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Arabic Evidence for Proto-Semitic */awa/ and */ō/

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

William Cowan
William Cowan*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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The Proto-Semitic vowels, as usually reconstructed, are identical with those of Classical Arabic: short */i a u/, long /*ī ā ū/. In addition, a number of the long vowels are recognized, on the basis of morphophonemic alternation, as resulting from earlier sequences of short vowels and */y/ or */w/. For example, on the basis of the cognate set Heb. /dān/, Acc. /dānu/, Syr. /dān/, Arab. /dāna/ ‘he judged’, Gray reconstructs Proto-Semitic */dāna/. Since this long-vowel correspondence contrasts, however, with that of the set Heb. /šālōš/, Acc. /šalāšu/, Syr. /tәlāθ/, Arab. /θalāθun/, Eth. /šalās/ ‘three’, where he also reconstructs an */-ā-/, he posits a presumably pre-Proto-Semitic */aya/ for the first set on the basis of the imperfects Heb. /yāÐīn/, Acc. /ˀidīn/, Syr. /nәÐīn/, and Arab. /yadīnu/. The methodological error here is immediately apparent: if the long vowel of */dāna/ contrasts in its reflexes in the descendent languages with the long vowel of */θalāθu/, then the contrast existed in Proto-Semitic, and the morphophonemic alternation is irrelevant in determining it. A similar situation exists with respect to the verb Heb. /qām/, Syr. /qām/, Arab. /qāma/, Eth. /qōma/ ‘he stood’ (for the Acc. reflex cf. Acc. /kānu/ ‘he existed’, Arab. /kāna/ 'he was'), where Gray reconstructs */qāma/. To explain the Heb. reflexes one has to resort to an analogical formation from the forms with suffixes (/dantā/ 'you judged', /qamtā/ ‘you stood‘) where the vowel remained short, with subsequent stress lengthening of the reestablished short vowel in the simple forms. For Eth. one must recognize an */aw/ nucleus in the suffixed forms which went to /ō/ and was reestablished in the simple form. It is much easier, however, to recognize that */aya/ and */awa/ existed in Proto-Semitic.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 36 , Issue 1-Part1: January-March , March 1960, pp. 60 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © 1960 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 C. Brockelmann, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen 1.57 (Berlin, 1908–13); G. Bergsträsser, Einführung in die semitischen Sprachen 5 (München, 1928). I retain the notation of the sources quoted, or an equivalent, except that i̯ and u̯ have been noted as y and w in all cases.

2 L. H. Gray, Introduction to Semitic comparative linguistics 24 (New York, 1934).

3 For a more recent statement see C. A. Ferguson, Lg. 34.316 (1958).

4 D. L. O'Leary, Comparative grammar of the Semitic languages 118 (London, 1923). An alternative view of originally biconsonantal forms with a short vowel is argued by F. R. Blake, JAOS 62.109–10 (1942).

5 I. N. Vinnikov, Materialy po jazyku i fol'kloru Buxarskix Arabov, Sovetskoe Vostokovedenie 6.120–45 (1949); id., Fol'klor Buxarskix Arabov, Acta Orientalia (Hungary) 6.181–206 (1956); id., Obraztsy Fol'klora Buxarskix Arabov, Archiv orientální 25.173–189, 426–451 (1957); G. V. Tsereteli, The Arabic dialects in Central Asia, Papers Presented by the Soviet Delegation at the XXIII International Congress of Orientalists, Semitic Studies (Moscow, 1954); id., The Arabic dialects of Central Asia: I. The Bukhara Arabic dialect (Tiflis, 1956). For further references see the bibliography in W. Fischer, Die demonstrativen Bildungen der neuarabischen Dialekte ('s-Gravenhage, 1959). I have taken most of the material used here from Vinnikov, whose transcription is phonemic. I have not marked stress in the examples quoted, since all long vowels are stressed. The observations made in the present article have not been made elsewhere to my knowledge. It is possible, however, that similar observations have been published by some of the Russian scholars, who have been acquainted with these dialects since the middle thirties, in publications not available to me.

6 /ḥayā/ ‘life’ does not have this reflex, perhaps because of the preceding */y/.

7 C. Rabin, Ancient West-Arabian 106 (London, 1951).

8 Op.cit. 105. Rabin does not recognize a phonemic /ō/ in the early Arabic dialects with which he deals, ascribing the spellings with wāw to either inherited Aramaic spellings, a written reflection of a subphonemic allophone [ō] of /ā/, or both. On the second point cf. C. F. Hockett, Lg. 35.599 (1959). If the quotation from Ibn Manẓur given by Rabin on p. 106 legitimately refers to a North African variety of Arabic, the reflexes of Proto-Arabic */ō/ were once much more widespread than they are now.

9 Rabin, op.cit. 107, quotes a ‘freak’ spelling slwm for Safatene.

10 Op.cit. 114. His view is based mostly on the Heb./mēθ/, Aram. /mīθ/ (Proto-Arabic */mōt/), a correspondence that has always caused difficulty.