Proto-Semitic language

Proto-Semitic is the

The Semitic language family is considered part of the broader macro-family of Afroasiatic languages.

Dating

The earliest attestations of any Semitic language are in Akkadian, dating to around the 24th to 23rd centuries BC (see Sargon of Akkad) and the Eblaite language, but earlier evidence of Akkadian comes from personal names in Sumerian texts from the first half of the third millennium BC.^[3] One of the earliest known Akkadian inscriptions was found on a bowl at Ur, addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiagnunna of Ur (c. 2485–2450 BC) by his queen Gan-saman, who is thought to have been from Akkad.^[4] The earliest text fragments of West Semitic are snake spells in Egyptian pyramid texts, dated around the mid-third millennium BC.^[5][6]

Proto-Semitic itself must have been spoken before the emergence of its daughters, so some time before the earliest attestation of Akkadian, and sufficiently long so for the changes leading from it to Akkadian to have taken place, which would place it in the fourth millennium BC or earlier.^[3]

Urheimat

Since all modern Semitic languages can be traced back to a common ancestor,

There is also evidence that Mesopotamia and adjoining areas of modern Syria were originally inhabited by a non-Semitic population. That is suggested by non-Semitic toponyms preserved in Akkadian and Eblaite.

Levant hypothesis

A Bayesian analysis performed in 2009 suggests an origin for all known Semitic languages in the Levant around 3750 BC, with a later single introduction from South Arabia into the Horn of Africa around 800 BC. This statistical analysis could not, however, estimate when or where the ancestor of all Semitic languages diverged from Afroasiatic.^[8] It thus neither contradicts nor confirms the hypothesis that the divergence of ancestral Semitic from Afroasiatic occurred in Africa.

In another variant of the theory, the earliest wave of Semitic speakers entered the

Vowels

Proto-Semitic had a simple vowel system, with three qualities *a, *i, *u, and phonemic vowel length, conventionally indicated by a macron: *ā, *ī, *ū.^[10] This system is preserved in Classical Arabic.^[11]

Consonants

The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic was originally based primarily on

The reconstructed phonemes *s *z *ṣ *ś *ṣ́ *ṯ̣, which are shown to be phonetically affricates in the table above, may also be interpreted as fricatives (/s z sʼ ɬ ɬʼ θʼ/), as discussed below. This was the traditional reconstruction and is reflected in the choice of signs.

The Proto-Semitic consonant system is based on triads of related

• stops
  *d *t *ṭ
• stops
  *g *k *ḳ (normally written *g *k *q)
• Dental sibilants *z *s *ṣ
• Interdental /ð θ θʼ/ (written *ḏ *ṯ *ṯ̣)
• Lateral /l ɬ ɬʼ/ (normally written *l *ś *ṣ́)

The probable phonetic realization of most consonants is straightforward and is indicated in the table with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Two subsets of consonants, however, deserve further comment.

Emphatics

The sounds notated here as "emphatic consonants" occur in nearly all Semitic languages as well as in most other Afroasiatic languages, and they are generally reconstructed as glottalization in Proto-Semitic.^{[15][16][nb 1]} Thus, *ṭ, for example, represents [tʼ]. See below for the fricatives/affricates.

In modern Semitic languages, emphatics are variously realized as

• The classical Ethiopian Semitic language Geʽez is unique among Semitic languages for contrasting all three of /p/, /f/, and /pʼ/. While /p/ and /pʼ/ occur mostly in loanwords (especially from Greek), there are many other occurrences whose origin is less clear (such as hepʼä 'strike', häppälä 'wash clothes').^[18]
• According to Hetzron, Hebrew developed an emphatic labial phoneme ṗ to represent unaspirated /p/ in Iranian and Greek.^[19]

Fricatives

The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic has nine fricative sounds that are reflected usually as

