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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Origins of the definite article of BHebrew

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Herman Meester <crazymulgogi AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Origins of the definite article of BHebrew
  • Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 12:00:58 +0000

On 18/12/2005 21:50, Herman Meester wrote:

... - alif al-wasl for stems vii, viii, x (surely
no historical hamz!), and some more.
...


No, neither the alif al-wasl of article, stem vii, viii, x, the words
ism, ibn, etc., nor the alif at the end of the 3rd person plural
perfect verb (the latter is only a vertical line I think to seperate
words), represent historical consonants.


Let me clarify a point here. The Arabic verb stems you refer to are the ones cognate with Hebrew hiphil, hithpael etc, right? And with Aramaic 'aphel etc? So we are talking about causative verb forms which in Hebrew start with he, in biblical Aramaic with alef (possibly silent), and in Arabic with silent alif. In all these languages, in the prefix conjugation the initial consonant is replaced with the personal prefix, i.e. in Hebrew the hiphil "imperfect" is yaqtil, not something like yehiqtil, and similarly in Arabic and Aramaic. Ethiopic/Ge'ez seems to have the same pattern, with the basic causative verb starting with the equivalent of alef.

This situation seems closely parallel to the article. Very likely the prefix in both cases originally started with a vowel, which became written with he and pronounced with an H sound in Hebrew and perhaps also Ugaritic and north Arabian; became written with alef and perhaps pronounced as a glottal stop in Aramaic and Ethiopic; and became written with alef but not pronounced in classical Arabic. There seems to be a clearly parallel pattern here.

So I tend to go for an original form of the article which was perhaps originally an- but became al- in central Arabia. Or possibly vice versa, except that we then need to explain why the form han- is apparently found in both Ugaritic far to the north and (if I remember correctly) in South Arabian. The original alternation between al- (less likely to assimilate) and an- (more likely to assimilate) in different Arabic dialects may account for the variable and apparently inconsistent assimilation rules.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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