arabic, *U was maintained as a lateral. *k was realized as a uvular stop [q] or as a voiced velar stop [g]. The other emphatics were characterized by velarization and affected the quality of neighboring sounds. In the modern Arabic dialects, there is pharyngeal constriction as well. iv. ARAMAIC: In the earliest Aramaic, *\i probably had a velar place of articulation. Whether it was a lateral or not, a fricative or an affricate, voiced or voiceless, is more difficult to

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determine.

Within the recorded history of Aramaic, this *tj merged

with * ? , and *8 merged with *t, as part of a general merger of interdentals with dental/alveolar stops. It is probable that by the Official Aramaic period, the emphatics were realized as backed consonants. Some modern dialects of Aramaic are characterized by a suprasegmental flat - non-flat contrast, as a reflex of the older emphatic - non-emphatic contrast for consonants. v. HEBREW: In Biblical Hebrew, *t4 has merged with *s, as has *e. As in Aramaic, the latter change is part of a general loss of interdentals. It is probably the case that the emphatics in Hebrew were characterized by backing. vi. MODERN SOUTH ARABIAN: The emphatic consonants are maintained distinct in MSA. *ti is maintained as a non-ejective fricative lateral [z], while *s, *k, *t, and *9 are all maintained as glottalized consonants. *9 appears as the preglottalized [ l 5], with a variant [©']; the rest are always ejectives. vii. UGARITIC: In Ugaritic, the only change that has taken place is that *\i has merged with *s. Evidence regarding the realization of the emphasis in Ugaritic is sketchy, but there is a slight amount of evidence suggesting that the relevant sounds were characterized by backing, but that evidence is not nearly as strong as the corresponding evidence for Hebrew and Aramaic. In addition to the above, it should be noted that there is evidence for all of the languages discussed above that *s was at least optionally realized as an affricate [ts]. Furthermore, *k does not seem to act like the other emphatics in those languages in which emphasis is realized as backing; in these languages, *k is usually distinguished from /k/ by having a uvular place of articulation. A further characteristic that the emphatics have in all languages for which we have evidence, except for a few of the modern Arabic dialects, is that they are unaspirated, while the voiceless sounds that they contrast with are heavily aspirated. It is certainly the case that for the earliest stages for which we have evidence that the emphatics are all voiceless.

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4.4 Reconstruction It is clear from the evidence presented in the preceding sections of this chapter that there was an emphatic series in ProtoSemitic. In this section, we will explore various factors affecting the reconstruction of this series, insofar as it is possible. This includes investigation of the precise characterization of the emphatic series and the positing of subgroupings on the basis of the developments in the various Semitic languages. In this last regard, it is not necessary to consider together the developments concerning the place and manner of articulation of the emphatics, as outlined in section 4.3, and the developments regarding the realization of emphasis in the various languages. The latter will be dealt with first. There are three logical possiblities concerning the realization of emphasis in Proto-Semitic: i. glottalization, ii. backing, and iii. something else. In practice, many investigators ignore the third possibility. The only alternative suggestion that I am aware of is Dolgopolsky's listing of lack of aspiration as a possibility for the emphatic series (1977:2). The advantage of positing either glottalization or backing for PS emphatics is that, for at least some of the languages, we do not have to posit any changes, so, in a certain sense, this simplifies our task. However, this reasoning is specious in that the simplest historical solution (given that we even know what simple means) is not necessarily a reflection of what happened. Furthermore, given the time frame in which any discussion of the Semitic languages is embedded, it may well be that phonetic stability is at least as comlicated as the kinds of changes under consideration here are. In the remainder of this section, I will outline the best possible case for each of three possible reconstructions: elective emphatics, backed emphatics, and unaspirated emphatics. I will also deal with possible objections to each of these analyses. It will be quite clear from a comparison of the analyses that the ejective analysis is the least objectionable one; it also explains the most.

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4.4.1 The Backing Analysis The backing analysis says, in essence, that the emphatics in Proto-Semitic were characterized by backing of the relevant consonants and by coarticulation effects on the neighboring sounds. Proponents of this analysis would most likely deny the evidence presented in section 4.2.3 suggesting that Akkadian had ejectives. In addition, they would argue that the ejectives in Amharic and the other Ethiopian Semitic languages resulted from contact between speakers of Semitic languages and speakers of Cushitic and Omotic languages; these non-Semitic Afroasiatic languages have ejectives, as well. The major linguistic arguments for backed consonants in PS are more nearly arguments against ejectives. For example, Garbell (1954:234) argues against ejectives on the grounds that there are reconstructive PS roots in which emphatic consonants cooccur with /?/. She also uses the fact that some Arabic dialects have voiced emphatics as an argument against there having been ejectives in PS; since ejective release and voicing are both glottal mechanisms, they are incompatible. None of the arguments given in the previous paragraph is particularly convincing. In fact, for some of them, they are clearly based on incorrect premisses. For instance, in order for us to be able to use the existence of ejectives in Cushitic languages as a source for ejectives in Ethiopian Semitic languages, we must first demonstrate that the particular Cushitic languages that have been spoken in in Ethiopia during the period that Semitic languages have been spoken there have ejectives. It turns out that the Cushitic language that is most likely to have influenced Ethiopian Semitic languages, Southern Agaw, does not have ejectives (Leslau 1958:152, Dolgopolsky 1977:13n). However, ejectives are reconstructed for Proto-Cushitic, on the basis of languages that do have them, and, if we do not know when they were lost, we cannot determine whether ejectives in Southern Agaw in the past might not have influenced Ethiopian Semitic during the more than 2000 years of contact that most theories about the origin of Ethiopian Semitic allow (see Hudson 1977:120, 160, for the timedepth). So, an initially appealing argument against positing backed emphatics for PS

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evaporates in the face of our ignorance. Garbell's argument concerning the cooccurrence of /?/ and emphatics in roots is based on two misconceptions, one concerning the phonological status of /?/ and the other concerning the nature of elective consonants. In her statement of the argument, Garbell does not give any indication of the number of roots containing /?/ and an emphatic consonant that can reliably be reconstructed for PS; nor does she indicate the position in the root of the /?/. I suspect that many of the roots she has in mind are ones whose initial consonants is /?/. One such root is *?art4 'land.' While it is true that in Semitic verbal roots, consonants with the same place of articulation tend not to cooccur (Greenberg 1950), it is not clear that /?/ in word-initial position is phonemic. There are no contrasts in any of the Semitic languages between sequences like /#?V/ and /#V/. If there were to be root constraints involving /?/ as the first consonant, /?/ would have been phonemic at the time the patterns developed. With regard to the emphatics themselves, all of the discussion of the phonetic nature of ejectives (primarily, Catford (1964, 1970) and Ladefoged (1968, 1971)) makes it clear that glottalization is a feature like voicing or aspiration and not at all comparable to velar or interdental places of articulation. So, glottalized consonants would not be expected to pattern as a class in the way that velars or interdentals do. As for Garbell's argument from the impossibility of voiced ejectives, it is only valid if we assume that recent pronunciations of Classical Arabic represent the most "authentic" Semitic available to us. It was clear from Sibawaihi's descriptions, taking into account the fact that he wasn't describing aspiration directly, that voicing of emphatics was not contrastive in early Arabic. In fact, there was nothing in his descriptions that forced the conclusion that early Arabic had voiced emphatics. In any case, it is clear that voiced emphatics in Arabic are a secondary development, exclusive to that language. Therefore, the fact that Arabic has voiced emphatics cannot be used to argue about the nature of the emphatics in Proto-Semitic.

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4.4.2 The Ejective Analysis That Proto-Semitic emphatics were ejectives is often assumed without argument. The earliest citation for this position that I have found is Meinhof (1921), and it has been accepted, also without argument, by Blake (1946), von Soden (1952), Martinet (1953), Moscati (1954) and Diakonoff (1965). However, there are some substantive arguments that appear in the literature. The first of these, most often hinted at in the midst of other discussion, is a naturalness argument: many languages around the world have ejectives, but backed consonants are almost unheard of outside the Semitic family. Therefore, it is more plausible to assume that PS had ejectives. This sort of argument is a little difficult to deal with. One could with as much justification claim that, since backed consonants are so rare in the languages of the world, they could not have developed out of thin air in Arabic, and so must be a retention from PS. Certainly, neither of these arguments should be used to support anything other than an already well-supported conclusion. A more reasonable argument for reconstructing an ejective series is provided independently by D. Cohen (1965) and Dolgopolsky {1977}. This argument is simply that, if the PS emphatics were ejectives, that provides an explanation for the lack of voicing contrast in this series. However, as Dolgopolsky points out, this same fact is explained equally well by the aspiration analysis (section 4.4,3 below). But, if the emphatics were backed consonants, this lack of voicing contrast is an "unexplained anomaly." Despite the fact that this argument is somewhat more reasonable than the naturalness one, it is probably best considered a supporting argument as well. Cardona (1968) argues for PS ejectives on the grounds that there is no evidence for effects of emphatics on vowel quality like those found in Arabic in other Semitic languages. This argument, however attractive its conclusion, is not valid. We know about the coarticulation effects of Arabic vowels of emphatic consonants and about Neoaramaic flatting assimilation through direct observation of living languages. These effects are not represented in traditional

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orthographies, and there is no reason to think that traditional orthographies of other Semitic languages would have been any more reflective of phonetic detail. So, we simply don't know whether Akkadian vowel quality, for example, was affected by the phonetic nature of one or another specific consonants. There is, however, one solid argument for PS ejectives that I have not seen anywhere in the literature. This argument is based on the phoneme /k/. In the Ethiopian Semitic languages, its primary reflex is [k']. In other words, it is part of the emphatic series. However, in early Arabic, it is differentiated from /k/ by its place of articulation rather than by backing; it will be recalled from page 136 that Sibawaihi did not include /k/ among the mutbaka. In addition, the backing assimilation discussed for Hebrew and Aramaic is not conditioned by /k/; sequences of /tk/ do not become /tk/. If PS had had backed emphatics, when the secondary backing coarticulation was replaced by glottalized release in the Ethiopian languages and in modern South Arabian, why would the uvular stop /q/ have been included in the class of sounds affected by the change? On the other hand, if glottalization had been replaced by backing as the exponent of emphasis, this backing, when applied to /k 1 /, would make it [q], taking it outside the class of emphatics. Thus, the existence of /k'/ in Ethiopic and Modern South Arabian is evidence that it was the second change that took place rather than the first. It could also be argued that the existence of affricated /ts/ is also evidence for ejectives in PS. Students of African languages that contain [s'J are often cautioned against substituting [ts] for that sound, as the glottal release accompanying the [s'] sounds, to the untutored ear, like the ordinary German/Russian /ts/. This perceptual confusion between [s 1 ] and [ts] could be used to explain the fact that so much evidence for [ts] as a reflex of /s/ is found throughout the Semitic language area. However, the argument is only as good as the assumption that affricates are somehow non-Semitic. Since this view ""s a priori unreasonable, the existence of [ts], whether emphatic or not, throughout Semitic cannot be used to argue for earlier /s/.

