SEMITIC LANGUAGES OUTLINE OF A COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR
ORIENTALIA LOVANIENSIA ANALECTA 80
SEMITIC LANGUAGES OUTLINE OF A COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR
BY
EDWARD LIPINSKI
UITGEVERIJ PEETERS en DEPARTEMENT OOSTERSE STUDIES LEUVEN
1997
C I P Koninklijke Bibliotheek Albert I, Brussel L I P I N S K I
Edward Semitic Languages: Outline of a Comparative Grammar. Leuven:
Peeters, 1997. 756 p.: ill., 24 cm. (Orientalia Lovaniensia
Analecta: 80). 1997, Peeters Publishers & Department of
Oriental Studies Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000 Leuven/Louvain
(Belgium) A l l rights reserved, including the rights to translate
or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form. D .
1997/0602/48 I S B N 90-6831-939-6 (Peeters, Leuven)
To MALGORZATA
CONTENTS
PREFACE ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS I . SEMITIC LANGUAGES 1.
Definition 2. Afro-Asiatic A. Egyptian a) Old Egyptian b) Middle
Egyptian c) Late Egyptian d) Demotic e) Coptic B. Cushitic a) Bedja
b) Agaw c) East Cushitic d) West and South Cushitic C.
Libyco-Berber D. Chadic 3. Proto-Semitic . .
17 21 23 23 24 25 25 26 27 27 29 29 31 32 32 33 34 39 41 47 50
50 52 53 53 53 54 55
4. Classification of Semitic Languages 5. North Semitic A.
Palaeosyrian B. Amorite C. Ugaritic 6. East Semitic A. Old Akkadian
B. Assyro-Babylonian C. Late Babylonian
8
CONTENTS
7. West Semitic A. Canaanite a) Old Canaanite b) Hebrew c)
Phoenician d) Ammonite e) Moabite f) Edomite B. Aramaic a) Early
Aramaic b) Official or Imperial Aramaic c) Standard Literary
Aramaic d) Middle Aramaic e) Western Late Aramaic e) Eastern Late
Aramaic f) Neo-Aramaic C. Arabic a) Pre-Islamic North and East
Arabian b) Pre-Classical Arabic c) Classical Arabic d) Neo-Arabic
or Middle Arabic e) Modern Arabic 8. South Semitic A. South Arabian
a) Sabaic b) Minaic c) Qatabanic d) Hadramitic e) Modern South
Arabian B. Ethiopic a) North Ethiopic Ge'ez Tigre Tigrinya b) South
Ethiopic Amharic Argobba Harari
56 56 57 57 58 60 60 61 61 61 63 63 63 65 66 69 70 71 72 75 75
77 78 78 79 80 80 80 80 81 83 83 83 84 84 84 84 84
,
j
i
CONTENTS
9
Gurage Gafat 9. Language and Script A. Cuneiform Script B.
Alphabetic Script C. Transcription and Transliteration II.
PHONOLOGY 1. Basic Assumptions A. Linguistic Analysis B.
Consonantal Sounds C. Vowels D. Intonation E. Phonemes F. Voiced
and Unvoiced Sounds G. Emphatic Sounds H. Proto-Semitic Phonemes 2.
Labials 3. Dental Plosives 4. Interdentals 5. Dental Fricatives 6.
Prepalatal and Palatal 7. Laterals 8. Liquids and Nasal 9. Velar
Plosives 10. Laryngals, Pharyngal and Velar Fricatives 11. Synopsis
of the Consonantal System 12. Vowels 13. Diphthongs
85 85 86 86 87 93 95 96 96 99 100 102 103 104 105 106 109 116
117 122 126 129 132 137 141 150 152 166
10
CONTENTS
14. Geminated or Long Consonants 15. Syllable 16. Word Accent
17. Sentence Stress or Pitch 18. Conditioned Sound Changes
173 178 181 184 186
A. Assimilation 186 a) Assimilation between Consonants 187 b)
Assimilation between Vowels 190 c) Assimilation between a Consonant
and a Vowel . 190 B. Dissimilation C. Metathesis D. Haplology E.
Prosthesis F. Anaptyxis G. Sandhi H. Elision I . Hypercorrection IL
MORPHOLOGY 1. The Root Morpheme 2. The Noun A. Noun Stems or
Patterns a) Simple Patterns b) Patterns with Diphthongs c) Patterns
Extended by Gemination d) Patterns Extended by Reduplication e)
Patterns with Preformatives and Infixes . Preformatives
'-/'Preformative yaPreformatives w-lm-lnPreformative tInfix
-tPreformative f) Patterns with Afformatives Afformative -n .191
192 193 194 195 196 196 199 201 201 209 209 210 212 213 214 215 215
216 216 219 220 221 221 221
.
.
.
CONTENTS
11
Afformatives -iy/-ay/-w/-yal-iyya Afformatives in -t Other
Afformatives Afformative -ayim/n of Place Names . . . . g) Nominal
Compounds B. Gender C. Number a) Dual b) Plural External Plural
Plural by Reduplication Internal Plural c) Paucative d) Collective
Nouns e) Singulative D. Case Inflection a) Diptotic "Ergative"
Declension b) Use in Proper Names c) "Classical" Triptotic
Declension d) "Adverbial" Cases e) Historical Survey of Case
Inflection E. The "States" of the Noun a) Construct State b)
Predicate State c) Determinate State d) Indeterminate State e)
Paradigms F. Adjectives G. Numerals a) Cardinals b) Ordinals c)
Fractionals d) Multiplicatives e) Distributives f) Verbal
Derivatives 3. Pronouns A. Independent Personal Pronouns B.
Suffixed Personal Pronouns . .
223 225 226 228 228 229 235 236 238 238 244 245 251 251 252 253
254 258 259 260 262 265 265 266 267 272 274 278 280 280 292 294 295
296 296 297 298 306
I!
12
CONTENTS
C. Reflexive Pronoun D. Independent Possessive Pronouns E.
Demonstrative Pronouns F. Determinative-Relative Pronouns G.
Interrogative and Indefinite Pronouns 4. Verbs A. Preliminaries B.
Tenses and Aspects a) Fully Developed System b) Simplified Systems
c) Transitivity Intransitivity d) Modern Languages C. Moods D.
