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——. 1984a. “A general classification for the Arabic dialects spoken in Palestine and Transjordan”. Stu-dia Orientalia 55.359–376.

——. 1984b. “Further notes on the descriptive imper-ative of narrative style in spoken Arabic”. Studia Orientalia 55.377–391.

——. 1984–1986. “Characteristics of the Arabic dialect of the "w#$%t tribe”. Orientalia Suecana 33–35.295–312.

——. 1989. “Linguistic sketch of the Arabic dialect of el-Karak”. Studia linguistica et orientalia memoriae Haim Blanc dedicata, ed. Paul Wexler, Alexander Borg, and Sasson Somekh, 225–251. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz.

——. 1991. “Is there a North West Arabian dialect group?”. Festgabe für Hans-Rudolf Singer, zum 65. Geburtstag am 6. April 1990, überreicht von seinen Freunden und Kollegen, ed. Martin Forstner, I, 151–166. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang.

——. 1997. “Linguistic observations of the explor-ers of Arabia in the 19th century”. Built on solid rock: Studies in honour of Professor Ebbe Egede Knudsen on the occasion of his 65th birthday April 11th 1997, ed. Elie Wardini, 226–239. Oslo: Novus Forlag and Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kultur-forskning.

——. 2004. “Remarks on the Arabic dialect of the "w#$%t tribe”. Jerusalem Studies of Arabic and Islam 29 (2004), 195–209.

Peake, Frederick G. 1958. History and tribes of Jor-dan. Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press.

Piamenta, Moshe. 1996. “More on the Arabic dialect of the Negev Bedouins”. Quaderni di Studi Arabi 14.123–136.

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Reichmuth, Stefan. 1983. Der arabische Dialekt der !ukriyya im Ostsudan. Hildesheim: G. Olms.

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cher sprachlicher Verwirrung am Beispiel eines beduinischen Sprechers”. Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 42.53–79.

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Heikki Palva (University of Helsinki)

Northwest Semitic Languages

1. T h e N o r t h w e s t S e m i t i c L a n g u a g e s

The term ‘Northwest Semitic’ is the traditional designation of a group of languages compris-ing Ugaritic, the Canaanite dialects, and the Aramaic dialects.

Ugaritic is the language of the ancient city of Ugarit (modern R%s !amra, on the north-east coast of the Mediterranean in Syria). The roughly eleven hundred Ugaritic texts are writ-ten in an alphabetic cuneiform script on clay tablets; unlike other Semitic alphabets, the Ugaritic script reads from left to right. In addi-tion to several important mythological texts, there are also some hundred letters, a few legal documents and treaties, and several hundred administrative texts. Most of the texts date to the 13th/12th centuries B.C.E., although some of the literary texts were probably written ear-lier. The alphabetic script indicates consonants only, although there are three signs for aleph (hamza), each of which indicates the glottal stop followed by a different vowel quality (e.g. <!MAL> for /"im&%lu/ ‘left’; <!IL> for /"a&ila/ ‘he asked’; <RPUM> for /r%pi&'ma/ ‘healers’ [nom.]). The standard reference grammar of Ugaritic is Tropper (2000).

The best-known form of Canaanite is Hebrew. The earliest Biblical Hebrew texts probably date to about the 12th century B.C.E., and the latest to the 2nd century B.C.E. There are also many Hebrew inscriptions, most of them quite short, beginning in the 10th century B.C.E.; the grammar of these is nearly identical to that of Biblical Hebrew, although a number of geo-graphical variations are attested. Developments in the grammar over the centuries also occur in both biblical and inscriptional texts. From the 2nd century B.C.E. to the 5th century C.E. is the period of Mishnaic Hebrew, which reflects

408 northwest semitic languages

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O!print from Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, ed. K. Versteegh (Leiden: Brill), volume 3

O!print from Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, ed. K. Versteegh (Leiden: Brill), volume 3 (2007)

a spoken dialect not directly descended from Biblical Hebrew. Hebrew continued to be writ-ten in the medieval and early modern periods, and – a phenomenon unique among the world’s languages – was revived as a spoken language in the 19th century (! Ivrit). Hebrew vocalism is known from the use of vowel letters (matres lectionis), which began early in the history of the written language, and from vowel points that were added to consonantal texts beginning in the late 1st millennium C.E. Reference gram-mars of Biblical Hebrew include Gesenius a.o. (1910), Bauer and Leander (1922), Waltke and O’Connor (1990), and Joüon (1991).

Another well-known form of Canaanite is Phoenician, the language of the city-states of the eastern Mediterranean coast, such as Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos. The earliest texts, from Byblos, date to the beginning of the 10th cen-tury B.C.E., while the latest are from the 2nd century C.E. The dialect of the texts written in Phoenician colonies established around the Mediterranean and beyond, especially that of Carthage (Phoenician /qart (ada"t/ ‘new city’) is referred to by scholars as Punic (from the 5th century B.C.E.). After the fall of Carthage, texts are said to be written in Neo-Punic (attested until the 5th century C.E.). The Phoenician alphabet is purely consonantal; there is no indi-cation of vowels until late in the Punic period. The standard reference work on Phoenician is Friedrich, Röllig, and Amadasi Guzzo (1999).

Another Canaanite dialect is Moabite, attested almost solely in the long 9th-century inscription of the Moabite king Me"a!. Still other Canaanite dialects, attested in a few short inscriptions only, are Ammonite and Edomite (9th/6th centuries B.C.E.; see Parker 2002).

The earliest attestation of Canaanite is found in a group of several hundred letters sent by vassal rulers in cities in Syria-Palestine (includ-ing Byblos, Tyre, Jerusalem, Shechem, Gezer, Ashkelon) during the first half of the 14th century B.C.E., to their Egyptian suzerain. The texts were found in excavations at Akhetaten, a short-lived capital of the Egyptian Empire under King Akhenaten (Amenophis IV), mod-ern el-!Am%rna. While ostensibly written in Akkadian, the lingua franca of the period, the letters betray a great deal of the scribes’ native Canaanite language, especially in the morpho-syntax of the verb, which is strikingly similar to that of Classical Arabic. Glosses of actual

Canaanite words are also frequently encoun-tered in these texts. The still-standard critical edition of the texts is Knudtzon (1907–1915); the grammar is described in Rainey (1996).

Aramaic is first attested in inscriptions on stone monuments dating to the 9th century B.C.E. These early inscriptions, down to the 6th century B.C.E., are collectively referred to as Old Aramaic, an umbrella term, since the inscriptions reveal a variety of grammati-cal idiosyncrasies. The inscriptions are writ-ten in the 22-letter Phoenician alphabet; the usage of the consonants indicates that many of the consonantal mergers that characterize later Aramaic had not yet occurred in this early period. During the Achaemenid period, Aramaic became one of the official languages of the Persian chancery, a factor in its spread across the Near East as a lingua franca for much of the next millennium. Official (or Impe-rial) Aramaic, as this phase is called, comprises a large number of letters and legal documents, most found in Egypt, as well as the Aramaic of the Biblical book of Ezra. After the fall of the Persian Empire, in which Aramaic texts exhibit a relatively uniform standard language, Ara-maic begins again to show dialectal diversity; in the so-called Middle Aramaic period (3rd cen-tury B.C.E.-2nd century C.E.), dialects include Palestinian (in the Biblical book of Daniel, in texts from Qumran, and in certain targums, i.e. Aramaic translations of Biblical texts), Naba-taean, Palmyrene, and Hatran. In Late Aramaic (3rd-9th centuries C.E.), a division into eastern and western forms of the language is evident. Western Late Aramaic includes the large corpus of Jewish targum and talmud texts, a significant number of Christian texts in a dialect known as Christian Palestinian, and the Aramaic of the small Samaritan sect. Eastern Late Aramaic includes the text of the Babylonian Talmud, as well as Mandaic. Syriac, the dialect of an enormous corpus of Christian texts, is variously considered to be an Eastern dialect or a sepa-rate branch. Aramaic continues to be spoken by more than one hundred thousand people, especially the many dialects known collectively as Northeastern ! Neo-Aramaic (from Iran, Iraq, and northeastern Syria) but also )'r*yo in Turkey, and the Western dialects of the vil-lages of Ma!l'la and vicinity near Damascus. A comprehensive Aramaic grammar has not been written; for Old Aramaic, see Degen (1969)

northwest semitic languages 409

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and Hug (1993); for Imperial Aramaic, Folmer (1995) and Muraoka and Porten (2003); for Biblical Aramaic, Bauer and Leander (1927) and Rosenthal (1995); for Nabataean, Can-tineau (1930–1932); for Palmyrene, Cantineau (1935); for Mandaic, Macuch (1965); for Syr-iac, Nöldeke (1904); for other late varieties of Aramaic, see, for example, Dalman (1905), Müller-Kessler (1991), and Macuch (1982).

