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.
33
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.
35
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.
36
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.
37
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.'
38
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<
11 11
30
V S 0
4 4
11 11
S 0 V
2
6
0 S V
1 1
3 3
S V 0 V S
V 0 S
30
Table VIII: Word order types represented in Ugaritic sentences containing subjects. Percentages are based on the number of sentences containing subjects, not the entire Ugaritic sample. "der
Number of Sentences
. 4 S V DO V only V S V DO Table IX: Most frequent word
11 6 4 4 4 orders in Ugaritic.
These figures, although they indicate a strong SVO leaning, are less significant than they might be, simply because the interpretation of a large number of the Ugaritic sentences is relatively uncertain. My segmentation of the texts into sentences followed Driver's for the most part; disagreements by other scholars are pointed out in the discussions of the relevant sentences. As pointed out above, SVO word order does not correlate with any other factor as it does in Moabite. This may in part be because Ugaritic does not have the same kind of verb sequence patterns, especially with regard to conversive wa-, as does Hebrew. The prefixed form, like Hebrew yi-xtov, is in Ugaritic poetry used as a narrative preterite (Gray 1957, Goetze 1938,
Gordon 1965). It is not restricted to main clauses as it is in Moabite, as shown in Table X. Clause Type
Main
Relat
Verb Form
38 5
Prefix Suffix Participle
1 1 1
-
Table X: Ugaritic \ierb forms
correlated with clause type.
Table XI shows that there is no striking correlation in main clauses between word order and verb form. Prefix S V 0 V S V S
0 V S 0 0 V
V only 0 V V 0 S 0 S V V S
9 8 7 4 3 2 2 1 1 1
Suffix 1
0 V S Table XI: Ugaritic word order correlated with verb form in main clauses. However, when we examine some of the specific subject-initial sentences, it is clear that discourse factors like contrast and focus come into play, although there are no hard and fast rules like those that govern placement of the subject in Moabite. The sentences in (17), all taken from Nikkal, nicely illustrate a series of contras-
49
ting subjects and, incidentally, the Gapping mechanisms of Ugaritic. They are in sequence, and describe a betrothal ritual. (17) a. adnh
yst msb
mznm
lord-her set standard-{of) scales Nik. ii 5-6 'Her father set the stand of the scales.' —Alst. 'Her father sets the beam of the balances.'--Gordon b. umh
kp
mznm
mother-her tray-(of) scales Nik. i i 6-7 'Her mother, the plank of the scale.'—Aistleitner 'Her mother, the trays of the balances.'--Gordon c. ihh
yeTr
msrrm
bfother-her arrange plummets Nik. ii 7-8 'Her brothers took the standard weights.'--Aist. 'Her brothers arrange the ingots.' --Gordon d. ahtth
labn
mznm
sisters-her to-stone-(of) scales Nik. ii 8-9 'Her sisters were by the weight-stones.'—Aist. 'Her sisters are for the stones of the balances.' --Gordon But, for the most part, there is no correlation between the position of the subject in a sentence and features of the subject such as definiteness and givenness, that might be expected to condition fronting rules. So, for example, in the sentences of (18), both also from Nikkal, the subject has been previously mentioned. (18) a. yrh ytrh ib tTrbm Yarikh bring-a-betrothal-gift Ib she-enters bbhth in-house-his Nik. i 17-19 'Yarikh w i l l offer that Ib enter his house.'--Aist. 'Moon would wed Ib; l e t her enter his house.'--Gor. b. wyfn
hrhb
mlk
qz
and-answer Harhab king-(of) summer Nik. i 23-24 'And Harhab King of Summer answered.'--Aistleitner 'And Harhab King of Summer repl ies.'—Gordon In (18) b., the w- prefix on the verb does not illustrate the conversive wa_- of Hebrew/Moabite. The prefix form, written ytrfei can, according to Goetze (1933), represent past narrative *yitrab and present/
future *yatarrafc, parallel to Akkadian iprus and iparras, with the same time reference. Thus, the conjunction w- preceding the verb must be interpreted as a sentence connector and not as an aspect marker. The point made above about the irrelevance of the semantic characteristics of the subject to its position in the sentence can be illustrated by the following sentences from the Keret epic, all of which are about Keret, the protagonist. (19) a. krt htkh rs Keret issue-his was-destroyed Keret i 10 'Oh, Keret! Our l o r d ! ' - - A i s t l e i t n e r 'Keret, his government is impoverished.'--Fensham {1971} 'Keret, our scion, is impoverished'--Gordan (1949) b. krt
grds
mknt
Keret is-ruined place Keret i 11 'Gardash, the home of the main wife, has been conquered.'--Aistleitner 'Keret, his office is broken.' --Fensham (1971) 'Keret despoiled of a place.' --Gordon (1949) c. y?n htkh krt see/answer issue-his Keret Keret i 21-22 'Thus answered his lord, Keret.' --Aistleitner 'Keret sees his progeny.'--Gordon (1949) The variation in the glosses, and in the interpretations underlying the qlosses, is sufficient indication that there is a great deal of risk involved in coming to any conclusion at all other than that there seems to be no pattern. In the absence of any clear conditioning factors, there is no choice but to but to consider the statistically most frequent SVO word order the basic order of Ugaritic. However, examination of a larger corpus as well as consideration of some of the factors discussed in 2.2.2 may ultimately allow a more principled determination. 2.1.1.3 Akkadian The most striking thing about the Akkadian dialects surveyed is the discrepancy between the two in basic word orders. The relevant features are recapiculated in Table XII.
51
Word Order
Old Akkadian
V DO S V DO S V DO V S 10 V 10 V DO 10 V
Mari Akkadian
9 2
— --
-
IS 17 11 8 8
Table X I I : Word orders in Old Akkadian and Mari Akkadian. The two dialects of Akkadian are separated from each other in time by no more than a millenium. I t is d i f f i c u l t to say much about the syntax of Old Akkadian, due to the limited nature of the corpus available. Most of the texts are temple l i s t s and inventories; there is l i t t l e connected material, whether poetry or prose. On the other hand, certain inconsistencies emerge from even a cursory examination of Mari Akkadian. Some typical SOV sentences from the Mari l e t t e r s are i l l u s t r a t e d in (20). (20) a .
immerati- - i a
i-na ma-at
qa-ta-nim
ig-ga-am-ra
herd-my in land-of Qatanum-GEN is-assembled 'My herd is assembled in the land of Qatanum.' ARM I I 6 6 , 16-17
b. i t - t i-su wa-si-ib with-him lives-PARTICIPLE 'He lives with him.' ARM XIV 54,8 C. pi-qa-at be-li te-ma-am an-ni-em se-mi perhaps lord-my thing-ACC this-ACC hears 'PerhaDS my heard of this t h i n g . ' ARM I I 40, 14-15 v 12 d. i-na-an-na n i - i s iIim u-di-is az-kur-ma now oath-of God-GEN again I-pronounced ' I have now sworn again to God.' ARM I I 51, 10-11 When the direct object of the sentence is a pronoun, this pronoun is c l i t i c i z e d d i r e c t l y following the verb.
Some examples from the Mari
52
letters are given in (21). (21) a. a-na ne-oa-ri-im la sa-ga-ra-tim to pri son-GEN of Sagaratum-GEN
us-te-ri-ib-su CAUS-enter-him
'Put him into the prison of Sagaratum.' ARM XIV 54, 17-13 b, pi-qa-at u-te-er-ra-kum perhaps
he-told-you
'Perhaps he t o l d y o u . ' C. u
ARM I I 6 6 , 12-13
as-sum mari~5U a s - n i - i q - S J - m a
and about son-his I-questioned-him 'And I questioned him about his son.' ARM XIV 54,19 d. sa-bu-ka ki-a-sm i-ta-na-pa-la-an-ni
army-your thus it-HABITUAL-answer-me 'Your army keeps giving me this response.' ARM II 51,6-7 The identical verb clitic order is found in Old Akkadian, as illustrated in (22). (22) a. ir-e-mu u-da-bi-bu-si-ma
Iremum bewitched-her 'The Iremum have bewitched her.' MAD 5, 8, 30 . d. . D. innin
u
d.„ , is-na-ra
. . . u-dam-me-ki
God-Innin and God-Ishhara I-conjure-you 'By Innin and by Ishhara I conjure you.' MAD 5,3,33 And, similar constructions are found in all Semitic languages with which I am familiar. Some random examples are given in (23). (23) a. aqrbk_ abh Ml I-wi11-near-you father-her Baal ' I w i l l bring her father Baal near to you.' UGARITIC, Nik. 1 27, Aistleitner b. wygrsh exiled"-him
km£ Chemosh
mpny from-face-my
'And Chemosh s e n t him o u t from m e . ' MOABITE Mesha, 19
c. wyhlfh_ replaced-him
bnh son-his
'And his son replaced him.'
MOABITE Mesha, 6
53
d . wsmkyhw
Iqhh^
and-Samakyahu
smYyhw
wy?l hw
took-him Shamayahy and-raised-him
hTyrh the-city-toward 'And Samakyahu, Shamayahu took him and brought him up to the city.1 HEBREW INSCRIPTIONS Lachish 6-7 e. zy yr^nk^_ dyn that will-want-you judgement 'Whoever w i l l want judgement from you' OFFICIAL ARAMAIC Cowley 8, 11 f. whn hnslth mnk and-if he-talFes-him from-you 'And i f he takes him from you. 1
OFFICIAL ARAMAIC Kraeling 2, 14
g. ky ?nh hmlkt_k because I CAUS-rule-I-you 'For I made you king.' OLD ARAMAIC Zakir A 13 h. wy?nri^_
b?l smyn
answered-me
Baal-shamayn (lit. Lord of the skies) 'And Baalshamayn answered me.' OLD ARAMAIC Zakir A 11
1. w-in saa? allaah aji_j_k_
if wi11s God
I-wi11-come-you
azuurik
I-wi11-visit-you
i1-lsbuuY i8-9aani
the-week
the-second
'If God wi J is, I'll come and visit you the week after.' KUWAITI ARABIC {Johnstone 1967:180) The data in (21), (22), and (23) indicate that verb-clitic order is the original Semitic order. So, if Mari Akkadian has VO order only in this case and OV order when the direct object is a full NP rather than a pronoun, it must be that the OV order that is unique to Akkadian is the innovation. This is confirmed by the fact that the other features that Lehmann (1973) claims should be associated with OV word order are not present in Akkadian. For example, an OV language would be expected to have postpositions rather than prepositions. But, Mari Akkadian has prepositions, as shown in (24).
54
[?A) a. is-tu ITU 4 KAM ago four months
ARM XIV 2,21
b. i-na ha-aI-si-im from d i s t r i c t - G E N
ARM XIV 2 , 23
C. a-na h a - a I - s t - i m to district-GEN
ARM XIV 2, 24
d. a-di i-na-an-na until now
ARM IV 22, 9
e. it-ti
with
awi
'tu-ru-uk-ki
men-Turukkum
ARM II 40, 5-6
All relative clauses in my data followed their head nouns, as would be expected in a V0 language. (25) a. u
nesum
ak-ki-lum
and lion-NOM hungry-NOM
[ sa
is-tu ITU 4 KAM
that ago
four months
i-na ha-al-si-im u-da-ap-pi-ru] is-tu ITU 1 KAM from district-GEN was-chased-SUBO ago one month a-na ha-aI-si-im
im-qu-ut-ma
to district-GEN returned 'And the hungry lion that was chased from the district four months ago returned to the district one month ago.' ARM XIV 2, 20-23 b. alpum steer
[sa warad-i-li-su a-na be-li-ia that to lord-GEN-my
u-ta-ah-hu-u] i-nu-ma
brought-SUBJ
u-ta-ah-hu-su-ma
the-same-day he-brought-it
ha-a-as
was-sick 'The steer that Waradilishu brought my lord was sick when he brought it.' ARM XIII 25, 5-8 Lehmann's typology predicts that in 0V languages nominal modifiers other than relative clauses should precede the noun that they modify. Table XIII illustrates the extent to which this is true in Mari Akkadian. For example, the sample contained 24 sentences with one Noun-Genitive construction and two sentences with two of these
55
Modifier Noun-Modifier Modifier-Noun Tokens per sentence 1 2 3 4+ 1 Demonstrative 12 . - 1 Nominal Genitive 24 2 1 Pron. Genitive 49 2 - Number 2 Adjective 1 Table XII: Relative orders of nominal modifiers and their heads in Man' Akkadian. There are two types of nominal genitive construction in Akkadian. In both of these, the possessor noun always follows the head. Examples are given in (26) and (27). (26) a. te-em
aw
''tu-ru-ki-urn
news-of men-Turukum-GEN b. e - l e - e
sa-bi-Im
ascent-of"army-GEN c. n i - i s
oath-of god-GEN d.
si-hat
ARM I I 51,13
i Urn
ARM II 5 1 , 10-11
napi st i - k a
anxiety-of soul-GEN-your
OB 6, 16
(27) a. \ \ u m e l la a-li-Sa gods of town ARM II 51,19 b. sa-bu-um sa us-ta-qi-e army-NON of Ushtagiye-place ARM II 3, 11-12 c. ne-Da-rl-im Sa sa-ga-ra-tim prison-GEN of Sagaratum-GEN-place ARM XIV 54,9-10 In my sample there were 21 genitive constructions like those in (26) and 11 that, like those in (27), contained sa_. In grammars of other Semitic languages, phrases like those in (26) are called "constructs." In construct phrases, the head noun has a slightly different form, here, absence of a case ending, and the following noun is in the genitive case. Periphrastic expressions like those in (27) are also found in other Semitic languages, although the intervening words do not seem to be cognate to |a_. So, one of my Ugaritic texts refers to the god
56
Izpn iizpid 'Luzpan, god of heart.' The element 3[ has the same function as the Akkadian sa_. A similar construction is found in Biblical and Official Aramaic, with the intervening element zy_ or di_, both of which are probably cognate with the Ugaritic z. Some Aramaic examples are given in (28). (28) a. byt
mdbh?
zy ?|h
house-of sacrifice-the of God 'God's temple1 Cowley 32, 5 b. mlh
zy my?
qsy?
boatman of waters-the d i f f i c u l t - t h e 'boatman of the d i f f i c u l t waters.' Cowley 8, 8 C
! bs
1 zy fmr
garment 1 of wool 'one wool garment' d. Ihn zy yhw servo.*:t of God 'servant of God1
Kraeling 2, 5-6 Kraeling 2, 1
e. hyl? zy swn army-the of Syene 'the army of Syene'
Kraeling 8, 3
I do not want to deal with the question of which genitive construction is more "authentic" Akkadian, since there is comparative evidence for attributing both to Proto-Semitic; nor do I want to speculate about the difference between them. Both clearly have the head noun preceHing the possessor, a VO order. In addition, all pronominal possessors are post-clitic to their heads, as illustrated in (29). (29) a. a-hu-ka-ma brother-your b. be-Ii-ia lord-my C. ma-r i-su son-his d. tap-p i-su-nu colleagues-their This latter pattern is something that the language does not allow to
57
vary; I am familiar with no morphological means by which the pronoun could precede the head. In contrast, the noun genitive can precede its head, but rarely. Finet (1956) indicates that this can happen in case of a double genitive, that is, when the possessor is represented both by a noun and a pronoun. Finet's examples are given in (30).12* /on\ « -i• v .. .,.mes . v (30) a. sa awl lira sa-tl awi I i ma-sa-n-su of man-GEN this-GEN men guafdian-his 'guardians of this man's1 ARM I 12,19 b. sarrurn pa-nu-su king-NOM face-his 'the face of the king's' ARM I 60, 21 Other examples of possessors preceding heads are explained by Finet as indicative of emphasis on the possessor or of Sumerian influence. My survey included 13 demonstratives, all but one of which followed their heads. Some examples are given in (31). (31) a. aloum su-u Steer-NOM this-NOM b. e q l i m field-GEN C. z i - n a - a m
ARM XIII 25, 15-16
su-a-t i this-GEN
OB 1 , 12
sa-a-ti
zina-ACC this-ACC d. te-ma-am
ARM XIII 2, 21-22
an-n i-e-em
thing-ACC this-ACC e. sa-bu-um ul-lu-um army-NOM other-NOM 'that army'
ARM II 40, 14-15
ARM II 3, 23
The demonstrative that precedes its head is given in (32). (32) a-nu-um-ma 9
these
-kakku-
sa kaspim
9 ornaments-NOM of silver-GEN
I suspect that the fact that the noun 'ornaments' has three modifiers associated with it has something to do with the unusual position of the demonstrative. There were two clear-cut numbers in the entire sample. One of these is given in (32) above. The other appears in (33),
58
(33) 4 suhare i-du-uk 4 children it-killed
ARM XIV 2, 24
The were also several cases in which numbers preceded unit words like English 'pints' and 'acres,' illustrated in (34). (34) a. b.
70 gan eaIim field-GEN
OB 1, 6
20 gur se-a-am barley-ACC
OB 6, 10
The relative scarcity of numbers results from the fact that Sumerian number formulae are often used in the Akkadian texts. These are expressions like the ITU 4 KAM 'four months' of example (25) a. and UD 2 KAM 'two days' of ARM XIII 25, 13. Presumably, these formulae were read by the Akkadians in Akkadian, but the syntax of the Akkadian expressions is difficult to determine (Powell 1979). In any case, the fact that numbers seem to precede the nouns they modify in Akkadian cannot be taken as something peculiar to Akkadian as an 0V language, since the same prenominal pattern is found in other Semitic languages. In Hebrew, for example, all numbers precede their nouns except for 'one.' This is illustrated in (35). (35) a. ?is ?eho5 man one Judges 18:19 b. sivTo vonim
seven sons
Job 1:2
The last nominal modifier to consider is the adjective. I found in the Mari letters that I surveyed one true adjective and three quantifiers. These are given in (36). (36) a. nesum
a k - k i - I urn
lion-NOM hungry-NOM
'hungry lion'
ARM XIV 2, 20
b. u-mi ma-du-t im days-GEN raany-GEN 'many d a y s ' ARM I I • i-mes
C
awiIi
,
,
5 1 , 4-5
+•
r a - a b - b u - t im
men-GEN many-GEN 'many men' ARM IV 22, 18
59
d. qi-sa-tim ma-da-tim-ma gifts-GEN many-GEN 'many gifts'
ARM II 51, 20
Evidence that these are adjectives rather than construct noun phrases comes from the case agreement found in the syllabic writing in (36) b. and d. Generality of this pattern is confirmed by Akkadian grammars. Ryckmans (1960), for example, indicates that the adjective can precede the noun it modifies only if it is being emphasized (p. 105). His example is given in (37). (37) kabtu nir belutiya powerful yoke-of domination-my 'the powerful yoke of my domination' Other syntactic characteristics that Lehmann suggests should be correlated with the position of the verb in a sentence are the position of the negative marker in negative sentences and the position of embedding verbs relative to embedded verbs. In both of these, Akkadian patterns as a VO language rather than as an OV language, although there is some ambiguity with regard to the embedding verbs. Negatives, as shown in (38), clearly precede the constituents they negate. (38) a. mi-im-ma ma-ri-um a-na se-ri-ia
u-ul
il-M-kam
something son-NOM to iand-GEN-my NEG came 'No son ever came to my lanr1 ' ARM XIV 54, 23-24 b. ma-am-ma-an u-ul ta-as-ku-um-ma samassammam
someone
NEG you-appointed sesame-ACC
im-ku-ta-sum
he-cut-it 'You appointed no-one to cut the sesame.' OB 4, 7C
u
e-!e-e
sa-bi-im u-uI
i-ba-as-li
and ascent-of army-GEN NEG is 'The ascent of the army isn't happdnina.' ARM"11 51, 8-9 d. pi-qa-at u-ul u-te-ra-kum
perhaps NEG he-to!d-you 'Perhaps he didn't tell you' ARM II 66, 12-13
60
e. i-na kl-a-am a-di
on
this
i-na-an-na ta-ki-it-am
until now
confirmation-ACC
£-uj_ a-sa-ap-pa-ra-kum NEG I-write-you
'I haven't written you confirmation of this until now.1 ARM IV 22, 8-10 f. a-na 40 gan eqlim .
.
.
la-a it-te-i h-hi
for 40 field-GEN NEG petition 'Do not petition for the 50 gan of fields.' 0B 1, 17-21 Mote that the word negation marker la-a is used with an imperative in (38) f. Note also the words mi-im-ma 'something' and ma-am-ma-an 'someone' in (38) a. and b. It seems to be the case that the Mari letters reflect a stage of Akkadian in which these indefinites w-2re beginning to have negative polarity. For more discussion of this, see Blejer (1978). Finet, in his discussion of negation, states that the negative word usually precedes the verb (p. 213). However, the alternative that he has in mind is that the negative marker might appear earlier in the sentence. Since there were no sentences in my corpus in which the negative marker did not immediately precede the verb, I am not in a position to comment on whether this motion forward of the negative marker was merely a matter of emphasis, or whether it indicated differences in the scope of the negation. In the one clearly modal sentence in my corpus, the modal precedes the infinitive it dominates. This sentence is given in (39). (39) nesum su-u ir-tu-ub we-e-ra-am lion-NOM this-NOM continued to-attack-ACC
'This l i o n continued attacking.'
ARM XIV 2, 28-31
Givon (1976:497-498) makes the contrary claim that modals follow the main verb and cites in support (40). (40) suma n u k a r r i b-um e q l - a m i-na zaqap-im l a igmur if gardener-NOM f i e l d - A C C t o plant-GEN NEG f i n i s h e d
61
This example is taken from Bucellati's unpublished grammar of Babylonian, so there is no indication in Givon's paper of whether these examples are contemporary with the Mari l e t t e r s . In any case, i t is clear from Finet's discussion of i n f i n i t i v e s that the formsof the verb irtub 'continue' always precede the i n f i n i t i v e that they govern, while other verbs l i k e igmur ' f i n i s h ' generally follow. Givon also claims that verbs of saying and t e l l i n g follow the i n f i n i t i v e s that they govern. His example is given in (41). (41) b i t - a m
ana awi I i - i m
house-ACC to
man-GEN
al
nada"narn
aqbi
NEG to-give-ACC I-ordered
Examples of i n f i n i t i v e s from my corpus are given in (42). (42) a. nesum a-na e-li-im Da-nam lion-NOM to rise-GEN face-ACC
is-ku-un-ma settled
'The lion prepared itself to get up.' ARM XIV 2, 13 b. u
a-na be-!1 — Ta
a-na qa-be-em az-zi-iz-ma
and to lord-GEN-my to talk-GEN I-PASS-present 'And I presented myself to mo lord to talk (to him)' ARM XIII 25, 8-10 Sentence (38) b. does not belong here, since the verb im-ku-ta-gum is an inflected form; the infinitive would be makatum. While it might be possible to infer from the data given so far that the VP syntax of Akkadian is becoming OV while the MP syntax is remaining V0, perhaps on the basis of a general principle that NPs are more conservative stylistically than are VPs, these data are also consistent with the statement that all Akkadian inflected verbs come at the end of the sentence. The only "exception" would then be irtub 'continue.' It is not necessary to examine in detail the morphological devices for indicating voice, reflexivity and causation. There are prefixes in Akkadian, with good cognates in other Semitic languages, that convey these variations of basic verbal meaning. This prefixation is inconsistent, in Lehmann's view, with OV basic word order; in consistent OV languages, we would expect suffixes. The one innovation in
62
Akkadian that should be mentioned is the reflexive "pronoun" panam, illustrated in (42) a. According to Lehmann (1973a:86). reflexive pronouns only develop in SVO languages. Non-SVO languages that have reflexive pronouns can be assumed either to have borrowed their pronouns from an SVO language or to have gone through an earlier SVO stage. The fact that pan is a good Semitic root meaning 'face' is evidence against borrowing; the main source of borrowings into Akkadian is non-Semitic Sumerian. It should be further noted that Akkadian has other indigenous words that are used as reflexive pronouns. Finet lists ramanum 'person,' pagrum 'body,1 qaqqadum 'head,' and napiStum/ napaStum 'life, soul' with this function (p. 37). This suggests that Akkadian at the time of the Man" letters was in the process o* innovating a reflexive pronoun, to meet some need in the language. This supposition is supported by the fact that none of the lexical items listed by Finet appear as reflexive pronouns in the other Semitic languages. In these other languages, an intransitivizing prefix t_appears. This t- also appears in Akkadian as a reflexive indicator in forms like it-ta-na-ki-jj^ 'it changed (itself).1 It is clear from the data given above that Old Akkadian poetry was SVO. The written Old Babylonian of only a few hundred years later appears not to have been. However, the typological theory developed by Lehmann leads us to suspect that spoken Old Babylonian was not SOV. First, the typological theory states that reflexive pronouns develop only in SVO languages, and Akkadian of the Mari letters has developed not one but several reflexive pronouns. It follows logically from this fact and from Lehmann's hypothesis that Mari Akkadian was SVO. Furthermore, Old Babylonian Akkadian has none of the typological features typically associated with OV languages except for the preverbal position of most infinitives. I have argued elsewhere (Faber 1979) that the explanation for these facts is simply that spoken Old Babylonian Akkadian, and, presumably, other Akkadian dialects, were not SOV languages. The placement of the inflected verb at the end of the sentence in written Akkadian was an importation from the Sumerian literary tradition.
63
In support of this suggestion, it should be noted that writing was a trade in ancient Mesopotamia, not the hallmark of an educated individual that it is in our society. The scribes received extensive training, much of it spent in copying Sumerian works of literature (Oppenheim 1964:249). So, literacy would not have been widespread, and there is no reason to expect to find "semi-literate" intrusions from spoken Akkadian in written texts. Furthermore, given the newness of writing in Mesopotamia, compared with our Western 5000 year tradition of literacy, we should not assume that Akkadian speakers and writers viewed the written word the way we do. It is well-know that modern "primitive" groups sometimes attribute to graphic representations, whether pictorial or written, magical power. And, it is as likely that this attitude corresponds to the Akkadian view of writing as it is that our "enlightened" demystification does. 2.1.1.4 Official Aramaic As will be recalled from earlier discussion, the Official Aramaic texts were about evenly split between SVO and VSO word order. Table XIV lists the most common orders. Order
Number of Sentences
V DO
12
V OBL V S V 10 DO S V OBL DO V
8 4 4 4 4
Table XIV: Most common word orders in Official Aramaic. When only the sentences containing subjects are taken into consideration, the distribution recorded in Table XV is found.
64
Order
Number of Tokens
SVO
10 7
Percentage
V S
4
40 28 16
S V
3
12
S 0 V
1
4
V S 0
Table XV: The word orders found in Official Aramaic sentences containing subjects. Percentages are based on the total numbers of sentences containing subjects, not the entire corpus of Official Aramaic. These figures are slightly misleading in that the SVO category includes sentences containing the passive participle siyt 'responsible, powerful,' which, perhaps, should not be counted as a present tense passive verb. It was the only passive participle that I found and should be discounted, since there does not appear to have been an active counterpart. An example of a sentence containing this form is given in (43). (43) ?nty
slyth
bh
mn
ywm?
znh
w?d
you-f.responsible-f. on-it from day-the this and-until ?lm world 'You are responsible for it from this day forward.' Cowley 8, 9 Eliminating sentences containing Slyt, there are nine sentences in Cowley 8 containing subjects (my original corpus only included the first half of this text). In only two of these sentences did the subject follow the verb. These two are given in (44). (44) a.