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4.4.3 The Aspiration Analysis The aspiration analysis is essentially a conservative one. We have evidence for aspiration of voiceless non-emphatic stops and for lack of aspiration of emphatic stops in virtually all of the Semitic languages. We have no sure evidence that Ethiopic languages underwent a stage in which they had backed consonants rather than ejectives. Nor do we have any evidence that Hebrew, Arabic, or Aramaic went through an ejective stage (discounting the /ts/ argument and the /k 1 / argument above). So, allowing for either of these stages introduces unwarranted complication into an analysis. Barr (1967:3) argues against such an analysis of Biblical Hebrew on the grounds that it is not necessarily the case that the emphatics were distinguished from the voiceless consonants by one property alone. 4.5 Decision There are two bases on which we might decide among the three alternatives presented above: the plausibility of the developments needed for each of the offspring languages, and comparative evidence from within Afroasiatic. We will deal with the internal developments first. 4.5.1 Developments from an Aspiration Contrast Let us approach the question: how might the contrast between voiceless aspirated and unaspirated consonants be transformed into a contrast between voiceless consonants and ejectives? One possibility is based on Catford's (1977:114) statement that aspirated voiceless stops have a wider glottal opening than do unaspirated voiceless stops. It might be the case that speakers who were concentrating on not aspirating consonants that were not supposed to be aspirated might have narrowed (and tensed} the glottal opening to the point of closure, thus producing ejective consonants. On the other hand, I think that it is unlikely that speakers who were concentrating on not aspirating specific sounds could have produced backed (pharyngealized or velarized sounds) as a by product of their concentration. If this is in-

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deed the case, it means that unaspirated sounds must have changed to backed sounds by way of ejectives. In that case, the aspiration analysis reduces to the ejective analysis. 4.5.2 Developments Based on the Backing Analysis I find it difficult to envision any transition from backed consonants to ejectives that does not involve some kind of mystical transfer of energy in the vocal tract from the tongue root to the glottis. I suspect that researchers like Garbell who adhere to the position that such a change must have taken place have not thought out the mechanism by which it would have had to happen. Aside from the inherent weakness of the arguments for the backing analysis given above (section 4.4.1), this lack of a plausible transition path is telling evidence against the analysis. 4.5.3 Developments from an Ejective Contrast In order adequately to discuss the ejective analysis, we must f i r s t point out (again) that ejectives are often characterized by tension i n the pharynx (Catford 1977:68). I t was the change in status of this secondary pharyngeal constriction to primary exponent of emphasis that constituted the change from emphatics to backed consonants. I w i l l here summarize Dolgopolsky's (1977:6-7) sketch of this change. Dolgopolsky posits a four-stage development. From a functional point of view, in a system with strongly glottalized consonants (ejectives with a long delay between oral and glottal release?), aspiration is not needed to maintain the distinctness of the glottalized and the pulmonic voiceless series. However, i f the glottalization weakens, then aspiration of the voiceless series is needed. Furthermore, with the weakening of the g l o t t a l i z a t i o n , the backing effect caused by the pharyngeal constriction becomes, r e l a t i v e l y , a more salient cue. This is Dolgopolsky's f i r s t stage. With the new salience of aspiration and backing, g l o t t a l i z a t i o n is no longer the powerful cue i t once was, so i t becomes even weaker. The burden of d i s t i n c t i v e ness shifts toward the aspiration and the retraction. This is the

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second stage. In the third stage the glottalization is lost completely and in the fourth, the aspiration is lost as well, shifting the entire distinguishing burden to the backing. 4.5.4 Internal Evidence Partial evidence for this reconstruction is found in the fact that there are currently attested and/or well-documented languages in the Semitic language family representing each of Dolgopolsky's stages. The earliest stage—strong glottal ization--is found in some Ethiopian languages. The first stage—weak glottalization, aspiration, and slight backing is found in Nestorian (Christian) Urmian Aramaic, Modern South Arabian, and in the Amharic spoken by my informant. The stage at which glottalization is present but redundantly so because of the prominence of backing and aspiration as cues, is found in Jewish Urmian Aramaic. The stage in which glottalization is lost, but aspiration and retraction retained, is represented by Sibawaihi's Arabic and by North African (at least) of the modern dialects. Dolgopolsky also claims that this is the state of affairs in Tur Abdin (Central Neoaramaic), but Siegel (1968:57) cites confusions between emphatics and nonemphatics (he doesn't specify voicing of the non-emphatics), implying that it was only the glottalization that was keeping the two series distinct and that it wasn't doing a very good job of it. The last stage is represented in Lebanese Arabic, in a manner of speaking, since VOT (aspiration) no longer distinguishes emphatics from non-emphatics (Yeni-Komshian, et. al. 1977:41).19 4.5.5 External Evidence The ejective analysis for Semitic is confirmed by facts from other Afroasiatic languages. Only Berber of the non-Semitic Afroasiat i c languages has pharyngealized emphatics. But, Berber is spoken in areas of north Africa that have been subject to Arabic influence from the earliest days of Islam, so the p o s s i b i l i t y of substratum (actually superstratum) cannot be discounted. Glottalized sounds, both ejectives and implosives, are found in Cushitic, Cfiadic and Omotic languages.

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Cushitic and Omotic are notorious for having ejectives. And, Newman and Ma (1966) include in their reconstructions of the phonemic inventory of Proto-Chadic glottalized /D"O7. They also suggest that there was a preglottalized / ' w / , but the correspondences are less sure; this is revised in Newman (1977} to l\JI > probably a palatal stop. Newman and Ma use the IPA symbols /S d"/ for implosives, but nowhere do they argue for an implosive rather than an ejective realization of these glottalized consonants. Hausa, the best known of the modern Chadic languages, has implosive / £ d? and ejective / k ' t s ' / (Carnochan 1952). The time depth relating Chadic and Semitic is such that i t is d i f f i c u l t to establish cognate lexical items l e t alone regular phonological correspondences. Nevertheless, the data given by Diakonoff (1965:26-28) suggest that glottalized consonants in Chadic do correspond to the ejectives that we have reconstructed for Proto-Semitic. However, the one item in Newman and Ma's level one confidence l i s t of reconstructed Proto-Chadic lexical items that contains a glottalized consonant with an obvious Semitic parallel does not support this statement. Newman and Ma reconstruct *SV 'go,' for which the obvious Semitic parallel is /b?/ 'come.' But, Diakonoff reconstructs the same root in Chadic as *ba 'go, walk.' So the question is open. I t is perhaps significant that the item in question has been omitted from Newman (1977), a revision of the work reported on in Newman and Ma (1966). A further potential cognate, in which Chadic and Semitic agree in glottal ization is Hausa /cfanJana/ 'to taste'--Semitic /t'Tm/ with the same meaning. These examples are not presented with the i n tention of establishing or denying firm lexical correspondences between Semitic and other Afroasiatic groups; rather, my intent has been to demonstrate the degree to which such comparison is d i f f i c u l t . 4.6 Subgrouping In the preceding sections, a good case has been made for positing a series of voiceless ejective consonants for Proto-Semitic. This entails the claim that in some of the Semitic languages, the ejectives changed to velarized/pharyngealized consonants. These Ian-

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guages are: Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and, possibly, Ugaritic. Languages in which the change did not take place are: Ethiopian Semitic, Modern South Arabian, and, probably, Akkadian. Obviously, failure of this change to take place cannot be taken as evidence that Ethiopian, MSA and Akkadian constitute a group within Semitic. The question is: can it be claimed on the basis of this change that Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic and Ugaritic constitute a group? This question can be approached from two perspectives, that of chronological plausibility, and that of the likelihood of independent innovation in the same direction. 4.6.1 Chronological Plausibility If we enter into the discussion of chronological plausibility with no preconceptions about the relationships among the Semitic languages, we find that there are no problems in considering Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Ugaritic as a group to the exclusion of other languages. The examination of Hebrew led to a lower bound for the change of ejectives to backed consonants of about 1000 BC, although, of course, the change could have been much earlier. The earliest attestations of Pre-Classical Arabic are from the fifth century BC. These are distinct from the Epigraphic South Arabian inscriptions, found starting in 800 BC. There is no evidence for or against backed consonants in either of these groups of inscriptions. Nevertheless, the fact that the two groups are distinct even in their earliest attestations indicates that there is no conflict with the hypothesis that North (Classical) Arabic had pharyngeals as a retention from a common period of development with Hebrew and Aramaic, while South Arabian maintained ejectives. Of course, if, as has been claimed, the Modern South Arabian languages are not direct descendants of Epigraphic South Arabian, then it is not germane to this discussion which type of consonants ESA had, since there would be no possible chronological inconsistency. The only kind of evidence that would mitigate against assumption of a Hebrew/Arabic/ Aramaic group from a chronological point of view would be evidence that, for example, at the time that we know that Hebrew must already have innovated backed consonants, Arabic or Aramaic was not yet diffe-

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rentiated from some other language that maintained ejectives. In the absence of such evidence, it can be safely concluded that there is no chronological impediment to hypothesizing a Hebrew/Arabic/Aramaic group that might or might not include Ugaritic. 4.6.2 "Universal" Considerations Most writers on pharyngealized consonants in Arabic stress the rareness of this articulation type in the languages of the world. If this impression that pharyngealization and other kinds of backed consonants are rare in the languages of the world could be substantiated by some kind of objective survey, that could constitute evidence that the presence of backing coarticulation in three (or four) Semitic languages reflects a single innovation. In other words, it would suggest an Arabic/Hebrew/Aramaic(/Ugaritic) subgroup of the Semitic language family. Ruhlen (1976) contains data collated by the Stanford University Language Universal Project on about 700 languages. Within this sample, three languages, Shilha Berber, Tamazight Berber and Ubyx, a Northwest Caucasian language, have pharyngealized consonants. The two Berber languages cannot be assumed to have been free of Arabic influence, so they can be discounted. In Ubyx, only labial sounds are susceptible to pharyngealization; dental/alveolars have labialized and non-labialized variants, while velars have palatalized and non-palatalized variants. Ubyx has the following pairs of pharyngealized - nonpharyngealized contrasts: [p h ] - [p h "3, [b] - [b"], [p 1 ] - [p'"], [f] - [f"L and [m] - [m"].2° Only one language in Ruhlen's survey contains velarized consonants. That is Russian, in which velarized consonants contrast with palatalized consonants. These velarized sounds correspond to plain sounds (sounds with no secondary coarticulation) in other Slavic languages, so it may be assumed that the redundant velarization developed as heightened non-palatalization. In addition, there were three languages in which there was a labialized series of consonants, not counting languages in which the only labialized consonants are labio-

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velars. These languages are Juat, an Australian language, Koma, a Nilo-Saharan language spoken in Africa, and Margi, a Chadic language spoken in Nigeria. According to Ladefoged (1968), a survey of west African languages, Margi also has glottalized consonants. And, from Ladefoged (1968), we can add to the list of languages with systematic labialization Bura, a Chadic language spoken in Nigeria (p. 64), and Kutep, a Benue-Congo language also spoken in Nigeria (p. 62). These data confirm the impression that velarization/pharyngealization is a rare phenomenon in the languages of the world. This supports the analysis that claims that the innovation of backed consonants occurred once in Semitic. In other words, the data presented justify the assumption that Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic underwent a common period of development, to the exclusion of the other Semitic languages. While it is tautologously the case that Ugaritic either was part of this group or it wasn't, the data available do not enable a determination. 4.6.3 Changes within the Class of Emphatics In this section we will consider the question of whether changes in the articulation of emphatic consonants, independent of the realization of the emphasis, can be used to formulate hypotheses about subgrouping. There are two recurrent changes to consider. *t4 merges with *s in Hebrew, Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Ethiopic. And, *9 merges with *s in Hebrew, Ethiopic and Akkadian. The first thing to note is that the first of these two changes must have occurred independently in Ethiopic. Ge'ez is already distinct from all other known Semitic languages in its earliest stage. Yet, *tj and *s are written with different symbols in the earliest Ge'ez. It should further be noted that /\i/ is a highly marked segment, an ejective affricated lateral. Given this markedness, it would not be surprising if it were to lose one or more of these characteristics. If the closure were indeed alveolar, change of the lateral release to the more common centered release would make the sound virtually indistinguishable from /s/. The likelihood of some simplification

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of this sound taking place suggests to me that we do not want to make too much of the fact that i happened -jn several languages. In other words, it is not an odd enough coincidence to be useful as evidence for a grouping together of Akkadian, Hebrew and Ugaritic, to the exclusion of all other Semitic languages. A similar argument can be made on the basis of the interdental and alveolar/dental emphatic fricatives in Hebrew, Ethiopic and Akkadian. This change was part of a general merger of interdental and dental/alveolar fricatives in all three languages. There are basically four things that can happen to interdentals: they can remain unchanged; they can merge with dental/alveolar fricatives, as in the languages under discussion; they can merge with dental/alveolar stops, as in certain varieties of New York City English (perhaps by way of the affricates [te] and [d3] that are found in certain varieties of Philadelphia English); or, they can merge with labio-dentals, as in Black English or Cockney English.

Given that these four possibilities are equally 3 likely, there is a probability of 1/4 , or 0.016, that the same thing would happen in all three languages independently. If we further assume that one of the languages, say Hebrew, could have been influenced by one of the other languages, say Akkadian, then we need only figure the probability that the same change would occur independently 2 twice; this figure is 1/4 , or 0.063. These figures mean that if we use the common loss of th« interdental series as the basis for positing a subgroup, the probability that we would be wrong because of one or more independent innovations is 0.205. The conservative position, one that is worth maintaining, would be not to take the chance in the absence of other evidence for such a grouping. 4.7 Conclusion In this chapter, we have examined the phonetic nature of the emphatic consonants in the various Semitic languages. These consonants are pronounced with velar/pharyngeal constriction in some of these languages and with glottalized (ejective) release in others. Because it was easier to create a plausible chain of events leading

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from ejectives to backed consonants than the other way around, it was concluded that the Proto-Semitic realization of the series was probably ejective. This conclusion was supported by evidence from the related Chadic and Cushitic language families. Furthermore, the rareness of a series of backed consonants led to the positing of a Hebrew/Aramaic/ Arabic subgroup within Semitic, a group that Ugaritic may or may not be a part of. However, it was not possible to posit any groupings on the basis of changes and mergers that took place in the inventory of emphatics in the various languages, due to chronological anomalies that would result from any such reconstruction and due to the high probability of independent innovation.