In Akkadian (and a few Egyptian) texts of the late 3rd and early 2nd millennia B.C.E. personal names are found that do not conform to the usual pattern of Akkadian personal names. The individuals bearing such names are often called Amorites. Many of the names exhibit features of the later Northwest Semitic languages (in phonology, e.g. in the name ia-qa-rum = /yaqarum/ ‘esteemed’, with initial y, vs. Arabic waqara and Akkadian waq!rum; in morphology, e.g. preterite verbs with initial ya rather than i as in Akkadian, such as ya-"u-ub-dda-gan = /ya!ub-dagan/ ‘[the god] Dagan has returned’). In view of the great chronological and geographical spread of the relevant texts, it is likely that a number of early dialects are reflected in these Amorite names. A recent study is Streck (2000).

2. F e a t u r e s o f N o r t h w e s t S e m i t i c L a n g u a g e s

The following paragraphs review some of the linguistic features that distinguish and/or con-nect Arabic and the Northwest Semitic lan-guages. In order to compare the Northwest

Semitic languages with Arabic, we have to be aware of the linguistic features that were already present at a Proto-Northwest Semitic stage and those that ought to be considered innovations within the individual subbranches of Northwest Semitic. The following comparison is mainly based on Classical Arabic, although evidence from Ancient North Arabian, Old Arabic, and Arabic dialects is included where appropriate. For the relationship of these subgroups to Clas-sical Arabic, see, for example, Rabin (1951:3) for Ancient North Arabian and Old Arabic, Fischer (1995) for modern Arabic dialects.

2.1. Phonology

The consonantal inventory of Proto-Northwest Semitic has to be reconstructed with all 29 Proto-West Semitic consonants.

In Ugaritic, many of the Proto-Semitic consonants remain distinct phonemes. Two unconditional mergers took place: *" and *s merged to "; and *t# and *!" merged to # (e.g. <!!+R> ‘small’; <AR!> / &ar,u/ ‘earth’ vs. Clas-sical Arabic !ar!). *"" was often preserved; it is transcribed ", as in <-BY> /"abyu/ ‘gazelle’, although it sometimes merged with *$, as in <N.R> /na/ara/ ‘he guarded’ (cf. Classical Arabic na%ara ‘he watched’). The Proto-Semitic sound *# had merged with *d to /d/ in most cases (e.g. <UDN> / &udnu/ ‘ear’), although the alphabet still had a separate letter for /#/ (e.g. <!R!> /#ir%!u/ ‘arm’).

In Hebrew (and Phoenician), *# and *z merged to z: *!u#n- > !&zen ‘ear’; *' and *x

Table 1. Consonants in the Northwest Semitic languages

Proto-Semitic and Proto-Northwest Semitic

Ugaritic Hebrew Phoenician Aramaic Arabic

*#*/ (!)*( (0)*1 (x)* 2 ¢*¢’*s*ts*t,*!* "!*dz

d / #/(1","s,$" / /z

z!(23 (,3 2"3 ss3 ",3 s"3 ,,3 "z3 ,3 z

z!((","s,",z

d (OA <Z>)!((s (OA <!>)! (OA <Q>)"s,t (OA <!>)$ (OA <!>)z

#/(x"%ss,$4z


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(See corrigendum in separate pdf file.)

Corrigendum to:

Hasselbach – Huehnergard, “Northwest Semitic Languages,” EALL 3, p. 410

Table I. Consonants in the Northwest Semitic Languages

Proto-Semiticand Proto-NorthwestSemitic

Ugaritic Hebrew Phoenician Aramaic Arabic

*®*g/ (g)*˙ (h)*, (x)*s´ (Ò)*s´' (Ò’)*s*ts*tß*ª*ª'*dz

d / dg/˙,-ß-sßt+/g/z

z·˙˙s´ß-sß-ßz

z·˙˙-ß-sß-ßz

d (OA <Z>)·˙˙s (OA <)>)· (OA <Q>)-sßt (OA <)>)† (OA <Í>)z

dg/˙,-(ssßt(z

merged to ': *!ax- > !!' ‘brother’; *# and *$ merged to #: *t#a$(r- > #!#(r ‘small’; *s and *" merged to ": *s(i)m- > ")m ‘name’; *"al!"- > "!l*" ‘three’; *!", *t#, and *"" all merged to #: *!ar !"- > *!ar# > !ére# ‘earth’; *t#idq- > #é$eq ‘righteousness’; *na""ara > n!#ar ‘he guarded’. Common Semitic *" remained distinct for most of the early history of Hebrew, but under Ara-maic influence it eventually merged with s (< *ts). Since *" had merged with *s and *" to " in Phoenician, from which Hebrew scribes borrowed their alphabet, there was no special letter to represent the still-distinct ", and so the letter for " was used; later the two consonants were distinguished by diacritical dots.

The orthography of early inscriptions indi-cates that nearly all Proto-Semitic consonants remained distinct in most Old Aramaic dialects. Consonants that were later lost through merg-ers were represented with the closest letter avail-able in the borrowed Phoenician alphabet. In Official Aramaic and in later Aramaic dialects, however, a large number of mergers occurred (examples from Syriac): *# merged with *d and *x merged with *': *!axa#a > !e'ad (Old Ara-maic <&"Z>) ‘he seized’; *" merged with *ts to s: *"!ma > s!m (Old Aramaic <!M>) ‘he placed’; *" merged with t: *"al!"- > tl!t (Old Aramaic <!L!>) ‘three’; *$ merged with #: *ba$aya > b#! (Old Aramaic <B!H> ‘he sought’); *"" merged with +: *na""ara > n+ar (Old Aramaic <N!R>) ‘he guarded’; the reflex of *!" in Old Aramaic was written with <Q> but later merged with #: Old Aramaic <MRQ>, Syriac mra# ‘he was sick’ (cf. Classical Arabic mari!a).

Table 1 provides an overview of the main mergers and differences in the individual North-west Semitic languages.Classical Arabic and most Ancient North Arabian dialects had a consonantal inventory of 28 con-sonants, following the merger of Proto-Semitic *ts and *s to s. The Ancient North Arabian dialect of Tayman is exceptional in having pre-served all three original voiceless fricatives (Mac-donald 2004:499). Although Ancient North Arabian is not the direct ancestor of what is called ‘Arabic’ today, it nevertheless might be related to pre-Islamic West-Arabian (Rabin 1951:2). Should the dialect of Tayman be related to later ‘Arabic’, the preservation of *s, *ts, and *" could indicate that Proto-Arabic had all 29 Proto-West Semitic consonants.