• Two voiced fricatives *ð, *z that eventually became, for example, /z/ for both in Hebrew and Geʽez (/ð/ in early Geʽez), but /ð/ and /z/ in Arabic respectively
• Four voiceless fricatives
  • *θ (*ṯ) that became /ʃ/ in Hebrew but /θ/ in Arabic and /s/ in Geʽez (/θ/ in early Geʽez)
  • *š (*s₁) that became /ʃ/ in Hebrew but /s/ in Arabic and Geʽez
  • *ś (*s₂) that became /s/ (transcribed ś) in Hebrew but /ʃ/ in Arabic and /ɬ/ in Geʽez
  • *s (*s₃) that became /s/ in Hebrew, Arabic and Geʽez
• Three emphatic fricatives (*θ̣, *ṣ, *ṣ́)

The precise sound of the Proto-Semitic fricatives, notably of *š, *ś, *s and *ṣ, remains a perplexing problem, and there are various systems of notation to describe them. The notation given here is traditional and is based on their pronunciation in Hebrew, which has traditionally been extrapolated to Proto-Semitic. The notation *s₁, *s₂, *s₃ is found primarily in the literature on Old South Arabian, but more recently, it has been used by some authors to discuss Proto-Semitic to express a noncommittal view of the pronunciation of the sounds. However, the older transcription remains predominant in most literature, often even among scholars who either disagree with the traditional interpretation or remain noncommittal.^[20]

The traditional view, as expressed in the conventional transcription and still maintained by some of the authors in the field

The primary disagreements concern whether the sounds were actually fricatives in Proto-Semitic or whether some were affricates, and whether the sound designated *š was pronounced [ʃ] (or similar) in Proto-Semitic, as the traditional view posits, or had the value of [s]. The issue of the nature of the "emphatic" consonants, discussed above, is partly related (but partly orthogonal) to the issues here as well.

With respect to the traditional view, there are two dimensions of "minimal" and "maximal" modifications made:

1. In how many sounds are taken to be
   affricates. The "minimal affricate" position takes only the emphatic *ṣ as an affricate [t͡sʼ]. The "maximal affricate" position additionally posits that *s *z were actually affricates [t͡s d͡z] while *š was actually a simple fricative [s].^[26]
2. In whether to extend the affricate interpretation to the interdentals and laterals. The "minimal extension" position assumes that only the sibilants were affricates, and the other "fricatives" were in fact all fricatives, but the maximal update extends the same interpretation to the other sounds. Typically, that means that the "minimal affricate, maximal extension" position takes all and only the emphatics are taken as affricates: emphatic *ṣ θ̣ ṣ́ were [t͡sʼ t͡θʼ t͡ɬʼ]. The "maximal affricate, maximal extension" position assumes not only the "maximal affricate" position for sibilants but also that non-emphatic *θ ð ś were actually affricates.

Affricates in Proto-Semitic were proposed early on but met little acceptance until the work of Alice Faber (1981)^[citation needed] who challenged the older approach. The Semitic languages that have survived often have fricatives for these consonants. However, Ethiopic languages and Modern Hebrew, in many reading traditions, have an affricate for *ṣ.^[27]

The evidence for the various affricate interpretations of the sibilants is direct evidence from transcriptions and structural evidence. However, the evidence for the "maximal extension" positions that extend affricate interpretations to non-sibilant "fricatives" is largely structural because of both the relative rarity of the interdentals and lateral obstruents among the attested Semitic language and the even-greater rarity of such sounds among the various languages in which Semitic words were transcribed. As a result, even when the sounds were transcribed, the resulting transcriptions may be difficult to interpret clearly.

The narrowest affricate view (only *ṣ was an affricate [t͡sʼ]) is the most accepted one.^[28] The affricate pronunciation is directly attested in the modern Ethiopic languages and Modern Hebrew, as mentioned above, but also in ancient transcriptions of numerous Semitic languages in various other languages:

• Transcriptions of
  Axumite Kingdom (early centuries AD): ṣəyāmo rendered as Greek τζιαμω tziamō.^[28]
• The Hebrew reading tradition of ṣ as [t͡s] clearly goes back at least to medieval times, as shown by the use of Hebrew צ (ṣ) to represent affricates in early New Persian, Old Osmanli Turkic, Middle High German, Yiddish, etc. Similarly, Old French c /t͡s/ was used to transliterate צ: Hebrew ṣɛdɛḳ "righteousness" and ʼārɛṣ "land (of Israel)" were written cedek, arec.^[28]
• There is also evidence of an affricate in Ancient Hebrew and Phoenician ṣ. Punic ṣ was often transcribed as ts or t in Latin and Greek or occasionally Greek ks; correspondingly, Egyptian names and loanwords in Hebrew and Phoenician use ṣ to represent the Egyptian palatal affricate ḏ (conventionally described as voiced [d͡ʒ] but possibly instead an unvoiced ejective [t͡ʃʼ]).^[29]
• Aramaic and Syriac had an affricated realization of *ṣ until some point, as is seen in Classical Armenian loanwords: Aramaic צרר 'bundle, bunch' → Classical Armenian crar /t͡sɹaɹ/.^[30]

The "maximal affricate" view, applied only to sibilants, also has transcriptional evidence. According to Kogan, the affricate interpretation of Akkadian s z ṣ is generally accepted.^[31]

• Old Iranian affricates /t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/ in Elamite.^[32]
• Egyptian transcriptions of early Canaanite words with *z, *s, *ṣ use affricates (ṯ for *s, ḏ for *z, *ṣ).[33]
• West Semitic loanwords in the "older stratum" of Armenian reflect *s *z as affricates /t͡sʰ/, /d͡z/.^[27]
• Greek borrowing of Phoenician
  Ξ) is difficult to explain if *s then had the value [s] in Phoenician, but it is quite easy to explain if it actually had the value [t͡s] (even more so if *š had the value [s]).^[34]
• Similarly, Phoenician uses 𐤔 *š to represent sibilant fricatives in other languages rather than 𐤎 *s until the mid-3rd century BC, which has been taken by Friedrich/Röllig 1999 (pp. 27–28)
  voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant
  .) However, it is likely that Canaanite was already dialectally split by that time and the northern, Early Phoenician dialect that the Greeks were in contact with could have preserved the affricate pronunciation until c. 800 BC at least, unlike the more southern Canaanite dialects that the Egyptians were in contact with, so that there is no contradiction.

There is also a good deal of internal evidence in early Akkadian for affricate realizations of s z ṣ. Examples are that underlying ||*t, *d, *ṭ + *š|| were realized as ss, which is more natural if the law was phonetically ||*t, *d, *ṭ + *s|| → [tt͡s],[30] and that *s *z *ṣ shift to *š before *t, which is more naturally interpreted as deaffrication.^[31]

Evidence for *š as /s/ also exists but is somewhat less clear. It has been suggested that it is cross-linguistically rare for languages with a single sibilant fricative to have [ʃ] as the sound and that [s] is more likely.

On the other hand, it has been suggested that the initial merged s in Arabic was actually a "hissing-hushing sibilant",[38] presumably something like [ɕ] (or a "retracted sibilant"), which did not become [s] until later. That would suggest a value closer to [ɕ] (or a "retracted sibilant") or [ʃ] for Proto-Semitic *š since [t͡s] and [s] would almost certainly merge directly to [s]. Furthermore, there is various evidence to suggest that the sound [ʃ] for *š existed while *s was still [ts].^[39] Examples are the Southern Old Babylonian form of Akkadian, which evidently had [ʃ] along with [t͡s] as well as Egyptian transcriptions of early Canaanite words in which *š s are rendered as š ṯ. (ṯ is an affricate [t͡ʃ] and the consensus interpretation of š is [ʃ], as in Modern Coptic.^[39])

Diem (1974) suggested that the Canaanite sound change of *θ → *š would be more natural if *š was [s] than if it was [ʃ]. However, Kogan argues that, because *s was [ts] at the time, the change from *θ to *š is the most likely merger, regardless of the exact pronunciation of *š while the shift was underway.^[40]