...?mr
mlisyh br
said
"
ydnyh yhwdy mhhsn
son-of
Jew
property-holder
byb byrt? IdgI hwmdt in-Yev fortress-the to-detachment-of Insn
to-woman
mbthyh b r t h
I?mr
daughter-his to-say
65
[ 'On the 21st of Kislev, that is the 1st day of Mesore, year 6 of King Artaxerxes,] said Mahseiah son of Jedaniah, a Jew holding property in the fortress of Elephantine, of the detachment of Haumadata, to lady Mibtahaiah, his daughter, saying:' Cowley 8, 1-3 (tr. Porten 1976) b.
ktb
Ttrswry br nbwzr?bn spr?
wrote bswn
son-of brt ?
zk
document-the this kpm
mhsyh
in-Syene fortress-the according-to-mouth-of 'Atashuri son of Nabuzeribni wrote this document in the fortress of Syene at the dictation of Mahseiah.' Cowley 8, 27-28 (tr. Porten 1976) These two sentences are the first and last sentences of the document respectively. Both seem to be formulaic. The first sentence describes the context—the date, the donor, his legal status. The last sentence is what might be thought of as a notarization: the scribe identifies himself and states that the donor dictated to him the contents of the document. It is followed by a list of witnesses. Kraeling 2, a marriage contract, opens and closes with formulae analogous to those given in (44) from Cowley 8. However, there are some additional sentences in which the subject follows the verb. (45) h n m
ly
brought-she to-me
tmt bydh
lbs
1 zy Tmr
in-hand-her garment 1 of wool
'Tamut brought to me in her hand 1 woolen garment.' Kraeling 2, 4 (tr. Porten) In sentence (45) the direct object 'one woolen garment' is the first in a long list of items to be considered Tamut's dowry; this may have something to do with the unusual (for Official Aramaic) syntax of the The other verb-initial sentences from Kraeling 2 are given in (46).
66
(46) a. mhr
?w ywm ?hrn
yqwm
Tnny
b£dh
tomorrow or day other will-arise wy?mr
sn?t
in-assembly
Itmt
?nity
and-he-will-say hated-I ACC-Tamut wife-my 'Tomorrow or another day, should Anani stand up in an assembly and say "I have divorced Tamut my wife"...' Kraeling 2, 7 (tr. Porten 1976) b. mhr
?w ywm ?hrn
tqwm
"trnt wt?mr
tomorrow or day other will-arise sn?t
IbTly
and-she-willsay
?nny
hated-I ACC-husband-my 'Tomorrow or another day, should Tamut stand up and say, "I have divorced my husband Anani"...' Kraeling 2, 9 (tr. Port) C. mhr
?w ywm ?hrn
ymwt
?nny
tomorrow or day other he-will-die 'Tomorrow or another day, should Anani die.' Kraeling 2, 10-11 (tr. Porten) d. mhr
?w ywm ?hrn
tmwt
tmt
tomorrow or day other whe-will-die 'Tomorrow or another day, should Tamut die...' Kraeling 2, 12 (tr. Port) These sentences are clearly conditionals; each is followed by a statement that is contingent on the truth of the first part. Cowley 8 contains a conditional sentence containing the same "tomorrow or another day" formula. given in (47). (47) hn mhr
?w ywm ?hrn drgmn ?w br
if tomorrow or day other
This is
zylh
or son that-to-him
yrsh ?l byt? zk he-will-bring-action about house-the that 'If tomorrow or another day, Dargamana or a son of his brings action about that house.' Cowley 8, 26-27 (tr.Porten) There are two differences between (47) and the conditional sentences in (46). The first of these is that (47) contains an explicit conditional marker hn_, while the sentences in (46) do not. The second
67
difference is that the subject and the verb are in different relative orders: (46) are VS while (47) is SV. The post-verbal subject in (46) is the functional equivalent of the conditional particle in (47). This conclusion is supported by the fact that when the "tomorrow or another day" formula appears in an SV sentence without jin_, it is not conditional. As shown in (48) the subject is the first word in such a sentence. (48) a. w?nh
mslm
mhr
?w ywm ?hrn
I?
?kl
and-I
tomorrow or day other NEG I-will-beable ?nsl Iplty mn tlrt Ibbk I-will-take-out ACC-Palti from under heart-your 'Tomorrow or another day, I, Meshullam, shall not be able to snatch Palti away from under your heart.1 Kraeling 2, 13-14 (tr. Porten 1976) b. w?p ?nh mhsyh mhr ?w ywm ?hrn I? and-even I tomorrow or day other NEG ?hnsl mnky I-will-take from-you 'Moreover, tomorrow or another day, I, Mahseiah, shall not snatch [it] away from you.' Cowley 8, 18-19 The examples given in this section indicate that VSO order is a marked word order for Official Aramaic. It occurs in formulaic expressions that are likely to be representative of earlier stages of Aramaic or of some other language from which the legal formulae might 14 have been copied. And, VSO word order, co-occurring with the "tomorrow or another day" formula, marks conditional sentences. So, the least marked word order for Official Aramaic is SVO, although the evidence of the formulae leads to the conclusion that this is an innovation in Official Aramaic. 2.1.2 Discussions of Word Order in Secondary Sources In this section, I will examine some of the Semitic languages that were not in my original corpus to see how their word order patterns fit with those observed in the sample. I will also examine
63
other opinions about some of the languages that I did sample; in some cases the small sample size might have been unrepresentative.
I will
again concentrate on deviations from VSO word order.
2.1.2.1 Aramaic Various dialects and periods of Aramaic need to be distinguished.
In Old Aramaic, the language of my Old Aramaic texts, the
word order was strongly verb-initial.
According to Degen (1969:121),
only conjunctions, adverbs, absolute infinitives (see pages 38-39 for discussion), and negation markers can precede the verb. can as easily follow the verb.
Most of these
This is in accord with my findings
about Old Aramaic, as indicated above in Table II and Table III. The next important period of Aramaic is that of Official and Biblical Aramaic (600-100 BC). Official Aramaic was the lingua franca of the Persian Empire.
Jews who were exiled to Babylon in
the eighth and seventh centuries BC began to use it at that time, and several sections of the Biblical books of Daniel and Ezra are written in Aramaic.
According to Segert (1975:422), SV relative order is 15 And, the order VS
prevalent in both Biblical and Official Aramaic. is found after certain adverbs.
Rosenthal (1968:56) makes the follow-
ing statement about Biblical Aramaic word order: The position of words in a verbal sentence is free and does not follow any hard and fast rules. The more ancient sequence VERB-SUBJECT-OBJECT occurs occasionally, in particular in dependent clauses and after such particles as kafan 'now' and baSayin 'then.' Preference is shown to the sequence OBJECT-VERB-SUBJECT. In sentences containing no direct object, the preferred sequence is SUBJECT-VERB. Other combinations are possible. Despite their differences in emphasis and terminology, Segert and Rosenthal are describing the same set of phenomena.
In this light,
it is interesting to note that neither of them mentions the SVO word order that was predominant in my sample of Official Aramaic.
2.1.2.2 Phoenician Van den Braden (1969:125) states that the unmarked word
69
order in Phoenician is VSO. But, "for one reason or another {accent, specification, etc.} the normal structure can be modified.11 The variations that occur are VOS, SVO, SOV and OVS. Segert (1976:250) states that the usual order is VS, but that SV is often found, especially if the subject is a personal pronoun. He also notes a certain degree of flexibility. It cannot be determined from the information given by Segert whether the SV order with pronominal subjects has to do with the subjects' being emphasized, or whether what is at work is a process like that in Moabite (Sec. 2.1.1.1). 2.1.2.3 Biblical Hebrew Despite the fact that Hebrew may well be the most intensively studied of all the Semitic languages, there does not exist any scholarly consensus about either the unmarked word order in prose or the conditioning factors for variation. Williams (1976:96) says that VSO is the "normal order in a verbal sentence." Alternatives are VOS when the direct object is cliticized to the verb and SVO in the following circumstances: if the subject is emphasized, if the subjects of two sentences are being contrasted in any way, if a new subject is being introduced, if the verb expresses a plu-perfect, in cases of simultaneous action, and when the subject is being given "rhetorical exposure." This list of circumstances is reminiscent of Hopper's characteristics of imperfective mode, with its frequent changes of subject, marked distribution of focus (i.e., subject provides new information), and temporal overlapping (see above, pp. 42-44). My only worry about Williams' list is that the term "rhetorical exposure" is undefined, and, potentially, so broad as to include anything that does not fit any of the other categories of SVO sentences. In contrast to Williams, Blau (1976:91) treats the sequence SV as basic in main clauses of "classical narrative." The order VS occurs in direct speech, in poetry, after the particle hinne 'behold,1 in subordinate clauses, and if the verb is preceded by any other constituent of the sentence. Both SV and VS are possible when the verb is non-finite (a participle or an infinitive). A further instance
70
in which VS is required is after conversive wa- (see p. 35, ff.). Schlesinger (1953) contests the notion that VS is ever a basic order in Hebrew. In a proposal possibly influenced by his native German, Schlesinger suggests that Hebrew had a constraint that the verb could not be the initial element in a sentence under normal circumstances. The aspectual conversive wa-, he suggest, is not cognate with the ordinary conjunction 'and,' despite their phonological nearidentity. After the aspectual marker, only VS order is found, while both V5 and SV are found after ordinary 'and.' While the etymology that Schlesinger proposes for the aspectual wa- is suspect (the existence of an Ugaritic conjunction £ makes a connection between Hebrew wa_ and Arabic fa_ unlikely), he is not alone in proposing that the two different uses of wa_- in Hebrew have different etymological sources. Hetzron (1974:45) reconstructs an Afro-Asiatic copula *wn, cognate with Egyptian wnn_ and Cush -J (Agaw) wanna. It may be that the wa_-VS order, with the aspectual difference, resulted from fronting the verb under some kind of focus. In a narrative sequence in which the subject does a number of things, the information conveyed by each verb in the sequence will be new. Reconstruction of *wn as a copula used in verb-focus constructions is supported by the fact that the Hebrew aspect marker but not the ordinary conjunction conditions gemination of the first consonant of the word following it; in Hebrew, as in most other Semitic languages, /n/ assimilates to following consonants across morpheme boundaries. lf_ it is the case that the wa_-V order was the result of fronting the verb under emphasis, then the only relevant Hebrew word order for purposes of reconstruction is SV. Hetzron (personal communication) has a different account of the same facts. Both VS word order and the wa_-V construction are archaisms in Hebrew. Presumably, the presence of the aspectual wa_inhibited a change from VS to SV. A. Gordon (1978) suggests that word order in Biblical Hebrew is sensitive to verb form. VS is found with tensed verbs
71
(whether prefixed or suffixed) and SV(0) with participles. For Gordon, the change from predominantly VSO word order to predominantly SVO order was triggered by the reanalysis of participles. In early Biblical Hebrew, they are best analyzed as nouns, but, by late Biblical Hebrew, they are clearly present tense verbs. But, changes that Gordon finds late in the Biblical period are irrelevant to a decision as to whether Blau or Williams has best described the distribution of sentence types in earlier Biblical Hebrew (Blau's "classical narrative"). Blau's proposals have to do with sentence level conditioning factors and Williams' with discourse conditioning. If there was a close relationship between Moabite and Hebrew, not an unreasonable proposition in view of their apparent mutual intelligibility, the same things must have been going on in the two languages just prior to our earliest attestations. So, to the extent that Moabite and Hebrew were closely related, Williams' account of discourse conditioned deviations from VSO word order in Hebrew is preferable. But, there is no inconsistency between the preceding and the suggestion made above that the VS order was originally a discourse conditioned alternant for original SV(0). 2.1.2.4 Arabic The unmarked word order for Classical Arabic is VSO; SVO is possible with topicalization, as is OVS. Brockelmann (1961:433-438) finds the following orders, with no indication of which is most frequent after VSO: VSO, VS, VOS, OVS, SV and SVO. All of the modern Arabic dialects are SVO (Tomiche 1964:178). This development began before the birth of Islam. In the earliest Judaeo-Arabic, SVO word order was already found in what Blau (1965:79) calls "living speech" —wishes and curses--although VSO predominates in texts. There was a tendency to include non-emphatic pronominal subjects (p. 37) and these generally preceded the verb (p. 94). In Christian Arabic, SV is also most common in texts that represent "living speech," as opposed to texts that are likely to have been translated from Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic (Blau 1967).
72
2.1.2.5 Epigraphic South Arabian According to Beeston (1962:68-70), Epigraphic (Ancient) South Arabian had unmarked VSO word order. The following exceptions can be listed: a prepositional phrase may precede the verb, but the verb is then marked with the conjunction w- or f_~. In relative clauses the element to which the resumptive pronoun is cliticized can be fronted. In addition, and perhaps more significantly, in the first sentence in an inscription or text, the verb must be the second element. It is preceded either by the subject or a "deictic expression." 2.1.2.6 Ge'ez In Ge'ez (Classical Ethiopian), according to Dillmann (1959), the unmarked word order was VSO, except with pronominal objects; in that case, the order was VOS. Other constituents than the subject could be fronted for emphasis. 2.1.2.7 Modern Ethiopian Languages In contrast to the above, the unmarked word order for most of the modern Ethiopian Semitic languages is clearly SOV, although, in some, not all of the characteristics normally associated with verbfinal languages are found. Despite this, the verb-final generalization is very firmly entrenched in these languages. In Amharic, for example, although various constituents can be extraposed, the main intonation pattern of the sentence ends with the verb (Goldenberg 1966:1). It is generally assumed that the SOV word order of the modern Ethiopian Semitic languages is the result of a strong Cushitic substratum (M. Cohen 1931:9, 1936:13, Leslau 1945a). This substratum effect is extensively documented for the phonological and morphological systems of the languages and innovations can often be tied to specific features of the coterritorial languages. Grover Hudson (personal communication) has, however, denied the existence of transparent Cushitic influence on the syntax of Ethiopian Semitic, and would pre-
73
fer to treat the shared SOV syntax of Ethiopian Semitic and Cushitic as a retention from Proto-Afroasiatic. However, internal reconstruction of Amharic and comparative work in the Ethiopic languages suggest that the traditional view that SOV is an innovation is correct. The internal reconstruction is that of Bach (1970). His work is an attempt to demonstrate that synchronic grammars of Amharic with underlying VSO word order and a late rule of verb postposing are preferable to more "surfacy" grammars in which the underlying word order is SOV. His argument is based on the fact that relative clauses modifying objects of prepositions have the preposition in clause internal position, as in (49). (49) alamu b-ayy-e-w bet Alamu at-saw-he-it house 'at the house that Alamu saw' A possessor phrase that is the object of a preposition is given in (50). (50) b-alemu bet at-Alamu house 'at Alamu's house' The corresponding non prepositional object phrases are given in (51) and (52). (51) a I emu y-ayy-s-w
bet
Alamu that-saw-he-it house 'the house that Alamu saw' (52) y-alamu bet of-Alamu house 'Alamu's house' It is clear from (49) through (52) that the preposition band the genitive/relative marker y_- cannot occur in sequence. Bach accounts for this by positing a rule deleting y_- after a preposition. However, the rules governing the placement of the preposition and the relative marker are complicated by the fact that they arecliticized rightward in the genitive phrases and lowered into the relative
74
clauses.
If the verb in the relative clause started out in sentence
initial position, the same attachment rules could operate for the relative clause as do for the genitive phrases without the statement being particularly messy. This has been criticized as a synchronic analysis of Amharic by Hudson (1972) and Little (1974). But, even if Bach's analysis is not a good synchronic description of Amharic, it is not without value. On the contrary, like many "abstract" phonological analyses containing opaque rules, Bach's treatment of Amharic provides diachronic clues, and may even serve as an internal reconstruction. That is, the facts that Bach uses to argue for Amharic as an underlying VSO language can also, perhaps more profitably, be used as evidence for surface SVO word order at an earlier stage of the language. Greenberg (1979) demonstrates, on the basis of comparative data, the progression from VSO to SOV in the Ethiopian Semitic languages. His primary evidence is from circumfixal morphemes. He claims that languages with circumfixal prepositions and languages with oenitive constructions that can be either preposed or postposed are in transition. Some relevant examples appear in (53). (53) a. bs-bet west in-house inside 'in the house' AMHARIC b. HEAD nay_ POSSESSOR of TIGRE Genitive construction cf. C. n a t k i
q w aI?a
of-you son 'your son'
TIGRINYA
(possessor-head)
Greenberg concludes that the Ethiopic facts speak for a continuum of development from VSO to SOV. First VSO changes to SOV; this is f o l lowed by the change from noun-adjective to adjective-noun. Genitives and adpositional constructions change order by means of circumfixal patterns for the prepositions and a noun meaning "possession," which
75
phonologically weakens to a genitive marker, for genitive constructions. 2.1.2.8 Akkadian Most grammars of Akkadian list only the SOV word order attested in written Akkadian. This is often explained as a result of Sumerian influence. In later stages of Akkadian, (S)VO order is sometimes found. Kaufmann (1974:132) ascribes this to Aramaic influence. However, if the view espoused in section 2.1.1.3 is correct, it could also be the result of waning Sumerian influence. Ravn (1941:63) notes that Akkadian relative clauses that are introduced by fu, rather than sa are characterized by VO word order. 2.1.3 Summary Table XVI lists the word order patterns that have been isolated and discussed in this section. Language
Basic Oi Order Conditioned Variants
Moabite
vso
Ugaritic Old Akkadian Man' Akkadian
svo-vso
Old Aramaic
Colloquial Arab. Epig. S. Arabian Ge'ez
vso svo vso vso svo svo vso svo vso vso
Modern Ethiopian
SOV
Official Aramaic Phoenician Biblical Hebrew
Classical Arabic
svo
SVO episode initial no conditioning apparent
SOV written only, SVO spoken? VSO formulae and conditionals discourse cond. SV0--W111iams VSO in poetry, etc.—Blau (1976) Schlesinger (1953)
SVO inscription initial
Table XVI: Word order in the Semitic Languages.
76
2.2 Inferences About Earlier Word Order In this section, I will attempt to formulate some hypotheses about Semitic word order and the developments from the posited PS word order in the Semitic languages. In order to do this, it is first necessary to evaluate a hypothesis that, should it be held tenable, would allow some extremely strong inferences, supplementing the reconstructions based solely on the data discussed so far in this chapter. 2.2.1 Cliticization and Agreement Harking Givon (1971) formulates the strong hypothesis that the order of bound affixes in a word, especially agreement morphemes, reflects the original syntactic order of these elements. Since all agreement morphemes are, in Givon's view, derived from anaphoric pronouns, the position of a subject agreement morpheme relative to the verb stem provides a reliable cue for the position of a pronominal subject. Thus, prefixed verb agreement patterns reflect earlier SV word order and suffixed agreement patterns reflect VS order. If Givon is correct in his hypothesis that agreement markers always result from free pronouns and that these markers never change syntactic position in the course of their accretion to verb stems, verb agreement patterns in the Semitic languages would constitute a valuable tool in reconstructing Semitic word order. Givon urges acceptance of his hypotheses precisely because of their power (1971:403). The first of Givon's hypotheses is identical with Tesniere's Glossogenetic Hypothesis: "Personal desinences originated in all languages as personal pronouns at one time" (1959:139). But, according to Tesniere, personal pronouns tend to gravitate towards the verb as a preliminary to cliticization (p. 132). Steele (1977), in a discussion of cliticization in the Uto-Aztecan languages, admits the ultimate relationship between the agreement affixes in that family and independent pronouns. However, due to the special status of second position in the sentence, the pronouns gravitated to that position from "subject" position as part of the process of cliticization (p. 548).
77
She proposes a counter-hypothesis to Givon's: clitics tend to be attracted to certain "special" positions in the sentence. Common "special" positions are immediately adjacent tc the verb and in sentence second position. Lightfoot (1978) presents some additional evidence against Givon's second hypothesis. In Modern Greek, word order is similar to that in French; full MP objects follow the verb but pronominal objects precede it. The explanation generally offered for French is that the SOV order with pronominal objects is a retention from earlier stages of Romance in which SOV order was found with nominal as well as pronominal objects. Thus, the pronominal order that is maintained provides evidence for the earlier general word order. However, Lightfoot claims that Modern Greek has been an underlying SVO language for over 1000 years but that the SOV pronominal order only developed recently. Therefore, other factors than simple loss of accent and "freezing" of an original order must have played a role in the development of SOV word order with pronominal objects in Greek. This is not accounted for by Givon's hypotheses. Although Lightfoot's objection seems to be valid in principle, the discussion of Greek word order in Marios (1979) suggests that it is simplistic to claim that Greek has been an underlying SVO language for a mill eniurn. Thus, Lightfoot's conclusions about Greek are overly strong. However, on the basis of Morin (1979) similar objections could be formulated regarding French clitics. There is a substantial amount of variation among French dialects in the relative order of object clitics and the cooccurrence restrictions on them. This variation can not reasonably be attributed to syntactic variation in earlier language stages, Further evidence suggesting that Givon's hypothesis is too strong is given in Zwicky (1975) and Jeffers and Zwicky (1979). None of these discussions provide evidence against Givon's first hypothesis, that there is a historical relationship between pronouns and agreement affixes; this hypothesis is explicitly questioned by Chafe (1977). But, the works cited above to cast doubt on the validity of the hypothesis that pronominal elements do not change their
78
position relative to other sentence constituents as part of the process of cliticization. It may be that further research would provide a detailed account of the circumstances under which pronouns/clitics could change position relative to the verb that governs them. But, in the absence of such an account, the history of Semitic word order must be investigated independently of any predictions that might be derived from study of the development of Semitic and Afroasiatic verb agreement paradigms. Thus, independent investigation of word order patterns and the development of the agreement paradigms can provide evidence relevant to Givon's hypotheses. 2.2.2 Considerations for Reconstruction Given that the SOV word orders of Akkadian and Ethiopian Semitic are clearly innovations, there are three possibilities for reconstruction of Proto-Semitic word order: SVO as in Ugaritic or Old Akkadian, VSO as in Classical Arabic, or something else. There is a strong temptation to reconstruct SVO word order, despite the inherent danger of assuming that the oldest languages in a family are the most authentic and the least likely to have undergone change. However, in the absence of hard evidence, no conclusions can be reached. There are several directions which a search for such evidence can take. These will be explored in the remainder of this section. 2.2.2.1 Typological Considerations One possible avenue to explore i.s word order typology. There is nothing "unnatural" per se about either VSO or SVO word order. However, it might be that the relative frequencies of the two types in the languages of the world would be relevant. Greenberg (1963:77) sampled 30 languages {this study was of course the "seed" for recent typological studies). His sample contained 6 VSO languages, 13 SVO languages and 11 SOV languages. Heine (1975) sampled 300 African languages. While there was undoubtedly some overlap with Greenberg's sample, it is still noteworthy that he found similar relative frequencies of language types. In his sample, 71% of the languages were SVO,
79
24% were SOV and only 5% were VSO. Ruhlen (1976a) surveyed the distribution of various typological features in a 406 language sample. Overall* 11% of these languages were verb-initial, 37% were verb-final, and 52% were verb-medial. However, there was striking variation among different geographical regions regarding the relative frequencies of these types. Ruhlen's figures are summarized in Table XVII. SOV
SVO
VSO
615!
12*
61%
Asia
27* 36« 85S
145,
4* 05!
Australia
605!