A significant sound change that distinguishes

Northwest Semitic from other Semitic languages is the shift of word-initial w to y, as in Hebrew yéle$, Syriac yald!, Ugaritic <YLD> ‘child’, vs. Classical Arabic walad. In the Ancient North Arabian dialect Safaitic, we also find evidence for the occasional change of initial w > y, as in yr, ‘month’, which occurs as a biform of wr,. This change is rare, though, and not limited to word-initial position. Thus, it should not be evaluated as the same isogloss found in North-west Semitic.

Another sound change that has sometimes been postulated for Northwest Semitic is the assimilation of n to a following consonant, which is attested in Ugaritic and Canaanite. Biblical Aramaic occasionally preserves origi-nal n before a consonant, as, for example, in !ant(h) ‘you’ (2nd pers. masc. sg.) (Rosenthal 1995:23), while Syriac has reflexes of precon-sonantal n in its orthography, although n is not pronounced in such cases. These attestations suggest a preservation of this phoneme in pre-consonantal position until after the split of Ara-maic from the rest of Northwest Semitic. Thus, n was probably not assimilated at the earliest stages of Northwest Semitic. Classical Arabic and most modern Arabic dialects, of course, do not assimilate n to a following consonant; in nearly all Ancient North Arabian dialects, however, with the exception of "a,aitic, n assimilates regularly (Macdonald 2004:501), as it does, less consistently, in the Old South Arabian dialects.

The reflex of Proto-Semitic *p remains a stop, /p/, in Canaanite and Aramaic, although it has a postvocalic fricative allophone in both language groups, as do all nondoubled, nonem-phatic stops: Hebrew p!%a' and yifta', Syriac p%a' and nefta' ‘he opened’, ‘he will open’, vs. Classical Arabic fata'a, yafta'u.

The Proto-Northwest Semitic vowels can be reconstructed as in Proto-Semitic, viz. three basic short vowels, three long vowels, and two diphthongs, just as preserved in Classical Arabic:

*a, *i, *u*!, *(, *-*aw, *ay

The consonantal nature of the Ugaritic script precludes a detailed knowledge of the vowel system. Evidence of writings in syllabic cunei-


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form texts, and the use of the three aleph symbols, however, show a number of devel-opments. The original diphthongs *aw and *ay contracted unconditionally to * and ), respectively: <MT> /m*tu/ ‘death’; <BT> /b#tu/ ‘house’. There is vowel harmony around gut-turals: /$uh'ru/ < *+ah-ru ‘pure’; /tah%matu/ < *tih!matu ‘sea’; and in the patterns CvC-C5C, as in Arabic: /,ibb6ru/ < *#abb(ru ‘collec-tive land’; <ULP> / &ull'pu/ < *!all-pu ‘leader’. There is also evidence of the sporadic syncope of short, unaccented vowels: /nabak6ma/ and /nabk6ma/ ‘springs’.

For Phoenician, because of the strictly con-sonantal orthography, we are dependent on transcriptions into other languages for any evidence concerning the vowel system. Such transcriptions show that in Phoenician, as in Ugaritic, the original diphthongs *aw and *ay contracted universally to /*/ and /#/ respec-tively: thus /m*t/ ‘death’ and /b#t/ ‘house’. A characteristic of all Canaanite languages is the change of Semitic *! to * (considered by some scholars to be dependent on stress, by oth-ers to be unconditioned): (Greek transcription) ozer for [!*zir] < *#!#ir- ‘helper’. A specifically Phoenician development was the shift of an original short Semitic *a to o in accented syl-lables: (Greek transcription) labon for [labon] < *laban- ‘white’.

Biblical Hebrew is characterized by a large number of developments in the vowel sys-tem. Diphthongs collapsed when unstressed but were triphthongized under the stress: b)%( ‘my house’ but bayi% ‘house’ (< *bayt(-()); m*%( ‘my death’ but m!we% ‘death’ (< *mawt(-()). As in Phoenician and other Canaanite languages, original long *! became *, as in k*%)" <

*k!tib- ‘writer’. Short vowels underwent com-plex developments: lost word-finally; lowered or backed under the stress or in open syllables immediately before the stress: d!"!r < *dabar- ‘word’, yitt)n < *yittinu ‘he gives’, yi.t*" < *yiktubu ‘he writes’; reduced to / or zero in open syllables otherwise, and generally in finite verbs: d/"!r(m < *dabar(ma ‘words’, yitt/n- < *yittin- ‘they give’, yi0t/"- < *yiktub- ‘they write’. Words of the shape CvCC underwent anaptyxis: *!ar!" - > *!ar# > !ére# ‘earth’; *sipr- > s1#er ‘book’; *quds- > q&$e". Still other devel-opments occurred in the neighborhood of the guttural consonants (!, h, ', #).

A number of vowel changes may be said to characterize Proto-Aramaic. As in Hebrew (and most Northwest Semitic languages), short final vowels were lost early, including the sin-gular case vowels: *k!tibu > *k!tib (> k!%e") ‘writer’; *k!tib(na > *k!tib(n (> k!%"(n) ‘writ-ers’; *tisma#-na > *ti"ma#-n (> te"m#un) ‘you [masc. pl.] hear’. Resulting final consonant clusters were resolved by epenthesis: *katabtu > *katabt > *katabit (> Targumic k/%á"i%; Syriac ke%be%) ‘I wrote’. A pervasive feature of Ara-maic is the reduction of short vowels in open syllables: *kataba > *katab > k/%a" ‘he wrote’; *katab+ih > ka%"eh ‘he wrote it’ (see also the preceding examples). Original long vowels gen-erally remained unchanged.

2.2. Morphology

2.2.1. PronounsThe Northwest Semitic system of personal inde-pendent pronouns and pronominal suffixes is similar to that of Classical Arabic, although only in Ugaritic are dual forms of the pronouns

Table 2. Independent personal pronouns

PNWS Ugaritic Hebrew Syriac Arabic

1cs *!an!(±ku) /&an%ku/, <AN> !!n*.(, ’an( !an! !ana2ms *!anta <AT> !att! !a(n)t !anta2fs *!anti <AT> !att !a(n)t(y) !anti3ms *hu!a /huwa/ h-(!) hu(!) huwa3fs *hi!a <HY> h((!) hi(!) hiya3cd *? <HM> — — hum!1cp *na'nu ? !ana'n- 'nan na'nu2mp *!antum(±-) <ATM> !attem !a(n)ton !antum2fp *!antin(±na) ? !atten(n!) !a(n)ten !antunna3mp *hum(±-) <HM> h)m(m!) hennon hum3fp *hin(±na) <HN> h)nn! hennen hunna


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attested (vocalization unknown); Ugaritic even has a 1st person dual suffix (<-NY>, as in <B!LNY> ‘the lord of the two of us’).

As the table indicates, the main differences lie in the 2nd person and 3rd person plural forms; while Ugaritic and Hebrew have m vs. n for the masculine/feminine contrast, as in Classical Arabic, the Hebrew forms exhibit an i vowel vs. the u of Classical Arabic. In most Aramaic dialects, the masculine/feminine contrast is in the vowels (u/o for masc. vs. i/e for fem.), the n having been leveled through all forms. In the 3rd person singular forms, it is likely that the aleph of the Canaanite and Aramaic forms is original, and developed into the glides w and y in Ugaritic, as in Classical Arabic, by assimi-lation to the preceding vowel.

The common Semitic longer biform of the independent 1st person singular pronoun, *!an!ku (cf. Akkadian an!ku), is found in Ugaritic and in the Canaanite languages (e.g. Hebrew !!n*.() alongside the shorter form, which alone has been preserved in Aramaic, as in Arabic.

Ugaritic and Phoenician also have independ-ent 3rd person forms with final <-T>, such as 3rd person masculine singular <HWT> (/huw%ti/??); in Ugaritic these are oblique (geni-tive-accusative) forms.