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Notes to Chapter Four *Lehn (1963:29) indicates that emphasis is found in all Arabic dialects except Maltese. The consonant chart for Maltese found in Aquilina (p. 3} contains only two stop series—voiced and voiceless. I use the cover terms "backed" and "backing" to refer to the two major types of emphasis that involve retraction of the tongue root and concomitant secondary constriction somewhere along the vocal tract, either in the velar or pharyngeal region. Use of the terms "velarized" or "pharyngealized" in the remainder of this chapter involves a claim about the location of this constriction. "Backed" involves only the claim that there was/is some constriction. 2 Strictly speaking, the term "secondary coarticulation" is not appropriate for glottalized consonants. Catford (1977:63,ff) classifies glottalized consonants (glottalic pressure stops, in his terminology) as an initiation type distinct from pulmonic voiced and voiceless stops. Nevertheless, it will be convenient to use the term "secondary articulation" in reference to glottalized sounds in comparative discussion because of the functional parallelism between glottalization and backing in the Semitic languages. 3 The idea of Proto-Semitic laterals is not new with Steiner. Similar claims have been made, albeit with far less supporting argumentation, by Meinhof (1921:93), Garbell (1954) and Cantineau (1960:23). According to Ladefoged (1971:14), in the production of laryngeal ized sounds, the arytenoid cartilages are pressed together so that only the anterior part of the vocal cords is free to vibrate. Laryngealized sounds are common in the Chadic (a group of non-Semitic Afroasiatic) languages. Laryngealized [?b] is often confused with implosive I S ] in descriptions of West Atlantic and Chadic languages (Ladefoged 1968:6). The difference between ejectives and implosives is how tightly closed the glottis is (Catford 1977:65). For ejectives, the glottis is tightly closed, maintaining the pressure differential necessary for the articulation of the sound. If the glottis is not tightly closed, however, voicing occurs when the larynx moves up, producing an implosive (Catford prefers the term "glottalic suction stop"). It is not necessary that there be an intake of air for this effect to be obtained. 5 This is apparently not uncommon in the production of ejectives in other language families. In his general discussion of ejectives, Catford (1977:68) states: "there may in addition be some secondary sphincteric constriction of the pharynx."

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This confirms Ryan's and Sumner's reports. There are few if any words in Amharic containing non-geminate [£]. The tokens with intervocalic /k/ were discarded because of obvious reading errors. g Among others. and Cooper {1955} for English. The aspiration represented in this Table is stronger than that in Table IV,- from Ryan's thesis. Given the limited number of tokens that I had, it may be that these figures are not representative for my informant. The possibility of dialect variation in regard to degree of aspiration of voiceless consonants cannot be evaluated, since Ryan does not specify where in Ethiopia her informant is from. 10 The analyses in this paragraph are based on the assumption that a large number of utterances of a particular phonetic target will cluster around one mean value in a close approximation of a normal distribution. The following table summarizes the results of the twotailed t-tests that I performed with that in mind. Fl a a i i

t-4.08 t=2.05 t=2.82 t=1.17

.001!

S

3 e

e

Table IX: Early and recent phonetic values for the Arabic reflexes of the PS sibilants.

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5.2.2 Evidence from Hebrew As noted above (p. 174), the Hebrew writing system preserves traces of a three-sibilant system. When first written, Hebrew S 2 was closer in pronunciation to 3, than to S.,. The first two were written with the same orthographic symbol,V/ , while S 3 had the symbol D to itself. Later, around the beginning of the Christian Era, spelling confusions between 0 and VJ (S2) suggest that S 2 and S 3 merged. This resulted in the set of grapheme-phone correspondences indicated in Table II (p. 173). Around the eighth century AD, when a group of rabbis in Tiberias developed a system of diacritics to indicate such things as vowel quality, gemination, post-vocalic spirantization and stress, Hebrew had only two sibilant phonemes. However, the graph VJ had two different pronunciations. In order to differentiate the two, the Tiberians placed a dot to the upper right of ^ when it represented /§/, and a dot to the left when it represented /s/. This interpretation has been challenged recently by Garbini (1971, 1972) and Diem (1974). Garbini's view was discussed above (pp. 174-175) in the context of a decision about the number of Proto-Semitic sibilant phonemes. Since his discussion of Hebrew is based on the faulty premiss that S. and S 2 were never phonologically distinct, there is no need to analyze his deductions from that premiss further. Diem, on the other hand, assumes that there were originally three sibilant phonemes, but that S-, and So fell together in early Hebrew, at the same time that they mergedin Ugaritic and Phoenician. As is evident from Table I, *9 merged with S, in Phoenician and Hebrew. In the attested liturgical pronunciations of Hebrew, S, is /s/. It is evident from Table I that *s is the usual PS value attributed to S,. Given that, it is reasonable for Diem to assume that the /s/ in Hebrew is a direct continuation of the Proto-Semitic value. Diem argues that a direct change of /s/ to /s/ is crazy, given that the phonemic system contained intervening /s/ and /£/, with either of which /e/ would be more likely to merge. In Phoenician, S„ (/s/ or[t4]) merged early with S,. A merger of /e/ and l\\l is entirely reasonable on perceptual grounds, as a little oral experimentation clearly shows. So, Diem

claims that the merger of /9/ and S, (/s/) is best understood as following a merger of /a/ and S2 (/H/). For Phoenician, this is a perfectly reasonable solution, since the reflexes of the three earlier phonemes S,, S„ and *e do not contrast. However, positing the same development for Hebrew is difficult, since S~ maintains its distinctness from S./9. In order to resolve this difficulty, Diem examined transcriptions of Semitic names in related languages, to see how the sibilants are represented. None of the languages (Old and Middle Egyptian, Akkadian, El Amarna Akkadian) has enough symbols to represent all of the sibilant phonemes posited for Proto-Semitic. So, Diem establishes the principle that representation of two PS sounds with the same Akkadian syllable series, for example, is not an indication that the two sounds have merged. On the other hand, if two sounds are consistently treated differently in Akkadian, that is evidence that they were distinct in the source language (p. 229). The problem with his methodology, however, is that there is no certainty that the correct values for the Akkadian or Egyptian symbols are known; these values might have been assigned on etymological grounds on the basis of the evidence being evaluated here. In any case, in the early Egyptian inscriptions, from around 1800 BC, Canaanite S, appears as /!/, while So appears as /s/. S 2 appears as / V in some slightly earlier inscriptions, while *9 appears as /s/. In later inscriptions, the transcriptions illustrated in Table X are found. Canaanite s

Egyptian

i

52

s/s

53

J_[ts] or

e

s/s

[c]

Table X: Later Egyptian transcriptions of sibilants in Canaanite names.

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Diem concludes from the distribution in Table X that around the fifteenth century BC S. was still distinct from S~ and *e. He comes to no conclusion about whether the latter two had merged. In the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, which are more or less contemporary with the Egyptian transcriptions discussed in the previous paragraph, S, was still distinct from S, and *e (p. 236), but the latter two had merged (p. 241). In the Lachish {southern Israel) inscriptions from the thirteenth century BC, S, and *9 are represented by the same symbol; these texts contain no instances of words containing etymological S,, so it is impossible to determine whether the three sounds had merged by then. However, in the Phoenician alphabet, from around the tenth century BC, there is only one symbol for Sj/So/Q. Similar evidence can be found in the Canaanite glosses to Akkadian cuneiform tablets found in El Amarna in Egypt. These originate from around the fifteenth century BC. In tablets originating in Palestine (possibly the upper Galilee) and Byblos, all three sounds are represented by the Akkadian signs for syllables containing /§/. However, in the texts originating in Jerusalem, S. appears as / s / , while So/9 appears as i\l. Diem presents two explanations for this disagreement. Either some phenomenon peculiar to the Jerusalem area is responsible for the discrepancy, or the three-way merger had already occurred in the north but not in the south (p. 239). While Diem allows for the possibility that these mergers took place differently in different dialects, he assumes that the three-way merger took place in the ancestor to Biblical Hebrew, since it is, for him, the only way that *9 could end up merged with S,. Diem is not unaware that he must now explain how S 2 resplit from the three-way merged phoneme in attested Hebrew. The answer is contact with a language in which S„ had been maintained as a distinct phoneme—Aramaic. It is well-known that Hebrew was being supplanted by Aramaic as the language of every day life in Palestine during the second half of the first millenium BC, although it is not clear exactly when Hebrew died out (Cantineau 1955). In any case, a prolonged period of bilingualism must have preceded the demise of Hebrew as a spoken

19C

language. In Aramaic, $2 did not merge with S, or *9. Rather, i t merged with Sy Thus, the Hebrew-Aramaic sibilant correspondences would have been as indicated in Table XI. Hebrew

Aramaic

i

s

£

h h

s

s

s

Table XI: Sibilant correspondences between Hebrew and Aramaic, according to Diem (1974). Although Diem does not phrase it this way, what he is proposing is that Aramaic phonemicizations were transferred into Hebrew. Kutscher (1965:40) argues against such a transfer. His strongest argument is simply that there are lexical items in Hebrew in which So appears as /s/ that are not attested in Aramaic. But, this argument is only as good as the assumption that a complete record of the Aramaic vocabulary from the beginning of the Christian Era is available. In other words, it is not very good. There was only one piece of non-controversial evidence presented above: early Canaanite $ 3 was represented in Egyptian as an affricate. It is clear from the data given by Diem that ancient Egyptian had at least three sibilant signs /s s s/ that could have been used to represent S^. The fact that they weren't used strongly suggests that S, was in fact an affricate. Another piece of direct evidence about sibilant pronunciation is the Shibboleth story in the book of Judges (12:6). ...and [the Gileadite sentries] would say to [a suspected infiltrator]: say si-bboleQ. And he would say sibboleB and he could not say it. And they would capture him and slaughter him at the ford of the Jordan. And, 42,000 Ephraimites fell at that time, (my translation, af) It is likely that this story represents real dialect variation in northern Israel in the twelfth century BC (Harris 1967). However, it is not clear just how to interpret it. Harris treats it as representing

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variation in the pronunciation of the /s/ phoneme, without elaborating. Speiser (1932) and, following him, Diem (1974), finds in it evidence for the timing of the merger of *8 with whichever sibilant it merged with. Diem (1974:243) assumes that Is! in this root represents *e. The Gileadite sentries maintained [e], but for the Ephraimites, *8 had already merged with /s/ S^/S^. Consequently, they were unable to pronounce [9] and substituted [s]. Diem uses this argument to claim that at least one dialect of Hebrew maintained *e as a distinct phoneme until the end of the second millenium BC. Unfortunately, the story shows no such thing. The lexical item sibbolse 'ear of grain1 has good cognates in Socotri, Arabic, Ugaritic and Akkadian (Appendix III, S.:35). Neither the Arabic sunbultu nor the Ugariti'c sb11 contains a possible reflex of *9. In fact, the item shows the regular S, correspondences. Thus, if the story is evidence for anything at all, it is evidence for fluctuation in the value of S,, perhaps of a change in progress. Depending on whether the Ephraimites or the Gileadites are seen as the innovators, /s/ was changing to /s/, or vice versa. The only other evidence that I am aware of concerning the early Hebrew sibilants is discussed in Steiner (1977). He presents evidence that S ? in pre-Hebrew was a lateral [ t O , like the [t4] in early Arabic (see p. 18§ above). However, this evidence is not as strong as the corresponding Arabic evidence, based as it is on the rendering of a proper noun. Steiner suggests that the rendering of the Akkadian gentilic kaldu 'Chaldean' by the Hebrew kas^dim is evidence that Akkadian /!/ and Hebrew S 2 had some feature in common, namely laterality. The evidence presented in this section can be added to Table IX, to give Table XII.