N. America
288
20% 42%
192 31*
S. America
55';
25-;,
2 Or.
Africa Europe
Table XVII: Geographical distribution of word order types. Based on Ruhlen (1976a:151). The information that SVO word order is more common than VSO in the languages of the world does not by itself help. Considerations of the naturalness of the proto-language system would lead to positing original SVO word order. Then, the development of the less natural VSO could be treated as a joint innovation in those languages that have it or show evidence of having had it. On the other hand, if change is viewed as natural simplification, the same "fact" that VSO is less natural than SVO would require reconstruction of VSO for Proto-Semitic. Then, the change to SVO in Akkadian and Ugaritic, because of its naturalness, could not be taken as evidence of joint innovation; it would be on a par with the later change to SVO in Colloquial Arabic, Official Aramaic, and, perhaps, Moabite. 2.2.2.2 Internal Diagnostics for Word Order Given that area! distribution of word order types alone does not provide sufficient clues for adequate reconstruction, the next task is to look for additional internal clues within the oldest attes-
ted of the SVO languages and the oldest attested of the VSO languages to determine whether either exhibits traces of the "other" order. This was done to a certain extent in section 2.1. Unfortunately, there is not much more that can be done at this point. Following Lehmann's work, the attention of typologists has been focussed on determining the extent to which OV and VO languages differ. Little attention has been directed towards the problem of determining just how SVO and VSO languages differ, if at all, other than in the obvious way. If it were the case that there were reliable diagnostics for SVO or for VSO languages other than in the position of the verb, then it would be possible to construct some, hopefully, plausible hypotheses about the direction of change in the Semitic languages. One possible approach lies in comparison of the phrase structure rules required for particular VSO or SVO languages. It is commonly assumed that the three sentence constituents in an SVO language do not have equal status; the verb and the object together comprise an intermediate verb phrase (VP), which, together with the subject noun phrase, constitutes a sentence. Thus, following Chomsky (1957, 1965), the initial phrase structure rule for English is: S — » NP VP. Clearly, it is not necessarily the case that adjacent verbs and objects be constituents, but there are many phenomena that lead syntacticians to take a grammar containing the category VP as more highly valued than one without that category. Assuming the validity of arguments for a VP in English (some of these, along with arguments against a VP, are given in Baker 1978:259-307) or other SVO languages, we are left with the problem of describing the relationship between the verb and the object in a VSO language, where these two elements are not ordinarily contiguous. Within the ordinary generative framework, there is no way in which a categorial node can dominate the verb and the object but not the subject (McCloskey 1979:163).19 It may well be the case that all and only SVO languages have or develop VP categories. If so, one would expect that there would be SVO languages that have not yet developed a VP and VSO languages that have not yet totally lost theirs. Further study of languages that
81
are known to have shifted either from VSO to SVO or from SVO to VSO would, if detailed enough, provide valuable evidence regarding the validity of this suggestion. Then, it would be meaningful to examine large corpora of sentences from the oldest Semitic languages for evidence of assymetries between the surface word order and the types of syntactic phenomena, if any, that appear to be sensitive to the constituent VP. So, if it were to turn out that all of the oldest Semitic languages, regardless of word order, shared processes, presumably reconstructive to Proto-Semitic, that are sensitive to VP, that would constitite evidence for a shared SVO stage. Alternatively, if none of the languages, again regardless of surface order, showed traces of processes sensitive to a VP constituent, that could be construed as evidence for earlier VSO. Presence of evidence for a VP would be stronger than absence of such evidence, since the latter state of affairs would also be consistent with insufficient attestation for a VP that was historically present to be inferred. Recent studies of VSO languages as genetically related as Jacaltec {Craig 1977), Modern Irish (McCloskey 1979) and Berber (Blejer in preparation) reveal a number of unusual similarities in complex sentence structure. These similarities are illustrated and discussed in Blejer (1979). If it were to turn out, after further study of still more VSO languages, that structural similarities in WH-questions, clefts and relative clauses are characteristic of all and only VSO languages, then presence of remnants of such similarities in surface VSO languages could be used to argue for earlier VSO stages. Still another phenomenon that may help elucidate the question of early Semitic word order is that of negative incorporation. English has a series of negative indefinite elements: no-one, nothing, nowhere. Davison (1978) suggests that such words develop only in SVO languages. If so, presence of such a word in a VSO language would be diagnostic of an earlier SVO stage. 2.2.2.3 Need for More Data Most importantly, what is needed to elucidate the question of
82
Semitic word order is more data. It was noted above (sec. 2.1.1.2) that the question of whether Ugaritic was SVO or VSO could profitably be approached by analyzing a sufficiently large corpus; whatever pattern there is to the VSO/SVO alternation will not necessarily emerge from study of a sample as small as that in this study. Still another body of data that could ultimately shed light on the question of ProtoSemitic word order is the Ebla archive (p. 21 above). As yet, there is virtually no linguistic or textual material available on Eblaite. Some general treatments of the historical and archaeological implications of the discovery of this archive are Matthiae (1975, 1977) and Bermant and Weizman (1979). The only available linguistic description (Pettinato 1975) deals only with morphological features of the language, based on a small proportion of the texts in the archive. In addition, details about the language are scattered throughout the other publications mentioned. However, I have seen no discussion of the syntax outside of Matthiae's (1977:174) comment that the word order in the texts is clearly Semitic. It is clear from the context that he means that the word order is not, SOV, as it is in the Sumerian texts found in the same archive. However, it is not clear whether "Semitic syntax" means VSO, in line with the assumption with which I began this chapter that Proto-Semitic was VSO, or whether it merely means VO. Because of the lack of published texts from Ebla and of syntactic analysis of as yet unpublished texts, any reconstruction proposed either on the basis of the data discussed in section 2.1 or on the basis of the considerations earlier in section 2.2 runs the risk of being rendered inadequate by this material. 2.2.3 Some Tentative Proposals Despite the gaps in the data that were elaborated above, it is possible to sketch the developments from both SVO and VSO reconstructions that would be needed to account for the distribution of phenomena in the offspring languages. The two alternative developments can then be compared with the reconstructions proposed in the other chapters of
83
this dissertation. There is even the possibility that one of the posited series of developments will be so inconsistent with the reconstructions in the other chapters that it can be eliminated; according to Pfaff and Portz (1979) syntactic interference due to language contact is less likely than is phonological or morphological interference. Thus, one would expect syntactic phenomena to be less likely to be transmitted by waves than phonological or morphological phenomena. 2.2.3.1 Assuming Original VSO If we assume that the traditional view is correct, we are faced with the following list of languages that innovated SVO word order: Old Akkadian, Ugaritic, Colloquial Arabic, Official Aramaic. This could not have been a one-time innovation, as it occurred within the recorded histories of Colloquial Arabic and Official Aramaic. In fact, both of these clearly show traces of an earlier VSO order. However, such is not the case for Ugaritic and Akkadian. There is no evidence available for Akkadian, due to the masking effect of SOV order in most written Akkadian. In Ugaritic, both SVO and VSO are found, but it is not possible to determine which is the oldest order without isolation of the conditioning factor(s). In line with the considerations of section 1.3.1, SVO in Akkadian and Ugaritic would have had to originate in the same range of contexts in order to be considered a joint innovation diagnostic of genetic relationship. Thus, given the currect state of knowledge about Akkadian and Ugaritic, assumption of VSO Proto-Semitic with subsequent innovation of SVO in Akkadian, Ugaritic, Colloquial Arabic and Official Aramaic does not lead to any strong claims about the historical development of the Semitic language family. 2.2.3.2 Assuming Original SVO In the discussions of the various languages in section 2.1, I noted that in the VSO languages, SVO word order is sometimes found. In Moabite, it appears to be conditioned by paragraph-initial position. In Hebrew, according to Williams (1976), similar discourse level condi-
8*
tioning obtains. In Epigraphic South Arabian, SV order is often found at the beginning of an inscription; if the subject does not precede the verb, some adverbial element does. In Phoenician, SV order is common if the subject is a personal pronoun. This is reminiscent of the absolute SV order in Moabite sentences containing pronominal subjects. These facts suggest that at least some of the VSO languages jointly innovated conditioned SVO word order. If this is the case, then the prior innovation of VSO word order must also have been shared. To the groupd of VSO languages listed in Table XVI should be added Official Aramaic, Colloquial Arabic and Modern Ethiopian, all of which have traces of earlier VSO word order. Later joint innovation of SVO provides one argument for considering the original change to VSO a joint innovation. Another argument can be based on the typological rarity of VSO languages, as noted in section 2.2.2.1; this rarity renders it unlikely that VSO would have been innovated more than once independently in closely related languages, although it is of course possible. Given these considerations, it is possible to posit the tree in (54). (54)
Proto-Semitic
Arabian The position of Ugaritic in the schema in (54) is subject to change as more is learned about the factors conditioning the SVO-VSO alternation noted above for that language. The word order of Eblaite, whether VSO or SVO, does not
85
affect the picture in (54). In either case, Eblaite could be construed as providing evidence for the timing of the change from SVO to VSO. 2.3 Conclusion Any reconstruction of Proto-Semitic must be consistent with what is known of the other Afroasiatic languages, even though ultimate reconstruction of Proto-Afroasiatic may be nearly impossible, due to the time depth involved (as much as 15,000 years). Thus, it is worth comparing both of the proposed reconstructions of Semitic word order with what is known of other Afroasiatic languages. Ancient Egyptian was VSO (Hodge 1954:19). According to deBuck (1967:122). this order was so rigid that any fronting of a noun required use of a post-verbal resumptive pronoun. Most modern Berber dialects are VSO. Heine (1975: 179) suggests that Proto-Berber was either VSO or VSO alternating with SVO, although the basis for this reconstruction is not made clear. Chadic languages are SVO, although Schuh (1971:72) notes that "some Chadic languages have VSO as the unmarked order under certain circumstances." Cushitic and Omotic languages are SOV. Heine treats this order as an innovation; SOV is areally restricted within Africa to the northeast corner (Ruhlen 1976a:151). Thus, there is nothing in Afroasiatic inconsistent with either a VSO or an SVO Proto-Semitic. Of course, any definitive conclusions would have to be based on authoritative reconstructions of these language groups. Unfortunately, it is not possible to come to any conclusion for Proto-Semitic; the evidence simple isn't available. However, it is possible to express a preference. I strongly suspect that subsequent investigation will provide evidence in support of the SVO reconstruction outlined in section 2.2.3.2. At any rate, future research into the question of Semitic word order should be based on the hypotheses and predictions implicit in the SVO reconstruction. Even a minimal comparison of the VSO and the SVO reconstructions shows that the former makes more claims about the history of the Semitic languages than does the latter. Thus, it is more falsifiable and therefore a better working hypothesis.
86
Notes to Chapter Two It is difficult to decide what is, or should be, meant by the phrase "dominant word order." This problem is touched on briefly in Heine (1975). The possibilities that he discusses are: least marked word order, order found in positions of neutralization, order with the highest text frequency, and order with the least morphological complexity (p. 166). He ultimately restricts his use of the term to orders that are statistically prevalent across languages (p. 166). In this chapter, I will use it to mean statistically prevalent within a language. It will become clear in section 2.1.1.1 on Moabite that the statistically prevalent word order is not necessarily the word order that best represents the underlying structure of a language. This, I will refer to as the basic word order. 2 In my initial counts, I distinguished between direct objects (DO), indirect objects (10) and oblique noun phrases (OBL) in the sense of Keenan and Comrie (1978). Since this provided 90 different word order categories, it was necessary to obliterate the earlier distinction between types of objects in order for it to be economically feasible to run correlations (CROSSTABS) programs on the computer. Thus, the symbol 0_ in the following tables refers to any kind of object. In case of a sentence containing several objects, say 10 V S OBL DO, I made an arbitrary decision in favor of VSO coding because there were two objects following VS and only one preceding. But, if the original order had been DO V S 10 OBL, the recoding might have been OVS, because DO is more integral a sentence part than is 10 or OBL, As can be seen from the word order types listed in Table II, not many sentences in any one language would have been affected by the unavoidable arbitrariness inherent in this procedure. 3 There are some phonological differences between the ordinary conjunction 'and' and the aspectual marker discussed in this section. The aspectual marker, as illustrated in (1) d., tends to trigger gemination of the initial consonant of the word to which it is cliticizedAnd, the conjunction is likely to be reduced to we- in unstressed syllables, while the aspect marker remains wa_-. In all examples, I only gloss w- 'and' in sentences in which it represents a simple conjunction. In examples in which it has an aspectual function, this function is taken account of in the gloss for the verb and the conjunction itself is not glossed. According to Kutscher (1970), spirantization in Aramaic, probably the "same" as spirantization in Hebrew, was underway by the sixth century BC. Since the Moabite inscription is from the ninth
87
century BC, it is probable, but not certain, that spirantization had not begun. A more rigorous argument can be constructed based on the timing of the change of Proto-Semitic interdentals to fricatives in Hebrew and to dental stops in Aramaic. In the Aramaic inscriptions from the eighth century, the interdentals are written with the symbols for fricatives, while in later Aramaic, the symbols for stops are used. This suggests that the change had not taken place by the eighth century. And, since there are no orthographic confusions between interdentals that were maintained from PS and interdentals resulting from post-vocalic spirantization, it is unlikely that both sets of interdentals were present in the same stage of Aramaic. If the Hebrew spirantization change was simultaneous with or influenced by the Aramaic spirantization, it, too, could not have been active before the loss of PS interdentals fn Aramaic. Unfortunately, there is a certain degree of circularity in the argumentation in this section. This is inevitable, since my inferences are based on a closed corpus of data. Barring discovery of a new inscription, there is no way to test my explanation against data that were not in the set of facts that it was proposed to handle. I have used current terminology "ergative" and "absolutive" for Speiser's "agent" and "subject" cases. I have translated Aistleitner's glosses into English. It should be noted that Aistleitner interprets this episode as taking place in the past, while Gordon treats it as present/future. Gordon uses underlined or italicized glosses to indicate a rendering that he is uncertain of. See Chafe (1976) for a discussion of these factors. In my Akkadian citations, I have observed the following conventions: hyphens separate syllable signs. Capital letters in the citations represent names of syllable signs about which no phonemic information is known. Words written in lower case without hyphens represent ideographs whose phonetic value in Akkadian is known. Raised letters indicate determinatives, symbols that indicate the semantic field that the object represented by the preceding or following word belongs to, but that, presumably, were not pronounced. I have ignored the particle -ma/-m in my glosses. For details about its function, see Blejer (1978). 12 It should be noted that the orthography provides no case information for ilim 'gods.' The editors supplied the genitive -jrn for the ideograph, based on the context. a Riemschneider (1968:42) suggests that this construction developed to facilitate preposing of the genitive noun. If so, this is
88
an example of a circumfixal construction, in the sense of Greenberg (1979). Within the context of Greenberg's model, such a construction represents a change in progress from Head-Genitive to Genitive-Head order, presumably following a change from VO to SOV. This view is inconsistent with, the view espoused in the text that spoken Akkadian was never SOV. Only intensive study of the distribution of circumfixal genitives in Akkadian over time and dialects can determine whether the construction was a stylistic variant, for emphasis, or whether it is indicative of syntactic change in progress. 13 I do not know what relevance to ascribe to the fact that in both sentences in (48) the subject is a pronoun followed by a noun in apposition to it. If it were not for the fact that SVO appears to have had a very general distribution in Official Aramaic, this could motivate positing a process of fronting emphasized subjects from underlying VSO word order. 14 The analysis of formulaic expressions as relics of an earlier syntax is illustrated for Indo-European by Watkins (1976). Of course, it must be borne in mind that, given the complex linguistic situation in the ancient Near East, the possibility remains that certain formulae, especially legal ones, were translations from some other language. 15 This may be interpreted as evidence for underlying VSO word order. word order.
Truly direct speech should not be characterized by marked Blau does not explain this. Many of these texts were translated from Hebrew or Aramaic
sources. Amharic maintains some prepositions, prefixed causative and passive markers, post-verbal object clitics and preverbal negation markers. Greenberg (1979) discusses the spread of OV harmonic orders within Ethiopian Semitic. Bach (1979) proposes an operation of "Right Wrap." Within the categorial frameword of Montague Grammar, this operation can insert a subject into a "derived intransitive verb" (VP), giving the surface order VSO. It is an open question whether a grammar including such an operation would be more highly valued for a VSO language than one in which V, S, and 0 are of equal status. Anderson and Chung (1977) describe a VO topicalization in Breton, suggesting that this clearly VSO language may have a VP constituent.
CHAPTER THREE AGENT PHRASES 3.0 Introduction In this chapter) I will show how detailed investigation of a single construction, the passive agent construction, can, in principle, be used to determine linguistic relatedness. This particular investigation does not lead to any direct hypotheses about the Semitic language family, because close analysis shows the construction to be an archaism in the ancient Semitic languages. And, it is a tenet of the comparative method that deductions about subgroupings can only be based on shared innovations. However, it will be shown in section 3.5 that significant claims can be made, based on an examination of the prepositions marking the agents in the various languages. One of the problems inherent in any discussion of passive agents is the confusion of syntactic and semantic notions of agent. Syntactically, an agent is a noun, with some kind of oblique or prepositional marking, in a passive sentence that could serve as the subject of a (truth-functionally equivalent) active sentence. Semantically, an agent represents some entity, probably human, that is behaving willfully, of his/her own volition. Clearly, not all nouns that become subjects of active sentences are agents in this semantic sense (Fillmore 1968:32-39). But, even subjects that are not semantic agents can become syntactic agents in passive sentences such as The door was opened by the key. Where there has been conflict between the two senses of the word agent, I have attempted to be consistent in using the syntactic criterion of agency rather than the semantic one. 3.1 Passive Agents in Hebrew It is generally assumed that Proto-Semitic, like its modern descendants, did not allow the expression of an agent in a passive 89
90
sentence. The following quotation from Brockelmann (1961) is illustrative: In the original Semitic language, the passive is used only when the agent is in no way being considered; as soon as it is brought to consciousness, the active form of expression must be used. (p. 142) Despite this, most handbooks of ancient Semitic languages include in the discussions of the various prepositions examples of agentive use. So, Gesenius cites about a dozen examples of passive sentences in Biblical Hebrew in which an agent is explicitly mentioned, preceded by one of the prepositions 1_- 'to,' b_- 'in, on, with,' or min 'from.' As is the case in many nineteenth century reference grammars, it is difficult to tell whether Gesenius intends his examples to be representative of general patterns or simply unexplained anomalies. In any case, the majority of his examples are with 1_- 'to.1 Four of them (Ruth 2:20, Sen 14:19, I Sam 15:13, I Sam 23:21) contain the passive participle borux 'blessed;' these sentences clearly represent some kind of formula, regardless of the correct interpretation of the preposition. One these sentences is given in (1). (1) borux ?avrom ls?el 9s I yon blessed Abram to-God powerful
Gen 14:19
The New English Bible translates (1) 'Blessed be Abram by God.' But, the Jewish Publication Society and the Soncino Pentateuch have 'of God.' Independently of my work on this subject, I have always assumed that the correct interpretation is the literal 'to God,' so the sense of the verse is that Abram is somehow set aside or marked as special to God. There are two sources of difficulty in the sentence. The first is whether the participle barux should be interpreted dynamically or statively. I suspect that there is an inconsistency between stative interpretation of the participle and agentive interpretation of the preposition. Another difficulty lies in the lack of an exact equivalence between the Hebrew verb borax 'he blessed' and the English verb bless. The Hebrew connotes a contractual exchange of obeisance for benediction, while the quid pro quo is totally absent from the
91
English (Ullendorff 1977b:63, Ferguson 1977). This means that a possible interpretation of (1) is 'Abram is/was knee-bent to God.' One of the other four sentences cited by Gesenius (Psalms 73:10) is fudged by the NEB with the notation "Heb. obscure." (2) urne
mole
yimmosu
lamo
and-waters-of fill-PARTICIPLE will-be-found to/for-him Of the remaining three, one is best translated with ' f o r , ' one with 'from,' and one with ' t o . ' These sentences are given in (3) through (5). (3) wayyeTtar
y i shoq laSonay Isnoxah
appealed
Isaac
to-God
(4) wa?im b o ? e l l e
lo
tiwwosru
?i s t o
on-behalf-of wife-his -Gen 25:21 li
and-if in-these NEG you-will-be-correcred to-me 'And i f despite a l l this you w i l l not be corrected to me.' —Soncino Lev 26:23 (5) ?elef me?o hakkesef ?aser luqqoh lox 1000 100 the-silver that was-taken from-you 'The 1100 pieces of silver that were taken from you.' —Soncino Judges 17:26 Gesenius also cites three examples in which the preposition min 'from' is apparently used with an agent. (6) wslo
yikkoreQ
kol
bosor ?o<5
mimme
and-NEG will-be-cut-off a l l flesh still/anymore fromwaters-of hammabbul the-flood Gen 9:11 'Never again shall a l l flesh be cut o f f by the waters of a f l o o d . ' —Jewish Publication Society Artom's commentary on this verse states: "The mem on the word mimme indicates the cause." (7) me?a5onay mis9a5e
from-6od
yever kononu
steps-of man
are-established
Psalms 37:3
Translations of (7) vary. The Holy Name Bible and the Interpreters' Bible have 'The steps of a good man are ordered by God.' Soncino has
92
l
I t is of the Lord that a man's steps are established. 1 The NEB has ' I t is the Lord who directs a man's steps.' And Artom's modern Hebrew translation has ' I t is God who makes man's steps correct so that he does not f a i l . ' Clearly, God here is an agent. However, the fact that so many translators have chosen to render the sentence as a c l e f t rather than as a simple sentence suggests that, in Hebrew, i t is an example of a focussing construction, perhaps parallel to the Arabic marking of a focussed (fronted) constituent with ?amma 'as f o r , ' i l l u s t r a t e d in (8). (8) ?amma ssafinatu
fakanat
! imasa"kTna
as-for the-ship-NQM well-was-it to-unfortunates-GEN yaTmuI una f i Ibahri they-work-JUSSIVE in the-sea-GEN 'As for the ship, i t belonged to poor men who worked on the sea.' This interpretation of (7) is supported by the fact that the putative agent is the f i r s t constituent in the sentence, in contrast to i t s position later in the sentence in examples (6) and (9). (9) maddua? missadday
lo
nispsnu
Tittim
why from-the-almighty NEG are-hidden times Job 24:1 'The day of reckoning is not hidden from the Almighty.' —NEB
(?) has a footnote in the NEB indicating that "a prefixed why in the Heb. has not been translated." Since the syntax of the verse is not clearly understood, i t would not be reasonable to accept the "clearer" parts of i t as examples of anything. Therefore, only (6) of Gesenius' examples of sentences with min as an agent marker is unambiguous. Gesenius further states that _b- ' i n , a t , on, with' is rarely used to mark a passive agent. He then cites three verses, (10) - (12). (10) sofex
dam
ho?o56m bo?a5om
domo
spill-PART blood the-man by-the-man blood-his yissofex will-be-spilled
Gen 9:6
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(11) waSoni
suwwo
ba5onoy
and-lord-my was-commanded by-God (12) ho?ovo9o haqqasb
the-work the-difficult
Numbers 36:2
?asEr fubbaS
box
that was-worked by/on-you
'the cruel slavery laid upon you.' — N E B Isaiah 14:3 Anderson (1971:13) states in connection with examples like (10) - (12): This raises the question of whether there is a proper agential tagmeme in the Hebrew verb clause. Various examples of b-, mill, and 1- have been classified as agential in function. I believe ft is possible to show that all such cases are better explained as instrumental (b_-s min) or referential (]_-)> but detailed demonstration is outside the scope of this paper. This claim is valid with regard to the referential (dative) phrases, as shown above. The instrumental examples are, however, trickier. The difference between instrument and agent in a passive sentence is extremely subtle, and can come down to a matter of perspective. There is no guarantee that such a subtle distinction can be made for a language that is no longer spoken. However, I believe that certain inferences can be made. In sentence (6), it is perfectly compatible with the Biblical world view to interpret the 'flood waters' as God's instrument in destroying mankind, What cannot be determined, however, is whether or not speakers of Biblical Hebrew would have preferred the instrumental reading over an agentive one, or whether they would have felt any ambiguity in the sentence at all. Only in rare and fortuitous cases can an absolute statement be made about the world view of a speaker of a dead language. I believe that sentence (11) is one of those cases. Insofar as I can enter, even temporarily, into the Biblical world view, I can imagine no entity, no force, that could use God as an instrument or tool in carrying out some action. Since this reasoning forces us to admit the syntactic category agent into any grammar of Biblical Hebrew, there is no need to seek alternative explanations bordering on casuistry for any of the examples presented above. The question then becomes: how widespread are agent phrases in Biblical Hebrew. With that in mind, I surveyed
94
several widely separated sections of the Hebrew Old Testament. The passives were isolated on the basis of the morphological form of the verb: verbs with an infixed u_or prefixed n- (possibly assimilated to the initial consonant of the verb) are passive. Instances of morphologically passive verbs without attested active counterparts are noted in the discussion. I found a total of 335 passive sentences, distributed as shown in Table I. Book
# of passives
32 58 54 84
Genesis 1-17 Joshua (all) Proverbs 1-10 Psalms 1-41
10 22 75
Ruth (all) Lamentations (all) Jeremiah 1-10
Table I: The numbers of passive sentences in various sections of the Hebrew Old Testament. Within this sample, I found one agentive use of min (out of 44 sentences containing this preposition) and 12 agentive uses of b_(out of 61 passive sentences containing this preposition). Included in this total were several of the sentences cited above in the discussion of Gesenius' claims--(6), (7), and (10). The others are listed in (13) through (23). (13) wan Ivraxu
bsxa
kol mi spaho9
ho?o5omo
and-will-be-blessed -you all families-of the-earth —Gen 12:3 (14) y a s s o r e f
bc?es
?o9o we?e9
ko! ?aser
lo
will-be-burned - f i r e him and-ACC a l l that to-him 'He shall be burnt, he and a l l that is h i s . ' —NEB
Joshua 7:15 (15) wefatto hissavTu no
li
ba5onDy
and-now be-sworn please to-me (16} gam
?avdsxD
also servant-your
ni zhor
is-warned
- God
Joshua 2:12
faohem
-them
Psalms 19:12
95
'It is these that give thy servant warning.1 --NEB (17) biSvar
?a5onay somayim naTasu
-saying-of God {18} gi'bbor lo
hero
heavens were-made
yinnosel
NEG will-be-saved
barov
Psalms 33:6
koah
-much strength
(19) ?en hammeI ex noss? barov hay!I NEG t h e - k i n g i s - s a v e d -much v a l o r
Psalms 33:16
Psalms 33:16
(20) noqasto ba?in>re f ixo were-caught-you - s a y i n g - o f mouth-your Proverbs (21) w a n i l q a S t o ba?imre and-were-trapped-you -saying-of (22) nisqao
To I
6:2
fIxo mouth-your P r o v .
6:2
pasoTay bayo6o
was-bound yoke-of sin-my
-hand-his
Lamentations 1:14
'My transgressions were bound around me; his own hand knotted them round me.' — N E B (23) noyo?alu
were-stained
baddam
-the-blood
Lamentations 4:14
From the above examples and the accompanying glosses, it is clear that not all of the b_- phrases are best interpreted as agents, although such an interpretation is clearly possible in most cases. A possible objection to my claim that Biblical Hebrew had agent phrases is simply that 13 candidates out of 335 passive sentences is simply not that significant; the construction, if it existed, was at best marginal. While this may be a valid form of objection on synchronic grounds—synchronic grammars should deal with regular patterns and not sporadic relics—it is not tenable in a diachronic investigation. As Watkins (1976) has pointed out, much can be learned about the history of certain kinds of sentences within a language from a study of synchronically marginal constructions. Thus, it is not the case that we can ignore a marginal construction in a diachronic investigation. It must somehow be explained, either in terms of the patterms of one synchronic stage of the language or as a relic of a previous stage. On the other hand, it is not at all clear just how infrequently a construction must appear to be considered marginal. One way of quantifying intuitions about marginality of passive agent sentences
96
would be to determine the percentage of passive sentences with agents in some language in which we are sure that tht construction is not marginal. Whatever the boundary, it must be lower than that percentage. To that end, I surveyed the June 1978 issue of Computer Design magazine. In the connected text accompanying the advertisements in the first half of the issue, there were 52 passive sentences, out of which two explicitly referred to the agent. These are given in (24). (24) a. One and all of them are supported by our powerful software. b. All [are] backed up by applications support available nationwide. The percentage of passive sentences in which the agent is expressed is 3.5% in the admittedly small English sample. The 13 out of 335 sentences with agents in the Hebrew sample comes to 3.66%. While these figures do not prove that the f u l l passive with explicit agent was i n tegral to Biblical Hebrew, i t is clear that the construction cannot be discounted on a s t a t i s t i c a l basis. 3.2 Agent Phrases in Arabic In Arabic too there are sentences that have been claimed to contain passive agents. Wright, for example, states that the preposition min 'from' can be used to mark the agent in a passive sentence in "vulgar" Arabic (ii:139) and/or in "modern" Arabic ( i i : 2 7 0 ) . His example is given in (25). (25) la yasluh lilayin ?iI la I i?an yutraha NEG it-serves for-thing-GEN-INDEF but to-COMP i t - b e thro wn xarijan wayuda~sa mina nnasi out-ACC-INDEF a n d - i t - b e - t r a m p l e d from the-man-GEN
' I t is good for nothing at a l l but to be thrown out and be trodden underfoot by men.' --Wright Ntlldeke (1963) also gives several examples of passive sentences with mj_n agents.
These are given in (26) through (28).