Evidence for the affricate nature of the non-sibilants is based mostly on internal considerations. Ejective fricatives are quite rare cross-linguistically, and when a language has such sounds, it nearly always has [sʼ] so if *ṣ was actually affricate [tsʼ], it would be extremely unusual if *θ̣ ṣ́ was fricative [θʼ ɬʼ] rather than affricate [t͡θʼ t͡ɬʼ]. According to Rodinson (1981) and Weninger (1998), the Greek placename Mátlia, with tl used to render Ge'ez ḍ (Proto-Semitic *ṣ́), is "clear proof" that this sound was affricated in

The shift of *š to h occurred in most Semitic languages (other than Akkadian, Minaean, Qatabanian) in grammatical and pronominal morphemes, and it is unclear whether reduction of *š began in a daughter proto-language or in Proto-Semitic itself. Some thus suggest that weakened *š̠ may have been a separate phoneme in Proto-Semitic.^[42]

Prosody

Proto-Semitic is reconstructed as having non-phonemic stress on the third mora counted from the end of the word,^[43] i.e. on the second syllable from the end, if it has the structure CVC or CVː (where C is any consonant and V is any vowel), or on the third syllable from the end, if the second one had the structure CV.^[44]

Morphophonology

Proto-Semitic allowed only syllables of the structures CVC, CVː, or CV. It did not permit word-final

Most roots consisted of three consonants. However, it appears that historically the three-consonant roots had developed from two-consonant ones (this is suggested by evidence from internal as well as external reconstruction). To construct a given grammatical form, certain vowels were inserted between the consonants of the root.[46]^[47] There were certain restrictions on the structure of the root: it was impossible to have roots where the first and second consonants were identical, and roots where the first and third consonants were identical were extremely rare.^[48]

Grammar

Nouns

Three cases are reconstructed: nominative (marked by *-u), genitive (marked by *-i), accusative (marked by *-a).^[49][50]

There were two genders: masculine (marked by a zero morpheme) and feminine (marked by *-at/*-t and *-ah/-ā).^[51][52] The feminine marker was placed after the root, but before the ending, e.g.: *ba‘l- ‘lord, master’ > *ba‘lat- ‘lady, mistress’, *bin- ‘son’ > *bint- ‘daughter’.^[53] There was also a small group of feminine nouns that didn't have formal markers: *’imm- ‘mother’, *laxir- ‘ewe’, *’atān- ‘she-donkey’, *‘ayn- ‘eye’, *birk- ‘knee’^[54]

There were three numbers: singular, plural and dual (only in nouns).^[52]

There were two ways to mark the plural:^[55]

• affixation
  • masculine nouns formed their nominative by means of the marker *-ū, their genitive and accusative by *-ī, i.e., by lengthening the vowel of the singular case suffix;
  • feminines also formed their plural by lengthening a vowel — namely, by means of the marker *-āt;
• apophonically (by changing the vocalisation pattern of the word, as seen e.g. in Arabic: kātib ‘writer’ — kuttāb ‘writers’) — only in the masculine.

The dual was formed by means of the markers *-ā in the nominative and *-āy in the genitive and accusative.^[56]

The endings of the noun:^[57]

Pronouns

Like most of its daughter languages, Proto-Semitic has one free pronoun set, and case-marked bound sets of enclitic pronouns. Genitive case and accusative case are only distinguished in the first person.^[58]

For many pronouns, the final vowel is reconstructed with long and short positional variants; this is conventionally indicated by a combined macron and breve on the vowel (e.g. ā̆).

The Semitic

A series of interrogative pronouns are reconstructed for Proto-Semitic: *man ‘who’, *mā ‘what’ and *’ayyu ‘of what kind’ (derived from *’ay ‘where’).[61]^[62][63]

Numerals

Reconstruction of the cardinal numerals from one to ten (masculine):^[64][65][66]

All nouns from one to ten were declined as singular nouns with the exception of the numeral ‘two’, which was declined as a dual. Feminine forms of all numbers from one to ten were produced by the suffix *-at. In addition, if the name of the object counted was of the feminine gender, the numbers from 3 to 10 were in the masculine form and vice versa.^[67]

