Proto-Semitic language


Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical proto-language of the Semitic languages. The earliest attestations of a Semitic language are in Akkadian, dating to ca. the 23rd century BC (see Sargon of Akkad). Early inscriptions in the (pre-)Proto-Canaanite alphabet, presumably by speakers of a Semitic language, date to ca. 1800 BC. Proto-Semitic would most probably have been spoken in the 4th millennium BC, roughly contemporaneous to Proto-Indo-European.

Sound system

Proto-Semitic is generally reconstructed as having the following phonemes (as usually transcribed in Semitology; tentative IPA values are given in square brackets)[1]

:

Notes:

  1. Nowadays it has become more fashionable to reconstruct /z/, /s/, , and sometimes as affricates, i.e. /dz/, /ts/, , and . If these sounds were affricates, many scholars are inclined to think that ลก was really a simple /s/. This is the way it appears in other Afro-Asiatic languages. However, the exact history of these sounds has yet to be worked out.
  2. The sounds notated here as "emphatic" sounds occur in nearly all Semitic languages, as well as in most other Afroasiatic languages, are generally reconstructed as glottalized in Proto-Semitic. In modern Semitic languages, they are variously realized as pharyngealized (Arabic, Aramaic) or glottalized (Ethiopian Semitic languages, Modern South Arabian languages).
  3. In Aramaic and Hebrew, all non-emphatic stops were softened to fricatives when occurring singly after a vowel, leading to an alternation that was often later phonemicized as a result of the loss of gemination.

Sound changes between Proto-Semitic and the daughter languages

This proto-phonology was reconstructed to attempt to explain the regular phonetic differences between the Semitic languages. This is how they are believed to correspond.

Notes:

  1. Arabic pronunciation is that of reconstructed Qur'anic Arabic of the 7th and 8th centuries CE. If the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic differs, this is indicated (for example, ).
  2. Proto-Semitic appears to have merged with in Tiberian Hebrew, but is still distinguished graphically.
  3. Biblical Hebrew as of the 3rd century BCE apparently still distinguished and (based on transcriptions in the Septuagint).
  4. Although early Aramaic (pre-7th century BCE) had only 22 consonants in its alphabet, it apparently distinguished at least 27 of the original 29 Proto-Semitic phonemes, including , , , , . This conclusion is based on the shifting representation of words etymologically containing these sounds; in early Aramaic writing, they are merged with , , , , , respectively, but later with , , , , .[2]

References

See also

Citations