(26) sunbuku mi n rudFd i Imarwi mafIHIu hoof-his - crushing-GEN the-pebble-GEN is-injured-PART
97
'His hoof has been injured by the tiny pebble.' (27) ka?annahu min sila"?i nnari mahlulu like-COMP-he - warmth-GEN the-fire-GEN is-heated-PART ' l i k e he is heated by the warmth of the f i r e . ' (28) yurawwafu
min s u t i
lytira~bi
he-was-made-insane - voice-GEN the-raven-GEN 'He was driven crazy by the voice of the raven.' NOldeke notes (p. 54) that i t is possible to interpret the objects of min in (26) and (27) as the sources of the action rather than as agents; in other words, neither the pebble nor the f i r e is necessarily acting of i t s own v o l i t i o n . But, there is no contradiction in viewing these phrases as semantic sources and syntactic agents. Reckendorff gives seven examples of sentences in which a putative agent is marked with min, All but one are from early (preeighth century AD) non-Qoranic sources. (29) ma
?Utiya
nnabTyuVia
min r a b b i h i m
what was-revealed the-prophets-NOM - master-GEN-their QOR 2, 130 Since revelation in the Qoran is indirect, through an intermediary, i t may be preferable here to interpret rabbi him as the source of the revelation rather than the agent who effected i t ; alternatively, we have a semantic source acting as a syntactic agent. ( 3 0 ) ?almu?minu
la" y u l d a y u
the-believer-NOMNEG is-stung
min j u h r i
-
marratayni
snake-nest twice
I t is unreasonable to interpret j u b r i as an agent in (30); c l e a r l y , snakes' nests do not sting anyone. (31) wa?uriya wasit.un min ?ahlihi and-was-uprooted - people-GEN-his I t is more l i k e l y the case that someone, not mentioned in (31), is uprooting Wasitun from his people than that the people are doing the uprooting. (32) rTTa minhu fu?adT was-agitated -it heart-my
98
In (32) it is clear that my heart became agitated as a result of some event.
Reckendorff himself translates minhu as Mnfolge.'
It is not
clear, however, whether a pronoun representing this event could serve as the subject of a corresponding active sentence. (33) mi8|uka
like-you
minhu
yu?nafu
-it/him
will-be-snubbed
The interpretation of (33) is unclear. I t may mean something l i k e : 'Someone l i k e you would be snubbed for such an act. 1 Reckendorff translates minhu 'hieruber.' (34) hummiltu
min
?asmav?a nusban
was-burdened-I
heavens poverty-ACC-INDEF
'Heaven { i . e . , God) burdened me with poverty.' (35) nuwwimiT
min \u\\
were-put-to-sleep-they
mi"
sahirtf
while COMP were-sleepless-they
The most l i k e l y interpretation of (35) is 'they were put to sleep because of a l l the time they had been sleepless,' but i t is also possible to interpret i t as 'the length of time that they were sleepless made them t i r e d . ' In addition to these examples with min, that are more convincing in the aggregate than singly, Reckendorff also cites some examples of putative agents with the prepositions b- ' w i t h ' and 1_- ' t o . ' (36) ?iSa subiqtu
if
bihi
was-passed-I -him
In (36) the interpretation is clear. The object of bi would cl early be the subject of the corresponding (synonymous) active sentence sabaqani 'he passed me.' (37) t u f l a
jawanibuha"
will-be-raised sides-NOM-her
bittarib
-the-dust
In (37), the dust is the material out of which the wall will be made, not the entity that will build the wall, so an agentive interpretation is not possible. (38) ?urdi?na
were-suckled-we
biha
-her
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Although it is preferable to interpret her in (33) as the source of the milk rather than as the agent of the suckling (in the semantic sense), there is still a corresponding active ?arda9tna" 'she suckled us. 1 (39) ?alla5Tna
yus?altJna
that-DUAL
was-asked
lahu
-him
(39) is extremely difficult to interpret. All that is clear is that he_ is not being asked anything. The most likely interpretation is that several questions were asked on his behalf. (40) hatta ma
?ura?u
lahu
until NEG I-am-frightened -him The most likely interpretation of (40) is that I am not scared of him or on his account. But, one of the Arabic speakers that I consulted on these interpretations paraphrased the sentence 'He doesn't scare me,' suggesting that l_a_ might in fact indicate a syntactic agent here. (41) lam yuhdad
IimuTtamatin
NEG was-destroyed -disaster-GEN-INDEF In (41), it seems reasonable to interpret the disaster as the instrument of his destruction, although there is nothing to preclude a more agenty interpretation. (42) yusahhadu
lihalyi
he-was-kept-awake -ofnaments-GEN
nnisa"?in
the-female-GEN-INDEF
In (42), i t is his thinking about feminine ornaments, not the ornaments themselves, that is keeping him awake nights. (43) ?!5a buhieat ''ansa'buhunna lisa?ilin if was-traced lineage-NOM-their -questioner-GEN-INDEF In (43), the tracing is not being done by the questioner but rather on his behalf. In summary, various sources on Classical and Pre-Classical Arabic syntax l i s t 12 examples of passive sentences with putative agents marked by irn'n, 3 with ^ i _ and 5 with Ja_. Of these sentences, 4 of the ones with min seem to be valid examples, as do two of the ones with t>i_. Only for one of the examples with Ja_ does i t seem plausible
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to claim that it contains a syntactic agent. So, these data indicate that early Arabic contained at least remnants of a passive agent construction. On the basis of the data given, it is impossible to determine whether there was any difference between bj_ passives and min passives, or whether the two prepositions were in free variation in this context. It should be further noted that in Pre-Islamic Christian Arabic, there are passive agents marked with min (Blau 1967:424). Blau attributes the construction to Aramaic and Greek influence. The fact that Aramaic influence on Arabic is plausible (the primary meaning of min is 'from' in both languages) does not mean that borrowing is the only explanation available for the Arabic construction. In any case, no Aramaic source is available for the JDI_ agent marking. 3.3 Agent Phrases in Aramaic Kutscher (1969) presents evidence that similar agented (full) passives were found in Biblical Aramaic and in the contemporary Official Aramaic. I found no examples of this in my sample (see section 3.4 for details), but this lack can be accounted for on statistical grounds; I only had five passive sentences in my sample. All of Kutscher's examples mark the passive with the preposition min, which means 'from' in Aramaic as well as in Hebrew and Arabic. (44) uminni
sim
t?em
and--me was-promulgated order Ezra 4:19 'And I made a decree.' --Kutscher (45) dsn?
[z
grant-the that
rnjn mlk?
-
wmny
yhb
king-the and- -me was-given
IThhpy to-Ah-Hapi Driver II 'The grant that was given by the king and me to Ah-Hapi' —Driver Kutscher isolated 12 examples of this agent construction in the Aramaic portions of the Biblical books of Ezra and Daniel and, while he does not cite figures for Official Aramaic, he refers to fif-
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teen or twenty distinct examples of the construction in the Official Aramaic documents published by Driver and Cowley without explicitly citing the sentences. He furthermore does not indicate how many agentless passives there were in the texts that he surveyed. According to Kutscher, this agent construction does not occur freely in Aramaic, however. This construction, while very widespread, is, at the same time restricted to a particular context. It is found only in direct speech where the agens is a king or a very highranking person, or in a narrative when speaking either about a deity or about the king or about a high-ranking person. -Kutscher (1969:149) Kutscher uses the term "passivum majestatis" for this particular use of a passive agent. He further claims that, "as far as [his] knowledge goes, it is foreign to Aramaic dialects." Thus, it must have been borrowed into Aramaic from Persian (p. 151). Unfortunately, however, there are only four examples found in Persian texts that are more or less contemporary with Official Aramaic. Kutscher attributes this to lack of texts rather than to non-utilization of the construction in Persian. But, given the fact that min marks passive agents in early Arabic as well, it seems more likely that the construction cited by Kutscher is a retention. By the time of Official Aramaic, its use had been restricted, and we would predict that linguistic descendants of Official Aramaic would not have had any way of marking passive agents. Further arguments for the agent construction as a retention will be given in section 3.5. At this point, it should suffice to note that later Aramaic dialects do not mark agents with min; those that mark agents at all use some other preposition. Maclean gives the following example from the Neo-Syriac dialect of Urmia (p. 170). (46) ku! miri pis lih all thing remained (=PASSIVE)finished (=PERFECTIVE) b'rya bid ?aiaha created-PART by God 'Everything was created by God.'
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The preposition bid is historically a contraction of biyad 'by/on hand.' 3.4 Passives in Other Semitic Languages In the course of the research summarized in Chapter Two, I counted the relative frequencies of passive and active sentences in languages other than Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic. The results of this count are presented in Table II. Language
# o f sentences
# of passives
190 63 124 58 60
28 4 20 5 11
Damascus Covenant Moabite Akkadian (Mari) Early Aramaic Ugaritic
Table II: Total numbers of sentences and of passive sentences in some Semitic language text groups. 3.4.1 The Damascus Covenant and the Dead Sea Scrolls Two of the 28 passive sentences in the sections of the Damascus Covenant that I surveyed are candidates for interpretation as agented. (47) ho?ole mizze yittofes bsze -. the-escaper from-thiswill-be-caught -this Dam. 4:18 (48) walo husvo p3?ero9om bafi ?ehoS and-NEG was-denied glory-their -mouth-of one Dam. 6:6 Carmignac (1978) found in the Dead Sea Scrolls 12 clear cases of the preposition J> marking a passive agent, and 10 more doubtful cases (p. 418). He found only one case in which a passive agent appeared to be marked with min, despite the fact taht Aramaic and Syriac, both of which could be expected to have greatly influenced Late Biblical Hebrew, use mjj^ for passive agents. Carmignac also found three sentences for which it could conceivably be argued that a passive agent is marked with 1_~> but he doesn't think any of them is a convincing case (p. 419) In any case, it is noteworthy that the relative frequencies of passive
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agents with j^- and min is comparable to that found in the Biblical text. But, it is not altogether surprising, since the language of the former is a descendant, and a relatively close one, of the language of the latter. 3.4.2 Old Aramaic I also found one candidate for agentive use of b_- in the Old Aramaic inscriptions that I surveyed. These date from the ninth century BC; their language is not necessarily a linear ancestor of the language of the Aramaic sections of the Bible (Garbini 1972). The relevant example is given in (49). (49) ?ykh 5y tvd 9wf? 5? b->9 how that is-burned wax-the this -fire
Sefire A 37
(49) should be compared with the Hebrew (14), which is repeated here for convenience. {14} yassoref
bo?es
?o9o ws?e8
fol ?as£r lo
will-be-burned -fire him and-ACC all that to-him 'He shall be burnt, he and all that is his.' Both of these sentences deal with ritual burning, (49) as the fate of an individual who violates a treaty, and (14) as the fate of someone who has violated God's commandments. Diest uses the Aramaic (49) to help explicate an obscure section of the book of Zedekiah. This additional Biblical reference lends credence to the suggestion that ritual burnings might have been common in the eastern Mediterranean in the first millenium BC. It would not be surprising, then, if such rituals had been described, or prescribed, with set formulae. Of course, attributing formulaic status to (49) and (14) does not absolve us of the responsibility for dealing with their syntax, at least diachronically. Following Watkins' (1976) suggestions for Indo-European, if it were to turn out that several Semitic languages had formulae for dealing with ritual burning and these formulae all contained passive agents, it could be concluded that at least a rudimentary passive agent construction is very old in Semitic. However, the sense of these
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particular sentences clearly allows a locative interpretation, as well as an instrumental one; agent marker may well be the least plausible interpretation of the preposition ])- in these sentences. 3.4.3 Ugaritic There were two candidates for agent-hood in the sections of the Keret epic that I studied. These are given in (50) and (51), with Driver's original interpretations. (50) tmh
mst
mtth
bm bkyh
was-soaked spread-of bed-his (51) msbTthn
bslh
one-seventh-of-them -sword
weeping-his
Keret 1, 30
ttpl
were-felled
Keret 1 , 20-21
Neither of these interpretations of Driver's is without controversy. Gray's interpretation of (50) is given in (52). (52) kmh
mst
mtth
/bm
bkyh
f a i l s spread-of bed-toward while weeping-he
/wysn
and-hesleeps
'He falls to his bed; while weeping, he falls asleep." This interpretation is accepted by Fensham (1972) and others cited there. Fensham's (1971) alternative to (51) is given in (53). (53) msb?t
hn bslh
one-seventh lo -lightning
ttpl
were-felled
Simple examination of the variation between (50) and (51) on the one hand and (52) and (.53) on the other is enough to show the extent to which the phonetic interpretation of the Ugaritic cuneiform is uncertain, let alone the parsing and interpretation of the transcription. My gut feeling is that (50) and (53) are the more reasonable alternatives, but I am loath to let too much ride on this preference. In any case, if (50) is the correct parse, the preposition bm can be interpreted 'as a result of.' Instrumental readings are available for (51) and (53). So, if any of the interpretations given above prove to be correct, that still would not force the conclusion that Ugaritic had even minimally a passive agent construction.
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3.5 Agent Markers In the previous sections I have shown that Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic had at the very least vestiges of a passive agent construction. A historical treatment must, following such a demonstration, address the question of whether these questions are innovations or retentions. And, if they are innovations, can subgroupings be based on them? It is not logically necessary that the question of the prepositions marking the agents be considered, since the possibility that a language could maintain an agent construction over several centuries, with no alteration save a change in the case/prepositional marking of the agent, cannot be discounted. So. it would be illegitimate to argue from the fact that the agents in Hebrew and Aramaic are marked with different prepositions that the passive agent constructions in these two languages cannot have had a common source. On the other hand, if there were two languages with the same preposition marking passive agents, it would be possible to use this similarity as evidence for the common origin of the constructions. In the remainder of this section, I will argue that, despite their differing forms in the various Semitic languages, min and b- are etymologically the sane prepositions. This etymological identity will be used to argue that the passive agent constructions discussed in earlier sections of this paper are a shared retention from Proto-Semitic. That is, Proto-Semitic had full passives which were later lost g in all of the surviving descendant languages. That the passive agent construction is a retention rather than an innovation is also demonstrated by the fact that ancient Egyptian also marked passive agents, with the preposition in_, which also served to mark demoted subjects in causatives (ferny1 and Groll, ch. 7 ) . In the Late Egyptian period, these were the only uses of this preposition, although the phraseology in ferny1 and Groll's discussion implies that passive agents were more frequent in earlier stages of Egyptian. In order for these facts about Egyptian to be relevant to a discussion of the agent construction in Semitic, it must be demonstrated that this is the same construction, in some well-defined sense (see sec.
1.3.1). The basis for the entire argument is that all of the prepositions mentioned in relation to passive agent constructions are etymologically related. This would be extremely unlikely in the case of independent innovation of the construction. It is not immediately obvious that either of these claims is correct. The first, that all of the propositions that mark passive agents in the Semitic languages are etymologically related, is by far the trickier. Table III lists the relevant prepositions and their cognates in various Semitic languages, along with the other meanings that the prepositions may have. Ugaritic: b^ 'in, at, with, from' Egyptian: m 'in, at, with, from' Tn_ SUBJECT of non-finite verb, AGENT Akkadian: ina 'in, at, with, from' Eblaite: UL 'in' Hebrew: b_ 'in, at, on, (from)' AGENT min 'from' (AGENT) Arabic b_ 'in, at, with' min 'from' AGENT aTs'o—fi 'in, on' Epigraphic South Arabian: b_ 'at, in, with, by' bn 'from' Ge'ez: b_ 'in, with, through, from, to' ?lmna 'from'
Harari: be_ 'in, with, from, by, of, on, at' Gafat: ba_ 'in, with, against' me 'from, to, in' Table III: Ranges of meanings of some prepositions in the Semitic languages and Egyptian. It should be noted that min, in those languages that have it,-,o marks the standard in comparative constructions. All of the languages from which data are presented in Table III except Akkadian, Egyptian, Ugaritic and Harari, have two distinct prepositions for this ablative/locative/instrumental field. However, ignoring differences in vowel quality, there are four different phono-
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logical shapes involved: b, m, miji, and vn. It could be claimed that Proto-Semitic, or earlier Afroasiatic, had four distinct prepositions, with subtle differences among them. However, this would not be a highly valued solution, since the methodology would, if extended, lead to an unlikely multiplication of prepositions in the proto-language. In the remainder of this section, I will outline an alternative to this unpalatable reconstruction. I would like to suggest that the earliest stage had two prepositions: *mb(V) and *ina. Davis (1973) similarly reconstructs a negative morpheme *mbV for Egyptian to account for a Late Egyptian alternation between forms with m and forms with b_. Cognates to this negative morpheme appear as ma_ in some Afroasiatic languages (including Arabic—see sentence (40)) and ^a_ in others (pp. 186-188). For my reconstruction, I am making no claims as to whether *mb was mono- or bi-phonemic, although I should point out that Greenberg (1965) provides evidence for reconstructing monophonemic */mb/, based on correspondences throughout the Afroasiatic language group. It would be fruitless to speculate about how these two prepositions split the semantic field ablative/locative/instrumental between them; the time depth is too great for that. However, I believe that it can be assumed that they both originally had referential meaning of some sort. The Egyptian restriction of j_n_ to grammatically governed contexts took place after the Semitic languages split from Egyptian. This left Egyptian with the preposition m_ («-*mb) to cover the range of the original two prepositions. Akkadian, the oldest of the attested Semitic languages, lost *mb, maintaining jna_ in the function of both; Eblaite maintained ina, but no evidence is available concerning *mb. It is clear that the traditional subgrouping of the Semitic languages given in Chapter One (4) is not supported at all by the list of prepositions in Table III, if it is assumed that the prepositions had a common origin and that *mb split, giving forms with rn and forms with b_. Evidence for such a split is found in Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Ethiopic. The cooccurrence of m_ forms and b_ forms in Ge'ez and
10S
Gafat (both Ethiopic) means the split took place in West Semitic. But, that leaves the task of explaining why Ugaritic, a West Semitic language, only has J>, which directly parallels the Egyptian use of m and the Akkadian use of ina. Given this major discrepancy, it is necessary to provide a model of the development of the Semitic languages that does not do violence to the preposition facts. Such a model is given in the remainder of this section. At the time that the West Semitic language group was breaking up, it "is quite likely that [m] and [b] were in free variation in those words that had */mb/. Given that /m/ and /b/ were clearly separate phonemes in these dialects and the fact that the preposition *mb must have covered a fairly wide semantic range, it is not surprising that the rn forms of the preposition and the b^ forms would have become differentiated semantically as well as phonologically. I would like to propose that this phonological and semantic differentiation was heightened by the compounding of the in variant of *mb with *ina, giving mina, and later min. It is significant that Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic all have the core meaning 'from' for the preposition min. Since the form is an innovation, this suggests that Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic did not become differentiated from each other until after Ugaritic had gone its separate way; it will be recalled that Ugaritic does not have any m_ form at all. Presumably, it generalized the b_ form of *mb, although the possibility that it developed and then lost an m_ form cannot be discounted. The form bn_ in the Epigraphic South Arabian inscriptions from the beginning of the Christian Era has been explained as a dissimilation from mn_ (Hofner 1942:154). This explanation has been rejected by Beeston (1962:57), in a passage that is worth quoting in full. The distribution of these forms, taken in conjunction with the fact that in Ugaritic both b_ and 1_ are attested in the sense 'from,' suggests that the whole ESA series bn_, In, hn_ are morphologically only enlarged forms of b_-, ]_-, h- to which the differentiated meaning 'from' has been attached. If so, it would be erroneous to visualized ESA bn as a "variant11 of Semitic mn_ as attested in Arabic and Ethiopic.
109
The vowel in Beeston's enlargement is not identified, as the ESA orthography provides no indication of vowel quality. But, i would like to suggest that the vowel was [i] and that Beeston's augment is the ProtoSemitic preposition *in(a). This indicates that the compounding that resulted in min in Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic was more productive in ESA. I conclude from this that whatever group ESA is part of split from Arabic-Hebrew-Aramaic just as compounds with jjx were becoming part of the language. As far as I can tell, only Ge'ez and Tigre of the Ethiopic languages have any traces of compounding with jin_. This is illustrated by the Ge'ez preposition ?imna 'from,' which, according to Dillmann, appears as ?jm_ in the earliest Ge'ez texts {p. 347). Tigre has a preposition Tab 'with, by, in, about,1 alongside b^ 'with.' The former occurs with a geminate [bbj before pronominal suffixes, so perhaps it resulted from *in-b by assimilation of the n_. Tigre also has men_ (Leslau 1945:195-196). Gafat also has the ^-m split: b£ means 'in, with,' and ms_ means 'from.' But, Leslau (1956) does not mention any compund forms. Because of the difficulty of finding evidence, I do not want to make too much of the Ethiopic data. Since compounding is the innovation, nothing relevant to subgrouping can be inferred from lack of compounding. And, it we are to account for the Ge'ez ?+mna as a compound, it is clear that we must make allowances for other mechanisms, mechanisms that obscured the transparency seen in Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, ESA and Tigre. Current linguistic investigation into the relationship between ESA and Ethiopic (summarized in Hudson 1977) suggests that the Ethiopic family is a daughter of ESA. This is inconsistent with the development of preposition compounding outlined here. If ESA had preposition compounding and Ethiopic didn't, either Ethiopic had separated from ESA before the latter developed compound prepositions, or Ethiopic had compounds and later lost them, with virtually no trace. I see no particular reason to prefer either alternative over the other. But, since a South Semitic group of some form is well-accepted,
110
I have indicated it on the tree in (54), which summarizes the hypothesized developments discussed above.
Hebrew Aramaic
Arabic
(Epigraphic) South Arabian/ Ethiopia
Assuming that the developments hypothesized above are accurate, this discussion indicates that Egyptian j n , Hebrew b~ and Aramaic/Arabic min, a l l of which can mark agents in passive sentences, can be traced back to the same etymon. This etymological connection suggests that their use to mark passive agents is o r i g i n a l , a retention from earlier stages of Afroasiatic. The second claim made on page 106 is relatively simple to demonstrate. This claim was that independent innovation of passive agent constructions with the same preposition marking the agent is unlikely. My evidence comes from comparison with a language family in which f u l l passives are known to be a recent innovation—Indo-European. In 155) are l i s t e d the agent markers in those Germanic languages that allow passive agents. (55) English: by_ German: von 'from' durch 'through' Danish: af 'off, for, from, on, with, o f (56) lists the agent markers in some languages more distantly related to English.
Ill
{56} French: p_ar^ (de_ 'of') Spanish: por 'intended for1 Roumanian: de 'of Welsh: gan ^Trom, chez' The range of prepositions used to mark passive agents in the Germanic languages is striking in comparison with the Semitic situation. The contrast is even more striking when Romance and Celtic data are brought into the picture, as these languages are at a distance from English roughly comparable to the distance from Egyptian to Hebrew or Aramaic. 3.6 Conclusion In this chapter, I have demonstrated that at least some of the ancient Semitic languages had constructions in which the agent of a passive sentence was explicitly marked. This construction was a retention from Pre-Semitic stages of Afroasiatic. Investigation of the prepositions marking the agents in the languages that have this construction and clearly cognate prepositions suggests that there was an innovating group consisting of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic. The innovation leading to the positing of this group was a particular regular preposition compounding process. Whether this grouping is genetic or areal can only be determined by comparing it to the groupings hypothesized on the basis of other phenomena, among these the phenomena reported on in other chapters of this dissertation.
112
Notes to Chapter Three This doesn't include sentences with the verb nola5 'be born,' in which the birth-giver or progenitor is marked with ]_-. These appear to contain genuine datives. C.f. archaic English "A child is born to them." p
The [n] can, if the word is cliticized to the following word, be assimilated to the first consonant of that word. If this consonant is [?, ?, h, h ] , the [n] drops and the preposition becomes me-. 3 This example is taken from Wright. The definite article is ]_-, which assimilates to following alveolar sounds. It may be that some of these examples should be discounted. higsavTu and nizhar lack active counterparts, nizhar, as far as I can tell, governs the preposition b~; this may well be true of other verbs represented in (13) through (23~) as well. Discounting the sentences containing the two verbs mentioned in Note 4, 11/335 of the passive sentences, or 3.28%, contain agents. I would like to thank Anne Royal and Kamel Abdel-Ghany for helping me interpret the Arabic sentences. Of course, neither of them is responsible for any errors of interpretation I may have made. The vowels in the sentences from the Damascus Covenant were added by the editor, Haberman. As noted above, it is at least chronologically possible that the use of min_ with an agent in Arabic resulted from Aramaic influence, but the use of b_ in (36) and (37) cannot thus be explained. q This is not to say, of course, that none of the modern Semitic languages has full passives, just that these constructions are descendants of the Proto-Semitic construction. 1 Ancient Egyptian was a sister {or a cousin) to Proto-Semitic. That is, for those who don't treat Egyptian as a Semitic/African mischsprache (see Hodge 1979 for discussion), there was at least one language stage that was the ancestor of all of the Semitic languages but not of Egyptian.
With the exception of the doubtful cases with 1_- 'to.'
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Most of the modern Ethiopic languages also have a preposition ka_- 'from,' which is probably a Cushitic (non-Semitic Afroasiatic) borrowing. The only phonetically similar preposition in Asian Semitic is jc- 'like.' All of the languages listed have, in addition, a dative/ directional preposition: Akkadian ana, Egyptian n_, and elsewhere ]__. 13 Greenberg's examples are lexical items in which Egyptian and Berber /m/ corresponds to Chadic medial /mb/ and Semitic /b/. There is in addition some evidence that a phonetically prenasalized stop may have been maintained until fairly recently in Semitic. Amharic has ?embi 'no,' possibly related to the Egyptian negative morpheme mentioned in the text. In addition, there are a fair number of words that have /m/ in some of the Semitic languages and /b/ in others. The following potential cognates are taken from Leslau (1938). i. Soqotri bene 'many', Arabic mana" 'he counted' ii. Mehri (ESA) mahdar/bendar 'town', Hadramaut (ESA) bandar 'port1, Dhofar (Mod." SA) menjader 'large cities', Yemenite Arabic bandar 'harbor' To ii. can be added from Leslau (1963): Harari bandar 'city', Amharic msndar 'village' Other possible cognates (not taken from Leslau): iii. Harari bad 'country', Akkadian mata 'land' iv. Harari misbar 'nail', Hebrew masmer 'nail' v. Amharic be[I a 'he said' , Hebrew mfTlel 'he mouthed' Newman (1977) reconstructs for Proto-Chadic a noun ^a_ "place.1 The Logone reflex of this item is mba. This lexical item could be related to *mb 'in.' 14 Mina is still the alternative to min when the following word begins with a cluster. In all other cases, the Arabic linking vowel is /i/. Further, mina or even mina was the primary form of the preposition in some Ancient West Arabian dialects (Rabin 1951:72). 15 Most subgroupings of Ethiopian Semitic isolate a North Ethiopian group consisting of Ge'ez, Tigre and Tigrinya. Because of their location, these languages have been subject to more Arabic influence than have the southern Ethiopian languages.