The Northwest Semitic pronominal suffixes were originally quite similar in form to those of Classical Arabic and were added to nouns (to indicate possession) and to verbs (to indicate objects) much as in Classical Arabic, i.e. simply attached to the bound form of a noun (or prepo-sition) and to the end of finite verb forms. Pho-nological and analogical developments, however, have produced complex changes in the forms of the suffixes in both Canaanite and Aramaic.

It is possible to reconstruct a common Proto-Northwest Semitic determinative-relative pro-noun that was declined for case, number, and gender, *#2. For Ugaritic this pronoun has feminine and plural forms with <-T> (vocaliza-tion unknown): masculine singular nominative <D> (/d'/), feminine singular <DT>, masculine plural <DT>. In Biblical Hebrew, the pronoun is only vestigially preserved in a few examples as indeclinable (old nominative) z- (this was generally replaced in Hebrew by the form !a"er, grammaticalized from a noun meaning ‘place’, cognate with Classical Arabic !a%ar ‘trace’); a relative <Z> also occurs in some Phoenician

dialects. In Aramaic, the reflex is the common indeclinable relative and genitive marker d( in Biblical Aramaic (the old genitive; writ-ten <ZY> in Old Aramaic inscriptions), which became d(/)- in Syriac. There are still traces of the same fully declined determinative-relative pronoun *#2 in Classical Arabic, although its semantic range shifted to the expression of possession. In Ancient North Arabian, this form of the relative pronoun is still regularly used in the form $ (masc. sg.) and $!t (fem. sg.) (Macdonald 2004:508), while Yemenite has an undeclined form $( (Rabin 1951:39).

There is no common Proto-Northwest Semitic demonstrative pronoun, although all languages use the same basic constituents to form demon-stratives. Ugaritic has a near deixis pronoun hnd, probably vocalized as /han%du/, and, perhaps, a far deixis pronoun hnk /hun%ka?/ (Tropper 2000:229 –231). Especially the lat-ter resembles the Classical Arabic word for ‘there’ hun!ka, while the first resembles Classi-cal Arabic hun! ‘here’ + demonstrative element *#7. In Canaanite and Aramaic, near deixis is expressed by an element *#7 in the singular, as in Hebrew ze ‘this’ (masc. sg.), z*(!)% (fem. sg.). Individual languages can add particles to this base, such as Targumic Aramaic h!den (masc. sg.) and h!d! (fem. sg.), but these seem to be secondary additions, since, for example, Biblical Aramaic has a feminine singular with-out prefix, d! ‘this’. Near deixis in the plural is expressed by a basic particle *!illV, as in Hebrew !)lle (comm. pl.) and Biblical Aramaic !ill)n (comm. pl.). Classical Arabic employs the same basic particles as Hebrew and Aramaic, although in a slightly different distribution, for example h!$! for the masculine singular and not, as in Targumic Aramaic, the feminine sin-gular. The main difference between the North-west Semitic and the Classical Arabic forms of the demonstrative pronoun is in the plural base. In contrast to the Hebrew and Aramaic base *!illV, with i and double -ll-, the Classical Arabic base has u and single -l-, as in h!!ul!!i. Modern Arabic dialects either do not use this base (e.g. Moroccan, Tunisian), or they have a base that seems to correspond to Classical Ara-bic (Lebanese hawl(k < h!!ul!!i+k). Since this base is not attested in Ugaritic, it is impossible to determine whether this vowel alternation is Proto-Northwest Semitic or not.

For far deixis, Biblical Aramaic uses the same


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base *#7 with the addition of final -k: d). ‘that’ (masc. sg.), d!. (fem. sg.), !ill). (comm. pl.). Other Aramaic dialects, such as Syriac, and Hebrew exclusively use the 3rd person pronouns as anaphoric elements to express far deixis, as in Hebrew h!!-(" ha-h-(!) ‘that man’. Classical Arabic is unusual among the Semitic languages in no longer employing the 3rd per-son pronouns anaphorically, using instead a full set of demonstratives, formed with the demonstrative elements for near deixis plus -k, as in $!lika (masc. sg.), !ul!!ika (comm. pl.). The feminine singular is an exception in that it has initial t instead of expected $, tilka. Ancient North Arabian offers little evidence for demon-strative pronouns, but it seems that Dedanitic had a form $ (h) as well (Macdonald 2004:509; Müller 1982:20).

2.2.2. NounsProto-Northwest Semitic undoubtedly had the same triptotic noun declension in the sin-gular as Classical Arabic (see Table 3). The full declension, however, is preserved only in Ugaritic and in the Canaanite reflected in the Amarna Akkadian texts, later Canaanite and Aramaic dialects having lost case distinctions with the general loss of final short vowels (like later Arabic dialects). Certain nominal forms with pronominal suffixes in Hebrew and Ara-maic still reflect the original case endings, such as Hebrew d/"!r). ‘your [fem. sg.] word’ < *dabari-ki [gen.], malk* ‘his king’ < *malku-hu [nom.], Syriac malkeh ‘his king’ < *malkihi (gen.; this last form is common Aramaic and reflects a frozen allomorph of the 3rd pers. masc. sg. suffix alternation -hu/-hi found in Classical Arabic). There is evidence in Ugaritic for a diptotic declension in the singular in some proper nouns (especially personal names end-ing in /-7n/; see Liverani 1963), but its status for Proto-Northwest Semitic is uncertain. The declension of the dual and plural was diptotic as in Classical Arabic (! diptosis).

Hebrew and Ugaritic also preserve a direc-tive ending -h, as in Ugaritic <AR!H> ‘to the ground’, Hebrew h! #(r!h ‘to the city’, which is probably related to the Akkadian terminative ending -i". This morpheme is not attested in any form of Arabic.

All Northwest Semitic languages lost ! mimation/! nunation in the singular and in the (external) feminine plural. This loss might thus

be reconstructed as Proto-Northwest Semitic (e.g. Proto-Semitic *+!bum > Proto-Northwest Semitic *+!bu ‘good [masc. sg. nom.]’; Proto-Semitic *+!b!tum > Proto-Northwest Semitic *+!b!tu ‘good [fem. pl. nom.]’), although the possibility that it was an independent develop-ment within the individual Northwest Semitic branches cannot be ruled out, since loss of mimation/nunation is a widespread phenome-non, which, for example, also occurred in post-Old Babylonian Akkadian and in Ge!ez (and, of course, in most modern Arabic dialects).

In Northwest Semitic languages, the plural is normally indicated by external markers. For the masculine plural, corresponding to the final -na of Classical Arabic (as in fall!'-na), some Northwest Semitic languages likewise exhibit -n(a) (e.g. Aramaic, some Canaanite dialects such as Moabite and Mishnaic Hebrew), while others exhibit -m(a) (Ugaritic, other Canaan-ite dialects such as Phoenician and Biblical Hebrew). Syllabic cuneiform evidence indi-cates that in Ugaritic the ending was /-ma/ on masculine plurals. Only Ugaritic retains case distinctions; as in Classical Arabic, these are nominative in /-'/ and oblique (genitive-accu-sative) in /-(/ (e.g. nom. /y%,ir'ma/ ‘potters’, oblique /dipr%n6ma/ ‘junipers’). In the other Northwest Semitic languages, with the loss of case distinction in the singular (see above), the oblique form was generalized in the mas-culine plural; further, the final a of the ending *-na/-ma also disappeared with the general loss of short final vowels; thus, we find, for example, Hebrew +*"(m, Aramaic +!b(n ‘good’ < oblique *+!b-(-ma/na. Vestiges of broken plurals are rare, but they are found in nearly every subbranch of Northwest Semitic (Rat-cliffe 1998:99). The most striking exception, and one of the major distinguishing isoglosses of Northwest Semitic, is the double marking of singular nouns of the pattern *qVtl- in the plural with inserted a after the second radical in addition to external plural markers (Huehner-gard 1991:284), as in Hebrew m/l!.(m ‘kings’ < *malak(ma and Ugaritic /malak'ma/ ‘kings’ from the singular base *malk-. Vestiges of this a-insertion are also found in Syriac (Nöldeke 1904:63). In Classical Arabic double marking is also occasionally found, but it is not manda-tory; cf. la#nat- ‘curse’, pl. la#an!t- vs. !ahl-, pl. !ahl-na ‘people’.

