Re: Proto-Semitic (was Re: markjjones@HOTMAIL.COM)

On Mar 8, 2005, at 10:41 PM, Rob Haden wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Mar 2005 20:58:23 +0100, Steven Williams
> <feurieaux@...>
> wrote:
> If there was */ts/, */dz/, and */s/, then we could say that */K/
> became /S/
> in Arabic (rather than merging with /S/).  However, the South Arabian
> languages have both /K/ and /S/.  Perhaps */s/ > /S/, */ts/ > /s/, and
> */dz/ > /z/ there.  But what would cause /s/ to become /S/?
Isn't /s/ becoming or has become /S/ in Portuguese?

>>> There's a class of verbs called 's-stems', with
>>> transitive/causative, destative, or denominal
>>> meanings.  However, they don't begin with s- at all,
>>> it seems; in Arabic they begin with '-, Akkadian
>>> with š-, and Hebrew with h-:
>> We-eird... It also seems somewhat anomalous that
>> switching consonants around like that could serve a
>> concrete grammatical function. The Semitic languages
>> look more and more like some bizarre loglanging
>> experiment gone horribly awry...
> Heh, you're telling me. :)  I don't mean to sound pretentious, but I
> wonder
> if the traditional interpretation of written Akkadian is a little
> incorrect.  Not only does Akkadian show |š| in the S-stems, where
> Arabic
> shows ?- and Hebrew h-, but it also has |š| in the personal pronouns:
> šu: 'he', ši: 'she' (cf. Arabic huwa 'he', hiya 'she').  So the
> question
> is, did Akkadian retain an earlier /S/ where Arabic and Hebrew did not?
> - Rob
Or maybe it's a whole different phoneme!  Something like */C/, maybe...
My notes and handouts from that class are around here *somewhere*...
Or maybe i should just break out my Semiticonlang, instead... ;-)


-Stephen (Steg)
  "Ezekiel... he has like the crazy thing!"
      ~ brilliant biblical commentary by n