CHAPTER FOUR EMPHATIC CONSONANTS 4.0 Introduction All of the Semitic languages, with the exception of Maltese Arabic, have a class of consonants called emphatics. These consonants contrast both with ordinary voiced consonants and with ordinary voiceless consonants. In this chapter, I will examine the phonetic nature of these consonants in the languages in which they appear. Then, I will use the results of this investigation to see whether it is possible to determine what these consonants were in Proto-Semitic, and to see what conclusions regarding subgrouping may be drawn from their distribution. 4.0.1 The Notion "Emphasis" Before we begin this examination, it will be useful to discuss the concept "emphasis." In general, this term is used both for the backed consonants found in Arabic and for the ejective consonants found in Amharic and other Ethiopian Semitic languages. Even though the term is used to describe two different kinds of secondary articu2 lation, it is a useful one. This is because there is no direct evidence for the nature of these consonants in dead languages such as Ugaritic, Biblical Hebrew and Akkadian. However, it is clear from the orthographies of these languages that consonants cognate to the Arabic backed consonants and the Amharic glottalized ejectives were phonologically distinct. For this reason, the term "emphasis" will be maintained in this chapter, despite its phonetic inexactness, as a cover term for a phonologically distinct class of consonants. Emphatic consonants will be transcribed /C/. When it is necessary to specify a mode of articulation on the phonetic level, [ C ] will be used for ejectives and [ C ] for backed consonants. 114
115
4.0.2 Consonant Correspondences Table 1 below indicates some correspondence sets for emphatic consonants in the various Semitic languages. Note that no reconstructed consonants have been provided; this is due to controversy in the literature as to the places and manners of articulation of some of these consonants (in addition, of course, to the question about the nature of the emphasis, the central question of this chapter). Akkadian Ugaritic Hebrew Aramaic ESA Ethiopic Arabic (Biblical)
Table I: Emphatic consonants in the Semitic languages. Of the correspondences presented in Table I, #2 is by far the most problematical. With the others, the main problem is to determine the phonetic realizations of the contrasts represented in them in the various Semitic languages. For the most part, the place and manner of articulation is relatively straightforward; all that must be determined is the phonetic exponent of the phonological emphasis. Set #2 by itself is the subject of an entire monograph (Stoiner 1977) which claims 3 that it was a fricative-lateral emphatic */*/• All of the transcriptions in the table, with the exception of those for Arabic and Ethiopic, should be taken with a grain of salt. They are based on interpretations of the orthographies, mostly on the basis of comparison with other Semitic languages, rather than on direct observation. 4.1 Emphasis in the Modern Semitic Languages In this section, I will present direct physical evidence for the nature of the emphatic consonants in the modern Semitic languages.
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4.1.1 Arabic There is a vast l i t e r a t u r e on the physical correlates of emphasis in the various Arabic dialects, both ancient and modern. I t should be kept in mind that the modern Arabic dialects d i f f e r greatly among each other, and the i l l u s i o n that they somehow constitute the "same" language is fostered more by p o l i t i c a l considerations such as pan-Arabism than by objective l i n g u i s t i c standards. I t should be understood as well that many Arabic dialects have more emphatic sounds than the f i v e l i s t e d in Table I . Much of the l i t e r a t u r e concerns the question of whether emphasis might better be treated as a feature of syllables or of vowels than of individual consonants ( e . g . , Lehn 1963). However, the secondary articulations described for the above five consonants are equally applicable to other emphatic consonants in these dialects. The Arabic dialects w i l l be discussed in west to east order. Marcais (1948) provides the following descriptions of some emphatic consonants in Algerian Arabic. In general, the t i p of the tongue is more retracted for emphatic than for non-emphatic consonants. This difference is 8 mm for [ t ] - [ t " ] ( p . 10); the former is clearly dent a l , while the l a t t e r is alveolar. Furthermore, [ t " ] is accompanied by clear pharyngeal constriction, visible in X-rays. For [ d ] , the pharyngeal cavity in one informant measured 5 cm from front to back. For [ d " ] , the same informant's pharyngeal cavity was only 3.5 cm wide. In addition, the hyoid bone was raised slightly during the articulation of [ d " ] (p. 16). In the case of the voiceless consonants, there is a further difference. For [ t ] , voicing begins s l i g h t l y after the release of the stop. This is perceived as a slight a f f r i c a t i o n ; in some dialects of North African Arabic, the normal pronunciation of / t / is in fact [ t s ] . On the other hand, the voicing of a following vowel begins almost simultaneously with the release of a pharyngealized stop (p. 21). Ghazeli (1977) studied the physical correlates of emphasis in Tunisian Arabic, [ s ] , [ 5 ] and [ t ] are characterized by lowering of the tongue root, pharyngeal constriction and alveolar closure, as opposed to dental closure for the non-emphatic equivalents of these
117
consonants. The greatest backing effect was found for [t"], and the least for [s"3. The non-emphatic [t] was strongly aspirated; voicing began some 30 msec after the release of the stop. Emphatic [t"j was also aspirated, but less strongly so; VOT was 10 -15 msec. Ghazeli also found that the emphatic consonants had a strong lowering effect on the second formants of adjacent vowels (1977:78); there was also a slight raising of the first formant. Lehn (1963) lists the following characteristics of emphasis in Cairo Arabic (pp. 30-31): i. slight velarization ii. pharyngeal constriction iii. slight labialization iv. increased tension of the entire vocal tract These characteristics are, generally speaking, less prominent in female speakers than in males. This particular claim of Lehn's is in part substantiated by Kahn (1975) and Royal (1979). Kahn measured formant frequencies of vowels in emphatic and non-emphatic environments, as uttered by male and female speakers. In the first of her studies, the degree by which the second formant (F2) was lowered following a pharyngealized consonant was greater for men than for women, as shown in Table II. In a subsequent study of Kahn's, this effect was not replicated. Speaker [e"] [i] [i"] [•]
W, ' M, 1
M, 1
Fl F2 Fl F2 Fl F2
300 3000
400 2300
500 2300
500 2000
450 2550
500 2450
550 2200
600 1700
250 2250
250 1500
500 2200
600 1500
250 2500
300 1700
550 2200
500 1700
Table II: Lowering effects of pharyngealized consonants on following vowels. All figures are in Hz. From Kahn (1975:41).
Kahn theorizes that this was due to the dialect areas her informants
118
were from; in the second study, she had a higher percentage of Saudis, and this particular difference between men's and women's speech may be restricted to Egyptian and, perhaps, Lebanese Arabic. Royal (1979) attempted to determine the extent of this difference between men and women in the degree of pharyngealization in Egyptian Arabic and the social/stylistic significance of whatever difference there is. She found that female speakers had just as strong a pharyngeal effect on following vowels as did male speakers, but that the timing of this coarticulation differed. For males, most of the F2 transition was clearly audible; it occurred after the cessation of aspiration. For females, however, much of the tongue movement corresponding to the F2 transition occurred prior to the onset of voicing, and is, therefore, hidden. The extent of this difference varied, depending on social context; the difference between males and females was greater in same-sex interactions than in male-female conversations. Obrecht (1970) performed a study on perception of synthetic stimuli to determine what is the strongest cue in the perception of emphatic and non-emphatic consonants in Egyptian and Lebanese Arabic. Subjects listened to sequences of CV syllables differing from each other in only one parameter. They were asked to identify the initial consonant and forced to choose among [t t" k q]. The first parameter that Obrecht manipulated was the frequency of the plosive burst accompanying release of the consonant. Lebanese speakers tended to hear all of the bursts as velar consonants; bursts at 1800 Hz or lower were heard, for the most part, as [q], while those at more than 2040 Hz were heard as [k], Egyptians, on the other hand, tended to hear all of the bursts as emphatic. Bursts of 1440 Hz or lower were identified as [q]. A burst of 1800 Hz was identified as [t"] 43% of the time and as [q] 25% of the time. Bursts of 2040 Hz and higher were identified as [t"], with [t] the main alternative. When Obrecht manipulated the apparent locus of the F2 transition, striking dialect differences again emerged. F2 transition loci of 1200 Hz or less were strongly identified as [q] while those of 1440 Hz or more were overwhelmingly identified as [t"] by Lebanese speakers.
119
While Egyptians also identified segments containing F2 transition loci smaller than 1200 Hz as [q], they overwhelmingly heard [k] in the stimuli containing higher transition frequencies; the only substantial minority response was [t]. Obrecht concludes on the basis of these data that the most powerful cue for consonant differentiation is the frequency of the plosive burst, followed by the frequency and duration of the F2 transition. However, it is not clear on what basis he arrived at this conclusion. None of the tests that he reports on in the article presents a wide enough range of stimuli to differentiate all of the consonants in the forced choice set. And, only by means of a factor analysis of the results of a paradigm in which several parameters, for example, burst frequency, transition frequency, F2 frequency of the steady state of the following vowel, and VOT, were manipulated could one legitimately determine which of these parameters plays the greatest role. If anything, Obrecht's results show that it would be simplistic to expect to find only and only one primary cue to the nature of a given sound. Ali and Daniloff (1972), in an X-ray study of speakers of Lebanese Arabic, found that the tongue dorsum and the tongue root are the primary articulators of the emphatic - non-emphatic contrast (p.-99). Emphatic consonants are accompanied by a "marked localized pharyngeal constriction," and a slight enlargement of the oral cavity ahead of the constriction (p. 100). In general, Arabic pharyngealized consonants cause a backing of adjacent vowels. This is illustrated in part in Table II (page 117). It has been generally thought that this is a low-level coarticulatory phenomenon. However, Ali and Daniloff claim (p. 100) that this is a higher level phenomenon; the rate at which the subjects were speaking was low enough that they could have produced sequences of [ta] and [t"a] with identical steady state vowels, as there was enough time to move the tongue into position. This fact will be of more significance in the discussion of how the Proto-Semitic series of which the Arabic pharyngealized consonants are reflexes might be reconstructed (sec. 4.4). Delattre (1971) states that we would expect Fl and F2 transi-
120
tions of pharyngealized consonants to be nearer to each other than the Fl and F2 transitions of the corresponding non-pharyngealized consonants (p. 131). The raised Fl results from the constriction of the pharynx and the lowered F2 from the slightly enlarged oral cavity found in the production of pharyngealized sounds. Pharyngealized consonants are also characterized by a slightly lowered F3 transition; this lowering is similar to but less extreme than that found in the articulation of American [r]. This theoretical effect was measured by Obrecht (1968). He found that the F2 transition frequencies for various emphatic consonants were lower for the corresponding non-pharyngealized consonants. His figures (from pp. 24-25) are presented in Table III. Fl
F2
b b" b" (med)
400 400 600
1150 950 1000
t t" d d (med) d" d" (med)
360 300 400 300 450 300
1800 1200 1750 1800 1050 1200
k g (nons) q (nons)
300 300 600
2100 1900 1200
Table III: Fl and F2 transitions for Lebanese Arabic (from Obrecht 1968). Tokens labeled "nons" were nonsense words. All figures are in Hz.
One other experimental result needs to be mentioned for Lebanese Arabic. Yeni-Komshian, et. al. (1977) determined that pharyngealized and non-pharyngealized consonants are not differentiated systematically be voice onset time (V0T, the physical correlate of perceived aspiration). This may be due in part to the fact that there is a four way distinction among dental/alveolar stops: the pharyngealized - non-
121
pharyngealized distinction cross-cuts the voiced - voiceless one, giving /t t" d d"/. In any case, all of the voiceless stops that Yeni-Komshian reports on had VOTs ranging from 15 to 35 msec. For the voiced stops, vocal cord vibration begins 40 to 80 msec before release t
of the stop. This contrasts with North African Arabic, in which [t] and [t"] are distinguished by VOT (see above, p. 116). In contrast, according to Panconcelli-Calzia (1921), a speaker from Aden (on the Arabian peninsula) pronounced [t] and [k] with stronger releases than for [t"l and[q]. The voicing for [t] and [k] began only after the plosive burst, while for [t"] and [q], the onset of voicing coincided with the release of the stop. In other words, in Adenese Arabic, the pharyngealized - non-pharyngealized distinction was accompanied by a difference in VOT/aspiration. In addition, Panconcelli-Calzia describes the pharyngeal constriction for [t"] in terms of the hyoid bone and the larynx. "The position of the tongue root remains the same for [[t] and [t"]]" (p. 184). The acoustic differences result solely from the laryngeal and pharyngeal displacement. The same thing is true of [d] - [d"] and [k] - [q]. We can summarized the various correlates of emphasis found in one Arabic dialect or another, although it should be emphasized that there is no one dialect in which all of these characteristics are found. Primarily, emphasis is realized in Arabic as a contrast between consonants accompanied by a secondary constriction of the pharynx and consonants without such a constriction. Often, pharyngealized consonants are retracted in comparison with the corresponding non-pharyngealized consonants. That is, [t] is dental and [t"] alveolar. Often, too, the pharyngealized consonants are less heavily aspirated than the corresponding non-pharyngealized consonants (of course, this difference is not found with [d]-[d"]). Furthermore, the pharyngealized consonants often have a backing effect on the surrounding vowels; more specifically, the allophones of a given vowel phoneme that are found in the vicinity of a pharyngealized consonant have higher Fl and lower F2 than the allophones of that phoneme in non-pharyngealized environments. The pharyngeal coarticulation is sometimes accompanied by slight labial-
122
ization. In some dialects, this labialization is pronounced enough that non-native speakers of Arabic assimilate words containing pharyngealized consonants into their languages with labialized consonants. For example, the Arabic word [s"adiqi] 'my friend' becomes [s w adiki] in some Bantu languages (Meinhof 1921:85). Inasmuch as it is not necessarily clear for any one dialect what is the primary cue for the emphatic - non-emphatic distinction, we can at this point come to no conclusions regarding this distinction in ancestors of modern Arabic dialects. 4.1.2 Modern South Arabian Johnstone (1975} includes the following glottalized consonants in his inventory of the consonants found in the Modern South Arabian languages: [t'3, [k'], [ s 1 ] , [§'] and ['53. He also lists preglottalized variants of [I ] and[r]. There is no glottalized cognate sound to set #2 in Table I; rather, the relevant sound is a lateral, transcribed [z] by Johnstone and [ Iz ] by Steiner. ['53 also has an ejective variant [e 1 ] and [s 1 ] arises from [k 1 ] by a regular palatalization. Johnstone states that the glottalization of these consonants is not as strong as that of the corresponding consonants in Amharic, but he gives no more precise definition of strength of glottalization. It may be that there is less energy in the glottal burst following the release of the oral closure in the Modern South Arabian languages than in Amharic, or that the lag between the oral and glottal releases is shorter in MSA, but this can only be determined by the use of precise instruments. In any case, Johnstone claims that it is the non-aspiration of the ejective consonants that is the primary cue distinguishing them from the homorganic voiceless stops. He seems unaware of the relationship between perceived aspiration and the onset of vocal cord vibration, however, and of the precise articulatory nature of glotta1ized consonants. In the pronunciation of an ejective consonant (glottalic pressure consonant in Catford's (1977) terminology) the glottis is tightly closed. While the primary closure (say, apico-alveolar) is
123
maintained, the glottis is raised. Because it is closed so that little or no air can escape downward, this raising causes an increase in the pressure behind the oral closure. When the oral closure is released, this pressure difference causes air to rush out from above the larynx. Because the vocal cords must be closed for this pressure difference to develop, a voiced ejective is not possible. It is likely that the phones that Johnstone describes as "voiced variants" of the ejective sounds are wholly unaspirated. In other words, there exists some variation in the MSA languages as to when the vocal cords begin vibrating relative to the release of the stop. An alternative is that these "voiced variants" are produced with "laryngealized voice" or are 4 implosives. Within the MSA languages, there is evidence that, phonologically, the ejective series is classified with the voiced stops rather than with the voiceless ones. The evidence is that there are two morphemes occurrence of whose allomorphs is conditioned by the phonological class of the initial consonant of the stems to which they are prefixed. Forms with the article from Mehri are illustrated in (1); Johnstone provides similar forms for Harsusi and Sheri. U ) a-ge"d a-k'Fb kawb
'the skin' 'the heart' 'the/a wolf
This patterning could account for the fact, noted by Johnstone without explanation, that native speakers of some MSA languages have difficulty hearing the difference between an ejective sound and the corresponding voiced sound. The example he gives involves [s 1 ] and [z]. Because of the fact that Johnstone did not do any instrumental studies, there is much that we still don't know about ejectives in MSA. What effects do they have (if any) on adjacent vowels? How are ejective formant transitions different from those of corresponding nonejective consonants? How much energy is there in the glottal burst? What is the interval between the glottal burst and the onset of normal voicing? Nevertheless, the mere fact that MSA has ejectives rather than backed consonants will be useful in the decision as to the nature
124
of these consonants in Proto-Semitic. 4.1.3 Amharic Amharic, l i k e the other modern Semitic languages of Ethiopia, has a f u l l series of ejective consonants. In addition to the [ s ' ] , [t'l,
and [ k ' ] l i s t e d in Table I , there is a [ c 1 ] , which historically
derives from sequences of /t/-*-FRQNT VOWEL, and a [ p ' L which occurs only in loan words, [ t 1 ] and [ k 1 ] have labialized variants [ t u ' ] and [ k w ' ] . Interestingly enough, when Amharic borrows words that contain voiceless stops from European languages, these stops become ejectives. One instrumental study of Amharic (Sumner 1957) describes 5 ejectives as being accompanied by a constriction of the lower pharynx. In an ejective stop, the oral closure is released a f u l l half second before the glottal closure (p. 2), and i t takes about 10 msec after that for the vocal cords to vibrate normally for the following voiced vowel. The only difference between ejectives and corresponding nonejective sounds that Sumner notes is that the ejectives tend to have a longer closure than do non-ejectives. Ryan (1977), in a study the primary purpose of which was to describe some features of ejectives in Quechua, provides some information about Amharic by way of comparison. She recorded one informant reading nonsense words in a carrier sentences. Table IV shows the closure durations and Voice Onset Times for a l l consonants that she investiqated. EJECTIVE
c p' t' t"'
closure
VOT
98 82 88
28 24 28 67 51 32 34
s'
£' k'
k»'
69 87 77
VOICED
VOICELESS
C closure t tu
78 76
VOT 38 34
VOT
b 97 d 79 d" 84
9 8 12 94 25 15 18
z
63 g 77 k« gu 87 Table IV: Closure durations and VOT 's for Amhari< c
k
66 79 77
68 40 43
C closure
3
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The VOT's for ejectives in Table IV include both the time between release of the oral closure and release of the glottal closure and the aperiodic vocal cord vibration prior to normal voicing noted by Sumner. This labeling masks the fact that one important difference between Amhan'c ejectives and pulmonic voiceless stops is that the ordinary voiceless stops are aspirated while the ejectives are not. We may also note that the duration of the oral closure is greater for ejectives than for voiceless consonants; voiced stops are closer to the ejectives in duration than to voiceless stops. In an e f f o r t to make more precise determinations about the nature of ejective sounds in Amharic, I undertook the following instrumental study. A native speaker of Amharic from the Eritrea region of northern Ethiopia recorded a l i s t of 44 items on two separate occasions. The data were recorded in an anechoic chamber onto Ampex tape on a Magnacord tape recorder. Each token was preceded by i t s number and embedded in the carrier sentence: ?ivakes
bay 'please say
.'
Thirty-four of the tokens were actual Amharic words; seven were nonsense words of the form dVd. These were included to provide a baseline for vowel formants. A complete l i s t of the tokens, with glosses, is found in Appendix I I . Spectrograms were made of a l l tokens on a Kay Elemetrics Sonagram. As might be expected from the preliminary description given above, Amharic ejectives are characterized by a period of silence, f o l lowed by oral release, followed in turn by silence and release of the glottal closure. The length of the closure preceding the oral release i s , on average, longer for geminate than for non-geminate consonants, and for ejectives than for non-ejectives. Ejective affricates contain the following sequence of events: oral release of the stop, characteristic f r i c a t i v e noise spectrum, silence, and release of the glottal s t r i c t u r e . While the total duration of an affricate ejective is approximately that of an ejective stop, the amount of time between the end of the f r i c a t i v e noise and the glottal release is approximately one half that that is ordinarily found between the two releases of an ejec-
tive stop.
These figures are summarized in Table V. Consonant type
P L A
r
N
E J E C T I V E
stop
C CC
Oral closure duration
Gap between oral and glottal release
82.11 201.08
affri-• C cate CC
c
CC
160.63 287.36
69.36 64.98
affri-• c cate CC
155.96 200.05
23.66 34.46
stop
Table V: Duration figures for plain and ejective consonants in Amharic, All figures are in msec. I t should be noted that the most salient cue distinguishing simple from geminate ejectives is the duration of the primary (oral) closure. Because of the limited number of tokens (8 simple and 6 geminate), the difference in duration between the two silent periods preceding release of the g l o t t a l constriction is not at a l l significant. While this period of silence doubtless contributes to the ease with which native speakers distinguish words containing ejectives from words containing non-ejectives, i t is also important to note that the nonejective consonants are heavily aspirated, as shown in Table VI. Consonant
Table V I :
VOT Initial Med ial
t tt
52.41
k kk
60..45
82 .11 67 .21 1
82.30
Voice Onset Times for some Amharic consonants. All times are in msec.
127
For most of the initial fricatives in the sample, it was too difficult to distinguish the fricative noise from the aspiration for any figure to be meaningful. However, in a few tokens, a clear drop in high frequency noise is visible on the spectrograms prior to the onset of vowel voicing. For two tokens of #s_, the gaps were 30.22 msec and 48.36 msec. For one token of #£_, the gap was 36.27 msec and for one of #f_, the gap was 24.18 msec. Neither /§/ nor /f/ has an emphatic counterpart in the language, so whatever aspiration of these consonants is perceptible plays no distinctive role. On the other hand, the aspiration of /k/ s /t/ and /$/ contrasts with the non-aspiration of their ejective counterparts. However, without experimental manipulation of these two parameters in a perception study, it is impossible to know which is the primary cue for distinguishing sounds belonging to the two classes. In an effort to determine whether these physical differences are the only cues for the differentiation of the two classes, I examined the formant heights of vowels following both ejective and nonejective consonants, and the second formant transitions of these consonants and their voiced counterparts. That there might be some effect visible was suggested both by Sumner's observation already alluded to on page 124 that articulation of the Amharic ejectives is accompanied by constriction of the lower pharynx and by the effects of the Arabic pharyngealized consonants on adjacent vowels. Table VII gives the Fl and F2 transition vowels determined for alveolar and velar stop consonants. All figures are based on the earliest sign of formants for the vowel following the consonant in question. If there was any doubt as to the location of the transition for a given token, that token was not used. Difficulties arose primarily with voiceless stops preceding /a/, perhaps due to the high Fl in most /a/ tokens (around 900 Hz for my informant).
128
Dental/Alveolar
Velar
Voiced (8,9)
Fl F2
562.5 2175
511.11 1972.22
Voiceless
Fl F2
881.25 2055.56
740 1880
Fl F2
816.67 1716.67
687.5 1937.5
(9,5)
Ejective (6,4)
Table V I I : Average Fl and F2 transition values for Amharic voiced, voiceless and ejective stops. Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of tokens each average is based on. All figures are in Hz. The actual values for these transitions are plotted in Figure I (p. 129). I t should be noted that the presence of two dist i n c t F2 transition l o c i for velar stops is well-documented in the l i t e r a t u r e for English as well as for other languages, so Amharic is not anomalous in this regard. What is s t r i k i n g , however, is the substantial lowering of F2 for [ t 1 ] as opposed to [ t ] , in contrast with the raising from [ k ] to [ k 1 ] . I have no explanation for t h i s , but i t does suggest that [ t ] and [ t 1 ] d i f f e r from each other not only in manner of articulation but in place uf articulation as well. A one-way Analysis of Variance performed on the figures for the alveolar consonants indicates that the variation in the F2 values is highly s i g n i f i c a n t . That i s , i t is extremely unlikely that this variation would exist as a result of random factors connected with the particular tokens analyzed. Rather, i t is l i k e l y that the variation is correlated with the different consonant types analyzed. In these terms, the probability that the F2 variation could arise from chance factors is much less than 0.0005, that i s , less than 5 chances out of 10,000. The probability that the Fl variation could have arisen by chance is between 0.001 and 0.005, that i s , between one and f i v e chances out of 1,000. Randomness as an explanation is s t i l l quite unlikely here, a l though not as unlikely as for the F2 variation. Table V I I I l i s t s the average Fl and F2 values for four of the seven Amharic vowels, following both ejective and non-ejective
/ / / / / 1 1 ' 1 /
2600 ' 2500 2400 2300 2200 -
N=6 tgt], N=2
[d], N=6
;
2100 "
[t], N=8 " " ^ " ^ ^
"'••W.N=9 F2 2000 "
•
/v
i 1900 "
/
';
s~
\'l
X /
1800 1700
n
1600
U ^ ^—
r"
^ * ^ ~ ^ j k ' ] , N=4
/ 5
: [k],N=8
1500 "
/
.-<' ft'], N=6 voiced consonants ejectives voiceless consonants
[b], N=3
500
600
700
800
900
1000
Fl
FIGURE I: Fl and F2 transition values for Amharic stops and following vowels. All figures are in Hz.