The feminine singular is marked with either


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-t or -at. While in Classical Arabic the latter ending has been generalized (except for a few words, such as bint and !uxt), in Hebrew, the choice of ending appears to be lexical: e.g. dele% < *dal-t- ‘door’ vs. !!m! < *!am-at- ‘maidserv-ant’. (This seems to be true in Ugaritic as well.) In Aramaic, the choice of ending was prob-ably determined phonologically originally, *-at appearing after bases ending in a consonant cluster (and sometimes after bases ending in 5C), *-t appearing otherwise. In both Hebrew and Aramaic, the original ending *-at became -! phrase-finally (i.e. when not in construct or followed by a pronominal suffix), as in Hebrew malk! ‘queen’, bound form malka%, both < *malkat- and malk!%( ‘my queen’ < *malkat-(; cf. post-Classical Arabic dialects. (In Phoenician, however, the final t remained in all forms.) Other feminine endings that are found in Arabic, such as -! (-ay), are attested only ves-tigially in a few Northwest Semitic languages (e.g. Syriac salway ‘quail’).

The feminine plural is marked by the end-ing -!tu (nom.)/-!ti (oblique), corresponding to Classical Arabic -!tun/-!tin, but again with loss of the final mimation/nunation. In Ugaritic and Amarna Canaanite, this ending is unchanged. In later Northwest Semitic languages, once again, the final case-vowel has been lost; thus, we find Aramaic +!"!% ‘good’, while in Canaanite the change of *! to * yields -*t, as in Hebrew +*"*%. Plurals of feminine nouns of the pattern qVtlat also exhibit a-insertion, as in Hebrew m/l!.*% ‘queens’ < *malak!tu.

The dual is fully productive in Ugaritic; the endings are nominative /-%ma/ (also /-%mi/), oblique /-#ma/ (also /-#mi/; from *-ayma/i), as in nominative /ma"la(%ma/ ‘two garments’. In Biblical Hebrew the dual is restricted to words denoting objects that naturally occur in pairs and a few time words; as in the mas-culine plural, the original oblique ending has been leveled, with *-aymV > -áyim: y!$áyim ‘(two) hands’, y*máyim ‘two days’. In Aramaic the dual appears on a few forms in the early dialects (e.g. Biblical Aramaic qarnáyin ‘(two) horns’ < *qarnaynV), but in later dialects it has ceased to be used.

Genitive expressions are constructed as in Arabic, with the nomen rectum standing in a bound (construct) form. In Ugaritic, the bound form of singular nouns was probably not distinguished from the absolute form (the

latter having lost the original final mimation). In Hebrew and Aramaic, different stress pat-terns in bound forms frequently resulted in allomorphism, as in Hebrew b!q!r, bound form b/qar ‘cattle’ (cf. Classical Arabic baqar). As noted above, feminine nouns that originally ended in *-at lost the t when not bound: "!n!, bound form "/na% ‘year’ (cf. Classical Arabic sana(tun)). Masculine plural and dual bound forms in Ugaritic lost the final -ma/-mi (e.g. /maqqa(%/ ‘tongs of’), just as the final -na/-ni is lost in such forms in Arabic. Likewise the final -n or -m is lost in later Northwest Semitic languages in masculine plural and dual bound forms, as in Hebrew dual #)náyim, bound form #)n) ‘eyes’ (< *#ayn-ay(-mV)). Curiously, in both Aramaic and Hebrew bound forms of masculine plurals, the expected final -( is replaced by what appears to be the dual end-ing, -), as in Aramaic (Biblical) ’el!h(n ‘god(s)’, bound form ’el!h).

Table 3. Proto-Northwest Semitic noun declension (masc. sg.)

singular dual plural

nominative *malku *malk!n/ma/i *malak-n/magenitive *malki *malkayn/ma/i *malak(n/maaccusative *malka *malkayn/ma/i *malak(n/ma

It is unlikely that Proto-Northwest Semitic had a definite article, since Ugaritic does not contain evidence for such a morpheme. The different forms of the definite article in Canaanite and Aramaic also indicate that these two branches of Northwest Semitic underwent independent developments: in Canaanite, the definite article ha- is prefixed to the nominal base with gemina-tion of the following consonant, as in Hebrew ham-mele0 ‘the king’; in Aramaic, the definite article –! (originally -a!) is suffixed, as in malk! ‘the king’. While all Northwest Semitic definite articles are perhaps to be derived from the same original particle, *han- (Rubin 2004), Classical Arabic employs a different base for the definite article, (!)al-, with the well-known variation (!)aC- when followed by a coronal ‘sun letter’. This article is already attested in the earliest evidence of Old Arabic (Macdonald 2000:50). Ancient North Arabian, on the other hand, employs the definite article h(n)-, a form that is much closer to the Canaanite definite arti-cle than to Old Arabic and Classical Arabic.


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Yemenite has yet another form of the definite article, am-, which might be a phonemically altered form of h(n)- (Rabin 1951:34–36).

The syntax of the definite article in the Northwest Semitic languages that attest it is virtually identical to that of the Arabic article: the article may appear only on the last member of a genitive chain; it may not appear on a noun with a pronominal suffix; it does not appear on predicate adjectives.

2.2.3. VerbsFor the Proto-Northwest Semitic and Arabic finite verbal system, one suffix conjugation and several prefix conjugations may be recon-structed:

*qatala*yaqtul pl. *yaqtul-*yaqtula pl. *yaqtul-*yaqtulu pl. *yaqtul-na‘energic’: *yaqtulVn(n)a

The suffix conjugation generally denotes the past tense in the Northwest Semitic languages, as in Arabic. In the earliest Northwest Semitic, such as Ugaritic and Amarna Canaanite, it seems to alternate with *yaqtul for the past. The latter form, *yaqtul, is the Proto-Semitic perfective form par excellence. As in Arabic, it is used as a jussive in all Northwest Semitic lan-guages (though usually without a preposed li-). It also continues to be used as a past tense: in Ugaritic and Amarna Canaanite, as just noted; in Classical Hebrew with preposed conjunc-tion wa-, as in wayyi0t*" ‘and he wrote’ (also frequently in early poetry without the preposed wa-); similarly in a few examples in the earliest Aramaic inscriptions. The form *yaqtula is used in Amarna Canaanite as a virtual equivalent of the jussive *yaqtul (Amarna scholars usually term it the ‘volitive’); in Ugaritic its function is debated, but it seems to be roughly similar to its use in Amarna Canaanite; in Hebrew it has been reduced in range to 1st person forms, called the ‘cohortative’, likewise injunctive in meaning, as in !e0t/"! ‘let me write’; in Aramaic *yaqtula has disappeared. The form *yaqtulu is imperfective in Northwest Semitic, as in Arabic, used as a future, a present, a past habitual, and a circumstantial. As in Arabic, the masculine plural of *yaqtulu in Amarna Canaanite and in Ugaritic ends in --na (although the prefix

y has been replaced by t in those languages, i.e. taqtul-na). In Hebrew and Aramaic, the loss of final short vowels has resulted in the falling together of original *yaqtul and *yaq-tulu in singular forms. Thus, Classical Hebrew yi0t*" may be either jussive ‘let him write’ (< *yaktub) or imperfect ‘he writes, will write’ (< *yaktubu); a number of weak verb types, however, preserve the original distinction, such as y!q*m ‘let him stand’ < *yaqum vs. y!q-m ‘he stands, will stand’ < *yaq-mu and yí"en ‘let him build’ < *yabni(y) vs. yi"ne ‘he builds, will build’ < *yabniyu. Early Aramaic preserves this distinction in a number of verbs as well, but it is lost in later dialects. The merger of *yaqtul and *yaqtulu in the singular made the distinc-tion between plural *yaqtul- and *yaqtul-na redundant; Aramaic leveled the latter form (thus, e.g., Biblical Aramaic yi0t/"-n), while Hebrew leveled the former (yi0t/"-, although the latter, yi0t/"-n, continued to appear as a biform in imperfect usages).