Actor Affixes a) Suffix-Conjugation b) Imperative c)
Prefix-Conjugation Set I Set I I E. Stems and Voices a) Basic Stem
b) Stem with Geminated Second Radical Consonant. c) Stem with
Lengthened First Vowel d) "Causative" Stem e) Stem with rc-Prefix
f) Stems with i-Affix g) Frequentative Stems h) Reduplicated
Biconsonantal Stems i) Stems with Geminated or Reduplicated Last
Radical. j ) Other Stems k) Verbs with Four Radical Consonants 1)
Passive Voice m) Recapitulation of Stems F. Infinitive and
Participle a) Infinitive b) Participle c) Neo-Aramaic Verbal System
d) Participial Tense Forms in Other Languages
311 312 315 324 328 331 331 335 335 340 343 346 351 359 359 366
368 369 376 378 378 382 385 387 393 395 402 405 406 407 407 408
409
.
415 415 419 421 . 424
CONTENTS
13
G. Particular Types of Verbs a) "Weak" Verbs b) Biconsonantal
Verbs c) Verbs with Pharyngals, Laryngals, Velar Fricatives . H.
Verbs with Pronominal Suffixes 5. Adverbs A. Adverbs of Nominal
Origin B. Adverbs of Place and Negatives C. Adverbs of Time 6.
Prepositions A. Primary Prepositions B. Prepositions of Nominal
Origin C. Compound Prepositions 7. Connective and Deictic Particles
A. Conjunctions B. Presentatives C. Subordinate Conjunctions D.
Copulae E. Expression of Possession IV. SYNTAX 1. Classes of
Sentences A. Minor Clauses B. Major Clauses C. Nominal Clauses D.
Verbal Clauses E. Concord of Subject and Predicate 2. Nominal
Phrases A. Attribute B. Apposition C. Genitival or Subjoining
Relation
425 425 436 445 450 453 453 454 458 459 460 465 469 470 470 472
474 475 480 481 483 483 484 484 487 491 494 494 496 497
14 3. Verbal Phrases A. Accusative B. Infinitive 4. Clauses
CONTENTS
504 504 508 511 511 515 519 521 527 533 535 536 543 545 554 557
564 567 568 570 . . . . 575 593 593 597 598 600 601 605 610
A. Particular Types of Main Clauses B. Parallel Clauses C.
Subordinate Clauses a) Relative Clauses b) Temporal/Causal Clauses
c) Final/Consecutive Clauses d) Substantival Clauses e) Conditional
Clauses V. LEXICON 1. Etymology 2. Derivatives 3. Languages in
Contact 4. Internal Change 5. Proper Names A. Anthroponomy B.
Toponymy GLOSSARY OF SELECTED LINGUISTIC TERMS BIBLIOGRAPHY 1.
Semitic Languages in General 2. North Semitic 3. East Semitic 4.
West Semitic A. "Canaanite" B. Aramaic C. Arabic
CONTENTS
15
5. South Semitic A. South Arabian B. Ethiopic 6. Libyco-Berber
7. Cushitic 8. Chadic 9. Languages in Contact 10. Anthroponomy and
Toponymy GENERAL INDEX INDEX OF WORDS AND FORMS Agaw Amharic
Ammonite Amorite Arabic Aramaic, Mandaic, Neo-Aramaic, Syriac
Argobba Assyro-Babylonian, Late Babyloninan, Old Akkadian . Bantu
Bedja Chadic Coptic East and West Cushitic Egyptian Gafat Ge'ez
Greek Gurage Harari Hausa Hebrew Hittite Latin Libyco-Berber,
Numidic, Tuareg
617 617 619 622 624 627 629 633 639 681 681 681 684 684 685 696
702 702 713 713 714 714 714 715 716 717 720 721 724 725 725 731 731
731
.
.
16 Moabite North Arabian Oromo Palaeosyrian Persian Phoenician
and Punic Rendille Semitic, Common Somali South Arabian, Epigraphic
South Arabian, Modern Sumerian Tigre Tigrinya Ugaritic
CONTENTS
734 735 735 736 738 738 740 740 742 742 744 745 746 748 749
753
TABLES, MAPS, A N D TEXT FIGURES
PREFACE
Having taught the introduction to the Semitic languages and
their comparative grammar for more than a quarter of a century,
year by year, I decided finally to acquiesce to a long-standing
suggestion and to undertake the task of publishing the results of
my research and teaching in the form of a textbook. In fact, the
usefulness of an outline of a com parative grammar of the Semitic
languages is self-evident since the last original work of this kind
was published twenty-five years ago by B.M. Grande, BBeAeirae B
cpaBHHTejiLHoe royneHHe CCMHTCKHX JOHKOB, (Moscow 1972). This work
was based mainly on the so-called classical Semitic languages, viz.
Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, Syriac, Classical Arabic, and Ge'ez, but
paid little attention to other Semitic languages, both ancient and
modern, and it abstained from a systematic treatment of the syntax
and of semantic problems. However, it was felt in different
quarters that it is important to draw the attention of the students
to cer tain tendencies discernible in modern dialects and to
clearly bring out the main common features of Semitic syntax. In
addition, the material has increased considerably during the last
decades and the need for a synthesis taking the new information
into account was growing steadily. Finally, comparative Semitics
without a broader Afro-Asiatic or HamitoSemitic background is in
some areas at least methodologically questionable, although C.
Brockelmann's famous Grundriss and its epigones seem to neglect
this type of comparisons. Yet, the right approach was already
outlined in 1898 when H. Zimmern published his Vergleichende
Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen, where he gives some paradigms
showing the connections between Semitic and other Hamito-Semitic
languages. Designed to come out in the centenary of the completion
of Zim mern's work, which resulted in the first comparative grammar
of the Semitic languages ever published, the present book owes a
similar approach to itself. Besides, as I.M. Diakonoff rightly
stressed in 1988, the Afro-Asiatic language families "cannot be
studied, from the point of view of comparative linguistics, in
isolation from each other". The scope of the present Outline is
thus larger, in a certain sense, that the one of earlier
comparative grammars of the Semitic languages, but it is nev
ertheless intended primarily as an introductory work, directed
towards
18
PREFACE
an audience consisting, on the one hand, of students of one or
several Semitic languages, and, on the other, of students of
linguistics. Its aim is to underline the common characteristics and
trends of the languages and dialects that compose the Semitic
language "family" by applying the comparative method of historical
linguistics. The object it has in view is not a mere juxtaposition
of forms belonging to various languages, but a comparison and an
explanation of the changes they incurred, seen in both a diachronic
and a synchronic perspectives which must be used together, i f some
part of the evidence is not to be veiled. To avoid an excessive
overloading of the text, references are given, as a rule, only when
they cannot be found easily in current grammars of the particular
languages. No Semitist can be assumed today to be at home in all
the Semitic idioms, and the present work relies to a great extent
on publications of other scholars, especially of A.F.L. Beeston, J.