130
consonants. The sample did not include enough tokens of [u] and [o] for comparison to be meaningful. Furthermore, there were no tokens in which [e] followed an ejective consonant, so there is nothing to compare the other [e] tokens with. Context
Fl
F2
Number
Plain 706 Ejective 841.67
1886 1876
25 12
Plain 903.66 Ejective 933.33
1617.07 1736.89
41 18
Plain 735.71 Ejective 616.67
2211.24 2158.33
21 12
Plain 441.67 Ejective 487.5
2791.67 2812.5
6 4
Table VIII: Average formant frequencies for four Amharic vowels, depending on the nature of the preceding consonant. All values are in Hz. Statistical analysis shows that the raising of Fl for [a] following an ejective is less likely to be the result of chance factors than is the lowering of F2. Similarly, the raising of F2 in [a] following an ejective is more significant than is the lowering of Fl. And, for [+], it is the lowering of Fl that is significant, not the lowering of F2. It is difficult to come to any conclusions about [i], due to the small sample size. In any case, the effects of ejective consonants on following vowels are not as striking in Amharic as in Arabic; nor are they in as consistent a direction. We can conclude that there are several factors that contribute to maintaining the ejective - non-ejective distinction in Amharic. These include: the period of silence between release of the oral and glottal closures, the longer oral closure of the ejectives, non-aspiration of ejectives, and the changes in transition and formant frequencies of the vowels following ejective consonants. Without further study, it cannot be determined which of these cues is primary, or even whether native speakers all make use of the same cues to the same
131
extent in distinguishing ejective from non-ejective consonants. 4.1.4 Neoaramaic The modern Neoaramaic dialects are spoken in an area ranging from northern Syria/eastern Turkey to Kurdistan and southern Russia. There are three major dialect groups subsumed under the label Neoaramaic: Eastern, Central and Western dialects. Western Neoaramaic is primarily represented by the Aramaic of the village of MaflUla, north of Damascus, and other villages in the Antilebanon mountains. These dialects have an affinity with the Jewish and Christian dialects of Palestinian Aramaic, from the beginning of the Christian Era, and have been influenced by Arabic. Central Neoaramaic is primarily represented by the Turoyo dialect, spoken in the vicinity of the village of Tur Abdin in western Kurdistan. Eastern Neoaramaic consists of the dialects of Mosul, along the Tigris in northern Iraq, and Urmia, near Tabriz in northwestern Iran. Azerbaijani Aramaic, both in Iran and in the USSR, is part of the western dialect cluster. The Eastern Neoaramaic dialects have an affinity with the earlier Mandaic, Classical Syriac and Babylonian Talmudic Aramaic. Tsereteli (1977:248) divides these dialects precisely on the basis of the reflexes of the emphatic consonants in them. In the Western dialects, [t", s",d",z"] are maintained with pharyngeal constriction. Tsereteli does not specify this, but [d", z"] are most likely found only in Arabic borrowings. Arabic [d"] is the reflex of the lateral *t4, which became [?] in earlier stages of Aramaic, while [z'r] is the reflex of *9, which merged with *t (see below, p. 148). [t", s", d",z"] are among the most common pharyngealized consonants in Syrian Arabic (Ferguson and Ani 1961:9). In Central Neoaramaic, only [d"] is maintained of all the pharyngealized consonants. In Eastern Neoaramaic, no pharyngeal coarticulation at all is maintained. Rather, there has developed a new series of ejective consonants. These consonants are not, however, direct descendants of earlier pharyngeals (if indeed the pharyngealized consonants were earlier--more on that
132
later). The most interesting thing about the Eastern Nsoaramaic dialects is that they have developed a complicated word-level harmony process, perhaps as a consequence of losing the emphatic - non-emphatic distinction. This is referred to in the literature as "synharmony." In general, a word is either "flat" or "non-flat" (this is Garbell's (1964) tenti). This means that all of the sounds in the word are either flat or non-flat. Flat sounds differ from their non-flat counterparts in several respects. Garbell (1964:88), writing about Jewish Aramaic of Azerbaijan, gives the following list: i. flat phones are velarized ii. there is a marked rounding of flat labials ill. flat [r] is trilled rather than flapped iv. flat oral consonants are retracted v. the glottis is closed for the pronunciation of flat voiceless stops vi. the pharyngeal tract is narrowed during the production of flat sounds vii. flat vowels are centered Garbell's analysis seems to be that there is a suprasegmental feature [FLAT] that has the above effects on the sounds of a word. Jacob (1973), in her discussion of Thumian, an Eastern Aramaic dialect of the Syria/Iraq/Turkey border area, discusses a similar phenomenon. She analyzes Thumian as having a "long emphatic component." This emphatic component distinguishes pairs like +?Tda 'holiday' and ?Tda 'hand.' Emphatic vowels are pharyngealized, glottalized, and centralized (p. 20). Jacob is not explicit, but, I suspect that by glottalization of vowels she means laryngealized voicing (Ladefoged 1971:14, c.f. Catford (1964:36) "ligamental voice"). The Jewish dialect of Zakho in Kurdistan also has this phenomenon, although Sabar (1974:210) does not state it as strongly. There is a tendency for emphasis to spread in a word. In addition, [m I r] tend to become emphatic and to act as sources of spreading emphasis in a word. Since this is a historical investigation, the next question to treat is: What is the origin of flatness assimilation in Eastern Neoaramaic dialects? This question can be interpreted in two ways:
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i. Is the phenomenon of flatness assimilation internal to Eastern Aramaic, or did it result from contact with some other language, for instance, Kurdish or Arabic? and ii. What within Aramaic determines/d whether a given word is flat or not? Garbell (19.64:91), Sabar (1975:279) and Tsereteli concur in relating development of flatness in a given word to loss of an emphatic or pharyngeal consonants. Garbell notes it as well in words containing [r] followed by [m], a voiced labial, [h] or [gj, and Sabar in words containing back rounded vowels. It should be emphasized that there is a difference between listing the conditioning factors for a change and actually explaining the change's origin. All we have established by the above observations is that there is some kind of connection between the pan-Semitic phenomenon of emphasis and the Neoaramaic phenomenon of flatness assimilation. Garbell (1964:93) notes that Kurdish, an Indo-Iranian language coterritorial with Eastern Neoaramaic, also has a distinction between flat and non-flat consonants. She suggests (p. 102) that the presence of this phenomenon in Aramaic as well is evidence for a Kurdish substratum under Jewish Kurdistani and Azerbaijani Aramaic. In other words, ancestors of the speakers of Jewish Aramaic spoke Kurdish at one time. This means that there is not an unbroken chain from, say, Babylonian Talmudic Aramaic to Jewish Neoaramaic. I would like, however, to question the necessity of appealing to a Kurdish, or any other, substratum to account for the facts of Aramaic. In the discussion of Arabic, the effect pharyngealized consonants have on neighboring sounds was alluded to (p. 120). This effect is found in virtually all Arabic dialects. It is especially striking in Iraqi Arabic. Malaika (1963) refers to an [o]-like allophone of /a/ in the vicinity of pharyngealized sounds (p. 1 ) , a velarized allophone of /i/ and a lowered allophone of /u/ (p. 2 ) . The phonemes /t", x> 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
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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-
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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-
164
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-
165
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
167
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
F2 t-.29 t=2.87 t « . 49 t=.59
.5
There were not enough tokens with [ i ] for the figures given above for that vowel to be meaningful. 'subject marker+reflexive/reciprocal.' /h/ is deleted here by general rule (see Faber 1976:11,ff for justification of this analysis), and /t/ changes to [e] by the spirantization rule alluded to in the text (p. 139). process was active prior to the phonologization of the spirantization rule. While /9/ no doubt could have assimilated to /s/, giving [e"], there would have been no way to represent this in the'orthography. If anything, we would see a geminated [s"s"]» just as we get [zz] from /zt/, presumably with an intermediate stage of */z9/. 13 Steiner (1977:40) suggests that *t? was a uvular ejective in early Aramaic. This [ q 1 ] would have been distinguished from *k 1 [ k ] solely by place of a r t i c u l a t i o n .
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Ginsberg (1936:96) describes this dissimilation in the Elephantine letters and in contemporary inscriptions as a "strong tendency." This process is most regular in Eastern Aramaic {Mandaic}. Ginsberg attributes the process to Akkadian influence; Mandaic, as an Eastern Aramaic dialect, would have been more susceptible to Akkadian influence than the dialects spoken in Egypt or along the eastern Mediterranean. 15 *v, a voiced post-velar f r i c a t i v e is attested only in Ugar i t i c and Arabic. Some exceptions: Knudson (1961:90): " I f i t is to be assumed that the Semitic languages throughout their history had only two ways of forming emphat i c s , either by back pharyngealization or by g l o t t a l i z a t i o n . . . " Blake (1946:13): "These sounds may have been characterized by the glottal catch, as in modern Abyssinian, or by velarization, as in modern Arabic, or by both, or there may have been other elements." The Soviet Novy Alfabet, for dialects of Neoaramaic spoken in the Soviet Union, used a typically Russian means of distinguishing f l a t from non-flat words, / a / is spelled a^ in non-flat words and a_ in f l a t words, much in the way Russian spelling distinguishes palatalized from non-palatalized consonants by the spelling of the following vowel (Polotsky 1961:1,ff). Dolgopolsky refers to loss of aspiration. However, a more precise statement would refer to loss of distinctiveness of aspiration. There is no particular reason to expect unaspirated consonants to be retained as a result of loss of this redundant feature. The emphatics could j u s t as easily become aspirated, and this is apparently what happened in Lebanese Arabic. 19 This is Dolgopolsky's assertion, based in part on his analysis of Neoaramaic ejectives as retentions from Proto-Semitic. This is clearly not the case for Jewish Azerbaijani Aramaic (see above, pp. 133-135). I was unable to consult the source Dolgopolsky cites for Jewish Urmian Aramaic, as i t is only available at the New York Public Library, which does not participate in Inter-Library Loan. Thus, I am not in a position to evaluate Dolgopolsky's claims about this dialect. 20 Note the compatibility of glottalization and pharyngealization.
CHAPTER FIVE SIBILANT PHONEMES 5.0 Introduction Standard reconstructions of the Semitic language family (e.g. Brockelmann 1961, Moscati 1969) include three voiceless non-emphatic sibilant phonemes: /s/, /!/, and a third "mystery" Ikl whose precise place and manner of articulation are unknown. The three sibilant reconstruction, first proposed by Nflldeke in 1862 (cited in Kutscher 1965) on the basis of correspondences between Hebrew and Arabic, has been contested by, e.g., Speiser (1932), Garbini (1971) and Garbini (1972). The approach in this chapter will be the following: first, to introduce the orthographic evidence that leads proponents of the threesibilant hypothesis to support it, then, to determine the extent to which the latest lexicographical work in the various Semitic languages supports a three-sibilant reconstruction. It is conceivable, but not, in fact,the case that the early correspondences on the basis of which Ntildeke and others posited three sibilant phonemes for Proto-Semitic were not representative of the lexicons as a whole. The survey supports the three-sibilant reconstruction, so the next task is to examine the evidence for the phonetic realizations of the sibilant phonemes in the various Semitic languages. This evidence will feed into a reconstruction of the Proto-Semitic sibilant system, on the basis of which changes leading to the attested descendant languages can be outlined. However, because the reconstruction leads to the positing of several push chains, this investigation provides no input into a determination of subgroups within the Semitic language family. 5.1 The Correspondences in "Standard" Reconstructions The standard sibilant correspondences are given in Table I 171
HEBREW
UGARITIC
PHOENICIAN
OLD AKKADIAN3
ARAMAIC
rt
s VJ
I1
1 * 1
SA SI SU
5
52
sW
s1
IV11
SA SI SU
53
sO*6
s
B Of
ZA Z I ZU
9
i W"
9
1 rfl
SA 51 5U
) s Of £ t + I 5
W
ESA
Sj
W
ARABIC s
sj s ^y e
CJ
Table I: Correspondence sets involving sibilants in the Semitic languages. Phonetic values are only to be taken seriously for Ethiopian, MSA and Arabic, where they represent a continuous pronunciation tradition. In all other cases, they are guesses, based on etymological correspondences, for the most part. The diacritics given with the Hebrew/Aramaic transcriptions are at least a millenium older than the consonantal part of the orthography. NOTES TO TABLE I: There is no direct evidence that these sounds had merged in Ugaritic and Phoenician. Hebrew presumably maintained the s/s_ contrast despite its lack of representation in the orthography (pjice Diem 1974). In Hebrew, only S^ merged with /s/ ( S«). Most linguists transliterate sphere, based on similarities with the Hebrew/ Aramaic W . However, that symbol represents Hebrew £, as well, which may have been phonologically distinct in Phoenician, too. O
These are the normal spellings in Old Akkadian. ZA ll ZU also spells *z/S and *s ([ts], see ChaptervFour}., In later Akkadian, a new series ZAM ZIM ZUM was used for *s; *e, Sj, and S 2 merged in SA SI SU; and So came to be spelled SA SI SU. Consequently, ZA ZI ZU was restricted to *z/5. Gelb gives the following values for Old Akkadian: SA SI SU III ZA ZI ZU /s s z/ SA Si SU iQl It will be shown below that this is not viable. There is little direct evidence for phonetic values, but it is clear that all four sets were distinct. MSA reflexes of S, are problematical. See section 5.2.7 for details. This is an archaic form of the letter. ro
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on page 172. Similar charts can be found in nearly all comparative Semitic grammars. I have followed the practice of Leslau (1938) in using 5,, etc., to refer to the correspondence sets. Otherwise, comparison of my reconstruction with those proposed by other researchers would lead to hopeless confusion. Several comments about the data in Table I are in order. First of all, no pronunciation tradition for Hebrew/Aramaic actually maintains a three sibilant distinction. In Hebrew, the grapheme VJ represents three Proto-Semitic phonemes {assuming that the three-sibilant reconstruction is correct): S,, Sp and *e. However, words containing this grapheme that have etymological S„ are pronounced with [s] rather than with [s] in all liturgical pronunciation traditions that distinguish the two sounds. The conventional explanation for this is that S, in early Hebrew was similar to but distinct from S, [s]. Thus, the two were written with the same grapheme. But, toward the end of the Biblical Era (around the beginning of the Christian Era), S^ merged with S, [s]. Thus, the reading traditions have the graphemephone correspondences indicated in Table II.
V/
I
VI
s
D
s
Table I I : Grapheme-phone correspondences in Hebrew reading traditions. I t is the fact that i t is those cases of [ s ] that are spelled V/ that correspond to Arabic / s / that motivated the original suggestion of a three-sibilant system for Proto-Semitic. The transcriptions that are provided in Table I are t r a d i tional . Except in the cases of Arabic, Ethiopian and Modern South Arabian, where direct observation of the pronunciation of languages that have been in continuous use is possible, they embody no phonetic claims. Much of the scholarly opposition to the three-sibilant hypothesis is based on the v a l i d i t y {or the lack thereof) of the corres-
174
pondences given in Table I. Speiser (1932) ignores their force altogether. He claims that the earliest evidence that we have for the reconstruction of a three-sibilant system is the Hebrew orthography (c. 100 BC); as can clearly be seen in Table I, even the oldest Akkadian shows no signs of a distinction between S, and S 2 . According to Speiser (p. 246), Hebrew/Aramaic originally had two sibilants:V/ l%l and 0 /s/. In some words, /s/ changed to /s/, without effecting any change in the spelling. The apparent correspondences with Arabic are "explained" as follows (p. 247): "In Arabic, it is precisely the ssounds which remain unaffected by the change in Hebrew that shift in the direction of /s/." No comment is needed here regarding the implausibility of the suggestion that speakers of Arabic were aware of a sound change that had taken place to the north several centuries earlier, and that this knowledge is necessary to "explain" a sound change in Arabic. Garbini's (1971, 1972) argument against reconstruction of three sibilants rests on two foundations: his denial of the regularity of the correspondences between Hebrew HI and ESA S2, and his particular conception of the development of the Semitic languages. Garbini sees the basic similarities among Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Ugaritic, South Arabian, and, to a lesser extent, Ethiopian Semitic, as having resulted from a series of Amorite innovations. The Amorites were a group of nomads, first mentioned in Akkadian texts from about 2000 BC which refer to raiders from the Syrian highlands. They may be identical with the Emori referred to in early books of the Bible as one of the pre-Israelite inhabitants of the land of Canaan. In any case, little is known of their language, save that which can be inferred from the structure of names identified as Amorite in Akkadian texts (Gelb 1958, Huffmon 1965), and from deviations from "normal" Akkadian in 2 texts from western Mesopotamia. As waves of Amorite nomads emerged from the Syrian desert, they settled and mingled with the sedentary populations of the Mediterranean coastal areas and with nomadic tribes deeper in the Arabian peninsula.
Throughout the second and first
millenia BC, the Amorite concentration gradually moved south. The
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Amorites, as has been common when nomadic populations become sedentary, adopted much of the culture of the people they settled among. However, certain features of the Amorite language left traces on the languages of these sedentary populations; others were felt for a time but later died out. This chapter is not the place to discuss the merits and failings of Garbini's view of Semitic linguistic history; it is summarized here because only in its light can Garbini's view on the sibilant question be understood. Garbini reconstructs two sibilants relevant to the present discussion: *s for S, and So in Table I, and *s" for S,. In Hebrew, Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Aramaic, *s changed to IV and *s to /s/. Later, IV became [I] in some lexical items. In Hebrew and Aramaic, this [s] was "reabsorbed" into the phonemic system, merging with /s/. Only in South Arabian was the IV - HI contrast tentatively phonemicized (1972:59). Presumably, what happened in Arabic was that only some instances of *s changed to III, while others merged with *s. In support of this reconstruction, Garbini cites the lack of regular correspondence between Hebrew IV and Epigraphic South Arabian S 2 - He claims that ESA S2 corresponds to Hebrew IV as often as it does to /£/; this claim is echoed by Magnanini (1974). For Garbini, however, the two-sibilant reconstruction is motivated as much by his inclusion of the partial change of IV to [s] in his lengthy series of innovations atribuable to Amorite influence as by lack of correspondence between ESA S, and Hebrew IV. Referring to similar claims in Garbini (1960), Kutscher (1965) states: "Garbini's discussion of Proto-Semitic IV is full of contradictions, strange views, and on the whole is not very lucid, to say the least" (p. 39). There is a strong temptation to dismiss Garbini (and Magnanini) out of hand, precisely because of these logical inconsistencies. However, for all that their solutions seem absurd and poorly thought out, they do raise a valid question: how good are the correspondences on which the traditional reconstruction rests? If they are, in fact, acceptable, then it is possible to uphold the
176
traditional three-sibilant reconstruction; if not, some alternative mechanism must be found to explain the facts.
5.1.1 A Re-examination of S« In response to criticisms like those of Garbini (1971, 1972) and Hagnanini (1977), Beeston (1977) examined all attestations of the sign S 2 in the Epigraphic South Arabian corpus.
He first discounts
the reliability of proper names in establishing etymological connections.
After discarding the names, he is left with 81 ESA roots.
Of
these, 18 are of unknown or uncertain meaning, and, thus, useless for comparison, and 34 have no apparent cognates in Biblical Hebrew.
There
are three cases in which regressive assimilation in Hebrew masks the regular correspondences: these are listed in Table III.
gloss
ESA
sun
S^mS,
Hebrew semes
three
S^le
solos
root
S^rS-,
sores
Table III: Examples in which the apparent correspondence of ESA So and Hebrew /s/ can be explained as resulting from assimilation of the first sibilant in the Hebrew words to the last. There are 21 cases in which ESA S 2 definitely corresponds to Hebrew Isl
and three cases that are less certain.
does ESA S 0 correspond to Hebrew / s / — W S Q ? — below (pp. 196-19?).
In only one case
hosia? 'saved,' discussed
Furthermore, Beeston found 25 good cases in
which ESA S,corresponds to Hebrew / s / and only two in which it corresponds to /!/; in the latter—£s,y_ - ?oso 'made' and s,?d -safaS 'support'—the anomaly may be due to the presence of the pharyngeal fricative / ? / .
5.1.2 A Study of the Lexical Material While Beeston's results indicate the validity of positing a PS phoneme behind the ESA S 2 - Hebrew /!/ correspondence, the degree
177
of dissent in the literature suggests that a complete re-examination of the lexical material in all of the Semitic languages may be in order. With that in mind, I conducted a survey of lexicons and dictionaries of the following Semitic languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, Old Akkadian, Arabic, Socotri (MSA), Harsusi (MSA), Mari Akkadian, Ge'ez and Ugaritic. The sources for this survey are listed in Table IV. Hebrew— Mandelkern (Biblical); Dalman (1967) (Mishnaic) Arabic—Wehr (Modern Standard); Cowan (Proto-Colloquialj Old Aramaic—Segert (1975); Fitzmyer and Harrington Talmudic Aramaic--Dalman (1967) Old Akkadian—Gelb (1957) Mari Akkadian—BotteVo and Finet (1954) Socotri— Leslau (1938) Harsusi—Johnstone (1975) Ge'ez—Lambdin (1978) Ugaritic—Gordon (1965) Table IV: Sources for the lexicographic survey. On the basis of the lexicons, tentative cognate lists were established. Items were added to these lists from other articles concerning the sibilant problem in Semitic, notably Aro (1959), Beeston (1962*
1977),
Goetze (1958), La Sor (1957) and Stehle (1940). The next problem was to eliminate all items that could have been the result of borrowing.
In a study of this nature, it is as im-
portant to eliminate those borrowings that exhibit "regular" correspondences as those that exhibit "irregular" correspondences, since our interest lies in showing approximately what percentage of the "good" correspondences can be grouped into regular sets.
However, it is dif-
ficult to avoid circularity in this endeavour, given that this is an attempt to test the reliability of earlier work. Unfortunately, some of the studies of borrowing from one Semitic language to another take the approach that any apparent cognate that does not show "regular" correspondences must be a borrowing. Among these is Fraenkel (1962), regarding Aramaic loan words in Arabic. Fraenkel also explains some borrowings that follow the regular correspondences as resulting from folk etymology.
An Aramaic word containing
/s/ might have been borrowed into Arabic; then, the / s / , which normal-
178
ly corresponds to Arabic /s/, would have been replaced by /s/. It is far preferable to devise some absolute criterion by which lexical items can be discarded as borrowings. One of these is non-Semitic origin. If a word was borrowed into Akkadian from Sumerian or Persian in historic times, it is safe to assume that it was not part of the Proto-Semitic lexicon. It is also safe to eliminate words that deal with specific, datable cultural innovations. So, for example, the language of the early Christian church was Aramaic. Words dealing with Christianity in Arabic, Ethiopian and Modern South Arabian can be assumed to have come from Aramaic. A further category of cognate sets that can be attributed to borrowing consists of those items that in some way show traces of a phonological process that only happened in one of the Semitic languages. Still another thing to look for is too much similarity between forms. For instance, as will be apparent from the forms in Appendix III, the syllable structure and vowel patterns in Modern South Arabian and Arabic differ strikingly. But, if there were to be one potential cognate in which Arabic and MSA agreed totally on both syllable structure and vowel quality, this would be a strong indication that the item was borrowed. In an attempt to eliminate from my cognate lists all borrowings, I examined the following treatments of borrowing into various Semitic languages: Grimme (1912) on Epigraphic South Arabian borrowings into Classical Arabic, Fraenkel (1962) on Aramaic to Arabic borrowings, Kaufman (1974) on Akkadian to Aramaic borrowings, Ellenbogen (1962) on borrowings into Biblical Hebrew, Lieberman (1977) on Sumerian borrowings into Akkadian, and Leslau (1958) on Arabic loan words in Ge'ez. Often, the same forms were discussed by several authors, with conflicting conclusions. I eliminated from my cognate lists items that fit one of the first three criteria above. In effect, this means that I took a conservative approach; some forms that one or more authors listed above treated as borrowings were retained in the cognate pool. Before the final cognate lists were compiled, an additional class of potential cognates was eliminated. These were words that were
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only attested in two or three languages that are; independently known to have been in close cultural contact, regardless of the closeness of the genetic relationship. Thus, the large number of literary parallels between Ugaritic and Biblical Hebrew renders suspect any lexical item that is attested only in those two languages. Similarly, Johnstone (1975) reports on the extent to which the Modern South Arabian languages are being supplanted by Arabic, and Leslau (1947) notes the extent of Arabic influence on MSA. Because of this possibility of cultural contamination, items attested only in Arabic and Modern South Arabian, Aramaic and Hebrew, or Hebrew and Ugaritic were eliminated. Following this elimination of suspect items, the remaining lexical items were grouped into correspondence classes. The resulting lists are given in Appendix III, organized according to the traditional S,, So) S, notation. It is evident from even a cursory examination of these lists that there are three distinct sets of corespondences. That is, there were three phonemes in the parent language. It should be noted that no vowel conditioning /s/ could possibly be reconstructed, even if that sound had been a conditioned alternant of one of the other sibilant phonemes at an early stage. In the Semitic languages, the vowel patterns in a word provide significant grammatical information. Thus, all perfect verbs in Arabic have /a/ following the first consonant of the root. Similar patterns are found in the other Semitic languages, and it is probable that each language generalized earlier patterns in a different way, imposing a greater or a lesser degree of regularity on the systems as a whole. This "retreadiiiy" ir each of the languages makes it impossible to investigate the possibility of conditioned sound changes involving consonants in the Semitic languages. It is clear from the lists in Appendix III that the correspondences between Hebrew and ESA are extremely regular. Minor apparent irregularities are discussed in the notes to the charts. The only major anomaly that I' noted was the variation in the realization of S, in the Modern South Arabian languages. Leslau (1947:189) states
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that Modern South Arabian IV generally corresponds to Arabic /s/ and Hebrew /s/. This claim is upheld by my data: there are virtually no examples of /s/ in the MSA forms that I examined that do not fit into the S. correspondence set. However, other sounds but /s/ are represented here. In Socotri, there are a significant number of forms in which Sj is represented by /h/. This phenomenon is not uncommon in the MSA languages; but, it is more common in some than in others (Leslau 1937, Johnstone 1975:10). The other notable irregularity is the interchange of /s/ and /s/ in MSA. Whatever, the problem is here, it is something internal to MSA; the correspondence sets are well-established without reference to the Modern South Arabian data. Furthermore, the "deviation" is toward agreement with Arabic, a language known to have been exerting an increasingly strong influence on Modern South Arabian. 5.2 Reconstructing the System Following the establishment of three distinct correspondence sets for sibilants in the Semitic languages, the next task is that of determining what the three sibilants were. It would be possible to opt for an "algebraic" approach, and not worry about the phonetic realizations of the three sibilant phonemes. However, that would be avoiding the question. Part of what is bothering those who object to the threesibilant reconstruction is that they have difficulty imagining just what those sibilants might have been. Furthermore, stopping with the establishment of the phonemes would be inconsistent with the approach taken in the rest of this dissertation. 1 am willing to accept the proposition that the evidence necessary for a determination of the phonetic realizations of the sibilant phonemes may not exist in this case, but I am unwilling to entertain the proposition that it is impossible in principle to determine what these phonetic realizations were. In this section, evidence for the pronunciations of the various sibilants in the languages represented in Table I will be examined. In order to provide some perspective for this endeavor, other reconstructions that have been proposed by proponents of the three-
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sibilant system will be examined. Most of these authors explicitly deny that any phonetic claims are expressed in their reconstructions. However, it is often clear from their discussions of the changes that it is necessary for them to posit in the offspring languages and from the symbols that they choose to represent their reconstructed phonemes that they are, in fact, thinking of their symbols as embodying some kind of phonetic reality. Table V shows some reconstructions that have been proposed for the sibilant system. All of these writers assume in addition *9 and * s , the ejective affricate discussed at length in Chapter Four. La Sor S, S3
s
Stehle, Beeston, Brockelmann s s
Cantineau (1960) s ts
Table V: Reconstructions of Proto-Semitic s i b i l a n t s , according to various writers. Stehle, Beeston and Brockelmann a l l assume that the Proto-Semitic system was maintained unchanged in Hebrew, despite the fact that, presumably, no phonetic information is i m p l i c i t in the phonemicizations indicated in Table V. Stehle, for example, states that South Arabian o r i g i n a l l y maintained most Proto-Semitic s i b i l a n t s , but that, by the time of the earliest ESA inscriptions, the "characteristic South Semitic interchange [ o f / s / and /if] had already taken place" (p. 531). This claim of Stehle's is based on two unsubstantiated assumptions. The f i r s t is that ESA and Arabic are extremely closely related. Arguments based on such an assumption cannot be allowed in this investigation, since that premiss is part of the subject of investigation. Stehle's second assumption is that in ESA S, was /s7, S2 / § / . and S, / s / . This is consistent with her assumption of a close r e l a t i o n ship between ESA and Arabic; she can then assume that Pre-Arabic had a system identical with that of ESA and that S, and S3 merged before
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the Arabic alphabet was established. Even allowing, for the moment, Stehle's two assumptions, this framework leads to a paradoxical situation. If the PS reconstruction is not based on a phonetic claim, on what basis is Stehle positing a "characteristic South Semitic interchange?" And, if there is some phonetic claim embodied in her reconstruction, the mechanism by which she arrives at the ESA system is suspicious. The interchange that she is positing is diagrammed in Table VI. ESA s
i
S
2 3
S
Table VI: Sibilant values in Proto-Semitic and Epigraphic South Arabian, according to Stehle (1940). This interchange involves S, and S2 exchanging phonetic realizations but maintaining their phonemic distinctness. It is hard to imagine how this could have happened. A serious reconstruction would have to allow for intermediate stages of some sort. Since the phonemic system already contained /s/, /s/ and /z/, it is hard to imagine a "free" sibilant that would be available to serve as an intermediate stage. This problem suggests that at least one of Stehle's assumptions is incorrect. Perhaps, her reconstruction of PS sibilants is wrong. Or, perhaps, it is that the phonetic values that she assigns to the ESA sibilants are incorrect. In any case, further study is warranted. I must emphasize that the point of the previous line of argument was not to denigrate Stehle's work in particular. Any reconstruction of PS sibilants that restricts itself to the inventory of sounds that appear as reflexes of these phonemes in the offspring languages will inevitably encounter the interchange problem in dealing with Hebrew/Aramaic or with ESA. The inevitability of such an unnatural change in at least one language suggests that an investigation of the phonetic realizations of these sounds in the various languages would be a valuable exercise; in the best case, a more natural recon-
183
struction will be motivated, and in the worst case, support might be found for this "unnatural" reconstruction. 5.2.1 Evidence from Arabic In Arabic today, as indicated in Table I, S, and S 3 have merged in /s/, while So has become /s/. In addition, Arabic has maintained *e. But, there is a substantial body of evidence, summarized admirably by Steiner (1977) suggesting that, as late as the beginning of the Islamic Era (c. 700 AD), S 2 was a voiceless lateral A H / . Steiner's primary evidence is the existence of synonyms that differ only in that one has /!/ where the other has /s/. One such example is the word for 'clarified butter'—gUda—qi Ida. Steiner also cites (p. 99) one early Arab grammarian who refers to a "deviant" pronunciation of /s/ that was something like /t*/. Steiner has argued convincingly (see section 4.2.1) that / H / was indeed a glottalized lateral affricate (or fricative?); he infers, then, that the "deviant" /s/ must have been [t4j, a non-emphatic voiceless lateral. The best-known Arab grammarian, Sibawaihi, makes no mention of a lateral /s/, even as a provincialism to be condemned. But, the correct interpretation of the phonetic descriptions that he does give are unclear. By Sibawaihi's time, S, and S, had merged; this had probably happened by the time the Arabic alphabet was borrowed from Aramaic. The evidence is that there is only one orthographic symbol for reflexes of the two phonemes; there are two in Aramaic. Sibawaihi states that the place of articulation of this sound is between the tip of the tongue and the area just above the teeth. Cantineau (1960:47) interprets this as a reference to a dental or an alveolar fricative [s]. So is realized in Sibawaihi's Arabic as a sound produced between the middle of the tongue and the middle of the hard palate (Cantineau 1960:60). This is generally interpreted as [s]; such an interpretation is supported by the fact that / j / and /y/ have the same place of articulation for Sibawaihi as S 2 These interpretations may seem relatively straightforward. However, Beeston (1962:224) argues that the description of S ? as a
134
blade-palatal fricative can only be based on [?]» the German ich-laut. For Beeston, the apico-dental fricative that Cantineau interprets as [s] was probably [s], although [s] is not excluded. I have a strong feeling that this argument is obscured by differences between English and French sibilants. In other words, each writer is assuming that the Arabic sibilants of Sibawaihi's time are like those of his own language. This suspicion is heightened by the fact that those who question Beeston's interpretations are not native speakers of English. For example, Murtonen (1966:133) counters Beeston by claiming that Sibawaihi's description of S,/S 3 , which Beeston interprets as [s], is a perfectly adequate rendering of /s/ in Murtonen's native Finnish. And, Blau, a native speaker of German (or Hebrew), claims (1970:59) that Sibawaihi must have been describing [s] and [s] respectively, regardless of what Beeston claims. But, Steiner, an American, and, presumably, a native speaker of English, bases his doubts (1977:54,ff) on the fact that others have expressed doubt, not on a direct interpretation of Sibawaihi's description. Blau (1970:59) also objects to Beeston's interpretation on the grounds that a system containing /£/ and /c//, but not /s/, would be highly unnatural. The two alternative interpretations discussed in this section are summarized in Table VII, along with the modern Arabic values. Modern Arabic S,/So S£
s s
Pre-Arabic Cantineau Beeston s s
s 9
Table VII: Interpretations of Sibawaihi's descriptions of the Arabic sibilants of the eighth century AD. McDonald (1974) constructs an ingenious argument in support of the phonetic values Beeston has posited. But, because he has not thoroughly considered all possibilities, his argument is not as persuasive as it seems at first. In both the Hebrew/Aramaic and the Arabic traditions, mystical significance is attached in some quarters to numerological equations between words. In the Hebrew/Aramaic tra-
185
dition, numerical values are associated with each letter in a word in accordance with alphabetical order. The Arabic numerical values are derived not from Arabic alphabetical order but from the Hebrew/Aramaic alphabetical order. The only variation arises because of the incommensurability of the Hebrew/Aramaic and the Arabic sibilant systems. There were two basic numerological systems that developed for Arabic, differing only in the values assigned to the sibilants. These two systems, together with their Aramaic prototype, are listed in Table VIII. Aramaic
S3 S
l
O * W
West Arabic
s c/ tS" <J? S S^Sg c y
s
" t+" s
East Arabic
O" <J <J>
s
S" i
Vs3
S2
Table VIII: The Eastern Arabic and Western Arabic numerological representations of sibilants. The East Arabic system is clearly based on phonetic similarities between Arabic and Aramaic. Because it is more recent than the West Arabic system, McDonald suggests that the latter was also based on phonetic similarity with Aramaic, and that the differences between the two systems are the result of a sound change that took place in early Arabic. McDonald follows Beeston in assuming that the earlier (western) Arabic had the two sibilants /s/, a post-dental apical sibilant like that of Finnish, corresponding to /s/ (S,/S3) of later Arabic, and /c/, corresponding to /s/ (Sj) of later Arabic. He further suggests that early Arabic could not have had a sibilant identical to Aramaic /s/ because, when the Arabs borrowed the Aramaic alphabet, they did not borrow the letter 0 /s/. What McDonald is worried about is the equivalent numerologic sign to Aramaic W /£/. His question is why Arabic S 2 was not equated with the Aramaic /s/ in the older system. However, the facts that he presents are consistent with the analysis already given in this section. If early Arabic had S 2 /t4/
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rather than / § / , / s / ( S i / S J would have been the closest approximation to Aramaic / s / in the Arabic inventory. The use of Arabic / t 4 / to f i l l the s l o t of Aramaic / t s " / can be explained by the fact that both were emphatic affricates, / s " / then would have been the only candidate to f i l l the place of Aramaic / s / . But, once Arabic / t * / had changed to / ! / , none of this approximation would have been necessary. So, while the facts presented by McDonald seem at f i r s t to support Beeston's claim that early Arabic, as described by Sibawaihi, must have had S~ / ? / , his data are equally compatible with the value / H / , which was already argued for above on other grounds. As far as I know, there is no other evidence for Beeston's phonetic values for the early Arabic sibilants. Furthermore, Canti- ' neau's phonetic values assume that no change took place between Sibawaihi 's time and the present. I t may not be the "simplest" state of a f f a i r s for there to have been a period of 1100 years in which no phonetic change took place. However, in the absence of evidence for positing a change, the simplest methodology is to assume that there was none. Since Sibawaihi's statements clearly allow Cantineau's reconstruction, Beeston's evidence cannot be considered compelling; there is therefore no reason to accept his reconstruction. We can than begin building a table containing the best (earliest) reconstructions of the phonetic values of the sibilants in the various languages. This table, IX below, w i l l , in e f f e c t , be a fleshing out of the phonological correspondences presented in Table I . * s
Arabic i
S2
t1->!