All Northwest Semitic languages attest ! ‘energic’ prefix conjugation forms, or at least vestiges of them. In Amarna Canaanite, the form is *yaqtuluna, which occurs especially in the 1st person, and especially in emphatic ques-tions, as in m(na (pu"una ‘what am I to do?’. In Ugaritic, energic forms written with both <N> (for /-an(n)a/?) and <NN> (for <-anVn(n)V/??) occur; their function is debated (see Tropper 2000:497–506). In Hebrew and Aramaic, the energic appears only before pronominal object suffixes, as in Hebrew yi0t/"enn-:, Aramaic (Biblical) yi0t/"inneh ‘he will write it’; such forms replace *yaqtulu + suffixes. (Both the Hebrew and the Aramaic suggest an earlier form *yaqtul-in-, with -i- rather than the a of Arabic yaqtulan(na) [and Ugaritic?] and the u of Amarna yaqtuluna.) A recent treatment of energic forms in Arabic and Northwest Semitic is Zewi (1999).

The prefixes of the prefix conjugations in Proto-Northwest Semitic are similar to those in Classical Arabic except in the 3rd person plural, for which we have to assume an origi-nal heterogeneous distribution of *y- (3rd pers. masc. pl.) and *t- (3rd pers. fem. pl.) (see Table 4). The distribution of prefix consonants in the individual Northwest Semitic languages would otherwise be difficult to explain. Ugaritic and Amarna Canaanite leveled the feminine *t-, so that the 3rd person masculine plural is most


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often attested as t-, while Aramaic leveled the masculine *y- (as did Akkadian and Ethiopic). Hebrew preserves the original distinction of 3rd person masculine plural *y- and 3rd person feminine plural *t-. Since even Ancient North Arabian and Old Arabic seem to have *y- in both the masculine plural and feminine plural, this distribution might go back to the earliest stages of Arabic.

The prefix vowels in the Proto-Northwest Semitic basic stem were originally dependent on the theme vowel of the imperfect base. When the theme vowel was i or u, the prefix vowel was a, yaqtul and yaqtil, but it was i when the theme vowel was a, yiqtal. This distribution is known as the Barth-Ginsberg Law. Ugaritic preserves this vowel distribution, while Hebrew and Aramaic only have vestige forms (Barth 1894:4–5). Classical Arabic regularly has the prefix vowel a in the basic stem, but some ancient and modern dialects preserve reflexes of the Proto-Northwest Semitic distribution, indicating that the a of Classical Arabic is the result of leveling (Bloch 1967:22–25; Hetzron 1973–1974; Hasselbach 2004).

The feminine plural forms of the prefix conju-gations exhibit final -na in Hebrew (and, prob-ably, Ugaritic), e.g. 2nd person feminine plural ti0t*"n!, as in Arabic taktubna. This was prob-ably also true in the earliest Aramaic dialects; later Aramaic, however, has replaced -na with -!n, as in ti0t/"!n (Huehnergard 1987).

A few Ugaritic imperative forms, all feminine singular, exhibit a prothetic vowel, as in Clas-sical Arabic imperative forms, e.g. <IBKY> for / &ibkiy6/ ‘weep!’ (Tropper 2000:426–427). Most Ugaritic imperatives, however, have no pro-

thetic vowel; rather, the first two root conso-nants are separated by an anaptyctic vowel (e.g. <RGM>, probably /rugum/ ‘speak!’). The latter is the norm in all other Northwest Semitic lan-guages (and the rest of Semitic), as in Hebrew and Aramaic k/%*" ‘write!’.

The active participle of the basic form of the verb may be reconstructed for Proto-Semitic as q!til-, and this remains unchanged in both Arabic and the Northwest Semitic languages (> q*t)l in Hebrew, with the change of *! > *). A common passive participle, however, cannot be reconstructed. For Hebrew, the par-adigmatic form is *qat-l, as in k!%-" ‘writ-ten’, whereas Aramaic regularized *qat(l, as in k/%i". The pattern *maqt-l, which was leveled as the paradigmatic passive participle in Arabic, as in makt-b, is not used as such in Northwest Semitic, with the possible exception of Ugaritic, where a few examples have been suggested, such as /ma"n'’u/? ‘enemy’ (i.e. ‘hated’) and <MDD> for /m*d'du/? ‘beloved’, but other interpretations of such forms are equally possible (see Tropper 2000:476–477). A few *maqt-l nouns in Hebrew seem to have passive semantics, e.g. masp-n(m ‘treasures’, i.e. ‘hidden things’.

In contrast to the large set of patterns from which Arabic verbs may select their verbal nouns

Table 5. Derived verbal forms

Classical Arabic Hebrew Aramaic (Biblical) Ugaritic

D (II)Caus. (IV)

N (VII)L (III)R (IX)tG (VIII)tD (V)

Ct (X)tL (VI)tR

fa!!ala/yufa!!il-!af #ala/yuf #il-

(i)nfa!ala/yanfa!il-f! !ala/yuf! #il-(i)f !alla/yaf!all-(i)fta#ala/yafta#il-tafa!!ala/yatafa!!al-

(i)staf #ala/yastaf !il-taf! !ala/yataf! !al-

qitt)l/y/qatt)lhiqt(l/yaqt(l

niqt!l/yiqq!t)l(q*t)l/y/q*t)l)q*m)m/y/q*m)m(hi%q!t)l/yi%q!t)l)hi%qatt)l/yi%qatt)l

(hi"ta'aw!/yi"ta'awe)(hi%q*t)l/yi%q*t)l )(hi%q*m)m/yi%q*m)m)

qatt)l/y/qatt)lhaqt)l/y/haqt)lSyriac: !aqtel/naqtel——(q!m)m/y/q!m)m)hi%q/t)l/yi%q/t)lhi%qattal/yi%qattal

Syriac: !e%taqtal/ne%taqtal—

qattila/yVqattil-"aqti/ala/yV"aqtil-

naqtala/yiqqatil-??yuk!nin-!iqtati/ala/yiqtatil-taqattala or !itqattila/yVtqatta/il-!i"taqti/al/yV"taqtil-

Table 4. Proto-Northwest Semitic prefixes

3ms *yV- 3cd *yV- 3mp *yV-3fs *tV- 3fp *tV-2ms *tV- 2cd *tV- 2mp *tV-2fs *tV- 2fp *tV-1cs *!V- 1cp *nV-


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(ma#dars), the Northwest Semitic languages exhibit only a small number of patterns. Most Aramaic dialects exhibit *miqtal as the basic (G) infinitive, but the earliest inscriptions also attest forms without the initial m (vocalization uncertain). Biblical Hebrew has two paradig-matic infinitive forms: q!t*l < *qat!l, tradition-ally called the ‘infinitive absolute’; and q/t*l (perhaps also < *qat!l, or perhaps < *qutul), called the ‘infinitive construct’. There are ves-tiges of other patterns used as verbal nouns, however, such as *qitl and *qitlat. In Ugaritic it is likely that *qat!l and *qitl occurred as verbal nouns, and probably a few other patterns as well (Tropper 2000:480–490).