Cantineau, I . M . Diakonoff, W. Fischer, I.J. Gelb, Z.S. Harris, T
. M . Johnstone, E.Y. Kutscher, W. Leslau, E. Littmann, R. Macuch,
S. Segert, W. von Soden. It is clear, of course, that the views
exposed in this book differ some times from the opinions expressed
by the above-mentioned Semitists and by other scholars.
Nevertheless, we deemed it unwise to explain here at full length
why the preference was given to certain theories to the exclusion
of others, and thus to corroborate our views by quoting litera ture
in extensive notes. The selection of linguistic facts and the
degree of their condensation may also be subject to discussion and
to criticism. For a more detailed presentation and analysis of
linguistic data, how ever, the advanced students should rather
refer to specific grammars, a selective list of which is given in
the bibliography, at the end of the vol ume. In view of the great
variety and intricacy of the material presented, especially from
spoken languages and dialects, it is inevitable that incon
sistencies w i l l appear in the transliteration and the spelling
of Afro-Asi atic words and phrases. For such occasional lack of
uniformity and for certain redundancies, aimed at lessening the
possibility of misinterpreta tion, we must ask the user's
indulgence. It might also be useful to stress at the outset that
the present work is intended as a compendious and up-to-date
analysis of the nature and structure of the Semitic languages. It
is a comparative analysis of a lan guage family, not a comparative
study of the views expressed by com peting linguistic schools:
Semitics is more wonderful than linguistics! Consequently, we do
not attempt to apply the latter's arsenals of techni cal vocabulary
to the Semitic languages, but rather to present as clearly
PREFACE
19
as possible the fundamental insights about the wide world
represented by the history and the present reality of the concerned
language family. Part One is introductory. It situates the Semitic
languages in the wider context of Afro-Asiatic or Hamito-Semitic
language family, the five main branches of which are Semitic,
Egyptian, Cushitic, Libyco-Berber, and Chadic. The Semitic group,
the single languages of which are briefly described, includes such
languages of antiquity as Palaeosyrian, Old Akkadian,
Assyro-BabyIonian, Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic, and Epigraphic
South Arabian, as well as Arabic, Neo-Aramaic, and the con
temporary languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea. The last section of
Part One deals with the problems of language and script. Part Two
is devoted to phonology. The presentation of the basic assumptions
is followed by a synchronic and diachronic description of the
consonants, vowels, and diphthongs. Questions related to the sylla
ble, the word accent, the sentence stress, and the conditioned
sound changes are examined in this part as well. Part Three
concerns the morphology. After a preliminary section deal ing with
the problem of the Semitic root, the nouns, the pronouns, the
verbs, the adverbs, the prepositions, the coordinative and deictic
parti cles are examined from a diachronic and synchronic point of
view. Part Four treats of the main features of Semitic syntax, with
questions such as classes of sentences, nominal and verbal phrases,
particular types of main clauses, parallel, coordinate, and
subordinate clauses. Diachronic factors come here distinctly to the
fore in relation to word order, i.e. to the sequence in which words
are arranged in a sentence. In fact, both fixed and free orders are
found mingled in widely varying proportions in a great number of
Semitic languages. Part Five aims at presenting some fundamental
insights about lexico graphical analysis. Etymology, derivatives,
languages in contact, inter nal change, proper names these are the
main questions examined in this part. It is followed by a glossary
of linguistic terms used in Semitics, by a selective bibliography,
by a general index, and by an index of words and forms. It is a
pleasure to acknowledge my gratitude to the many classes which have
inspired the successive drafts of this grammar. I have prof ited in
particular from a number of questions raised by my Kurdish students
and from the constructive comments of those who have fol lowed my
seminars in the Department of Epigraphy at the Yarmouk
University.
20
PREFACE
I also wish to express my sincere thanks to Mrs F. Malha for the
great care and professional skill which she exercised in preparing
the text for printing. Further, I cannot let go unexpressed my deep
appreciation for the work realized by Peeters Publishers and the
Orientaliste typography, whose skilful care is apparent over again
in the way this book is printed and edited. Last but not least, I
must thank my wife Malgorzata for help ing me to bring this work to
a happy end.
ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS
The Books of the Bible Gen., Ex., Lev., Nb., Deut., Jos., Judg.,
I Sam., II Sam., I Kings, II Kings, Is., Jer., Ez., Hos., Joel,
Am., Ob., Jon., Mich., Nah., Hab., Soph., Hag., Zech., Mai., Ps.,
Prov., Job, Cant., Ruth, Lam., Qoh., Esth., Dan., Esd., Neh., I
Chr., II Chr., Sir., I En., Act. Other Abbreviations accusative
Amorite Arabic Aramaic Archives royales de Mari, Paris 1950 ff.
Assyro-Babylonian circa, about Consonant confer, compare Classical
Arabic Colloquial corrected, corrects in divine name Egyptian
execration texts published by G. POSENER, Princes et pays d'Asie et
de Nubie, Bruxelles 1940. = exempli gratia, for example e.g. EA =
The El-Amarna tablets numbered according to J.A. KNUDTZON, Die
El-Amarna-Tafeln (VAB 2), Leipzig 1915; A.F. RAINEY, El Amarna
Tablets 359-379 (AOAT 8), 2nd ed., KevelaerNeukirchen-Vluyn 1978.
E.S.A. = Epigraphic South Arabian Fern., fern., f. = feminine Gen.,
gen. = = genitive Hebr. = Hebrew KTU = M. DIETRICH - O. LORETZ - J.
SANMARTN, The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani
and Other Places {KTU: second, enlarged edition), Miinster 1995. =
literally, etymologically lit. = Modern Arabic M.Ar. Masc, masc. m.
= masculine M.S.A. = Modern South Arabian msec. = millisecond(s)
Ms., mss. = manuscript(s) Ace, acc. Amor. Arab. Aram. ARM Ass.-Bab.
ca. C cf. Cl.Ar. Coll. cor. DN E = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
22
ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS
Norn., nom. = nominative n.s. = new series O.Akk. = Old Akkadian
O.Bab. = Old Babylonian Pers., pers. = person Plur., plur. = plural
PN = personal name Pr.-Sem. = Proto-Semitic P.Syr. = Palaeosyrian
1Q, 2Q, 3Q, etc. = Texts from Qumrn grot 1, 2, 3, etc. RES =
Repertoire d'pigraphie Smitique, Paris 1905-68. Sing., sing. =
singular TAD = B. PORTEN - A. YARDENI, Textbook of Aramaic
Documents from Ancient Egypt I. Letters, Jerusalem 1986; II.