192

*

Arabic

J S-, l

s

Hebrew s or s

S

2 ts

Table X I I : Sibilant values in Arabic and Hebrew. 5.2.3 Epigraphic South Arabian Most of the l i t e r a t u r e dealing with Semitic sibilants actually is concerned with the sibilants in the Epigraphic South Arabian inscriptions. This is because, u n t i l relatively recently when detailed descriptions of the Modern South Arabian languages became available (e.g. Leslau 1938, 1947; Johnstone 1975, 1977), Epigraphic South Arabian was the only Semitic language in which a three-way (four, i f *9 is included) sibilant contrast was maintained. In the l i t e r a t u r e that I have read concerning the ESA s i b i lants, there is no question raised about which etymological correspondence set each ESA s i b i l a n t symbol is related t o . These are the values presented in Table I ; they are repeated here in Table X I I I . ESA

s2 S

3

rt £

Table X I I I : Etymological values of the ESA s i b i l a n t symbols. Of course, establishing the etymological relationships t e l l s nothing about the phonetic realizations of these phonemes. Cantineau (1935) begins with the symbol S2 $ • He is not the f i r s t to note that this symbol is a ninety-degree rotation of the Canaanite V / , an archaic form of V7 . However, he points out that i t is illegitimate to i n fer from t h i s , as others apparently had done, that ESA So must have been / s / , in accord with the Canaanite (Hebrew, Phoenician) value.

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Cantineau points out (p. 315) that the Canaanite represents two original phonemes: S, IV and S2 HI. He follows Brockelmann (and j u s t about everyone else) in positing a lateral / H / for PS S 2 . Since the Modern South Arabian reflex of S2 is also a l a t e r a l , \t would complicate the reconstruction to posit anything other than a lateral So for ESA, in the absence of evidence that a change did take place. This, for Cantineau, is evidence that ESA did not share the change of S2 to III with Arabic, as had been assumed by Brockelmann (1961:130). He rules out / s / as a possible value for S, on the basis of the Ge'ez orthography. Ge'ez borrowed the S, and S2 symbols from Epigraphic South Arabian. In the modern Ethiopian languages, both symbols represent Is/. \*J is often transliterated s. in discussions of early Ethiopian texts, although there is no foundation for this in Mittwoch's author i t a t i v e work (1926). In any case, U^ is pronounced / s / in a l l Ethiopian reading traditions for Ge'ez. Cantineau has already shown that the ESA model for Ge'ez W could not have been pronounced / £ / . But, i f i t had been pronounced / s / , and i f S, had been pronounced / s / (Cantineau assumes t h i s ) , there would have been no motivation for the adoption of two s i b i l a n t signs for the same sound {Is/) into Ge'ez. Therefore, ESA S„ cannot have represented / s / . Cantineau's argument that ESA S2 could not have been IV is crucially based on the assumption that Modern South Arabian is a direct descendant of Epigraphic South Arabian. Hudson (1977) summarizes recent work on the structure of South Semitic suggesting that this assumption is not tenable. So, on the basis of orthographic evidence alone, following Cantineau's methodology, i t is possible to eliminate / s / as a value for S 2 ; but, i t is not possible to determine whether IV or IV is more l i k e l y . Stehle (1940) assumes also that Brockelmann's reconstruction of the PS sibilants is correct. She operates under the additional assumption that Arabic and Epigraphic South Arabian are closely related. This assumption forces her (see pp. 181-182 above) to reconstruct the following system for ESA: S1 Is/, S? / s / , S, / s / . The S2 anu S3

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values are identical with the realizations for these sounds in Arabic (see pp. 183-186). The value Ik/ for S, is determined for Stehle by the fact that *s (S2 In hers and Brockelmann's reconstructions of PS) has changed to /s/. Since there is no evidence for merger of 5, and So or for confusion between the two, S. could not also have been /s/ in ESA. She infers from this that S, must have been /!/, without considering any other possibilities. For her, the only difference between Arabic and ESA is that S, and S 3 have merged in the former and not in the latter. This is consistent with her assumption of a close genetic relationship between the two languages. However, it also involves the phonemic interchange that was criticized above {p. 182). Since it is implausible that such a reversal of the phonetic realizations of the two phonemes could have occurred without there having been some "slopover," it must be concluded that at least one of Stehle's assumptions is invalid. That is, either the assumption that ESA and Arabic constitute a group, the reconstruction of PS on which her developments are predicated, or the assignment of phonetic values to the ESA sibilants must be rejected. It may be that all three of these are erroneous. La Sor (1957) accepts Stehle's assignment of phonetic values to the ESA sibilants, and projects it back to PS. Table XIV summarizes LaSor's reconstructions and the attested values for Hebrew. * S

ESA

I

Hebrew

I

So

5

S3

S

Table XIV: Attested s i b i l a n t values in Hebrew compared with the value assignments made by LaSor (1957) for ESA. LaSor assumes that no change took place between PS and ESA. I t is readily apparent from an examination of Table XIV that, in order for La Sor to derive the Hebrew values for the sibilants from the PS values, he must posit an interchange of s i b i l a n t values identical to Stehle's South Semitic interchange. LaSor himself recognizes the

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improbability of such a development, stating (p. 172) that a gradual shift of the relevant values could not have taken place without causing unrecoverable mergers. Furthermore, it is improbable that there would have been a sudden shift, under the influence of a prestigious individual (and how would that individual's speech have changed?). The way out that LaSor suggests is to assume that *s (S,) was not phonetically identical with the lil (S 2 ) in Hebrew. His suggestion, one that he does not explicitly argue for, is that the sound in question was [c]. The next voice heard in this discussion is that of Beeston (1962). His work has been discussed above, in section 5.2.1. It will be recalled that Beeston argued that the early Arabic reflex of S„ was /c/, while the reflex of S,/S, was IV. He further suggests that ESA $ 2 was also /c7, and that ESA differed from Arabic only in that /§/ (S,) and /s/ (S.J (according to Brockelmann's reconstructions) had not yet merged. Thus,for Beeston, ESA had the sibilant system indicated in Table XV.

S

2

v

3

s

Table XV: Epigraphic South Arabian s i b i l a n t s , according to Beeston (1962). The only change that Beeston posits in the s i b i l a n t system from PS to ESA is the change of S, lil to Icl. This is unnecessary, however, for as long as no claims are made about the phonetic realization of PS $„ there is no impediment to taking the value / ? / back to PS. Beeston's analysis is an improvement over those presented by Stehle and LaSor in that i t does not require a phonemic interchange for either Hebrew or ESA. However, i t is flawed in that the only positive evidence presented is based on the possibly erroneous assumption that ESA and Arabic are closely related. Beeston further assumes that Sibawaihi's descriptions of Arabic in the eighth century AD are relevant to

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analysis of ESA of the first century BC. The crucial "fact" about Arabic for Beeston is that the reflex of S,, as described by Sibawaihi, was /c/, not the /s/ found in Arabic today. It was shown above that this interpretation of Sibawaihi's descriptions is not tenable. But, even if it were, transferring it from the eighth century AD to the first century BC is as inadmissible as making inferences about the phonetic structure of the French of the Strassbourg Oaths on the basis of modern Quebecois. None of the above discussion implies that Beeston's assignments of values for the ESA sibilants are wrong; it is merely the case that he has not argued for them. But, accepting Cantineau's (1960) reconstruction of a lateral S 2 for Proto-Semitic, in the absence of evidence for change, there is no obstacle to assuming that this lateral value was maintained in ESA. Thus, we are back to Cantineau's (1935) suggestion of S, /s/, S 2 /t*/ and S, /s/ for ESA. But, there is an inconsistency here. In Ethiopic, the ESA S. symbol was adapted as the symbol for /s/, representing reflexes of S,, S 3 and *9. According to Cantineau, it was ESA S 3 that was /s/. Given that, if IV and /e/ had changed to /s/, one might expect that it would have been the ESA /s/ symbol, or So, that would have been preserved. In other words, it is possible to infer from the fact that it was the S-> symbol that was preserved that the phonetic values of the other two phonemes tended toward S,. So, if S, was /s/, the result of the merger probably would have been /!/. On the other hand, the fact that only /s/ remains in Ethiopic suggests that the result of the merger was / s / , and that S 1 in Ethiopic and ESA was probably /s/. Further evidence that ESA Sj was not /§/ will be presented below. The argumentation presented thus far has been a lot of "sound and fury signifying nothing" in that all of the conclusions drawn by other researchers have either led to the positing of unnatural phonemic interchanges or have been based on assumptions about the linguistic affinities within Semitic of ESA. However, there is some more reliable evidence. It lies in one of the borrowings that were excluded from the

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original cognate lists described in section 5.1.2: Hebrew hosia? 'he saved'--ESA w£g?_ 'help.' In earlier works, it was assumed that this item was to be associated with Arabic wasu?a 'be wide.' However, the semantic difference between the Arabic item on the one hand and the Hebrew and ESA forms on the other makes any etymological relation unlikely. Beeston (1962) suggests that the ESA form is a borrowing from Hebrew, on the basis of a similar form in Ugaritic with IQI (recall that the Hebrew reflex of *e is I V ) . If this suggestion is correct, it can be inferred that, around the beginning of the Christian Era, Hebrew S, and ESA S,, had the same or nearly the same phonetic value. In any case, ESA So was the most accurate rendering of Hebrew S,. The realization of S, as III in all Hebrew pronunciation traditions in which /s/ and IV are distinguished suggests that S, had this value at the beginning of the Diaspora, that is, around the beginning of the Christian Era. If so, then S„ was the best spelling possible of [£] in ESA. Therefore, any attribution of phonetic values for the ESA sibilants that includes S, IV cannot be accurate. This argument does not constitute proof that ESA S„ was /s/, merely that neither of the other sibilants could have been. The reasoning in the previous paragraph means that Beeston's reconstruction of ESA sibilants cannot be correct; for him, ESA S, was IV. Cantineau's (1935) system cannot be correct either, for the same reason. However, the reconstructions presented by both Stehle and LaSor involve So IV\ thus they are compatible with the analysis of the borrowing wso? in ESA. But, these reconstructions were rejected because of the phonemic interchange that they required to account either for the facts of Hebrew or those of ESA. LaSor's solution is to assume that the phonetic details of the PS reconstruction that he was working with are in error. He suggests (see above pp. 195-196) that S, in PS was /?/; this changed to IV in Hebrew and to IV (/14/?J in ESA. Meanwhile, So IV, according to LaSor, remained the same in ESA and changed to IV in Hebrew. This solution provides the clue that the only way to explain the sibilant facts without having to explain away a lack of merger is

198

to posit a PS consonant inventory containing some sibilant sound not found consistently in the offspring languages. The discussion of W S Q ? in ESA suggests either that ESA had no phonemic IV or that IV was the ESA reflex of S 2 . The discussion of the adoption of the ESA S, character as the representation of /s/ in Ge'ez suggests that ESA S, was /s/. However, no evidence is available for the value of Sg in ESA. 5.2.4 Evidence from Aramaic As in Hebrew, in the earliest Aramaic inscriptions, So is written with the same character as is S.. However, in later Aramaic (around the beginning of the Christian Era), S 2 has merged with $,. It is generally assumed that the relevant phonetic values were, as in Hebrew, IV and 1st. This can be inferred from the similarities in the Jewish pronunciation traditions for Biblical Hebrew and Talmudic Aramaic. There is a certain amount of evidence that, as late as 700 or 600 BC, S„ was still a distinct phoneme in Aramaic. Fales (1978) indicates that transcriptions of Aramaic names in Neoassyrian cuneiform consistently represent IV (Aramaic S,) with the ^ syllable series. Spellings of names with S 2 vacillate among s_, t_ and s. Since it is not entirely clear what phonetic values the Akkadian signs had (see section 5.2.5, below), no inferences can be made about the phonetic value of S 2 in Aramaic. However, to the extent that it is certain that Hebrew S, was IV, the same is true of Aramaic; both are written with the same Neoassyrian symbol. So, the Table of sibilant values can be updated, as in Table XVI. *

Hebrew

ESA

Aramaic

S,

s or s

Arabic s

s?

s

52

+4-*s

s

s?

53

ts

Table XVI: Phonetic values assumed for Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic and ESA sibilant phonemes.