2.2.3.1. Derived verbal formsTable 5 provides an overview of the derived forms in Classical Arabic and the main North-west Semitic languages. Forms in parentheses are rare.

D-stem: The Proto-Central Semitic form of the D-stem was most likely *qattil-. Arabic (Clas-sical and dialects), and Ge!ez for that matter, leveled the /a/-vowel, resulting in the attested form qattala, while Proto-Northwest Semitic preserved the form qattila, as reflected in Ugar-itic and Aramaic. In Canaanite, another change occurred from *qattila to *qittila (Huehnergard 1992:219), resulting in the Hebrew form qitt)l. Both Canaanite and Arabic reflect independ-ent innovations, while Proto-Northwest Semitic preserved the original forms. For the meaning of the D-stem, which is similar in all Central Semitic languages, see Kouwenberg (1997).

Causative stem: The Ugaritic form of the causative indicates that the sibilant formative that is likewise attested in Akkadian, as in u"apris, was still preserved in the early stages of Northwest Semitic. For the reconstruction of an original sibilant, see Voigt (1988:60). The original sibilant of the causative is also still pre-served in the Arabic Form X, (i)staf #ala. This sibilant changed to h in Canaanite and Biblical Aramaic, and further to ! in Classical Arabic and Syriac (Voigt 1988:57–59), i.e. *yusaqtil > *yuhaqtil > *yu(!)aqtil > *yaqtil in Hebrew and Syriac, but yuqtil in Classical Arabic. Also note that Dadanitic still has a derived stem with prefixed h-, hf #l, in addition to !f #l (Mac-donald 2004:512). The vowels of the suffix conjugation underwent the same changes as in the D-stem in both Canaanite and Arabic, i.e.

*haqtila > *hiqtila in Caananite and *haqtila > *haqtala in Arabic.

N-stem: The N-stem is characterized by an /n/ that is prefixed to the verbal root in all languages that preserve it. In the suffix conjuga-tions of Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Hebrew, the /n/ stands at the beginning of the word with a vowel between /n/ and R1, nVR1–, while in Ara-bic the /n/ is immediately prefixed to the verbal base and has a hamzat al-wa#l to resolve the initial consonant cluster, (!i)nR1–. The vowel that follows /n/ in Northwest Semitic languages differs in that Hebrew has /i/, while Ugaritic has /a/. It is likely that Ugaritic preserves the original vowel of the perfect, while the Hebrew form is the result of an inner Hebrew develop-ment; cf. also the Akkadian N-verbal adjective naprus. In the imperfect, Arabic, Hebrew, and Ugaritic share the same basic form, except that Ugaritic and Hebrew assimilate the original /n/ to the following root consonant. Aramaic lost the N-stem completely. The N-stem is used as a middle/reflexive/passive stem in Arabic and in Ugaritic. When used as a passive, it usually relates to the G-stem. The function as passive to the basic stem is the one most commonly used in Hebrew and Phoenician, which might be explained by the loss of internal passives in these languages.

L-stem: Northwest Semitic languages do not have a productive L-stem as found in Arabic (Form III). There are, nevertheless, vestiges of such stems in Hebrew and perhaps also in Ugaritic (Tropper 2000:577–585). The rare attestations of the form q*t)l for strong roots in Hebrew resemble the Classical Arabic Form III both formally – the long /*/ between R1 and R2 derives from original *! – and semantically. As is well known, the L-stem of Arabic expresses the notion of ‘having an action/somebody as goal’, as in q!tala ‘to fight’, i.e. ‘having kill-ing as a goal’. The same meaning is found in Hebrew, as in m/"*p+( ‘my adversary’, i.e. ‘somebody who would contend with me’ (Ges-enius a.o. 1910, § 55b). In Ugaritic, a similar stem seems to be used for geminate roots, but with the semantic range of the D-stem, as in t#zzk /tu!%ziz'ka/ ‘may they make you strong’, from the root #-z-z ‘to be strong’.

R-stem: The R-stem in Hebrew and Ugar-itic is confined to roots IIw/y for which it has the same semantic range as the D-stem, as in Hebrew m*%)% ‘to slay, kill’ from the root *m-


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w-t ‘to die’ and Ugaritic yrmm /yur%mim/ ‘he built/made high’ from the root *r-y-m ‘to be high’. The Arabic R-stems (Forms IX and XI) are used for adjectival forms of the type !af #alu, as in (!i)#farra and (!i)#f!rra ‘to become yellow’ from the adjective !a#faru ‘yellow’. The differ-ent R-stems in Arabic and Northwest Semitic are probably not related since they differ both formally and semantically.

t-stems: The forms of the t-stems in the indi-vidual languages differ with regard to whether the t-preformative is prefixed or infixed. In Syriac, we only find prefixed forms, while Ugar-itic and Hebrew have prefixed t-forms except in the Ct, where the t is infixed, but note that Hebrew only has one verbal root that occurs in the Ct. The infixation of the t in the causative is probably caused by the sibilant. In Hebrew, a metathesis of the prefixed t with a following sibilant regularly takes place in the Hithpa&el, e.g. hitpall)l ‘he prayed’ vs. hi"tamm)r ‘he guarded himself’. In Arabic, the tD and tL are prefixed and the Gt and Ct infixed. For a reconstruction of these forms, see, for example, Diem (1982) and Testen (1999). In most of the languages, the t-stems are used as reflexive/mid-dle, rarely as passive, although in Syriac, they are exclusively used for the passive. Note that the Proto-Semitic St stem (Arabic Form X) is vestigial in Hebrew (one verb, yi"ta'awe < *yista'wiyu ‘he prostrates himself’) and was lost in Aramaic (though later reintroduced from Akkadian), where it was replaced by innovative ’ittaqtal. Also in Hebrew the Gt (Arabic Form VIII) was lost except for a few relic forms.

Other stems, such as Forms XII–XV, are miss-ing or at best vestigial in Northwest Semitic.

2.3. Syntax

The basic word order in Arabic and the Northwest Semitic languages is the same, with Subject-Predicate in nominal sentences and Verb-Subject-Object in verbal sentences. Attributive adjectives usually follow the noun they modify. Variations to these basic rules are found when specific elements of a sentence are fronted for emphasis and topicalization (see Khan 1988). Classical Arabic differs from Northwest Semitic in that an indefinite subject cannot stand at the beginning of a sentence, in which case the predicate is fronted. This con-struction is not found in Northwest Semitic.

Predicate and subject usually agree in gen-der and number in both nominal and ver-bal sentences in Northwest Semitic languages, regardless of the position of the predicate in a sentence. (An exception is the dual in Canaanite and Aramaic, since the dual is only preserved in vestiges in these languages; dual subjects are therefore construed as plural, with the gen-der depending on the gender of the singular.) In Canaanite and Aramaic, as in Arabic, an attributive adjective also agrees in definite-ness with the noun it modifies, while predicate adjectives remain indefinite. Exceptions to these agreement rules can occur. In Hebrew, plu-rals of names, animals, things, and abstracts are sometimes construed as feminine singular with verbal predicates. There also occur vari-ations when the predicate precedes its subject, in which case the predicate can stand in the 3rd person masculine singular, independent of the number of the following subject, although agreement is more frequent. Interestingly, unlike Hebrew, Ugaritic does not seem to have cases of lack of agreement in verbal sentences (Tropper 2000:886).