Contracts, Jeru salem 1989; III. Literature, Accounts, Lists,
Jerusalem 1993. TSSI = J.C.L. GIBSON, Textbook of Syrian Semitic
Inscriptions I. Hebrew and Moabite Inscriptions, 2nd ed., Oxford
1973; II. Aramaic Inscriptions, Oxford 1975; I I I . Phoenician
Inscriptions, Oxford 1982. Ugar. = Ugaritic v = vowel v = long
vowel vs. = versus, against Symbols, Determinatives enclose
phonemic transcriptions; enclose phonetic approximations or
reconstructed parts of a text; enclose words not found in the
original, but needed in the translation; indicates form or
vocalization supposed, but not attested as such in texts; signifies
that the preceding form has developed from the following one;
signifies that the preceding form develops or has developed into
the following one; ! to be especially noticed, e.g. because of a
new reading; ? dubious reading or interpretation; // parallel with;
/ indicates alternative forms, appellations, symbols, when placed
between two letters, syllables, words, etc.; : the colon indicates
length in linguistics; it is generally replaced by the macron in
the present Outline', + joins lexemes or morphemes forming one
word. hyphen used to connect the elements of certain compound
words, as well as cuneiform and hieroglyphic "syllabic" graphemes
pertaining to one word. abbreviation of the determinative DINGIR,
"god", in cuneiform texts; postpositional determinative KT,
"country", in cuneiform texts; LUGAL small capital letters indicate
logograms, sumerograms; determinative URU, "city' , in cuneiform
texts.d ki uru 1
// t] () * < >
I SEMITIC LANGUAGES
1. DEFINITION
1.1. The "Semitic" languages were so named in 1781 by A.L.
Schlcezer in J.G. Eichhorn's Repertorium fuer biblische und
morgenlaendische Literatur (vol. V I I I , p. 161) because they
were spoken by peoples included in Gen. 10,21-31 among the sons of
Sem. They are spoken nowadays by more than two hundred million
people and they constitute the only language family the history of
which can be followed for four thousand five hundred years.
However, they do not stand isolated among the languages of the
world. They form part of a larger language group often called
Hamito-Semitic, but lately better known as Afro-Asiatic. The
existence of a relationship between Berber in North Africa and
Semitic was perceived already in the second half of the 9th century
A.D. by Judah ibn Quraysh, from Tiaret (Algeria), in his work known
as Rsla. Ibn Quraysh is rightly regarded as one of the forerunners
of com parative Semitic linguistics, based an Arabic, Hebrew, and
Aramaic, but his intuition connecting the languages of this group
with another branch of Afro-Asiatic, at least in some particular
cases, did not yield fruit before the 19th century. A broader
interrelationship was first recognized by Th. Benfey in his sole
work on Semitic linguistics: Ueber das Verhaeltniss der
aegyptischen Sprache zum semitischen Sprachstamm (Leipzig 1844),
where he expresses the opinion that also Berber and "Ethiopic",
i.e. Cushitic in his terminology, belong to the same large language
family. As for Hausa, the best known of the Chadic languages, it
was related to this group in the very same year by T.N. Newman who
had appended a note on Hausa in the third edition of J.C.
Prichard's Researches as to the Physical History of Man (vol. I V ,
London 1844, p. 617-626), and was then followed by J.F. Schon in
the latter's Gram mar of the Hausa Language (London 1862). The
designation "Cushitic" was introduced by 1858, and the entire
language family was named "Hamito-Semitic" in 1876 by Fr. Miiller
in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft (Wien 1876-88), where
Miiller describes the concerned group of languages. J.H. Greenberg,
instead, considering that this is the only language family
represented in both Africa and Asia, proposed
24
SEMITIC LANGUAGES
to call it Afro-Asiatic in his work The Languages of Africa,
issued in 1963. 1.2. The languages in question are spoken nowadays
in Western Asia, in North Africa, and in the Horn of northeastern
Africa, but their oldest written attestations, dating back to the
third millennium B.C., are limited to Mesopotamia, North Syria, and
Egypt. Whereas the relation between the various Semitic languages
can be compared with that of, say, the various Germanic or Romance
or Slavic languages, Afro-Asiatic would more or less correspond to
the group of Indo-European languages. The latter have a few points
of contact with Afro-Asiatic, but these are scarcely sufficient to
warrant assumption of any genetic connection; anyhow, this topic is
outside the scope of the present study. On the other hand, there is
a structural analogy between Afro-Asiatic and the Cau casian
languages, as first shown by I . M . Diakonoff (Semito-Hamitic
Languages, Moscow 1965) who reached the important conclusion that
Afro-Asiatic belonged originally to an ergative language type,
character ized by the opposition of a casus agens (nominative,
instrumental, loca tive) to a casus patiens (accusative,
predicative). The links of Afro-Asi atic with the great Bantu
linguistic stock of Central Africa seem to be more precise, as
indicated e.g. by the noun prefix mu- (e.g. Kwena murt-i,
"teacher", built on the stem -rut-), the reciprocal verb suffix
-n(e.g. Sotho ho-op-n-, "to be striking one another";
Swahilipatiliz-ana, "to vex one an other"), and the causative
suffix -is-1 -is- (e.g. Kwena hu-rt-s-, "to cause to teach";
Swahili fung-is-a, "to cause to shut"). A reference to these
languages will be made only occasionally, although there are many
features of semantics and idiom which are common to African
languages and to Semitic. For example, parts of the body are often
used as prepositions and the extended metaphoric use of words, e.g.
of the verb "eat", can lead to meanings like " w i n , gain, use",
etc.
2. A F R O - A S I A T I C
1.3. The languages that belong to the Afro-Asiatic group are
classified in four main families, besides the Semitic family which
will be described below. The pertinent observations are restricted
here to the prerequisites necessary for an understanding and a
reconstruction of Semitic linguistic history. A more detailed
approach is unnecessary, since comparative Egypto-Semitic
linguistics is still in its infancy, while
EGYPTIAN
25
none of the other African members of the Afro-Asiatic group is
known from sources earlier than the 19th century, except ancient
Ethiopic or Ge'ez, which is a Semitic language, and Libyco-Berber,
represented by inscriptions only partly understandable in the
present state of our knowledge.