The names of the numerals from 11 to 19 were formed by combining the names of the unit digits with the word ‘ten’. 'Twenty’ was expressed by the dual form of ‘ten’, and the names of the ten digits from 30 to 90 were plural forms of the corresponding unit digits. Proto-Semitic also had designations for hundred (*mi’t-), thousand (*li’m-) and ten thousand (*ribb-).^[68][65]

Ordinal numerals cannot be reconstructed for the protolanguage because of the great diversity in the descendant languages.^[66]

Verbs

Traditionally, two conjugations are reconstructed for Proto-Semitic — a prefix conjugation and a suffix conjugation.^[69] According to a hypothesis that has garnered wide support, the prefix conjugation was used with verbs that expressed actions, and the suffix conjugation was used with verbs that expressed states.^[70]

The prefix conjugation is reconstructed as follows:^[71][72]

The suffix conjugation is reconstructed as follows:^[73]

Verb stems are divided into base forms (a "G-stem",^[74] from German: Grundstamm) and derived. The bases consist of a three-consonant root with thematic vowels. Among the derived ones, one distinguishes stems with a geminated middle consonant (German: Doppelungsstamm), stems with a lengthened first vowel, causative stems (formed by means of the prefix *ša-), nouns with the prefix *na-/*ni-, stems with the suffix *-tV-, stems that consist of a reduplicated biconsonantal root and stems with a geminated final consonant.^[75][76][77]

From the basic stems, an active participle was formed on the pattern CāCiC, the passive one on the patterns CaCīC and CaCūC.^[78]

From the derived stems, the participles were formed by means of the prefix *mu-, while the vocalisation of the active ones was a-i and that of the passive ones was a-a^[79] (on this pattern, for example, the Arabic name muḥammad is formed from the root ḥmd ‘to praise’.^[80])

The imperative mood was formed only for the second person, and the form for the singular masculine was the pure stem:^[81]

Conjunctions

Three conjunctions are reconstructed for Proto-Semitic:^[82]

• *wa ’and’;
• *’aw ’or’;
• *šimmā ’if’.

Syntax

The Proto-Semitic language was a language of

Reconstruction of the Proto-Semitic lexicon provides more information about the lives of Proto-Semites and helps in the search for their

Reconstructed terms include:

• to anoint’, *ḳdš ‘be holy’, *ḥrm ‘to forbid, excommunicate’, *ṣalm- ‘idol
  ’;
• threshing-floor’, *ḥinṭ- ‘wheat’, *kunāṯ- ‘emmer’, *duḫn- ‘millet
  ’;
• donkey’, *’atān- ‘she-donkey’, *ḥalab- ‘milk’, *lašad- ‘cream’, *ḫim’at- ‘butter
  ’;
• Terms of daily life: *bayt- ‘house’, *dalt- ‘door’, *kussi’- ‘chair’, *‘arś- ‘bed’, *kry ‘to dig’, *bi’r- ‘well’, *śrp ‘to kindle, *’iš- ‘fire’, *ḳly ‘to roast’, *laḥm- ‘food’;
• Technological terms: *ṣrp ‘to smelt’, *paḥḥam- ‘
  bow’, *ḥaṱw- ‘arrow
  ’;
• Plants and foods: *ti’n- ‘
  palm tree’, *dibš- ‘date honey’, *buṭn- ‘pistachio’, *ṯaḳid- ‘almond’, *kammūn- ‘cumin’.^[85][86]

The words *ṯawr- ‘buffalo’ and *ḳarn- ‘horn’ are suspected to be borrowings from Proto-Indo-European^[85] or vice versa (for *ṯawr- and certain other words).^[87] Sergei Starostin adduces several dozens of Semito-Indo-European correspondences, which he considers to be borrowings into Proto-Semitic from Proto-Anatolian or a disappeared branch of Proto-Indo-European.^[88]

Comparative vocabulary and reconstructed roots

See List of Proto-Semitic stems (appendix in Wiktionary).

See also

• Afroasiatic languages
• Afroasiatic homeland
• Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples
• History of the Middle East
• Proto-Afroasiatic language
• Proto-Indo-European language

Notes

References