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5.2.5 Akkadian In order to understand the problems involved in the identification, however tentative, of phonetic values for Akkadian sibilants, it is necessary to have an understanding of the nature and origin of the Akkadian writing system. Akkadian is written in a cuneiform syllabary, borrowed from the Sumerians. The earliest Akkadian writing is found around the middle of third millenium BC. At that time, the inventory of cuneiform symbols was insufficient to indicate all of the sounds of Akkadian. In general, no contrast between voiced and voiceless obstruents, between emphatic and non-emphatic consonants is possible. As Akkadian became the dominant language in Mesopotamia, additional signs were created or adapted to deal with the full range of the Akkadian phonemic inventory. So, the sound inventory of later Akkadian gives the illusion of being more nearly commensurate with those of other Semitic languages than is that of earlier Akkadian. The signs that were innovated to represent the full range of Akkadian sounds differed in various regions of Mesopotamia. This creates certain problems for the researcher. The same cuneiform sign may represent syllables as disparate as AB, DI, and NA, depending on the origin of the text it is found in. In addition, the possibility that different signs may have had the same value in different places and eras cannot be discounted. The first Akkadian to be deciphered was Late Assyrian, found in parallel texts with Old Persian. Phonetic values were assigned to the symbols on the basis of agreement with Hebrew and Aramaic Biblical names. Reiner (1966:31) correctly refers to this as a "historical accident," but minimizes the effects it has had. In effect, the values assigned to the syllables for this late Assyrian period became the names used by scholars for these symbols for all periods of Akkadian. Although it is the convention to use capital letters (e.g. SA) for these names, there is a strong temptation to assume that these names represent the phonetic values attached to the signs for all periods of Akkadian. While it has been invaluable from an etymological point of view to have the late Assyrian values for the cuneiform signs as an aid

200

to reading Old Akkadian and Old Babylonian texts, it is all too easy to assume that there was no change in the phonetic realization of a given sign from the Old Akkadian period to the late Assyrian period, except where a given sign starts to be used for the reflexes of a Proto-Semitic phoneme that it had not previously been used for. For purposes of this chapter, reconstruction of Proto-Semitic sibilant values, the Old Akkadian phonetic realizations will clearly be more useful than those of later periods of the language. However, in the absence of anchors for Old Akkadian similar to the presence of Assyrian words in the Hebrew Bible and of Hebrew and Aramaic names in Assyrian texts, there is little guarantee of accuracy. However, we are not at a total loss. First of all, it is relatively easy to determine from spelling and from spelling variation how many distinct sibilant phonemes there were. Table XVII lists the signs used for sibilants in Old Akkadian and in Middle Babylonian Akkadian. * 51 52 53 9

Old Akkadian SA SA ZA §A

Middle Babylonian SA SA SA SA

Table XVII: Differences in the spelling of reflexes of ProtoSemitic sibilants in'Old Akkadian and Middle Babylonian. It must be understood that symbols like SA are being used to represent the entire syllable series SA SI SU. In Old Akkadian, the ZA series was also used to represent reflexes of *z and *ts' as well. The only relevant phonemic change to take place between Old Akkadian and later stages of the language was the merger of *6 with S,/S„. The only attempt to deal seriously and systematically with the phonetics of the Old Akkadian sibilants that I know of is Gelb (1961). Gelb assumes that S 3 ZA continues the value /s/ from ProtoSemitic (p. 34--note that he, also, is assuming a reconstruction like

201

Brockelmann's). Therefore, S,/S2 SA cannot represent /s/; if it did, there would be numerous examples of interchanges of SA and ZA in words with unambiguous etymologies. Since SA cannot represent /s/, it must, according to Gelb, represent /s/. He does not admit any influence in this decision from the fact that words in this series are later spelled with SA. It is clear, however, that he wishes to treat the differences between Old Akkadian and later stages of the language as orthographic only. .Among other things, such an analysis ignores the incommensurability of systems containing three sibilants and systems containing two sibilants. If a system containing three sibilants is reduced to one containing two sibilants, each of the remaining sibilant phonemes will inevitably encompass a different range of allophones (or a different phonological space) than did its antecedent in the earlier language state. Given the merger that took place between Old Akkadian and later stages of the language, the differences between Old Akkadian and later Akkadian spelling cannot be explained as mere orthographic variation, resulting from Sumerian interference. But, it is not necessarily the case that Gelb is incorrect in his claim that SA in Old Akkadian spelling represents /§/. The argument that SA could not represent /s/ was crucially grounded in the assumption that one of the pronunciations of ZA was /s/ This assumption is in turn based on Gelb's acceptance of reconstructions of Proto-Semitic that assign /s/ to S*. An alternative solution would be to assume that reflexes of S, had some other realization in Old Akkadian, call it $.. There would, then, be no obstacle to attributing the value /s/ to S./S*. When S./S, merged with *9, the sign SA, previously used for the latter alone, was used to represent the merged phoneme. SA was thus freed to represent S-, allowing it to be distinguished orthographically from /z/-/ts'/- Then, if the realizations of S- and S,/S«/9 changed, to /s/ and /§/ respectively, and if S. was not originally 7s/, there would have been no orthographic confusions, and, thus, no traces for modern scholars to analyze. It is possible to make some suggestions about what S. might

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have been. As noted above, one of the peculiarities of the Sumerian syllabary that was adapted for Akkadian was that it did not distinguish voiced from voiceless consonants. For that reason, in the earliest Akkadian, groups of consonants like /t d t'/ were represented with the sane syllable series. Now, the names for the syllable series SA and ZA, based as they are on their values in Assyrian times, mask the fact that it is unlikely that Sumerian would have contrasted voiced and voiceless dental/alveolar fricatives when it did not distinguish any other pairs of voiced and voiceless consonants. So, whatever the phonemic values of SA and ZA in Sumerian, they could not have been /s/ and /z/. In section 4.2,3, evidence was presented from Cardona (1968) that Akkadian /s/ was an affricate. Based on the dissimilation referred to in the literature as Geers' Law, it was concluded that the affricate was an ejective: /ts'/. If the TA series is conceived of as representing dental/alveolar stops, regardless of the state of the glottis, ZA must represent some articulation type and place, again, regardless of the state of the glottis. It has already been demonstrated that /s/ was an alveolar affricate ejective: /ts'/. Abstracting out the state of the glottis gives alveolar affricate. So, if S. was spelled in Akkadian with the alveolar affricate series, it, too, must have been an alveolar affricate. Since it interacts with voiceless consonants, it, too, was probably voiceless. The argument in the previous paragraph provides a value of /ts/ for Sg in Old Akkadian. It does not, however argue directly for a value of /s/ for S^S^. But, if SA was the spelling for /s/ in Sumerian as well, and if Akkadian /ts/ deaffricated, pushing Akkadian /s/ towards /s/, a change of spelling for S, (*/ts/) would be expected. For an affricate, the use of ZA would have been appropriate; for a simple fricative, SA would have been more appropriate. These reconstructions, admittedly speculative can be added to the table that we have been building.

203

*

Hebrew Arabic

S,

s or s

52

tHs

53

ts

s t4-*§ s

ESA

Aramaic

s?

s

s?

Akkadian s s ts

Table XVIII: Sibilant values for Hebrew, Arabic, ESA, Aramaic and Akkadian. There are in the literature suggestions that there were three additional sibilant phonemes in Akkadian. One of these, $,, will be dealt with in section 5.2.7 on /S/-/h/ correspondences in Afroasiatic. In the previous paragraphs, it was stated that after S./S- and *9 had merged in Akkadian, the SA series, that had been used to spell S,/S 2 J came to be used for words containing etymological So. However, in some Old Babylonian texts, SA was, in addition, still used for certain words containing etymological S,/S2. On this basis, Goetze (1958) reconstructs an additional sibilan phoneme, /s /, for Akkadian. He argues that, as no conditioning is observable, this phoneme must be a retention from Proto-Semitic (p. 40). Steiner (1977:49-51) counters this claim with evidence that the phenonema on the basis of which Goetze posited /s / are restricted to the Babylonian dialects of Akkadian, and therefore an innovation in this group of dialects. Aro (1959) argues that Goetze's /s / was actually related to a conditioned retention of PS So> and refers to it as /s7. However, this, too, is something internal to Akkadian; some of Aro's examples of this phoneme contain Ikl in Hebrew and some /s/. Here, too, Steiner's explanation based on Akkadian-internal phenomena is convincing. 5.2.6 Ugaritic As can readily be verified from Table I , Ugaritic maintained Proto-Semitic *9 and S3 as d i s t i n c t phonemes, while S, and S2 are written with the same symbol. Both Fronzaroli (1955:20) and Steiner (1977:48) take pains to mention that this does not mean that a phonemic merger had taken place. In Hebrew, until the l a t t e r part of the f i r s t

204

millenium AD, S-, and S2> which clearly had not merged, were written with the same symbol (see above, section 5.2.2). Fronzaroli, in a study entitled La fonetica ugaritica, which is full of argumentation about the exact nature of various Ugaritic phonemes, has nothing to say about the realizations of these particular sounds. He assumes that S,/S2 was /s/ and Sg /s/, more, or less as in Hebrew. However, no evidence is presented, either from related Semitic languages or from unrelated languages like Hittite, that this was in fact the case. So, nothing can be concluded that is relevant to the purpose of this investigation. 5-2.7 s_ - h_ Correspondences in Afroasiatic The Old Akkadian cuneiform inventory contains some additional sibilant signs that were not mentioned above. The series SA SE SU* is, according to Gelb (1961:32), a "sibilant of uncertain quality," used in masculine demonstratives and personal pronouns and in certain common verbal roots: basum 'be' and njse 'favor.' Gelb suggests that these spellings reflect an additional Akkadian sibilant phoneme. His reconstruction has been criticized by Garbini because of its consequences for the reconstruction of Semitic pronouns (1972:149,ff). Rather, he claims, based on his reconstruction of only one PS phoneme for S^/ Sp, the Old Akkadian facts on which Gelb has based his reconstruction of an additional sibilant are orthographic only. It should be noted that Garbini rejects the claim, made first by Thureau-Dangin (1933), accepted by every other work I consulted in my research, that PS *e was maintained as a distinct phoneme. That, too, is "orthographic variation" in the representation of PS /s/ (S,/S2) for Garbini. Garbini's argument against Gelb is that, if Gelb is right, several different pronominal stems would have to be reconstructed for Proto-Semitic. Determiners/relative pronouns would have *9, masculine personal pronouns *S,, and feminine personal pronouns *s (Sj/S*)- But, according to Garbini, all Afroasiatic pronouns are based on an /s/ stem (/s/ in the traditional view of Akkadian, / s / in the view proposed in section 5.2.5). However, Garbini's argument is clearly specious. Even for the Semitic languages, which have been intensively studied

205

and compared for over a century, there is often little concensus about what is innovation and what is retention. The only other Afroasiatic family that has been as intensively studied from a historical point of view is Chadic (Newman and Ma 1966, Kraft 1971, 1974, Newman 1977), and these studies only concern the lexicon, phonological system and some pronouns. So, there is no way that Garbini, or any other scholar, can have a clear idea which forms attested in any one Semitic language are retentions from Proto-Afroasiatic. And, even if it could be demonstrated that /s/-stem pronouns and complementizers were the only ones found in Proto-Afroasiatic or Proto-Semitic, there would be no reason not to assume that a given language or group of languages could not have innovated another pronoun or complementizer, based on another stem. In fact, Akkadian seems to have done just that, innovated a remote demonstrative, based on the stem anni-. So, Garbini is bringing to bear on his discussion of Akkadian considerations that are totally out of place. But, it would be inappropriate to infer that Gelb is right in positing another sibilant phoneme for Akkadian. Assuming, for the moment, that Gelb is right, there are two possibilities: either it is a retention from some earlier language state (not necessarily Proto-Semitic) or it represents an innovation in Akkadian. The only way to determine which of these alternatives is correct is to see if cognate items to those in which Gelb finds this phoneme in Akkadian also exhibit special behavior in other languages. If it were to turn out that cognate items are similarly distinguished in other languages, Gelb's prionemicization would be supported; however in the absence of such evidence from related languages, it could still be the case that Gelb is right. It turns out that we do not have far to look for such evidence. It has long been noted that there is a restricted class of morphemes in the Semitic languages in which s/s in some languages correspond to h/? in others. So, the Old Akkadian personal pronouns SU--A 'he' and SI 'she' correspond to Hebrew hu_ and h_i_, respectively. In general, /s/-stems are found in Akkadian and Epigraphic South Ara-