A. Egyptian 2.1. The Egyptian language was the speech of the
Nile valley from the earliest historical times until some time
after A.D. 1000. Only Egyptian and some Semitic languages have
records from very ancient times. Even in the third millennium B.C.,
however, these two branches were very distinct. Among the
similarities is the phonological system, although next to nothing
is known about the vowels of the older stages of Egypt ian. The
morphologies of Semitic and Egyptian were characterized by
consonantal roots which are combined with vowel patterns and
affixes. Both possess two genders (masculine and feminine) and
three numbers (singular, dual, and plural). Egyptian has a suffix
verb form, namely the old perfective or "pseudo-participle", which
is related to the Semitic stative, and a prefixed form in /s which
corresponds to the Semitic causative stem. There are also some
affinities in the vocabulary, inde pendently from loanwords.
Despite these analogies, the practical use of Egyptian in
morpho-syntactic analysis and in comparative Afro-Asiatic studies
in general is limited. This results partly from the current Egypto
logical research that too often postulates syntactic principles
unheard in language study and, therefore, cannot serve comparative
purposes. There is also the intrinsic default of the hieroglyphic
writing system that lacks any indication of vowels and geminations,
while its limits are not com pensated by any living tradition. Only
Coptic dialects (2.7) give some insights into the latest phase of a
number of grammatical categories in a language that underwent
important changes in the course of time.
a) Old Egyptian 2.2. The main sources for our knowledge of the
language of the Old Kingdom are the biographic texts, the royal
decrees, and the Pyramid texts discovered on the walls of chambers
inside the pyramids of the kings of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties.
These texts, which were incanta tions for the well-being of the
dead king, show peculiarities of their own,
26
SEMITIC L A N G U A G E S
including very archaic linguistic features. Besides the old
perfective, Old Egyptian has a series of suffix-conjugations, which
are peculiar to Egyptian and are not paralleled in the other
Afro-Asiatic languages. Since Egyptian is linked by evident lexical
and morphological isoglosses with Semitic, Libyco-Berber, Chadic,
and Cushitic, it is unlikely that it could have diverged from
common Afro-Asiatic before the latter had developed its verbal
system. Therefore, it stands to reason that Egyptian has lost the
prefix-conjugation in prehistoric times under the influence of a
Macro-Sudanic adstratum or substratum of the Nile valley, just as
Egyptian vocabulary comprises words alien to Afro-Asiatic but
related to Old Nubian, as k3i, "to think out, to plan", vs. Old
Nubian ki-, "to think", rp, "wine", vs. Old Nubian orpa-gir, "to
make wine", negative m vs. Old Nubian negative morpheme m. In
another domain, Egyptian religion presents the same basic
characteristics as the Nilotic religion of the Dhinka and Shilluk
tribes of southern Sudan, the only ones of whose religious ideas
there is definite knowledge. However, because of the lack of
vocalization in Egyptian, it is extremely difficult to ascertain
that the Egyptian conjugation system had developed under a Nilotic
influence. For example, like Nilotic languages, Old and Middle
Egyptian dispense, as a rule, with any equivalent of a definite or
indefinite article, but an important feature of several Nilotic
languages consists in showing definiteness by the use of verbal
forms involving an internal vowel change, viz. the "qualitative"
(indefinite) and the "applicative" (definite); e.g. Anyuk a ki'o ki
y, " I am paddling a canoe" ("qualitative"), a kiia y, " I paddle
the canoe" ("applicative"). Now, such vocalic differ ences cannot
be expressed in hieroglyphic script. We know at least that, along
with Nilotic languages, Egyptian has a special verb for
"notknowing": rh, "to know", vs. hm, "not to know".
b) Middle Egyptian 2.3. Middle Egyptian is the classical stage
of ancient Egyptian. It developed from Old Egyptian and was based
on the language spoken towards the end of the third millennium
B.C., being used for all pur poses from that time until the
mid-second millennium B.C. The suffixconjugations of Old Egyptian
remained the major verb forms in use through Middle Egyptian, but
the influence of the spoken language is reflected by the occasional
use of forms which were to become standard only in Late Egyptian.
Middle Egyptian survived in later times for many monumental
inscriptions and for some literary compositions.
EGYPTIAN
27
2.4. At least as early as the Middle Kingdom, a special system
known as "group-writing" was devised for the transcription of
foreign names and words, particularly Semitic. This system involves
the use of certain hieroglyphic or hieratic signs indicating a
consonant followed by a weak consonant or a semi-vowel (3, i, w,
y). These "syllabic" signs are thought by some to represent Semitic
syllables, but they are often com bined with "alphabetic" signs
marking just one consonant (Fig. 1). Besides, since the Egyptians
did not distinguish between r and / in their script, they usually
used the sign 3 to transcribe these two Semitic phonemes in Middle
Egyptian texts (e.g. --k-3-n = 'qln), but they rep resented them
also by signs which Egyptologists transcribe with "r" and " n " .
There are also some hesitations in the transcription of Semitic
voiced consonants, for instance in the name of Byblos, Gbl in
Semitic but K-p-n or K-b-n in ancient Egyptian.
c) Late Egyptian 2.5. Late Egyptian shows striking differences
when compared with Old and Middle Egyptian: the old verb forms were
being replaced, def inite and indefinite articles were used, many
phonetic changes occurred, and numerous foreign words appeared.
Fairly accurate deductions may be made about the phonetic value of
the consonants and of the vowels thanks to cuneiform texts,
particularly the Amarna letters from the 14th century B.C. It
appears also, for instance, that the Egyptian phoneme interpreted
as " t " by Egyptologists corresponds then to Semitic s (e.g.
Egyptian twf.y vs. Hebrew sp, "papyrus plant") and that the alleged
" d " is the phonetic equivalent of Semitic s (e.g. Egyptian db'
vs. Semitic 'sb', "finger").
d) Demotic 2.6. Demotic was the ordinary language used for
official acts and other documents, beginning in the 8th/7th century
B.C. and continuing into Roman times, down to the 5th century A.D.
Definite traces of dialect distinctions, which may be related to
these of Coptic, are found in Demotic texts. Demotic is written
from right to left, like contemporary Semitic alphabetic scripts.
The signs comprise phonograms, word signs, and determinatives, and
a single Demotic sign is often in origin a liga ture of several
hieroglyphs. In the Ptolemaic age it first distinguishes / from
r.