Classical Arabic agreement rules differ from Northwest Semitic. Two major differences need to be addressed. First, a verbal predicate when it precedes its subject is always construed in the singular, whether the subject is singular or plural. Although this situation is sometimes found in Hebrew as well, it is not as strict as in Classical Arabic. In some colloquial Arabic dialects, a verbal predicate agrees in number and gender with its subject independent of its position (Rabin 1951:209). In Ancient North Arabian, verbs generally agree with their sub-jects in gender and number as well (Macdonald 2004:526). The second major difference is that inanimate plurals are generally construed as feminine singulars, likewise a situation that is found only sporadically in Northwest Semitic.

Another syntactic feature in which Arabic dif-fers from Northwest Semitic languages is with regard to relative clauses. In Classical Arabic, relative clauses are not introduced by a relative pronoun when the nominal antecedent is indefi-nite, but they have to be introduced by a rela-tive pronoun when the antecedent is definite. In !afaitic, this distinction is not kept as strictly; although relative clauses may be introduced by the relative pronouns $ or mn, these pro-nouns can be absent even after a definite noun


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(Macdonald 2004:528). In Northwest Semitic, no distinction of this kind is made in those languages that have a marker for definiteness. In Syriac, relative clauses are generally intro-duced by the relative pronoun d-. Exceptions to this rule are rare and often are Hebraisms (Nöldeke 1904, § 354). In Hebrew, relative clauses are usually introduced by the pronoun ’a"er, but asyndetic relative clauses occur as well, especially in poetry. These asyndetic rela-tive clauses, interestingly, are most commonly found after an indefinite antecedent, a situation that resembles Classical Arabic (Gesenius a.o. 1910, § 155d).

2.4. Lexicon

The Northwest Semitic languages and Arabic share a significant number of lexical items that are not attested in other Semitic languages, such as the prepositions *!il(ay) ‘to(ward)’ and *#im/ma# ‘with’; the nouns *#abd ‘servant’, *kapp ‘palm of hand’, *laban ‘white’, and the extended form *!il!h ‘god’; and verbal roots such as #-$-r ‘to help’, '-g-g ‘to make a pilgrim-age’, '-z-y ‘to see’, n-'-m ‘to console’, s-k-n ‘to dwell’, t-m-m ‘to be complete’, and +-r-p ‘to pluck’. There are also, however, many items that are found in Arabic but not in Northwest Semitic, and vice versa.

3. S u b g r o u p i n g

The most disputed aspect concerning the sub-grouping of the Semitic languages is the posi-tion of Arabic. The traditional view is that Arabic belongs to a ! South Semitic group that also includes Old South Arabian, Modern South Arabian, and Ethiopian Semitic (Nöldeke 1899:17; Brockelmann 1908:21). This view was challenged in several influential articles by Hetzron (1974, 1976), in which he argued for a subgroup labeled Central Semitic, consisting of Arabic and the Northwest Semitic languages, on the basis of certain shared morphological innovations in the verbal system, particularly the imperfect form yaqtulu. Hetzron’s clas-sification is widely accepted today (e.g. Faber 1980, 1997; Voigt 1987), although a number of scholars continue to argue in favor of a subgrouping of Arabic as South Semitic (Blau 1978; Diakonoff 1988; Diem 1980; Zaborski 1991, 1994; Ratcliffe 1998).

The debate centers on different evaluations of certain isoglosses that Arabic shares with Northwest Semitic on the one hand and with South Semitic on the other. Scholars who argue in favor of the subgrouping of Arabic with Northwest Semitic, in a Central Semitic sub-grouping, usually consider the form of the prefix conjugation yaqtulu, underlying the Northwest Semitic and Arabic imperfect, to be a shared innovation of these languages (now known to be shared by the Old South Arabian languages as well; see Nebes 1994). South Semitic does not have a reflex of this verbal form but uses yaqattal instead, a shared reten-tion from Proto-Semitic also found in Akkadian (Hetzron 1974:187, 1976:105).

Scholars who support the subgrouping of Ara-bic as a member of South Semitic explain simi-larities between Northwest Semitic languages and Arabic as results of language contact. The main two isoglosses quoted against a genealogi-cal relationship with Northwest Semitic are the wide range of broken plural patterns used in Arabic and South Semitic (but see Huehnergard 2005), and the Arabic/South Semitic verbal stems with lengthened first vowel, q!tala and taq!tala (i.e. Arabic Forms III and VI), which are explained as shared innovations (Nöldeke 1899:17; Diem 1980:69; Zaborski 1991:370, 1994:399; Ratcliffe 1998:120). Rare occur-rences of Hebrew Po!el forms of strong roots resemble the Classical Arabic q!tala both for-mally and semantically, however (Gesenius a.o. 1910, § 55b). Furthermore, this stem is attested outside Semitic, for example in Beja (Zaborski 1991:371), and may go back to an early stage of Afro-Asiatic; if so, it would not constitute a shared Arabic/South Semitic innovation.

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Rebecca Hasselbach (University of Chicago) John Huehnergard (Harvard University)

Noun

1. D e f i n i t i o n

Generally speaking, the term ‘noun’ can be used either as a synonym for ‘substantive’ and ‘adjective’, or as an umbrella term for all ‘nomi-nal’ parts of the sentence, including adjectives as well as pronouns and numerals. In the con-text of Semitic and Arabic linguistics, ‘noun’ (!" ism) is always used in the first, narrower sense. The demarcation between substantive and ! adjective poses a morphosyntactic prob-

lem in some Semitic languages (! noun phrase; ! adjective phrase) because from a typologi-cal point of view, substantive-adjective phrases could also be analyzed as two nouns in apposi-tion, e.g. ar-rajulu l-kab(ru ‘the man the big (one)’. Moreover, the strict distinction between nominal patterns (including declensional fea-tures) specific to substantives and those specific to adjectives that is found, for instance, in Akkadian (Huehnergard 2000:607–609) does not exist in (Classical) Arabic (see, e.g., Fischer 1997:192). Therefore, the following notes do not exclude references to adjectives, because these can function regularly as substantives, which is especially evident in the case of the ! participle.

From the native Arab grammarians’ point of view, the definition of ‘noun’ is more com-plicated. On the one hand, ! ism philosophi-cally denotes everything that can be assigned a name. Much in the spirit of the Qur&%nic verse wa-#allama !3dama l-!asm!!a kullah! ‘and He taught Adam all the names [sc. of things that can be assigned a name]’ (Q. 2/31), S6ba-wayhi writes that !i$! qulta marartu bi-rajulin !innnam! za#amta !annaka !innam! mararta bi-w!'idin mim-man yaqa#u #alayhi h!$! l-ism ‘by saying “I passed by a man” simply means that one passed by one of those to whom this name [i.e. ‘man’] applies’ (Kit!b I, 2201ff./187.18ff.). On the other hand, S6bawayhi also subsumes the demonstrative pronoun, the participle, the elative form !af #alu, and certain indeclinable words under his concept of !asm!! (see Diem 1970–1971:316ff.). This broader definition is still reflected in Wright’s grammar (1967:I, 104ff.), which lists six kinds of nouns: (1) al-ism al maw#-f or al-man#-t ‘the noun that can be qualified by an adjective’, (2) a#-#ifa, al-wa#f, or an-na#t ‘the adjective’, (3) ism al-#adad ‘the number’, (4) ism al-!i"!ra ‘the demonstra-tive pronoun’, (5) al-ism al-maw#-l ‘the relative pronoun’, and (6) a!-!am(r or al-mu!mar ‘the pronoun’.

The concept ‘noun’ in the sense of a word denoting a person or a thing (cf. Sanskrit n!man or Greek ónoma) is discussed here with special attention to morphological notions; the entry does not, nevertheless, neglect semantic categories, because these are closely associ-ated with noun patterns. ‘Nominalized’ clauses (cleft sentences and relative clauses), which can adopt the syntactic position of a noun, are

422 noun

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