206

bian, while /h/-stem pronouns are found in Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Ethiopic, and Ugaritic. Moscati (1969:104) and Hamershaimb (1941:40) attribute both stems to Proto-Semitic. The only alternative to this reconstruction mentioned by Moscati is reconstruction of a "mixed" pronominal system, with a masculine /h/-stem and a feminine /s/-stem. The systems attested in the various languages would then have resulted from analogical replacement of either the masculine or the feminine pronoun. Another morpheme in which this /s/-/h/ alternation is found is the causative morpheme. In Akkadian and Ugaritic, causatives are formed by prefixing /l/ to the verb stem; in Hebrew, the prefixes are based on /h/, and in Arabic, Ethiopic and Aramaic on /?/. However, all of the languages in which there are h/? causatives have remnants of causatives with s/s. So, for example, Arabic causatives of certain derived verbs have /s/: e.g., ?ista?ada 'regain' (causative reflexive of ?a~da 'go back'). In Amharic, a prefixed |a_- on an intransitive verb makes it transitive. An as_- makes the transitive verb causative, even though the transitive marker is not present. These derivational processes are illustrated in (1). (1) k'oma 'he stood' ?a-k'oma 'he set up* ?as-k'oma 'he caused to stand up' (forms from Leslau 1967:431,ff) In all of the Semitic languages except Ugaritic, the causative marker is identical with the third person form of the personal pronouns. In addition, none of the languages which have /s/-forms have any trace of /h/-forms, either for causatives or personal pronouns. Garbini, despite the fact that he notes this assymetry, agrees with Moscati and Hamershaimb in attributing both stems to Proto-Semitic (1972:29). Still another morpheme in which /s/-/h/ alternations are attested is the directional marker found in Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Hebrew. In Akkadian, a suffix -_i_s on a noun, in a sentence containing a verb of motion, indicates motion toward the referent of that noun. For example, sanlanum means 'lower' and saol is means 'toward the bottom, down.' In addition, manner adverbials tend to end in -jj_

207

[Finet 1956:119-122). The cognate Hebrew morpheme is -ah. So, ?ere-ts means 'earth,' and ?artsoh means 'toward the earth.' Ugaritic has an equivalent morpheme -h. The only work that I have seen that is unambiguous in suggesting that all three of these morphemes can be reconstructed with /s/-sterns is Blejer (1978b). The /s/ forms in the languages that have them fit the regular S, correspondences, with the exception of the Akkadian S. forms that began this discussion. Assuming that the /s/ forms are original, it must then be decided whether there was an $* phoneme in Proto-Semitic that merged with S, in some of the Semitic languages and with *h in others, or whether S, split. In the latter case, a conditioned sound change would produce some result, derived from S,, that would ultimately merge with *h or *?. The problem with the first alternative is that any phoneme S» would have a limited distribution. Edzard, in a review of Diakonoff (1965), who proposed such a reconstruction, raises the possibility that the data are defective (1967:146). The problem with the second alternative lies in the difficulty of conceiving of a regular, phonological change that would have the effect of picking out a causative marker, personal pronouns, and the directional marker. The suggestion made by Bravmann (1977) comes close. His suggestion is that the conditioning factor for the change of s/s to /h/ was an immediately following vowel. So, causative prefixes like sa_- or sa- would change to ha-, except in derived verb stems like the Arabic ?ista?ada (cited above, p. 207). In such forms, the invariant presence of the reflexive t- would have blocked the change. A similar explanation can be proposed for the retention of the —s in the Amharic forms cited in (1), although there g are some other Amharic forms that could present more of a problem. But, since these problem cases are limited to Ethiopian Semitic, it makes sense to assume that they resulted from innovation in Ethiopian Semitic after the /s/ to /h/ change ceased to be productive. Given that the personal pronouns in their minimal form are CV, it is clear that the same conditioning factor would obtain—s/s in a personal pronoun would always be prevocalic.

However, the fact that

208

exactly the same change affects the directional/dative suffix -is/-oh is harder to explain. Within the theoretical and notational apparatus of generative phonology, there is a device that allows the "regularity" of this change to be nicely captured—the Mirror Image Rule. A rule can be formulated to state that /s/(or /s/, depending on the reconstruction of S,) changes to /h/, just in case it is surrounded by a word boundary and a vowel, without the relative order of the three elements being crucial. The next problem to deal with is why this rule, assuming that the analysis thus far is correct, did not affect S, when it was part of a verbal or nominal root. In fact, it probably did affect actual lexical items. However, the phonological environment for root consonants in the Semitic languages is not constant in the same way that it is constant for invariant morphemes like pronouns. So, S, in a verb root like S.kr 'be drunk' would be in an environment meeting the structural description of the rule in forms like Hebrew sikkur 'drunk' but not in yisssxer or histakker 'get drunk.' Since the three root consonants constitute a lexical unity, it is rarely the case that there are morphophonemic alternations in root consonants. So, alternations between forms like *hikkur and hi stakker would quickly have been leveled in favor of either the /h/ or the /s/. The validity of this analysis does not rest on the theoretical status of mirror image rules. If it is the case that what I have presented here is the best possible analysis of the data, then phonological theory must allow a device to describe it. A theory that did not provide a mechanism to describe this rule/change would be inadequate. And, given the multiplicity of the sibilants needed to account for the facts of the Semitic languages--S, S 2 So z ts' e — I submit that any non-ad_ hoc device that releases us from the necessity of reconstructing yet another sibilant is deserving of serious consideration. We now return to the forms with which we began this discussion, the Akkadian demonstrative and personal pronouns, which motivated Gelb to posit an additional sibilant phoneme for that language.

209

The discussion in this section has led to the conclusion that this putative S„ was not the continuation of an additional PS phoneme. the possibility of innovation in Akkadian is not precluded.

But,

One possi-

bility is that the change of S, to /h/ began as an aspiration of prevocalic S. / s / .

If so, it may be that the spelling variation in Old

Akkadian represented the phonetic variation between [ s h ] and [s]. Given the special status of the pronouns, this variation would not have been phonemic, so, unless [ s h ] merged with some other phoneme, as it did with Hebrew /h/, there would have been no need to record it. In this section, a set of facts has been presented that has led investigators either to posit two sets of pronoun stems for ProtoSemitic or to posit an additional PS sibilant phoneme.

It has been

demonstrated that it is necessary to resort to neither of these alternatives to account adequately for the anomalies that led to their being posited.

All that is needed is a sound change by which S-, changed to

/h/ when sandwiched between a vowel and a word boundary.

Thus, there

is no need to reconstruct an additional sibilant phoneme.

5.3 A New Reconstruction of the Sibilants Table XIX summarizes the results of the phonetic inferences drawn in the preceding sections of this chapter, together with the facts discernible from direct observation of the Modern South Arabian languages. Standard Hebrew Reconstruction

ESA

Arabic

S,

s

s or s

s?

s

S2

s

t+ts

s?

tt-> s

S,

s

is

a

s •abic

ESA""^

Ethiopian Semitic MSA

Hetzron justifies every branching on the tree in (4), except for the division of South Semitic, by reference to a particular [morphological innovation. So, characteristic of South Semitic is the fact that the verb agreement suffixes in verbs like Hebrew kp8ay_-fj 'I wrote' contain /k/ throughout the paradigm. Hetzron does not discus? Ugaritic at all. I do not know whether this is due to the difficulty of finding data relevant to the features he is looking at or whether he assumes that Ugaritic is a Canaanite language and that, as such, it would pattern like Hebrew. In any case, further study of the facts of Ugaritic could invalidate his proposal. 6.1.2 Compatibilities with Hetzron's Subgrouping Except for the placement of Ugaritic, the tree in (2), based on the facts of preposition compounding, is totally compatible with Hetzron's grouping illustrated in (4). It was further noted in section 6.0.3 that pharyngealization/backing developed as the primary exponent of the phonologically distinct emphasis in Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic, in other words, in Hetzron's Central Semitic group. However, it was also noted that pharyngealization might have been present in Ugaritic. If it were to turn out, after further investigation, that Ugaritic did share this innovation, then the resulting proposed grouping would be

236

compatible with Hetzron's (4), but not with (2), based on preposition compounding. 6.1.3 Incompatibilities with Hetzron's Subgrouping The subgrouping in (3), based on the *s to /h/ change, is clearly incompatible with Hetzron's grouping in (4). In other words, it cannot be the case that both trees represent genetic relatedness in the Semitic language family. It can still, however, be that the tree in (3) represents a wave-like spreading of the change from *s to /h/ across part of the Semitic speaking region sometime after ancestors of ESA and ancestors of Ugaritic became linguistically distinct one from the other. It could also be the case that all of Hetzron's innovation, preposition compounding and backing coarticulation were wave phenomena. Before expanding on these possibilities, I would like to point out that the area of incompatibility concerns the South Semitic group; there is no problem with Hetzron's Central Semitic group, as the *s to /h/ change occurred in some form in all of the Central Semitic languages. The problem is that the change is not attested at all in Epigraphic South Arabian, happens regularly in Ethiopian Semitic, and has been generalized almost to the point of being an unconditioned sound change in Modern South Arabian. It may be that the form of the change in MSA warrants placement of that language group with Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic and Ethiopian Semitic in the grouping in (3). Overgeneralization of the change was something that happened in MSA and thus should not define a group of Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic and Ethiopian. However, this revision does not deal with the fact that the grouping based on the *s to /h/ change does not group ESA in the same group with MSA and Ethiopian Semitic. To the extent that Hetzron's grouping is a correct historical reflection, the *s to /h/ change must be treated as an independent innovation or an area! (wave) phenomenon.

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6.1.4 Partial Compatibilities with Hetzron's Model The facts of the word order change are more complex. First of all, it was impossible to come to a clear determination of whether VSO or SVO word order was the innovation. Thus, argumentation about compatibility of one reconstruction or the other with Hetzron's model is one degree further removed from "reality" than are the other arguments in this section. JT my suspicion that VSO was in fact the innovation is correct, then the subgrouping based on that innovation, (1) above, should be compared with (4). The group in which the VSO innovation is posited is coextensive with Hetzron's West Semitic, subject to the same reservations about Ugaritic that were expressed in section 6.1.2 above. That is, when more is known about Ugaritic word order and how Ugaritic lines up with regard to the other features discussed in this dissertation and those discussed by Heztron, revisions may need to be made. Lack of compatibility with Hetzron's model occurs in that group of languages in which an SVO conditioned alternant to basic VSO was innovated: Hebrew (and Mqabi.te and Phoenician} and ESA. Any grouping together of these languages is much more tentative than is the grouping based on the VSO innovation. Nevertheless, the fact that, according to this innovation, Hebrew/Phoenician/Moabite and Epigraphic South Arabian are separated from Aramaic, Arabic and Ethiopian Semitic must be reckoned with. It may be that not enough is known about discourse governed word order variation for a subgrouping to be based on it. It might also be that further examination of the SVO paragraph initial word order in Hebrew, Moabite, and ESA would reveal subtle differences precluding treatment of the phenomenon in these languages as somehow the same. This is another area where more study is needed.