28
SEMITIC LANGUAGES
SIGN
TRANS LITERATION
OBJECT D E P I C T E D
It
i
Egyptian vulture
1WW
i y r w
flowering reed j ( i ) two reed-flowers oblique strokes forearm
quail chick foot stool homed viper owl water mouth reed shelter in
Held* wick of twisted flax placenta (?)
1
*
a
Jf
b P
m n rro
h h hs
i
animal's belly with teats bolt ((a) folded cloth pool
hill-slope
c
I
s k g ti
A
basket with handle stand for jar loaf tethering rope hand
snake
d4 1
Fig. 1. The uniconsonantal signs in the Egyptian hieroglyphic
script according to A. Gardiner,Egyptian Grammar, 3rd ed., London
1957, p. 27.
CUSHITIC
29
e) Coptic 2.7. During the Roman and Byzantine periods Greek was
the most common written language in Egypt, although Demotic was
also widely used. As early as the 2nd century A.D. texts were
written in Egyptian but in Greek letters, breaking with the
hieroglyphic and Demotic tradi tions. These were not only
horoscopes, magic spells, and the like, but also Christian
translations of the Bible, followed by a Christian litera ture,
written in Greek letters supplemented by seven characters taken
from Demotic. The language was the one or the other of the Egyptian
dialects as they were then spoken and are known as Coptic, from the
Greek {Ai)gyptos, "Egypt". Aside from the rather slight difference
of linguistic structure between Demotic and Coptic, there is a
marked change in vocabulary and general tone due to the shift from
paganism to Christianity, with its religious and ecclesiastical
phraseology borrowed from Greek. In fact, Coptic literature is
almost entirely religious and consists mainly of translations from
Greek. Coptic dialects became pro gressively restricted after the
Arab conquest of Egypt (A.D. 640). The Arabic writer Maqrizi, bom
in Cairo (1365-1442), still records that in his own day Copts in
Upper Egypt spoke scarcely anything but Coptic. But it is generally
assumed that Coptic died out as a spoken language during the 16th
century, although a Coptic native speaker is attested at Asyt in
1672/3, while a few men in the village of Zainya (northeast of
Karnak) could understand usual Coptic liturgical texts as late as
1936. The Bohairic dialect is still the liturgical language of the
Coptic Church, but the pronunciation is based on the values of the
letters in Modem Greek. B. Cushitic 2.8. The Cushitic family
comprises about seventy mostly littleexplored languages. There is,
as yet, little agreement concerning the identification and
classification of these languages that are spoken from the Red Sea
littoral to the area south of the Horn of northeastern Africa (cf.
Fig. 19). They are generally characterized in phonology by palatal
consonants (c, , n, s), by globalized emphatics (p = p\ t = t\ c =
c\ q = k'), and by the absence or the limited use of pharyngals (h,
') and of velar fricatives (h, ), which have most likely
disappeared like in several Semitic languages. Cushitic preserves
some archaic Afro-Asiatic fea tures in morpho-syntax, as verbal
aspects, the "ergative" and the nonactive cases of the noun
inflection, the causative, passive, and reflexive
30
SEMITIC LANGUAGES
stems of the verb, but it frequently suffixes the characteristic
mor phemes, just as it uses postpositions rather than prepositions.
The pronominal elements and the basic vocabulary often show close
rela tionship to Semitic. Instead, Cushitic is not-related to the
Macro-Sudanic languages which were used and written in northern
Sudan: Meroitic, a still imperfectly understood language which is
attested from the 3rd cen tury B.C. to the 5th century A.D., and
Old Nubian which is known from Christian writings dating from the
end of the 8th century to the 14th cen tury, and which is continued
by the modern Nubian dialects of the Nile valley and of the
Kordofan hills. Cushitic consists of five main groups of languages,
that might be further subdivided.
The following diagram presents the main sub-groups:
Cushitic
North Cushitic (Bedja)
Central Cushitic (Agaw)
West Cushitic (Omotic)
East Cushitic
South Cushitic
Bilin Khamtanga Qemant Qwara Awngi
"Highland" "Lowland"
Northern (Saho-Afar)
Oromo
Southern
Galaboid
Ba'iso
Sam
Rendille
Bani
Somali
CUSHITIC
31
a) Bedja 2.9. Bedja or North Cushitic is spoken on the Red Sea
littoral of the Sudan and in the hinterland, to the latitude of
Kassala in the south. The Bedja tribes of eastern Sudan are
essentially nomad pastoralists that belong to two main tribal
confederacies: the Bisharin and Abdada, in the north, the
Hadendowa, Amarar, and Beni 'Amar in the south. Their lan guage,
called also (To) Bedawi, presents striking morphological analo gies
with Semitic verbal stems, with the causative prefix s- (gumad, "to
be long", sugumd, "to lengthen"), the reflexive/passive affix -t-
(kehan "to love", atkehan, "to be loved"), and the intensive or
"pluriactional" doubling of a radical (dir, "to k i l l " , mdedar,
"to kill each other"). Moreover, the conjugation of the finite verb
parallels the Semitic imperfective, preterite, and probably
jussive; e.g. present 'adanbl < *'adabbl, " I am collecting";
past 'adbfl, " I collected"; conditional 'dbil, " I may collect",
which has a present meaning in negative clauses (e.g. k-dbil, " I
don't collect") and seems to go back to a volitive form. As for
phonology, Bedja has lost the Afro-Asiatic pharyngals and the
emphatic consonants. The Bedja of the Sudan are probably the Medju
of ancient Egypt and certainly the Blemmyes who used to raid Upper
Egypt in the Roman period. They are called Bouyaeixoi in the Greek
inscriptions of Ezana, king of Aksum in the mid-4th century A.D.
(8.11), and Bcy in the "Christian Topography" written about A.D.
550 by Cosmos Indicopleutes who had travelled throughout the Red
Sea trading area. In earlier times the Bedja speakers extended much
further to the west across the Nile. They probably inhabited what
is now called the Bayuda desert, about 200 km north of Omdurman.
Remnants of these western Bedja are to be recognized in the Bedyat
of Ennedi, whose royal clan, the Bisherla, is presumably of
Bisharin descent. The Islamism of the Bedja, though fervid in some
tribes such as the Haden dowa, is relatively recent, for Maqrizi
(1365-1442) wrote of them as mostly heathen. Early Moslem monuments
discovered in the area should be linked rather with the Arabs of
the Beni Omayya tribe who had begun to cross the Red Sea as early
as the 8th century. Thus, Moslem tomb stones dating from the 8th to
the 11th centuries (the earliest is dated from A.H. 153 = ca, A.D.
