Northwest Semitic languages

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Northwest Semitic
Levantine
Geographic
distribution:		 concentrated in the Middle East
Linguistic classification: Afro-Asiatic
Subdivisions:
Glottolog: nort3165[1]

Northwest Semitic is a division of the ancient Semitic language family, also known as Syro-Palestinian,[2] comprising the ancient languages of the Levant. It would have emerged from Common Semitic in the Early Bronze Age. It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite in the Middle Bronze Age. The oldest coherent texts are in Ugaritic, dating to the Late Bronze Age, which by the time of the Bronze Age collapse are joined by Old Aramaic, and by the Iron Age by the Canaanite languages (Phoenician and Hebrew).[3]

The term was coined by Carl Brockelmann in 1908,[2] who separated Fritz Hommel's 1883 classification of "West Semitic languages"[2] into Northwest (Canaanite and Aramaic) and Southwest (Arabic and Abyssinian).[4]

Brockelmann's Canaanite sub-group includes Ugaritic, Phoenician and Hebrew. Some scholars would now separate Ugaritic as a separate branch of Northwest Semitic alongside Canaanite. Central Semitic is a proposed intermediate group comprising Northwest Semitic and Arabic. Central Semitic is either a subgroup of West Semitic, or a top-level division of Semitic alongside East Semitic and South Semitic.[5] SIL Ethnologue in its system of classifcation (of living languages only) eliminates Northwest Semitic entirely by joining Canaanite and Arabic in a "South-Central" group which together with Aramaic forms Central Semitic.[6]

Historical development

Aramaic alphabets
Phoenician alphabets
Comparison of Northwest Semitic scripts, by Mark Lidzbarski in 1898
Edward Bernard's "Orbis eruditi", comparing all known alphabets as of 1689, including Northwest Semitic which is described as "Adami, Noachi, Nini, Abrahami, Phoenicum et Samaritarum ante Christe (5509) a nummis Iudaicis Africanisque Pentateucho Mosis"

The time period for the split of Northwest Semitic from Proto-Semitic or from other Semitic groups is uncertain. The first attestation of a Northwest Semitic language is of Ugaritic in the 14th century BC.

During the early 1st millennium, the Phoenician language was spread throughout the Mediterranean by Phoenician colonists, most notably to Carthage in today's Tunisia. The Phoenician alphabet is of fundamental importance in human history, as the source of the Greek alphabet and later Latin alphabet, and of the Aramaic/Square Hebrew and Arabic writing systems as well.

By the 6th century BC, the use of Aramaic spread throughout the Northwest Semitic region (see Imperial Aramaic), largely driving the other Northwest Semitic languages to extinction. The ancient Judaeans adopted Aramaic for daily use, and parts of the Old Testament are written in it. Hebrew was preserved, however, as a Jewish liturgical language and language of scholarship, and resurrected in the 19th century, with modern adaptations, to become the Modern Hebrew language of today's Israel.

With the Muslim expansion in the 7th century AD, Arabic began to gradually replace Aramaic throughout the region. Aramaic survives today as the liturgical language of the Syriac Christian Church, and is spoken in modern dialects by small and endangered populations scattered throughout the Middle East. There is an Aramaic substratum in Levantine Arabic.

Sound changes

Phonologically, Ugaritic lost the sound *ṣ́, replacing it with /sˤ/ (ṣ) (the same shift occurred in Canaanite and Akkadian). That this same sound became /ʕ/ in Aramaic (although in Ancient Aramaic, it was written with qoph), suggests that Ugaritic is not the parent language of the group. An example of this sound shift can be seen in the word for earth: Ugaritic /ʔarsˤ/ (’arṣ), Hebrew /ʔɛrɛsˤ/ (’ereṣ) and Aramaic /ʔarʕaː/ (’ar‘ā’).

The vowel shift from *aː to /oː/ distinguishes Canaanite from Ugaritic. Also, in the Canaanite group, the series of Semitic interdental fricatives become sibilants: *ð (ḏ), *θ (ṯ) and *θ̣ (ṱ) became /z/, /ʃ/ (š) and /sˤ/ (ṣ) respectively. The effect of this sound shift can be seen by comparing the following words:

shift Ugaritic Aramaic Biblical Hebrew translation
*ð (ḏ)→/z/ 𐎏𐎅𐎁
ḏhb		 דהב
/dəhab/
(dəhaḇ)		 זהב
/zaˈhab/
zahab		 gold
*θ (ṯ)→/ʃ/ (š) 𐎘𐎍𐎘
ṯlṯ		 תלת
/təlaːt/
(təlāṯ)		 שלוש/שלש
/ʃaˈloʃ/
šaloš		 three
*θ̣ (ṱ)→/sˤ/ (ṣ) 𐎉𐎆
ṱw		 טור
/tˤuːr/
(ṭûr)		 צור
/sˤur/
çur (ṣur)		 mountain

Notes

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook, Chapter V, page 425
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Kurzgefasste vergleichende Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen, Elemente der Laut- und Formenlehre (1908), quote "Das Westsemitische gliedert sich in zwei Hauptgruppen, das Nord- und das Südwestsemitische... Das Nordwestsemitische umfaßt das Kanaanäische und das Aramäische...Das Südwest semitische umfaßt das Arabische und Abessinische."
  5. ↑ Linguist List Central Semitic composite tree (with Aramaic and Canaanite grouped together in Northwest Semitic, and Arabic and Old South Arabian as sisters)
    Linguist List bibliography of sources for composite tree
    Rubin, Aaron D. 2007. The Subgrouping of the Semitic Languages, Language and Linguistics Compass, vol. 1.
    Huehnergard, John. 2004. "Afro-Asiatic," The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages (Cambridge, pp. 138-159).
    Faber, Alice. 1997. "Genetic Subgrouping of the Semitic Languages," The Semitic Languages (Routledge, pp. 3-15)
    Huehnergard, John. 1991. "Remarks on the Classification of the Northwest Semitic Languages," The Balaam Text from Deir 'Alla Re-evaluated (Brill, pp. 282-293).
    Huehnergard, John. 1992. "Languages of the Ancient Near East," The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Volume 4, pp. 155-170.
    Voigt, Rainer M. 1987. "The Classification of Central Semitic," Journal of Semitic Studies 32:1-19.
    Goldenberg, Gideon. 1977. "The Semitic Languages of Ethiopia and Their Classification," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 40:461-507.
    Ethnologue Central Semitic entry (with Arabic and Canaanite grouped together against Aramaic)
    The Ethnologue classification is based on Hetzron, Robert. 1987. "Semitic Languages," The World's Major Languages (Oxford, pp. 654-663).
    The older grouping of Arabic with South Semitic was "based on cultural and geographical principles", not on principles of empirical historical linguistics (Faber, 1997, pg. 5). "However, more recently, [Arabic] has been grouped instead with Canaanite and Aramaic, under the rubric Central Semitic..., and this classification is certainly more appropriate for Ancient North Arabian" (Macdonald, M.C.A. 2004. "Ancient North Arabian," The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages Cambridge, pp. 488-533. Quote on pg. 489).
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

Bibliography

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  • Cross, F. M. 1967. “The Origin and Early Evolution of the Alphabet,” EI 5: 8*-24*.
  • Cross, F. M. 1982. “Alphabets and pots: Reflections on typological method in the dating of human artifacts,” MAARAV 3: 121-136.
  • Cross, F. M. 1989. “The Invention and Development of the Alphabet,” in The Origins of Writing (ed. W. M. Senner; Lincoln: University of Nebraska), pp. 77–90.
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