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.
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*
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.
193
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
195
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
196
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
197
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
202
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 •<* s
Aramaic Akkadian s
s/h
s
s 9
5
t1
ts t
MSA
s 9
8
Table XIX: Phonetic realizations of sibilant phonemes in the Semitic languages. The task of reconstruction is simplified somewhat by the fact that there is no obstacle toward accepting the standard reconstruction of
210
*e; no other value for this phoneme seems reasonable, given its reflexes in the offspring languages. The only alternative that I am aware of is that of Garbini (1972). He suggests *s, on the basis of the Old Akkadian spelling of this phoneme with the SA series and the spelling of this phoneme with §_ in Old Aramaic. However, the change from As/ to /e/ that Garbini needs to posit for Arabic and Modern South Arabian seems even more unlikely than the change of *e to /s/ or /!/ which provides part -of his motivation for discarding the traditional analysis. If further reason to reject Garbini's reconstruction is needed, we need only consider the basis on which the name SA is assigned to the syllable series that is used to spell this phoneme in Old Akkadian. It will be recalled from the discussion above (p. 200 ,ff) that the SA signs received that name because they were used to spell names that appeared in Hebrew with /s/. However, the period during which these synchronisms are noted is approximately 1000 years later than the Old Akkadian era, and the sign !>A spells the reflexes of three PS phonemes rather than the one of the Old Akkadian period. As for Sg, it has been reconstructed as /s/ by almost everyone. However, previous works have not given due consideration to the evidence for /ts/ in early Hebrew. Nor have they considered the possibility that the earliest Akkadian reflex of this phoneme was /ts/ as well. And, ordinary comparative methodology requires the assumption of no change, just in case the offspring languages exhibit no variation. However, as soon as the possibility of variation in the offspring languages is acknowledged, it is no longer possible to insist on a priori grounds that one or another of the attested sounds is more basic; motivation must be found for any choice. All other things being equal, S, must be reconstructed as either *s or *ts. One factor that may be relevant to the decision is the relative naturalness of the changes that must be posited. Thus, it it could be demonstrated that deaffrication of /ts/ is more natural, within a rigorous definition of naturalness, than is affrication of /s/, that would motivate the claim that So was probably /ts/. However, I know of no notion of naturalness that is powerful enough to do this in
211
the absence of other considerations. There is no question that S, was some kind of lateral sound; the evidence presented by Steiner (1977) for pre-Arabic and pre-Hebrew is convincing. Furthermore, there are MSA Items containing laterals that are cognate with Arabic words containing /§/ and with words containing $2 in other Semitic languages. In this case, a sufficiently defined notion of naturalness is available. On a distributional basis, /t*/, the voiceless affricate lateral, and /4/, the voiceless fricative lateral, are extremely rare in the languages of the world, while there are many languages that have /s/ and/or /s/. The likelihood of either of the latter two sounds changing to / t V even once, let alone several times in the same language group, is infinitesimal. On the other hand, delateralization of /t4/ would have to be considered a natural change. In reconstructing S,, the options available are *s and *s. Any reconstruction must provide an account not only of the facts of the sibilant systems that have been presented in section 5.2 but also of the facts of the S, to /h/ change discussed in section 5.2.7. The latter account consists in providing a plausible answer to the question of whether /s/ or /s/ is more likely to be heavily aspirated and therefore confused with /h/. I would like to suggest that the answer to this question is unambiguously /s/. My reason lies in the acoustic spectra of [s] and [s]. Table XX, extracted from Strevens (1960:41-43) indicates the frequency levels at which noise is found in the relevant fricatives. Fricative
Lower Bound
Higher Bound
s
3500
s
1600-2500
8000+ 7000
h
400-700
6500
Table XX: Noise spectra for [s], [s], and [h]. All figures are in Hz. Assuming that the spectrum for aspiration is similar to that for [h] the transition between [ 5 ] and aspiration would be more perceptible
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than the transition between [I] and aspiration. Thus, aspirated [s h ] would be more likely to be heard as a distinct segment from the other sibilants than would [ S M . Perception of the aspirated sibilant as a distinct segment is logically prior to its reanalysis as an allophone of /h/; thus, these facts suggest that S., the sibilant that alternates with /h/, was */s/ in the Proto-language. The account given above explains how the change -from *s to /h/ could have taken place prevocalically; it does not, however, explain how the change could have taken place post-vocalically, as it must have in the -is/-oh suffix. This latter change can be explained either phonetically or phonologically. If the final /s/ was pre-aspirated, that is, if the vocal cords stopped vibrating before the fricative articulation began, the change of final /s/ to /h/ can be viewed as the mirror image of the change of initial /s/, since the same sequence of articulatory events would have been occurring, but in the reverse order. Alternatively, the extension of the rule to the mirror image environment can be viewed as a generalization/simplification of the rule changing prevocalic /s/ to /h/. It does not matter which alternative is selected. The only remaining problem is the distribution of these sounds in Ugaritic, which has /s/ causative markers but /h/ pronouns and directional marker. Here, what is at issue is the environment. In causative verbs, the causative marker is only stem initial in the suffix conjugation, as in Hebrew himlix 'caused to reign.' In the prefix (imperfect/narrative) conjugation, the subject agreement prefixes precede the causative marker, as in Hebrew yamlix. So, perhaps the same analogical leveling that protected root S, in Hebrew protected the causative marker in Ugaritic. Another argument for assigning the value /s/ to S. can be constructed on the basis of markedness considerations. Jakobson (1968: 55) points out that /s/ is the unmarked fricative on cross-language distributional grounds. If a language has only one fricative phoneme, it will have /s/, from which it can be inferred that / s / as a phoneme is more common in the languages of the world than is fit or /ts/. Trubetzkoy (1957:285,ff) notes also that marked members of phonological
213
oppositions tend to be less frequent in a language tahn are their unmarked counterparts. Of course, it cannot be inferred from the fact that /s/ is cross-linguistically unmarked that it was phonologically unmarked in Proto-Semitic. Nevertheless, it makes sense to examine the relative frequencies of the Semitic sibilant phonemes to see what light can be shed on the issue under discussion by the distributional evidence. Beeston (1977:54) notes the infrequency of So as a phoneme relative to the other Semitic sibilant phonemes. This is confirmed by the length of the cognate lists in Appendix III. The S, list contains 80 items, the S„ list 48, and the S, list 31. There is no reason to think that the items included in these lists are unrepresentative of the lexicons of the Semitic languages or of Proto-Semitic; lexical items that were eliminated from the lists were eliminated because the risk that they were borrowings was too great and this was done before the items were grouped into correspondence sets. In any case, I am uncomfortable with the traditional reconstruction, not the least because of the phoneme frequencies it entails: Sj IV - 80 items, S 2 l\M - 48 items, and S 3 /$/ - 31 items. In this reconstruction, it is precisely the garden variety sibilant /s/ that is the rarest. Even the highly unusual l\\l is more common. On the other hand, if it is assumed that S, was /s/ rather than /§/, as I argued above, the PS system will include the unusual sound /a/ but not the ordinary sound 1st. But, the latter alternative strikes me as more plausible than a system in which /s/ is so grossly under-represented. If the value /s/ is assigned to S-, S, must have been /ts/. This gives the system illustrated in Table XXI. Traditional Reconstuction s
.12 Proposal in this Chapter
i
S S, 2
°3 s ts Table XXI: Two reconstructions of the PS sibilant system.
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5.3.1 Again, Two Sibilants or Three? One other consideration needs to be touched on before the changes required by the reconstruction advocated in section 5.3 are outlined. Thus far, it has blithely been assumed that the evidence for distinct S^ in some of the Semitic languages requires that it be reconstructed as a Proto-Semitic phoneme. Beeston claims (1977:54n) that the evidence only requires that a common ancestor of Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, and South Arabian (ancient and modern) be assigned this phoneme; no evidence is available for Akkadian, Ugaritic, or Phoenician. This claim is factually inaccurate, as comparison of the Akkadian and Arabic columns of Table XX (p. 209} clearly shows. There are there distinct correspondence sets for these two languages: i. /s/ - /s/, ii. IV - /s/, and, iii. /s/ - /ts/. Thus, it must be the case that the nearest common ancestor of Arabic and Akkadian had three sibilant phonemes. Another approach to this question lies in comparative evidence within Afroasiatic. If Proto-Semitic had three sibilant phonemes it might be the case that other Afroasiatic language groups also show traces of such a contrast. M. Cohen (1947:133-141) presents some sketchy evidence that the three sibilant phonemes have different correspondences in the various Afroasiatic language groups. His correspondences are summarized in Table XXII. Semitic
Egyptian
S x /s/ S 2 /t4/
s s
So /ts/
S
(s)
Berber
Cushitic
s (z) s (z)
s s (d)
5
S
Table XXII: Afroasiatic sibilants corresponding to those reconstructed for Semitic, according to M. Cohen (1947). The Semitic sibilant reconstruction is that presented in section 5.3, above, rather than the traditional one Cohen uses. The values advanced for Egyptian are conventional in the same way that most of the values for sibilants in the ancient Semitic languages ate traditional.
I am not aware of any reconstructions of the phonetics of
215
either Egyptian or Cushitic. Newman and Ma (1965) reconstruct only one sibilant phoneme for Proto-Chadic: */s/. Kraft (1971) suggests an additional */tl/. And, Newman (1977), reconstructs */s/ and * / ? / (with unspecified phonetic differences), as well as a "hlateral" */hl/, which patterns as /!/. Table XXIII lists those words in Newman (1977) containing one of these three phonemes that appear to have reasonable cognates in Semitic. Also listed are the Semitic potential cognates, together with a cross-reference to the cognate lists in Appendix III. Gloss
Chadic form
tongue
ahlssi
Semitic form loson (Hebrew; S j #46)
ear
sami
soma? (Hebrew; S : # 5)
break
fass
fa?s
( A r a b i c ; Sx
buy
masa
s2?m
(ESA; S 2 #48)
cow
hi a
s2h
(ESA; S 2 #10)
knife
suk-
sakkin(Hebrew;
name
sam
sem
s2) (Hebrew; Sj #14)
root
ssr
sirs
(Arabic; S 2 #9)
sleep
s-n
wasinu(Arabic; S x
tooth
san
sinnu ( A r a b i c ;
two
S3T
9an-
(Arabic)
drink
sa
SO9D
(Hebrew; S x
S
#59)
#48)
l> #29)
Table X X I I I : T e n t a t i v e s i b i "lant correspondences betwee
Proto-Chadic (Newman 1977) and Proto-Semitic. There are no items in Table XXIII representing PS Sg. In addition, and, perhaps more importantly, there is no apparent regular correspondence between Chadic and Semitic as regards the sibilants. Thus, there is no evidence from Chadic for positing three sibilants in Proto-Semitic or Proto-Afroasiatic. However, there is no evidence against such a reconstruction either.
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5.3.2 The Changes Needed The list Below indicates the changes needed to derive the states of affairs attested in the various Semitic languages from the reconstruction of the Proto-Semitic sibilants presented in section 5.3. With each change is an indication of the languages it occurred in. At this stage, I am making no claims about whether a given change was a joint innovation in the languages that it occurred in or not. a. *e-v s (S 1 ) — Hebrew b. *e-1*s (S./S2) ~ Akkadian c. * 9 — * s (S,/So) — Ethiopian Semitic d. *e-Mi (S2) -- Phoenician e. *e —> t -- Aramaic f. *ts-» s — Hebrew, Akkadian — within recorded history --Arabic, Aramaic, Modern South Arabian -- before earliest records g. *s -*s -- Hebrew, MSA, Aramaic, Akkadian, Phoenician h. *s-» h -- Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Ugaritic, Phoenician — strong conditioning — Modern South Arabian -- more general i. *ti—» s
— Arabic -- within recorded history --ESA?
j. *t4—• s (S 3 ) -- Hebrew, Aramaic — within recorded history k. *t4—*s (S,) -- Akkadian, Ugaritic, Phoenician -- perhaps orthographic only There are some orderings implicit in the changes listed in a. through k. For example, the change of /s/ to /h/ in Hebrew and Aramaic must have preceded the change of /s/ to /s/ in those languages. In (2) through(io) below are listed the changes that need to be posited for each language; if any ordering must be assumed, that is indicated, as wel 1. (2) Hebrew: h. *s-> h a. *9-» s
f. ns-* s g. *s~*
s
j. *t4-* s
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Changes h. and a. must have preceded f; this is the only way that the appropriate feeding and bleeding relations are maintained. Changes f. and g. together constitute a push chain. Deaffrication of *ts, which would have resulted in [s], pushed *s toward [s], thus averting a merger. Change g. probably happened around 1100 BC, if the Shibboleth story in the Biblical book of Judges (see above, p. 190,ff) is a reflection of this change. And, change j. occurred much later, around the beginning of the Christian Era. (3) Aramaic: h. *s-»h e. *9 — • i f. *ts->s g. *s—>s j. *t4—*s (4) Arabic: h. * s — h (-*?) f. *ts-» s i. *t 4 -» s Change f. resulted in the merger of S, and S,. within the recorded history of Arabic.
Change i. occurred
(5) Epigraphic South Arabian: f. *ts-»s That this change was occurring toward the end of the recorded history of ESA is suggested by the confusions of S, and S, in some inscrip-
(6) Modern South Arabian: h. *s-» h f. *ts-+ s g. *s -* s As in Hebrew and Aramaic, changes f. and g. constitute a push chain. (7) Akkadian: k. * H - » s a. *9-* s f. *ts-» s g. * s - * s Again, changes f. and g. constitute a push chain; they occurred within
218
the recorded history of the language. (8) Ugaritic: h. *s-» h, partially k. *ti—* s, probably I know of no evidence that changes f. and g. occurred in Ugaritic. is there, as far as I know, evidence that they did not occur.
Nor
(9) Phoenician: h. *s-»h a. *9-» s k. *t4—*• s, probably f. *ts-» s g. * s — * s I know of no direct evidence that the f. and g. push chain took place in Phoenician. Latin and Greek transcriptions of Phoenician names, for all that they are abundant, are of no help because of the fact that these languages have but one sibilant each. My reason for suspecting that the changes did occur in Phoenician is the spelling correspondences between Hebrew and Phoenician. The same letter, VJ , is used to spell S, in both languages; similarly, reflexes of So are spelled with the same symbol in the two languages. If the values had changed in Hebrew and not in Phoenician, Hebrew S-, /s/ should have been identified with Phoenician S, *s. The fact that this identification did not take place is evidence either that the f. and g. push chain took place in both Phoenician and Hebrew, or that it took place in Hebrew after the adoption of the Phoenician writing system. The earliest Hebrew inscriptions are from the period 1000 - 900 BC. And, if the evidence of the Shibboleth story is correct, the *s to /s/ change (change g.} was occurring around 1100 BC. Therefore, it is extremely likely that the sequence of changes took place in Phoenician as well as in Hebrew. (10) Ethiopia: h. *s-» h a. *9 -» s f. *ts-*s j. *t i -+ s
Change j. took place within the recorded history of Ge'ez, the oldest
219
recorded Ethiopic language. 5.4 Inferences about Relatedness The whole point of the discussion in section 5.3.2 has been to lay the foundations for a discussion of the relationships among the various Semitic languages, and the inferences that can be made about that relatedness based on the changes that have been posited. However bizarre the facts of the sibilants seem at first blush, especially when reference is made to the "standard" reconstruction, further analysis reveals a plethora of extremely natural sound changes. I use "natural" here in a loose, intuitive sense. If it is easy to think of a reason for a change to take place, if it does not seem surprising that a given change took place, if a plausible perceptual or articulatory reason for a change can be surmised, then that change is natural. 13 every change posited in section 5.3.2 is natural.
In that sense,
The problem posed by this naturalness for the linguist whose •interest lies in positing genetic relations is simple: one cannot preclude the possibility that a natural change will recur, independently, in the same language family. Thus, the fact that two languages share a natural change cannot be interpreted as proof of any special relation between the two. One way out of this bind is to investigate the possibility that shared sequences of rules in two or more languages are more unlikely than are shared rules. However, this would be a reasonable hypothesis only if there were no relation between the two rules. Thus, because the *s to /s/ change (change g.) in Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian, Phoenician and Modern South Arabian is the second half of the push chain involving the *ts to /s/ change (change f.), no stronger case for relating this group of languages can be made on the basis of the fact that they have two changes in common than could be made on the basis of any one shared change. A further problem with attempting to create plausibility arguments for possible shared innovations is that in some cases there is evidence that a given change took place within the recorded history of
220
one of the languages. Thus, for example, the evidence presented above regarding the timing of the *s to IV change in Hebrew precludes the possibility that Hebrew shared this particular innovation with any other language, except, perhaps, Phoenician. Similarly, the spelling changes and alternations that provide the evidence for the *t4 to /s/ change in Hebrew and Aramaic indicate that this change took place in both languages around the beginning of the Christian Era, long after the two languages became distinct. To the extent that this was "one" change, it was an area! phenomenon, related to the degree of Hebrew/ Aramaic bilingualism in Palestine at that time. The following sections summarize the chronological evidence for the changes listed above in the languages that they occurred in. It will be readily seen that the possibilities for independent innovation are severely restricted. 5.4.1 The *s to /h/ Change The *s to /h/ change occurred in essentially three versions. In Ugaritic, it only applied to instances of *s (S-,) that were always in absolute initial or absolute final position in the word. In Hebrew, Arabic, Phoenician, Aramaic, and Ethiopic, the change occurred in the causative morpheme, even when it was preceded by another prefix, in the personal pronouns, and, in the case of Hebrew, in the directional suffix -oh, which has a cognate only in Ugaritic. And, in some of the Modern South Arabian languages, the change has affected almost all reflexes of * s , so that /s/ in some MSA languages corresponds to /h/ in others. It is only reasonable to consider the *s to /h/ change a joint innovation in those languages that have it in more or less the same form. Even if the alternation had innovated jointly in all of the languages listed above, the differing developments in Ugaritic and MSA suggest that their speakers were not in direct contact with speakers of the other languages for much of the time that the sound change was in progress. In fact, the greater similarity of the Ugaritic change with the Hebrew/Aramaic/Arabic/Ethiopic change suggests that, if the *s to /h/ change is to be treated as a shared innovation, the struc-
221
ture of the language group in which it occurred is something like that in (11). (11)
^ ^ _ ^ ^ ^ s
./^ "*-s.
Modern South Arabian
^^~7\~~~~~~^ UgarTtic Hebrew Arabics. Ethiopic Aramaic It is beyond the scope of this work to comment on the significance (if any) of the fact that /h/ and /?/ alternate to a certain extent in the causative morpheme and the personal pronouns in the Hebrew/Aramaic/ Arabic/Ethiopic group. The discussion above demonstrates what subgrouping follows jrf the *s to /h/ change is treated as a joint innovation. However it does not provide any argument for treating the change as a joint innovation. Bravmann (1977) cites the existence of a similar change in Greek, producing the form hepta 'seven' from an earlier form with / s / , as evidence for the naturalness of the change in the Semitic languages. And, Cohen (1947:132) cites the existence of a IV - /h/ alternation in certain Tuareg (Berber) dialects. However, according to Cohen's own correspondence lists, Si in Semitic corresponds to /s/ (or /z/) in Berber (see Table XXII, p. 215, above). So, while the Berber facts provide evidence for the naturalness of the change (not that that was in doubt), it is not at all clear whether the Berber change occurs in the same environment or in the same morphemes as the Semitic change. Of course, if it turned out that the Berber change and the Semitic change occur in similar environments, that would have definite repercussions for any reconstruction of Semitic. In the absence of such evidence, we can only note the possibility that revision will be necessary. None of this discussion makes a decision any clearer. There is no question that the *s to /h/ change could have been a joint innovation. But, at this juncture, a decision must rest in part on the
222
plausibility of a group with the structure shown in (11), keeping in mind that Epigraphic South Arabian and Akkadian are outside the group. It the other changes discussed in this chapter or in the other chapters of this dissertation provide evidence for a grouping compatible with that in (11), that, in a way, would be evidence for it. While the notion of evidence outlined above may seem an odd one, it should be kept in mind that the ultimate goal of the procedures advocated here is to construct a coherent picture of what happened in the Semitic languages to the extent that this can be done without circularity. So, if independent evidence for a grouping like that in (11) were to be discovered, that would constitute evidence for the *s to /h/ change being a joint innovation. On the other hand, if evidence were found that the "correct" grouping of the relevant languages was incompatible with the grouping in (11), nothing at all would have been shown about the *s to /h/ change. A decision would have to be made as to which grouping to accept as a reflection of genetic relationships within the Semitic language family. If the other grouping were accepted, it would still be necessary to decide whether the *s to /h/ change was the sort of change that might have spread thru'! a linguistic area, regardless of the languages spoken. That is, in essence, the position adopted by Garbini (1972); all of his Amorite innovations are waves overlaid on a group of languages, the exact nature of v/hose relationship is left ambiguous in Garbini's model, as it is in the work of many investigators who explain linguistic relatedness on the basis of successive waves of change emanating from one source or another.