790) have been found in some places, while early Moslem stone-built
towerlike tombs occur at Maman, about 100 km northeast of Kassala,
and elsewhere. Circular stone graves with flat tops are presumably
those of Bedja, either Moslems or no. In any case, many non-Islamic
beliefs persist among the Bedja people until our days.
32
SEMITIC L A N G U A G E S
b) Agaw 2.10. Agaw or Central Cushitic is constituted of a
number of closely related languages, that are not necessarily
intelligible to speakers of another Agaw idiom. These languages are
spoken in Eritrea and in northwestern Ethiopia, in a region where
Semitic influence has been rel atively strong. The Agaw people are
believed to have once occupied most of highland Ethiopia. Their
present scattered distribution must be the result of the Semitic
expansion in this area (8.9). The Agaw dialects which are still
living include Bilin, spoken in Eritrea around Keren, Khamtanga,
corresponding to the Khamta and Khamir varieties of Agaw reported
earlier in the northeastern part of the Amharic area (Wello
province), Qemant and the Qwara or Falasha dialects, north of Lake
Tana, and Southern Agaw or Awngi, spoken south and west of the
lake. At the request of James Bruce, the text of the Song of Songs
has been translated in 1769-72 from Amharic into three Agaw
dialects, among them into Falasha, and some Falasha prayer texts in
Qwara, dating from the 19th century, have been preserved. The
Falashas, which claim to be of Jewish descent, once spoke two Agaw
dialects, and it is still custom ary among them to recite certain
blessings in Agaw, including the Grace after Meals. But they have
almost entirely forgotten their former lan guage with the exception
of some outlying communities living in Qwara before the Falasha
emigration to Israel. The Falashas read the Bible in Ge'ez and
speak Amharic. The Agaw dialects are receding nowadays before
Amharic and Tigrinya, although Awngi seems to be in less dan ger of
disappearing than the others. It is noticeable for having preserved
five basic verbs which belong to the prefix-conjugation, parallel
to the Semitic imperfective and perfective: yinte, "he comes" (vs.
Semitic y-'ty), yage, "he brings" (vs. Semitic y-wg'), yig e, "he
remains" (vs. Semitic y-qm), yae, "he is, he becomes" (vs. Semitic
y-wq% yaqe, "he knows" (vs. Semitic y-wqy). Otherwise, Awngi has a
developed suf fix-conjugation with a clear distinction between the
main verb and the verb of subordinate clauses. The Agaw dialects of
the Qemant-Qwara group possess the voiced velar fricative , like
Awngi, and also the velar nasal ng (/rj/), as well as their
labialized counterparts.w
c) East Cushitic 2.11. East Cushitic comprises a number of
languages spoken in the Horn of Africa and divided into "Highland"
and "Lowland" East Cushitic.
CUSHITIC
33
1 The main "Lowland" language is Oromo, formerly called Galla or
Galbnna. It is spoken by some twenty million people living in
Ethiopia and in northern Kenya, and it was once used also in
northern Somalia. Oromo is thus, after Arabic, Hausa (2.16), and
Swahili (1.2), the African language with the largest number of
speakers, but it became a "written" language only in 1975, with the
publication of the first Oromo periodical in Ethiopian script
(9.7). 2 Other linguistically important Lowland East Cushitic
languages are the Konso in Ethiopia, the Saho-Afar in Eritrea and
in the Djibouti Republic, the languages of the Galaboid sub-group,
Ba'iso which is spo ken on an island of Lake Abaya, and the
so-called "Sam" languages, whose name is derived from a common root
*sam ("nose"). The latter sub-group is important for comparative
linguistics because of its prefixconjugation with an aspectual
distinction between perfective and imperfective. It comprises
Rendille, spoken in Kenya, east of Lake Turkana (former Rudolf),
Boni, attested mainly in Kenya, east of the lower Tana river, and
the Somali dialects spoken by about five million people in Somalia,
in eastern Ethiopia, and in northern Kenya. Instead, the total of
Rendille and Boni speakers amounts only to a few thousand. Contrary
to a Somali tradition, there is no reason to believe that their
ancestors arrived from Arabia, although the Arabic peninsula was
the origin of an increasing immigration, probably from the 8th
century A.D. onwards, as well as the source of the Islamization of
Somalia. There is a large body of Somali oral literature, including
alliterative poetry. The name Somali first occurs in a praise song
of Yeshaq I of Abyssinia (1412-1427). 3 Eastern Sidamo, now called
Highland East Cushitic, was the main substratum language of South
Ethiopic. This sub-family of East Cushitic is a compact group with
seven or eight languages and several dialects spoken by some two
million people. Hadiyya, spoken by about one mil lion people, is
its main representative nowadays; the other languages of this group
are Kambata, Sidamo proper, Tembaro, Alaba, Qabenna, Darasa, and
perhaps Buri.
d) West and South Cushitic 2.12. West Cushitic, also called Kafa
group or Omotic because it is spoken in the vicinity of the Omo
river , constitutes a family of some forty related languages spoken
by about two million people in south western Ethiopia. Among the
Omotic dialects, which are considered by some scholars as a
distinct branch of Afro-Asiatic, the best represented
34
SEMITIC LANGUAGES
is the Walamo dialect cluster with more than one million
speakers. Spe cial attention was paid also to Moca, Djandjero,
Madji, and Kafa. From the comparative point of view, Kafa, for
instance, has only suffixed nominal and verbal formations, but it
preserves the aspectual nature of the conjugation very well. Most
verbal roots are monosyllabic and belong to the types C vC or C vC
Cx 2 A 2 T
2.13. South Cushitic comprises languages spoken in Kenya and in
Tanzania, like the Mbugu, the Iraqw, and the Dahalo. These
languages except Iraqw are little known and some of them, as Mbugu
and Dahalo, in Tanzania, are influenced by Bantu languages. There
is no doubt, however, that the pronouns are Cushitic and that the
conjugation belongs to the common Cushitic suffix inflection.
C . Libyco-Berber 2.14. Libyco-Berber dialects were formerly
spoken in all of North Africa except Egypt, by the Tuareg of the
Sahara, and by the Guanches of the Canary Islands (Fig. 2).