6.2 Tree vs. Wave Phenomena Aside from the historical and cultural conclusions that can be drawn on the basis of the groupings discussed above, assuming that the tree model based on Hetzron's work is an accurate reflection of actual developments in the Semitic language family, certain conclu-

238

sions can be drawn based on the types of phenomena that contributed to it. That will be the task of this section of the chapter. 6.2.1 Tree Phenomena Hetzron based his model solely on morphological phenomena. But, in this investigation, it turned out that several other types of phenomena were compatible with Hetzron's model. One of these was the development of backed emphatic consonants. Another was the development of VSO word order in West Semitic, assuming that positing SVO order for Proto-Semitic can be substantiated. An additional morphological criterion also substantiated Hetzron's model: compounding of prepositions. 6.2.2 Wave Phenomena One of the hypotheses that was formulated in Chapter One was that phenomena that were judged to be joint innovations on the basis of considerations of markedness and the probability of independent innovation but that were not consistent with any tree model of that language group would necessarily be areal phenomena, propagated by waves. The only phenomena isolated in this investigation for which wave interpretation is appropriate are the change of *s to /h/ and the innovation of SVO word order with discourse conditioning in Hebrew/Moabite/ Phoenician and ESA. Most of the other changes discussed were losses of some phenomenon, which, needless to say, never provides a basis for positing linguistic groups, and natural phonological processes. If the probability of independent innovation is great enough, there is no virtue in attempting to reduce multiple occurrences of of a given phenomenon, say, merger of interdental fricatives with dental/alveolar fricatives, to a single innovation. One of the failings of Garbini's (1972) attempt to treat virtually all innovation in the Semitic language family as part of a. series of waves emanating from an Amorite focus in the Syrian desert is that he does not give enough weight to the possibility of totally independent innovation. It is not the case that all linguistic changes must have models somewhere, in some other

239

language. Once this crucial fact is recognized, it becomes an interesting task to differentiate between changes that have a prototype in a neighboring language and changes that occur ex nihilo, as it were, in a given language. 6.2.3 The Value of Morphological Criteria One of Hetzron's operating principles is that morphological criteria will provide the best basis for positing genetic relationships among languages. In other words, morphological criteria will provide the best input into construction of a tree representation of relationships within a given language family. It is for this reason that Hetzron's model is based solely on morphological features. However, the validity of this operating principle is subject to empirical test, and that was one of the purposes of my investigation. The fact that one of my phonological criteria, development of backed consonants, confirmed the picture based on Hetzron's morphological criteria and on preposition compounding suggests that the strong version of this hypothesis is not tenable. This suggestion is confirmed by the fact that at least some of the word order facts are, at least tentatively, compatible with the morphological picture. So, the investigations summarized in the earlier chapters of this dissertation imply that it is simplistic to claim that only morphological criteria are useful in investigation of genetic relationships. On the other hand, the researcher whose primary interest lies in determining for other reasons (interest in historical and cultural questions, for example) the subgroups in a given language family will presumably want to know how most efficiently to determine this. If it is the case that morphological criteria will always select valid subgroups, then such a researcher would be justified in relying only on morphological criteria. Unfortunately, it is not possible to prove that a certain type of object, in this case, a set of morphological facts that will, upon further investigation, prove to be inconsistent with a genetic model for a particular language group, does not exist. If one bases

240

one's methodology inductively on the fact that no such set of morphological facts has yet been isolated, one is running the risk that such a set of facts will be isolated by a colleague who is working on a different language family, invalidating the results of one's own work. One task for theoreticians in historical linguistics would then be to look at morphological facts in various language groups to see if in fact there are any morphological patterns that are borrowed from one language to another, I suspect that there are, although some may more properly be labeled morpho-syntactic (e.g., gender assignment). If there are, then the weaker form of the hypothesis under discussion, that any_ morphological criterion will a priori prove superior to all phonological and syntactic criteria in determining linguistic groupings, will also no longer be tenable. 6.3 Directions for Further Research One of the noteworthy things about the research summarized above is that it raises as many questions as it answers. There were areas of inquiry about which no speculation could be entertained for lack of information. And, there were new areas of inquiry suggested by some of the tentative answers proposed here. In this section, I will suggest some directions that future research about the relationships in the Semitic language family could take. 6.3.1 Word Order Problems One of the question marks left at the end of the research summarized in Chapter Two was that of word order, despite the fact that the entire chapter dealt with that question. It was possible to determine that the word order of Proto-Semitic was either VSO or SVO, but it was not possible to determine which. In at least some of the languages, there was discourse conditioning of the SVO/VSO alternation. In certain positions in a narrative, SVO appeared; in others, VSO. It is likely that conditioning of this sort operated in other Semitic languages, languages in which it was not noted in this study. So, if

241

more texts from more languages were studied, it might be possible to determine both the extent to which conditioned word order is found and the extent to which this variation is conditioned by the same range of factors in the various languages. This second factor would determine whether the variation is susceptible to interpretation as a joint innovation. Another approach to the study of word order variation is a functional one: word order functions in a sentence to clarify who did what to whom. Languages have other devices that serve this function. One of these is case marking. Within the Semitic language family, Classical Arabic, Akkadian, and, possibly, Ugaritic, had a three-case system, differentiating nominative, accusative and genitive nouns- by their final vowels. In addition, El Amarna Canaanite from around the fifteenth century BC shows some vestiges of a case system (case endings are marked, but often incorrectly). It may be that the loss of case inflections (or, possibly, the development of them, if it should turn out that the Arabic and Akkadian systems are not as similar as they appear to be) can be correlated with SVO word order. Another area to investigate in this regard is that of direct object markers. The difference between these and accusative case inflections is in the nature of the system they are embedded in. The object markers found in the Semitic languages interact with the system for differentiating definite from indefinite nouns, while the accusative case markers are in substitution classes with other case inflections. Some examples of sentences containing definite direct object markers are given in (5). In all of the languages represented, indefinite direct objects receive no special marking. (5) a. rus mass no

?e8 Inahissim ?aser ?onoxl more

run find please ACC the-afrows that I shoot 'Run, please find the arrows that I shoot." — I Sam 20:36 BIBLICAL HEBREW

242

b. ?e6ayin ?aryox bahi9ba!iDlo hansel

then

Arioch in-haste

leSoniyyel

brought-in ACC-Daniel

ko5om ma I ko before king-the 'Then Arioch quickly brought Daniel in before the king. 1 —Daniel 2:35 BIBLICAL ARAMAIC c. w-fssaw

lijun

nskkese

dog-the child-the-ACC bit 'The dog bit the child.1 —AMHARIC The use of 1_- to mark the definite object in Aramaic is an extension of the dative use of this preposition. Two approaches to the problem of the direct object markers can be taken. Synchronically, within any one language, presence of direct object markers may be correlated with certain word orders. Thus, it is possible that the Hebrew marker ?e9 could occur with definite direct objects only in VSO sentences. Alternatively, the hypothesis could be entertained that there would be no need for such a marker in an SVO language, so none would develop. Thus, innovation of a definite direct object marker would be indicative that the language was verb peripheral (SOV or VSO). All of these suggestions could be tested by examination of large numbers of texts in Hebrew and Aramaic; since Amharic has only been written extensively relatively recently (Ge'ez was the literary and liturgical language), it may be that the origins of the Amharic marker are not recent enough to be studied by such means. 6.3.2 Other Phenomena In addition to the avenues of inquiry outlined above that might shed additional light on the question of Semitic word order, it is important that other phenomena be studied. If it turns out that other phenomena, when studied intensively, select the same groups of innovating languages that were selected by the investigations in this dissertation, that would be confirmation of the essential correctness of the group as a genetic representation. On the other hand, if the

243

subgroupings isolated on the basis of Hetzron's work and on the basis of the investigations reported on in this dissertation are incorrect, it would be expected that studies of other phenomena would tend to isolate non-isomorphjc groups. In this section, some other phenomena examination of which would be useful will be mentioned. One area deserving of further study is relative clause structure. Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic relative clauses are characterized by rentention of a pronominal copy of the head noun within the body of the clause. Some examples from Gulf Arabic {from Qafisheh 1977:212) are given in (6). (6) a. I imslTf rTn i||i rflrt wiyya"hum the-passengers that went-I with-them 'the passengers that I went with' b. ibanat

MM

Slfttttn

the-girls that saw-I-tfiem 'the girls that I saw' If it could be determined whether this relative clause structure in Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic is an innovation and, if so, whether it was restricted to those languages, then this might constitute additional support for the subgrouping proposed in section 6.1. In Chapter Three, the question of morphological marking of passive verbs was not considered, even though the topic of the chapter was the syntax of passive sentences. It was assumed there that the syntax and the morphology of passive sentences were not bound together, but rather that they could change separately. There are three basic morphological types of passives in the Semitic languages. In Biblical Aramaic, t- or ^a_- is prefixed to the verb. In other Semitic languages, this morpheme marks a reflexive/reciprocal verb. In Hebrew, as was noted briefly in Chapter Three, some passive verbs are characterized by an infixed -u.- following the first consonant of the verbal root, and some are characterized by a prefixed n- (or gemination caused by assimilation of the ii- to the initial root consonant). It is generally assumed (Blake 1901, Castellino 1962:134) that the inter-

244

nal passive (with -u-) is an innovation. Hetzron (1974:45) notes that all three passive formatives appear to have cognates as copulas in the Ethiopian Semitic language group. One of these copulas, *wn, was alluded to in the discussion of the wa_-imperfect and its narrative function in Hebrew and Moabite (sections 2.1.1.1 and 2.1.2.3), In any case, further investigation of the development of these passive morphemes should lead to new inferences about the internal structure of the Semitic language family. Still another promising line of inquiry regards the tense/ aspect systems of the Semitic languages. Various problems in these systems have been alluded to throughout the discussion in the preceding chapters. Briefly, all of the Semitic languages have forms parallel to Hebrew ko9av-ti and yi-xtov, both based on the verb 'to write.' However, in different languages, these different conjugation patterns have different functions. In some languages, it appears that the first of these is a perfect, reflecting completed action, and the second is an imperfect, reflecting incomplete action. In other languages, the distinction seems to be based more on temporal than on aspectual considerations. The problem is complicated by the fact that both Akkadian and Ethiopian Semitic have a third verb form, i'p_arr_is; it may or may not be the case that this third pattern was also found in Ugaritic. The relationship between these verb conjugation patterns and the conversive (aspectual) wa_ in Hebrew also needs elucidating. Study of the development of the tense/aspect marking systems in the Semitic languages, to the extent that such study is possible, given the nature of the texts available, will lead to new insights about the structure and development of the Semitic language family. 6.3.3 The Position and Structure of Ugaritic Running through much of the discussion of subgrouping of the Semitic languages has been the plaint that not enough is known about Ugaritic. Many conclusions had to be drawn with reservations, contingent upon Ugaritic ultimately being consistent with them. This strain

245

runs through much of the literature on the Semitic languages, and has ever since Ugaritic was first deciphered and identified as a Semitic language. It is not clear how the tense/aspect system of Ugaritic works, or even how many distinct verb conjugation patterns there were. It is not sure whether the narrative structure of Ugaritic prose parallels that in Hebrew. It is not clear whether the apparent literary similarities between Hebrew and Ugaritic reflect deep linguistic similarities, or whether they merely reflect a common literary tradition totally divorced from linguistic relatedness. It is unfortunate that so many of the conclusions advanced in this dissertation are subject to such easy refutation. However, it can only be hoped that additional linguistic studies of Ugaritic will soon make it possible to answer some of the questions posed here. 6.3.4 Language Contact Phenomena A problem that arises not only in connection with Ugaritic but with other Semitic languages as well is that of language contact. What sorts of phenomena in the Semitic languages may have resulted from contact with one or another of the non-Semitic languages spoken in the region at the same time? It is often the case that poorly understood phenomena in one of the Semitic languages are "blamed" on the influence of some other language. In order for such an explanation to be viable, there must be available a complete description of the offending donor, and a reasonable theoretical perspective in the context of which it can be determined what kind of phenomenon is susceptible to transfer. Otherwise, borrowing is no explanation at all. Languages that need to be studied in this context include: Sumerian, Hurrian, Hittite, Old Persian, Urartrian, Ancient Egyptian, and various Cushitic and Berber languages. 6.4 Historical and Archaeological Connections Any historical linguistics hypothesis worth considering must be empirical. In the case of hypotheses about linguistic subgrouping, at least part of the empirical nature of the hypotheses comes from the

24 6

fact that they are subject to confirmation and disproof from outside of the discipline. That is, linguistic hypotheses must be consistent with general historical knowledge. Given the time depths in the ancient Near East that the reconstructions of Proto-Semitic proposed here must connect with, there is unlikely to be actual historical documentation. Rather, confirmation or disproof will come from archaeological evidence for cultural contact, either as a result of trade or military conquest. In terms of the reconstructions proposed in this dissertation, we can ask whether there is any archaeological evidence for the kind of cultural affinities that might be expected, given the Central Semitic group that was proposed. Lack of such evidence is not conclusive, since ethnic groups have been known to adopt another language than their own; it is not necessarily the case that all speakers of a given language have a common cultural heritage. However, if speakers of Proto-Central-Semitic migrated from one area to another, there should be traces of that migration accessible to modern archaeology. There is another, related, question that should be pointed out. Earlier in this chapter, a distinction was made between linguistic phenomena that are evidence of genetic relationship and those that were transmitted by waves after the break-up of the Proto-Language. In terms of the archaeological concomitants of these different modes of linguistic relatedness, it should be asked whether we should expect to find the same kinds of cultural patterns relating the two. Can it be assumed that there will be evidence for cultural contact (burial, building styles, etc.) paralleling evidence for linguistic contact? And, will these cultural contact phenomena differ from artifacts that are (perhaps) retentions from a common cultural heritage? And, if so, how? While I recognize that these are important questions, not only because they provide a check on linguistic hypotheses, I must unfortunately concede that the exploration of the archaeological ramifications of the conclusions proposed here is beyond the scope of this work.