5.4.2 The *9 to /s/ Change The *e to /s/ change must have been an innovation in Akkadian, since it occurred after the Old Akkadian period, when Akkadian was already well differentiated from the other Semitic languages. As for the change in the Ethiopian Semitic languages, it is difficult to determine exactly what happened. Before the Ethiopic writing system developed, $,, S-, and *9 had merged, probably in /s/. However, it is
223
impossible to determine which of the S phonemes *6 merged with first. It is even possible that S 1 and S 3 merged first and that *e merged with the product of that merger. Given this uncertainty, it doesn't make sense to discuss the possibility that the change was a joint innovation in Hebrew and Ethiopic; there is nothing so unusual about the change as to make us want it to be a one-time innovation (two-time, actually, counting the Akkadian). 5.4.3 The Change of *9 to Other Things. Since the change of *e to fx^i assuming Diem's analysis (see pp. 187-190, above), was limited to northern Hebrew and Phoenician, it can be of no use in determining subgrouping, except insofar as it provides evidence that *9 must still have been a distinct phoneme at the time that Hebrew and Phoenician split. A similar argument can be made with respect to Aramaic. In the earliest Aramaic documents, *9 is spelled s\ later the spelling t_ is found. *e must have been a distinct phoneme at the last common stage of Hebrew/Aramaic and at the last common stage of Aramaic/Ethiopic. 5.4.4 The Change of *ts to /s/ The *ts to s change, without the second half of the push chain, occurred in Arabic and Ethiopic. In addition, signs of it are seen in the later Epigraphic South Arabian inscriptions. Nothing can be determined about the Ethiopic change because of uncertainty about which of the three phonemes S, /s/, S, /ts/ and *9 merged first. And, given the naturalness of deaffrication as a phonological process, there is no overwhelming merit in reducing the change to a single occurrence, especially in the light of the push change that the same change initiated inothenlanguages. It is further worth noting that the ejective *ts' deaffricated in Arabic, perhaps as part of the reanalysis of the emphatic phonemes in which the pharyngeal constriction rather than the glottal closure became the primary cue. In the Ethiopic languages, both the affn'cation and the glottal closure remained.
224
5.4.5 The Push Chain of *ts to /s/ and *s to
/If
The push chain occurred in Hebrew and Aramaic. It also occurred in Akkadian, if the argumentation on pages 201-202 is correct, within the attested history of the language. Thus, the occurrence of the same change in Akkadian and Hebrew/Aramaic can not indicate a genetic relationship among the three, to the exclusion of other Semitic languages. On the other hand, the possibility of an areal phenomenon cannot be precluded. But, the placement of the *s to IV change in Hebrew in the 11th. century BC, according to the Shibboleth story, may have a bearing; until more is known about the mechanics of the replacement of Akkadian by Aramaic as the language of empire in the ancient near east, this question is perhaps better left untreated. It was argued above that the status of Hebrew and Phoenician with regard to the push chain must be the same. That is, either the Hebrew alphabet was borrowed from Phoenician before the push chain occurred, or the push chain affected both Hebrew and Phoenician. It was suggested (p. 218) that the latter alternative is correct; in that case, the change may well have been a joint innovation in Hebrew and Phoenician. However, the status of the change in Aramaic is not as clear. It may be that there was a stage in which Hebrew/Phoenician and Aramaic developed in common to the exclusion of the other Semitic languages. However, if the inferences from the Shibboleth story are correct, such a relationship cannot possibly be deduced from the fact that the languages share this particular sequence of changes, since the earliest Aramaic inscriptions are quite clearly distinct from the Hebrew of the earliest inscriptions (both from c, 1000 - 800 BC). The differences are too great to be accounted for by only two or three hundred years of separation. A similar push chain to the one described above has apparently occurred in the Modern South Arabian languages. However, it was not nearly as regular as in Hebrew, Aramaic and Akkadian, A glance at the correspondence lists in Appendix III shows that MSA S, has fairly irregular correspondences. In some items, it appears to have merged
225
with S 2 , in others with S 3 . In some of the languages it appears as /h/, in others as IV alternating with /s/ or /t4/. Aside from the chronological problems involved, this difference in behavior suggests that, despite the superficial similarity, there would be no point in trying to connect the MSA alternations with the Hebrew, the Akkadian, or the Aramaic change. 5.4.6 The *t* to IV
Change
Although this delateralization/deaffrication occurred in both Arabic and Epigraphic South Arabian, there are chronological baric riers to considering it a joint innovation. The evidence from the early Arab grammarian, concerning dialectal variation in the pronunciation of So (pp. 183-184 above) indicates that the change must have taken place around the beginning of the Islamic Era (c. 600 AD). On the other hand, the evidence of the lexical item wsgf 'help,' borrowed from Hebrew into ESA, suggests that S 2 in ESA already had the value IV. Of course, a case can be made that, given a phonological system containing /s ts t4/, a lexical item containing IV would have been nativized with /t*/, but an equally good case can be made for /s/, so this argument is not conclusive. Discounting the evidence that ESA had S 2 IV, the change is unique in Arabic and, thus, cannot contribute any evidence to a determination of subgrouping. 5.4.7 The *t« to /%/ Change This delateralization occurred in Akkadian, Phoenician, Ugaritic, Hebrew, Aramaic and Ethiopian Semitic. In the first three languages, the merger was with S,, in the second two with So, and in the last with S, and So merged. Furthermore, the merger in Ethiopian Semitic was within the recorded history of the language; in the earliest inscriptions, So is consistently spelled differently than S|/S,/ 8. The Akkadian change is reflected in the earliest Akkadian writing, so, despite claims to the contrary, there is no consistent spelling difference to warrant the assumption that So was phonologically distinct in the earliest Akkadian. Diem (1974) has presented evidence
226
that the merger took place in Phoenician around the fifteenth century BC, later than the earliest Akkadian by more than a millenium. So, a joint innovation in Phoenician and Akkadian is ruled out. On the other hand, I am aware of no chronological impediment to assuming a joint innovation in Phoenician and Ugaritic. However, it must be kept in mind that the fact that the reflexes of S, and S2 in Ugaritic are spelled the same does not in fact constitute proof that a phonological merger took place. As for the merger of $ 2 and S3 in Hebrew and Aramaic, it took place around the beginning of the Christian Era. While it may be that the change in Hebrew took place under the influence of Aramaic, there is no way that this could be evidence for genetic relationship, since the languages had been distinct for at least a millenium and a half. 5.5 Conclusion In this chapter, a wide range of evidence has been presented regarding sibilants in the Semitic languages. Previous reconstructions were found to be inadequate in that they necessitate, for the most part, positing in at least one language unnatural phonological changes whereby two distinct phonemes exchange phonetic realizations, all the while maintaining their distinctness. Also examined were arguments regarding the number of sibilant correspondences. The evidence presented demonstrated conclusively that there were three voiceless sibilant phonemes in Proto-Semitic. This is in accord.with accepted Semiticist "doctrine." What is innovative about the reconstruction of the three phonemes presented here is that it introduces an additional phonetic value, not directly attested in any of the Semitic languages, although traces of it are found in transcriptions from early Hebrew into Egyptian and in the principles underlying the Akkadian adaptation of the Sumerian syllabary. Reconstruction of this /ts/ allows the derivation of all of the attested forms in all of the Semitic languages without any unnatural phonemic interchanges. In addition, a previously unexplained change, as a result of which s/s in
227
some of the Semitic languages corresponds with h/? in others, was examined. Following a suggestion by Bravmann (1977), it was shown that this change is conditioned by the sandwiching of the relevant segment (/s/) between a vowel and a word boundary, with the order irrelevant. Further investigation shows that none of the changes needed for the derivation of the attested forms in any of the Semitic languages, with the possible exception of the *s to /h/ change, can possibly provide evidence for genetic subgrouping. This is either because of chronological inconsistency that would result from positing joint innovation or because of the extreme naturalness of the processes posited. Despite the lack of conclusions relating to the subgrouping of the Semitic language family, the investigation was not without value. If it were to turn out that alternations like those discussed in this chapter are, in general, not of value in determining genetic relatedness, that, too, would be significant.
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Notes to Chapter Five There are Hebrew pronunciation traditions in which the two are merged, for example, that of Lithuanian Jews (Weinreich 1952). 2 One such deviation is SVO/VSO word order instead of the (S)0V norm in written Akkadian. If the suggestion made in Chapter Two that spoken Akkadian was in fact {S)V0 is correct, presence of SVO in some written Akkadian would provide no evidence at all about Amorite. Alternatively, Garbini could claim that Iki resulting from this change was maintained distinct, while /s/ changed to /s/. Then, Ikl would have changed to /s/. Steiner uses the symbol [ 15 ] for a voiceless lateral fricative. Cantineau (1941) uses [tl] for a lateral affricate. In addition many writers use [s] to represent a lateral, while for others it is only an unspecified sibilant, distinct from /s s s s' 9/. I will use it in that way here, reserving [t4] for contexts where I am making a claim about lateralization. My reason for adapting Cantineau's symbol rather than Steiner's is typographical only. *9 merged with S, in Hebrew. Until the original value of S, is determined, it cannot be determined what sound *9 changed to. Sawyer (1975) provides an extensive discussion of the root *y9? in Hebrew, Ugaritic and Akkadian. He rejects any connection between Hebrew hosia? 'save' and Arabic wasufa 'be wide.' He further notes the existence of names based on yg? in the Epigraphic South Arabian corpus. According to Goetze (1957:42), these values are accepted by most scholars. However, most works I have seen agree with Gelb. Schuh (1971) attempts to reconstruct systems of subject emphasis for some Chadic languages. This is the only attempt that I know of to deal with Chadic syntax. Leslau (1967:433) presents the verb ?asassab3 'cause to think, suggest,1 based on ?assaba 'think.' S. Anderson (1974:110,ff) demonstrates the necessity for a more extensive class of mirror image rules than Bach allows. Bach,(1968) allows a segment to condition an alternation regardless of what side of the conditioning segment the affected segment is on. Anderson allows environments of A B, in which the two factors A and B together
229
condition some alternation, without their relative order being important. He attributes the observation to Marcel Cohen. 12 The affricate was first proposed, as far as I know, by Cantineau (1941). My system differs from his only in the reconstruction of /s/ for S,. 13 However, the aggregate may seem unnatural until we consider that we are dealing with a time range of over 5000 years, from Old Akkadian (c. 3000 - 2500 BC) until Modern South Arabian today. 14 See the discussion in Chapter Four, section 4.5.3. 15 The question of the naturalness of this change has not been treated yet. hi and Isl have similar acoustic spectra (Ohala 1974: 255), so the change could be accounted for by perceptual confusion.
CHAPTER SIX CONCLUSION 6.0 Summary of the Results of the Preceding Investigations In this dissertation, four phenomena in the Semitic language family have been thoroughly investigated. The goal of these investigations was to determine which type of phenomena are likely to reflect genetic relationships among languages and which are likely to reflect areal (wave) relationships. But, before derivative conclusions of this sort can be formulated, it will prove worthwhile to summarize the results of the four investigations. 6.0.1 Word Order Phenomena Chapter Two examined the basic (dominant) word orders attested in the various Semitic languages. The traditional view that SOV word order in Ethiopian Semitic languages is an innovation found support in an internal reconstruction of Amharic, showing a reflection of earlier VSO word order in that language. Similarly, SOV word order of written Akkadian resulted from contact from Sumerian. Thus, any attempt to reconstruct Proto-Semitic word order need only consider VSO and SVO as possibilities. No principled means of deciding between the two options was found, partly as a result of incomplete data from Ugaritic. However, it is possible to sketch the developments each of the alternatives would require positing in the attested languages. If PS was VSO, as has traditionally been assumed, then the innovation of SVO word order in Akkadian, Ugaritic, Colloquial Arabic, and Eastern Aramaic cannot be treated as a joint innovation; it happened within the recorded history of Arabic and Aramaic. And, given the substantially higher frequency of SVO basic order in the languages
230
231
of the world, it is likely enough that the change from VSO to SVO could have happened rnore than once that no subgrcuping of Akkadian and Ugaritic can be based on the fact that they shared this change. If, on the other hand, PS was SVO, it is possible that some valid inferences about subgrouping can be made. These inferences are summarized in (1), below, copied from page 83. Proto-Semitic
6.0.2 Preposition Compounding The discussion of full passives (with explicit agent phrases) in Chapter Three did not lead to any direct postulation of a group, because it turns out that the full passive is a retention from ProtoSemitic. However, examination of the prepositions used to mark the agents in Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, and ancient Egyptian leads to the postulation of a process of preposition compounding: reflexes of the preposition *mb were compounded in some languages with *in(a), as part of the re-phonemicization of the prenasalized consonant. The Semitic languages can be grouped according to their reflexes of these two prepositions. Akkadian retains only *ina, Ugaritic only t>-, and, in the other languages, some compound forms like min. are found. The compounding process was most extensive in Epigraphic South Arabian, in which it appears to have been possible to compound any preposition with *in. The groupings that can be based on these facts are summarized in the tree in (2), copied from page 110.
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6.0.3 Emphatic Consonants In Chapter Four, the differing realizations in the Semitic languages of the phonological feature emphasis were examined. In all of the Semitic languages, the emphatic consonants constitute a class that is phonologically distinct from ordinary voiced and voiceless consonants. In Ethiopian Semitic, the phonetic exponent of emphasis is glottalization: the consonants are ejectives. In spoken Arabic, the emphatics are characterized by pharyngeal constriction that tends to spread through any word an emphatic consonant is found in. In Neoaramaic dialects, this spreading has taken place to such an extent that the pharyngealization is best analyzed as a suprasegmental harmonic feature. In earlier Arabic, the relevant characteristic was velarization rather than pharyngealization, according to the Arab grammarians. Evidence was presented that Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic probably had some kind of backed consonants but that Akkadian probably had ejectives like those found in the modern Ethiopian languages. Both markedness considerations and the plausibility of the transitions from one type of articulation to the other suggest that the ejective consonants are more nearly the "authentic" Semitic type than are the backed consonants. On the basis of markedness and cross-linguistic distribution, it is likely that the innovation of the backed consonant type in Heb-
233
rew, Aramaic and Arabic was a joint innovation indicative of a close linguistic relationship among the three languages.
It cannot be deter-
mined whether Ugaritic was part of this group or not. 6.0.4 Sibilant Correspondences Chapter Five dealt with correspondences among sibilant phonemes in the Semitic languages.
The issue was simply whether there
were three voiceless sibilant phonemes (other than *e) or whether the evidence for the third phoneme is too sketchy to be relied upon.
Part
of the problem with the three-sibilant reconstruction is that, in the traditional assignments of phonetic values to the sibilant phonemes, for at least one of the Semitic languages it is necessary to assume that two phonemes exchanged phonetic values without losing their phonemic distinctness.
Rather than resolve this dilemma by denying the
validity of the correspondences, the approach taken in this chapter was to find evidence for non-traditional phonetic values for the sibilant phonemes.
Thus, the postulation of a system including /s H ts/
rather than the traditional /s t4 s/ obviates the necessity for appealing to unnatural phonological changes to account for the attested states of affairs in the Semitic languages. On the other hand, establishing a reconstruction based primarily on considerations of phonetic and phonological naturalness means that it is unlikely that the changes posited to account for the attested language states will be unusual enough that any subgrouping can be posited based on them. The only change discussed in Chapter Five that is idiosyncratic enough that a subgrouping could be posited based on it was the change of *s to /h/ in certain, primarily grammatical, morphemes (sections 5.2.7, 5.4.1).
Thischange has been very strongly generalized in
the Modern South Arabian languages, to the extent that, in some of them, the primary reflex of *s is /h/.
In Ugaritic, in contrast, the
change only occurs when *s is at the beginning or at the end of a word. In causative stems, in whicM the *s is sometimes internal to the stem, the change does not occur.
But, in Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Ethi-
234
opian Semitic, the change occurred in base causatives (but not in causatives of reflexives), in personal pronouns and in a directional suff i x . The grouping in (3), copied from page 221, can be posited on the basis of this change. (3)
Proto-Semitic ^~~~*^ /^"\^^ j/ / S v
A ^
Epigraphic South Arabian
Akkadian
Modem-South Arabian Ugaritic
Hebrew Arabic Aramaic EtPliopic 6.1 Comparison with Hetzron's Morphologically Based Subgrouping The next step of the analysis is to compare the four tentative subgroupings summarized in section 6.0 with that presented by Hetzron (1976) on the basis of morphological criteria alone. This comparison has two goals. First, the extent to which the five different groupings are compatible needs to be determined. If there is a high degree of compatibility, then the probability that the merged grouping reflects actual developments and historical subgroupings within the Semitic language family is significant. And, if it turns out that groupings (1) and (3), based as they are on syntactic and phonetic/ phonological criteria, are compatible with Hetzron's grouping, the strong hypothesis that morphological criteria are the only safe ones on which to base linguistic subgroupings can be discarded. 6.1.1 Hetzron's Subgrouping. The subgrouping of the Semitic languages presented in Hetzron (1976) is based on an examination of several different morphological innovations that involve, for the most part, analogical changes in the
235
form of subject-verb agreement affixes. The grouping that Hetzron arrives at is illustrated in (4). (4}
Proto^Semitic Akkadian
Central Semitic
SoQth Semitic ^Y
Aramaic He'brew A>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 <
gi russu (?)
difsu
63 s p i l l 64 explain
feser
fasara
peser
pesar
65 b r e a t h e , 1 i f e
ansom
nasama
nssomo
nesum
da§
sapakum
nsmh
HARSUSI
SOCOTRI
ARABIC
HEBREW
66 reckon
ESA
lie sob
hoseb
hasaba
hosav
67 hour
sa?eh
saTah
safat
Sofo
?imsin
?amsu
?emes solat-N
68 yesterday, evening 69 power
seltan
sit
sal l a t a
70 send
sefor
sfor
safara
71 study
deros
deros
darasa
ndyhi r
73 eagle rosem
74 inscribe
neser
rasama
rosam 'n::--.
hss
hassa
76 leave, precede
sebok
sabaka
77 vanity
s.w?
78 j o i n
SOW
kosar
kesor
?sras-M
79 want 80 chieftain
?s,wd
sold14
sayyid
epesu
ARAMAIC
13
ETHIOPIC na sa ba sa?at
musum
mese"t sol U
sal l a t a
da rasa
doras
nasr
75 feel
AKKADIAN
safarum
ba'Pusa
72 v i r i l i t y
UGARITIC
sed
ba'st um
be? si
nasru
riesr
sw?
261
2 Aro cites this form as an example of his tit. 3 This is an archaic form, found only rarely in the Hebrew Bible. Ellenbogen claims that it is a borrowing from Akkadian or Ugaritic. This claim is refuted by Kaufmann (1974:60). 5 = 'ravish 6 'A tribe is a branch of a people, just as a rod is a branch of a tree 7,From Harari rather than Ge'ez. stay up all night'
This etymology is proposed by Leslau (1938). I do not know whether he is assuming a different phonemicization of Akkadian than are my other sources or whether the Akkadian itself is anomalous.
12 According to Lieberman, this item was borrowed into ProtoSemitic. by Leslau (1938). Phonologically, all that is involved is devoicing and metathesis. Initial pharyngeal consonants are not represented in Akkadian orthography. e_ is the expected spelling. merchant.1 c.f. #51, 'lion.' horseman.' cited in Steiner (1977} 16*, from Mehri The Aramaic sibilant "should b e s " (Kaufman 1974:82).
GLOSS
ESA
HARSUSI
SOCOTRI
ARABIC
HEBREW
UGARITIC
AKKADIAN
ARAMAIC
ETHIOPIC
1 rise
ns2?
nas
ns?
nasa?a
no s o
ns?
nasum
nasi"?
nas?a
2 ten
Ts2r
?oser
fair
Teser
fsr
esir
Tasar
Tasru
3 put
52ym
sem
sayaVn
Gsm
sebeh
Gcfa
SDfD
sp
safab
sa?b sani ?a
S3 r e
sn?
sabi7a
sova?
sb?
4 edge, l i p
sTbith
Taser
sam saptum
snh
sebum
sb?
sumelum
sm?l
s?rt
sartu
s?r
soSe
sd
sadwum
soraf
irp
surpum
srp
si bum
sb
5 people
s2fb
6 enemy
s^n?
msena?
7 sate
s-b?
soba
8 east
s?rk
sarke
sark
so re k
9 root
s~rs
Sirs
sores
srs
10 c a t t l e
S?ll
sa? . . 3 sakara
SE
3
soxar
skr
si ma 1
sun i
sn 1
saTTr
seYorim
sTr
saYTr
seTar
sadda
, 4 skor
11 hire 12 l e f t
s?m
s i ma I
13 barley
Sjfr
sefTr sor
14 hair 15 f i e l d
19 flesh
safihor
serof frSp
18 elder
20 grass
stmlii I
s-dw
16 burn 17 spread
s i bah
bs«r
feros ' u6 sayb
"i. k sibab
fa rasa
poras
sabba
S3V
sbt
bo sor
bsV
basar
dese
sn?
sfrb
prs
bsr ijisum
GLOSS
HARSUSI
21 establish 22 good news
SOCOTRI
ARABIC
HEBREW
bassara
besoro
srr
bs 0 r
abeser
?ibsir
AKKADIAN
ARAMAIC
hasama
24 grass
Tasiba
25 destroy
ETHIOPIC sarara
SDrar
23 evil
besrat
bsr
hasama ?esev hi ssel
musahhar sDhor-M 1 1 .13 sahr sanaronim
26 public 27 moon 1 2
s~hr
28 buy grain
s
2 yt
si Vti Ui
29 malice 30 obiigation
s«mt
samata
s„r?
31 know
s^r
32 associate
s«rk
33 wife 34 drops
hs ? k
seller
sere
sa rTVa saTara
sar?a saTar sarak tpsak
rassa
r a s i sim
35 deflect
sat t a
sut
36 stop up 37 look
satama
snGam
latum
it
Slff 3
38 rule 39 c i r c u i t 40 storm
s2?r
41 witness
s*hd iftll
42 lamb
UGARITIC
nagsa
novas
sehed
sajja
suy
sa?ir
saTir
ssTora
sehed
sahida
sehe5-M
kobs
kabl
keves
syg seurtu
sTr
HARSUSI
SOCOTRI
ARABIC
HEBREW
43 belly
keres
seres
kirs
44 t r e l l i s
arsayt
Tarasa
AKKADIAN
ARAMAIC
ETHIOPIC
keres
karsu
karsa
kars
?irres~
era"sum
45 couch
feres
46 laugh 19
so ha k
47 winter 48 sell-buy
52?m
saitU
setc
sita?
som
s f om
sima
UGARITIC
?r§
Trs sa !;a ka
s9ow
20
265
NOTES form given by Steiner (1977). 2 ='valley'
This is one of the lexical items for which Goetze (1958) wants to establish fsj. that the Ethiopian merger of /s/ and /s/ began before the writing system was firmly established.
15
='fate<
Leslau gives this etymology, despite the "irregular" correspondence.
19 Other Semitic languages have reflexes of *t4hk in 'laugh. See Steiner (1977: Ch. xiv) for discussion of these forms!
°3 HARSUSI
SOCOTRI
ARABIC
1 do i n morn.
vesom
gehem
jasama
2 thin
my s
GLOSS
ESA
3 spit1 4 honey
hassa
•>asel
?asel
Vassala^
streh
satara
6 garment
ks^wt
kso
k£s
kasii
7 council establish
ms?wd
wesadeh
sed
wasada
saYdeh
saTida
8 support 9 gather,
AKKADIAN
ARAMAIC
ma sa wa hos-M
so9ar ksv
KDSO
so3/yDsa5 3
mks ysd
J
SjTd
10
sweep
kanasa
mekneset
so?a5 ksnas posul
10 wrong
11 turn
sabTb
12 grasshopper
hassUn
13 forgive
salafia
SD
?asara
?esor-M
?sr
?sr
?Dsaf
?sp
?awsef
ho sa r
fisr
14 bind
?s 3 r
15 enlarge
ws-f
16 dedicate
Fis^r
17 despoil
ks,h
18 ration, pour ns~k
yaser sef
kasaha nasaka
ETHIOPIAN gesam
masa has
s,tr10 setor
5 hide protect
UGAI UGARITIC
HEBREW
sbb hsn 1 ah
slfi
ko sa h no sax poras
nsk
n
n -o -a
IA
— r
o
o
o
10
Ira
O
ID
268
NOTES Hebrew, Aramaic 'God f o r b i d ! 1 Could this involve a r i t u a l of spitting to avoid an undesired outcome? Proto-Colloquial Arabic (Cowan) 3 'secret'/'establish' 4 Gelb phonemicizes /s/, although it is written s_ in Old Akkadian, /s/ was generally written z_, although some anomalous spellings are found. 5 The initial s_ here is the causative morpheme. From Harari ='despise' With connotations of moral departure, either from good or from evil. S
='stable' 10 These are irregular correspondences of S, with Hebrew /s/. It is replacements such as these of expected $ 3 with S, in ESA that provide evidence for a merging of these two phenomena Tate in the ESA period.
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VITA Alice Faber was born in Mew York, New York, on 22 April 1952, to Doris and Harold Faber. After graduating from Pleasantville High School, Pleasantville, New York, in 1970, she entered Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. She spent her junior year in Israel at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and returned to graduate from Cornell in May 1974. After spending the summer of 1974 at the Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute at the University of Massachusetts, she entered the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin. She was a staff member for the University's Archaeological Expedition to Tell Yinam, Israel in the summer of 1975. She received a Master of Arts degree in Linguistics in December 1976. Since the Fall of 1977, she has been employed as a Teaching Assistant and an Assistant Instructor by the Department of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. She has been married to Mark Brian Fishman since 1977.
Permanent Address: 1708 Manor Road #211 Austin, Tx. 78722 This dissertation was typed by Alice Faber.