Considerable interest in the spoken Berber lan guages and their
origins had developed by the middle of the 19th century, but no
written sources are available before some Shleuh manuscripts from
the 16th or 17th century written in Arabic script, except a few
short Berber sentences in an Arabic manuscript from the 12th
century and a number of Berber words and proper names quoted in
works of Arab mediaeval writ ers. The Libyco-Berber language is
spoken by some twenty million people from the Siwa Oasis in Egypt
to the Atlantic and from the Mediterranean southwards into the
Sahara. It shows many correspondences of a phono logical,
morphological, syntactical, and lexical nature with Semitic, but
these affinities can readily be explained within the general
framework of Afro-Asiatic languages. Libyco-Berber preserves the
features of an ergative language type to a greater extent than
Semitic and its declension system is based on the opposition of an
active subject case (casus agens) to a pred icative or non-active
case (casus patiens). In the singular, as a rule, the active
subject case is characterized by the w-prefix, while the a-prefix
is marking the predicative or non-active case (32.1-7). Beside a
stative con jugation (e.g. hnin, "he is gracious") and two
non-aspectual tenses, viz. the imperative (e.g. atom, "follow!")
and the jussive (-Ikdm-) (38.2), which is used also in subordinate
clauses, Libyco-Berber has two verbal prefixforms, viz. the
imperfective and the perfective, that indicate the aspect,
i.e.^
Fig. 2. Geographical distribution of Libyco-Berber
36
SEMITIC LANGUAGES
whether the action is considered as a lasting process or as a
concluded action; e.g. the basic stem of -Ikdm-, "to follow":
Aspect perfective imperfective Positive -Ikam-lkkdmNegative
-Ikem-hkkdm-
A vowel lengthening characterizes in Tuareg the intensive stem,
like in some Semitic and Cushitic languages, and affixes may be
added in all dialects to the verbal root in order to express the
causative, reflexive or reciprocal, frequentative, or passive
meaning of the verb. A l l these stems occur also in Semitic
languages, except the last one which is paralleled by the Egyptian
"pseudo-passive": intensive stem, e.g. -Ikm-; -lkkdm-\ causative
s-stem, e.g. -S9rt9k-, "cause to f a l l " ; reflexive / reciprocal
m/rt-stem, e.g. m3trdg-, "be freed"; frequentative i-stem, e.g.
-tdffd-, "go often out"; agentless passive f/w-stem, e.g.
-ttwadddz-, "be crushed". Despite numerous lexical variations (e.g.
"fox", udn in Kabyle but hdggi in Tuareg) and important phonetic
changes (e.g. "heart", Tuareg dwl, Tachelhit ul, Tamazight uz,
Tarifit wr), Libyco-Berber is still essen tially one language, the
numerous dialects of which show but relatively slight differences,
although Tuareg and some eastern idioms appear to be its most
archaic forms of speech. Tuareg is important also because it has
but few borrowings from Arabic, which are instead numerous in other
Berber dialects, viz. Tarifit or Rifan in northern Morocco,
Tachelhit or Shleuh in the south of the country and in Mauritania,
Tamazight in the Middle Atlas region, Kabyle and Tachaouit or
Chaouia in Kabylia and in the Aurs (Algeria), Zenaga in
southwestern Mauritania, etc. However, the borrowings from Arabic
are mainly lexical, exceptionally morpho logical or syntactical. In
Tuareg, one must reckon also with possible loanwords from Songhai,
an important isolated language spoken in Tombouctou (Mali), in the
Niger valley farther south, and in the city of Agades in the A i r
oasis of the Sahara (Niger). The term ta-mazi-t is used nowadays in
Moroccan and Saharan dialects to designate the Berber language in
general, and someone speaking Berber is an amazi (plur. i-mazi-dr).
The word mazi has a long history, since it is attested as a North
African personal name in Roman times, while some Libyco-Berber
tribes are called Mazices or MG^IKSC; in classical sources. Ibn
Khaldun (13321406) considers Mazigh as a forefather of the
Berbers.
LIBYCO-BERBER
37
2.15. The Berber-speaking Tuaregs have a writing of their own,
the tifna, a plural apparently related to Greek (poiviK-,
"Phoenician, Punic". Its origin may go back to the 7th-6th
centuries B.C., as indicated by monuments and inscriptions ranging
over the whole of North Africa. Most of the ancient inscriptions
(about 1200) date however from the times of the Numidian kingdoms
(3rd-1st cent. B.C.) and of the Roman Empire (Fig. 3). As a rule,
they do not indicate vowels, not even the ini tial w-, a-, /- of
the case prefixes which have thus to be supplied, e.g. nbbn nqr'
corresponding approximately to *i-nbabdn n-u-qura\ "the cutters of
wood (were)..." (Dougga, 2nd century B.C.). There is also a large
corpus of Libyco-Berber proper names quoted in Punic, Greek, and
Latin sources. However, it is not easy to connect the phonological,
mor phological, syntactical, and lexical elements of this antique
documenta tion with the modern Berber forms of speech. The Numidic
noun gld, "king", pronounced nowadays idgid in Tarifit because of
the phonetic changes g > z and // > g, gives a small idea of
the problems facing the linguists. Nevertheless, the uninterrupted
continuity of the LibycoBerber idioms appears to be accepted
nowadays by all reputable schol ars in the field. The orthography
of Tuareg in Latin characters, officially adopted in Niger and in
Mali, does of course not reflect the dialectal richness of the
language, although it undoubtedly presents some advan tages. The
modem Berber dialects reflect the ancient loss of original
gutturals, but they have more pharyngalized emphatics than Common
Semitic, also more palatalized and fricativized consonants. The
changes d > d, d > t, d > d, g > , k > g, k > , q
> , r > r, s > s, t > t, s > z are quite frequent,
as well as g > z, k > , l> z, 11 > , 11 > ,rr> g,
z > (>), z > z, b > b, d > d, t > f; e.g.
Tachaouit ti-dtt-dn, "she-goats", to compare with Hebrew gddi and
Arabic ady, "young goat". Besides, original pharyngalization can
disappear (e.g. Tachaouit dddhhast < *ta-dahhkit, "laughing"), a
secondary pharyngal may be inserted before t (e.g. Tachaouit
dz-zdht < Arabic dz-zdyt, "olive oil"; Kabyle ta-bdliht <
ta-bdlit, "mule"), and various assimilations may occur (e.g.
Tarifit yda < *yika, "he ate").
38
SEMITIC LANGUAGES
PHONETIC VALUE . b m f P t t d d d t nV
OLDER FORMSE3
PRESENT-DAY FORMS Consonants bt mt nb Clusters
0
3 u cj
X o X X B 6VA H
nd -rnd
t
nuE EI nt
m3 3
H >
mi r ?e
>>
*)
>0
o0
?
( r
Ps q rV
>
?
1 r
?V
; /%rtr
?wK