2a

6.5 Conclusion Much of this concluding chapter has consisted of speculation about the ramifications of the analyses presented in the preceding chapters of this dissertation. This speculation involved suggesting areas of investigation that might provide support for the tentative conclusions advanced here. It is worthwhile, however, to repeat the actual conclusions that can be drawn on the basis of the research summarized in this dissertation. I. It is possible empirically to differentiate wave from tree phenomena. This can be done by examining a large number of linguistic phenomena in related languages. If study of the innovation patterns for several phenomena suggests the same grouping, these phenomena and this grouping are probably diagnostic of genetic relatedness. Phenomena that provide groupings incompatible with the main grouping probably represent linguistic waves. II. While it may be the case that properly analyzed morphological phenomena will always select accurate genetic groups, it is not the case that no syntactic or phonetic/phonological phenomena will ever do this. Thus, it cannot be claimed that morphology is the only reliable cue to genetic grouping. III. In terms of the Semitic language family, it can be concluded that Hebrew (and closely allied languages like Moabite and Phoenician), Arabic and Aramaic constitute a Central Semitic group.

APPENDICES

?48

APPENDIX I VARIABLES FOR SYNTACTIC CODING Code

Veilue

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 30 31 33 34 35 36 37 40

E>n'stential Verb Only N Pronoun N Pred Nom

249

N OBL Pronoun N Pred Mom N OBL N

VS V S DO

V S 10 V S OBL V S DO 10 V 10 S V OBL S V DO 10 S V S OBL OBL V OBL S OBL V DO V DO S V DO 10 V DO OBL V DO 10 OBL V DO OBL OBL V DO OBL 10 V DO S OBL V DO 10 OBL OBL V 10 V 10 DO V 10 OBL V 10 OBL DO V 10 DO OBL V 10 S OBL V 10 S OBL DO V OBL

Code Order

41 42 43 44 45 48 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

V OBL DO V OBL 10 V OBL S V OBL S DO V OBL S 10 V OBL OBL S V S V DO S V 10 S V OBL S V DO OBL S V DO 10 OBL S V 10 OBL S V 10 DO S V OBL OBL S V DO 10 DO V DO V 10 DO V 10 OBL DO V OBL DO S V DO OBL V DO V S DO V S OBL DO V S 10 OBL V OBL V S OBL V DO OBL V OBL OBL S V OBL DO V OBL 10 V OBL S 10 V S OBL 10 V OBL V DO OBL

io v

S OBL V S DO V DO 10 V 10 DO V S 10 V DO 10 S V S DO V 10 S OBL V OBL S OBL V DO OBL S V DO OBL S V

Variable

Code

Value

Word Order

92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

10 V DO V S OBL DO V S 10 OBL V S 10 OBL DO S DO OBL V OBL V S OBL NP only

Adverbs

0 3 4 10 20 13 14 23 24 55

No adverb Postverbal only Preverbal only Sentence final only Sentence initial only Final and Postverbal Final and Preverbal Initial and Postverbal Initial and Preverbal Other

Topicalization And Pronouns I

0 1 2 3 4 5 5 7 8 9

None Topic~S Pronoun Topic—DO pronoun Topic—10 pronoun Topic—OBL pronoun S pronoun DO pronoun 10 pronoun OBL pronoun no S pronoun

Topicalization and Pronoun II

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Irrelevant S + DO pronouns S + 10 pronouns S + OBL pronouns S, DO + 10 pronouns S, DO + OBL pronouns S, 10 + OBL pronouns S, DO, 10 + OBL pronou Two OBLs

Initial Particle

0 1

None Present

Negation

0 1 2

None Implicit Sentence Initial

ro s v

Variable

Code

Value

Negation

3 4 5

Preverbal Emphatic P o s i t i v e Other

Conjunction

0 1 2

No c o n j u n c t i o n

Verb Voice

0 1 2

Irrelevant Active Passive

Time Reference

0 1 2 3 4

Irrelevant Past Present Future Unclear from context

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Irrelevant Prefix-1 (yixtov) Suffix Participle Unclear from context Infinitive Prefix-2 (iparras)

Mood

0 1 2 3

Indicative or Irrelevant Subjunctive Imperative 1_-Subjunctive (Akkadian only)

Demonstrative

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

None 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5

0 1 2 3 4

None 1 N-GEN 2 N-GEN 3 N-GEN 4 or more N-GEN

\lerb

Form

Nominal

Genitive

Initial Preverbal

N-DEM N-DEM N-DEM or more N-DEM DEM-N DEM-N DEM-N DEM-N or more DEM-N

Code

Value

5 6 7 8 9

1 2 3 4 5

0 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

None 1 N-PN 2 N-PN 3 N-PN 4 or more N-PN 1 PN-N 2 PN-N 3 PN-N 4 PN-N 5 or more PN-N

Adjectives

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

None 1 N-ADJ 2 N-ADJ 3 N-ADJ 4 or more N-ADJ 1 ADJ-N 2 ADJ-N 3 ADJ-N 4 ADJ-N 5 or more ADJ-N

Numbers

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

None 1 N-NUM 2 N-NUM 3 N-NUM 4 o r more N-NUM 1 NUM-N 2 NUM-N 3 NUM-N 4 NUM-N 5 or more NUM-N

Clause Type

1 2 3 4 5

Main Relative Subordinate

0 1

Irrelevant or Headless Subject

Variable Nominal

Genitive

Pronominal Gen.

Gram.Rel. o f R e l a t i v e C I . H.

GEN-N GEN-N GEN-N GEN-N o r more GEN-N

Infinitival Gerundive

Variable

Code Value

G.R. of R.C. Head

2 3 4

Direct Object Indirect Object Obiique

Mode cf Action

0 1 2 3

None Causative Reflexive-Reciprocal Continuous

Position of Mode Marker

0 1 2 3

Irrelevant Preverbal Postverbal Infix

APPENDIX II AKHARIC TOKENS I. Nonsense words dod dad dad did ded dad

did I I . Actual Words Token

Gloss

Token

Gloss

l*J ?>JJ I abb

takka tatta b+cca

3*b

child hand heart hyena

gibi s + ga 1 aga saba kada ds-a

enter! meat fresh, plane to drag to deny highland

lakka f akka

to substitute to intertwine only odor, stink to measure to brighten

wic' i wat 'u sak'a s+c 1 1 f o t 'a

tagga sadda gibbi sagga sabba lagga ksdda

expenses, go out! the stew to laugh give! towel

to be diligenc to be clean enclosure to be apprehensive to be fat to h i t the ball to betray

w+c ' c ' + w b + c ' c 'a tec'c'a

bak'k'a

the exterior yel1ow to condemn to sell to punish to suffice

get a laka

master to send

sat 'a

to give

Satta

255

set 't S k'at't'a

APPENDIX III SIBILANT CORRESPONDENCES NOTE: This appendix contains the correspondence lists assembled as part of the research discussed in Chapter Five. The lists are organized by correspondence set: S-,, S2> and Sg. The notes are organized by set, as well, so the notes to the Sj_ correspondences precede the listing of the S 2 correspondences. The transcriptions are for the most part those of the sources that I utilized. All emphatic consonants, however, have been rendered C. The glosses listed are not to be taken seriously as "translation equivalents." Rather, they are intended to indicate the general semantic field that the lexical items belong to. Thus, it may be the case that cognates listed in two languages do not mean the same thing. Many but not all of the less obvious semantic shifts have been made explicit in the notes. The letter H next to a Hebrew form indicates that that form is attested only in Mishnaic Hebrew.

256

GLOSS

ESA

HARSUSI

1 write 1

srfr

2 valley

s.rn

3 head

r?s

4 Sheba

5

i

SOCOTRI

ARABIC

HEBREW

ra?s

ros

i s,m9

6 one

fSjt

7 six

s.de

sett

ya?t

sitt

si sso

8 seven

s.bt

sabe

si bete

sab?

9 nine

tSjt

tss?

tisf

10 man

? v s

dbSj

mesme?

hemali

sami ?

re?s sab?

Taite3

fast

seva?

sb?t

sxb?4

tesaT

ts?

?i nsfyye dibs . 19 sum

sent _.15 sobi

? i nsa~n

?enos

dibs

dsvos hi sko

s,m Sjby

16 touch

msjsj

massa

misses

17 take

ms,k

ma sa ka

mo sax

18 other

Sl

ser

sa?ira

so?ar

sebot

s i bt

SEVElt

sufl

ssfelo

20 lowlands s . f l

r?s

v 2 sama?Lirn ?isten

15 capture

s,M

ri s

srn?

14 name

19 rod , tribe*

v 2 ra?sum

ETHIOPIC

semaT

samVa

9st? si

seddestu

ssva?

sabTi)

ts?

tes?u

?is

13 drink

?r

sstar

soma?

Hi

11 man

ARAMAIC

sat arum

savaV

5 hear

12 honey

AKKADIAN

so ran resi d

b ?

l ?ns.

UGARITIC

satara

hf 1

ns

? ana's

d i spurn sky STi

Sovo

n i su

sakum * * 2 sumum

sby

dus hky sem sb?

msk sa?a>um

s?r sevta

sol

sap 1 urn

spl

GLOSS

ESA

21 dry 22 evil

ARABIC

HEBREW

ybSj

yabi sa

yabboso

b?s

bi?s

bois

23 steal

l s, rk

24 roof

s,kf

HARSUSI

SOTOk

SOCOTRI

herak

saraka

hekof

sakafa

ysr

25 direct sekon

26 place 27 praise

29 drink

l*y ms. h

ARAMAIC

besum

ETHIOPIC

b?s

sarku

saraka

sekef 2 K_ eseru

yi sser

sakkana

soxan

skn

sabbaha

sevah

sbh

somayim

V

. V

ysr 2

skn

sakanum sab be ha

sbh

samayu

srriyn

soGo

My

sat urn

?esti

satya

massaha

mo sah

msh

masa~hum

msh

mas ha

s

30 annoir.t

AKKADIAN yabsa

yasi ra

Scrns

28 heavens

UGARITIC

sama~y

31 burn, cook bs.I

bessl

be he I

basa la

bosa I

bsl

basa la

32 five

xans

hamos

hams

homes

home s

xans

kuds

kodes

kds

kds

kaddasa

34 draw water

si?ob

mi s?ab

so?av

5?b

sabum

sa?av

si ba

35 grain

seboleh

sunbuItu s i b b o l s e

5b.lt

subuitu

sahara

sohar

slir

s e r t urn

sener

saMta

so hat

sfit

sahatu

seha~t

sakaba

soxav

skb

sakaba

saki ra

s i kker

skr

sakra

sal a

so lew

11»

sa lam

solom

slm

samr,

semen

fi

33 holy

36 dawn

keds

s

37 slaughter 38 lie down

i —

O

39 drunk 40 rest 41 peace 42 oil

s

sel em

sel irr

sab I shr

slwh s Im s/samnu;

sIm

GLOSS

ESA

HARSUSI

S0C0TRI

senet

43 year 44 f a m i l y

ARABIC

HEBREW

UGARITIC

AKKADIAN ARAMAIC

sana

Sana

Sn(t)

santum

snh

slf.h9

mi spelio

sph

nosak

nsk

nasakum

nsk

1 i san

la son

Isn

1 i sa~n um Isn

lesan

labasa

lavas

lbs

1 abasum lbs

labsa

wasi nu

yasen

ysn

snh

nasi ya

nosa-M vl8 peres

45 k i s s 46 tongue

Is n

lesin

lebes

47 c l o t h e

senet

48 sleep

49 forget

nsjy

50 horse

frs-

51 lion 52 embrace

1 esen

? S

53 equal 54 separate

l

d

wsn

n e s e / n i si , . , . 16 firhin ?esed he bos

he bos

kbs

56 truth kedos

58 betray 59 axe

faras

iiabasa

hpvas

hevas

habs

sowe

swy

fa rasa

poras

parasum

prs

kabesa

kovas

kabasum

kbs

ka ssa t a

kost

kistum

ksl

kadasa

ko9as

kasadum

kt/dS

sadda

soSao

sadadum pastum

fa?s * V 11 mugsem

60 body 61 f i e l d 1 2 62 tread

15 parasa

?asad

swy

55 trample 57 smite

faras

sadada pwst?17 gom

J i sm j a sera

dos

ETHIOPIC

m i y ro s

!'j'" ^

da'sc

dos

d6

safaka

safax

sp