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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter.r.kirk AT ntlworld.com>
  • To: Biblical Hebrew List <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Potiphar's title
  • Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 02:43:57 -0700

On 10/07/2003 19:12, Dave Washburn wrote:


in my response to Stephen. Also, if as you suggested this word is part
of the common Semitic stock, instead of being Akkadian ša rēši “the one
at the head” > Hebrew saris, it would be Hebrew še rō'š, or 'ašer rō'š
“the one at the head”.

Perhaps, but not necessarily. Hebrew also has words such as reshit and rishon with similar meanings.

I'm not sure why Akkadian š becomes Hebrew s when

borrowed, but you can hardly argue that Hebrew š (shin) becomes Hebrew s
(samek).


Of course not. I'm not talking about Hebrew shin, but a term from the (admittedly hypothetical) Proto-Semitic word stock. So the question is not, "doea Akkadian shin become Hebrew samek" but "might a Proto-Semitic word with (say) a sin be rendered with a 's' sound in Hebrew but a 'sh' sound in Akkadian?" Based on the chart I'm looking at in C. H. Gordon, _Ugaritic Textbook_ p.30, the answer is "very likely." The 7th column of the chart shows a Proto-Semitic s' (an 's' with an acute accent on it) rendering as 's' in Hebrew but 'sh' in Akkadian. So if there is any validity to the pattern he sets forth, the question of SRYS still seems to be an open one.

I say all this while bearing in mind that I'm a grammarian, not a lexicographer, which means I'm painfully aware of my limitations in this area...


I'm also not an expert in this field, but here's my answer to you, Dave, and to Michael and Karl:

I cannot rule out the possibility that SARIS is a Hebrew word from the original proto-Semitic stock with no known cognates in other Semitic languages. But, as noted in GKC 30m, in a Hebrew triliteral root "The first and third consonants are very seldom identical", which is another argument against this analysis.

But if it is a cognate of the given Akkadian word, that implies that it has the same etymology, the relative pronoun SHE-, in both Akkadian and Hebrew (although the 'ASHER is more common in biblical Hebrew), plus the common Semitic word for "head". This word for "head" has a final consonant s in Arabic and dialects, Ge`ez, Tigre, Tigrinya, Amharic and Harari, but sh in Akkadian, Ugariti, Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic, Syriac, Ma`lula, Urmi, Mandaic, Sabean and Jibbali (Data from "Comparative Semitic Linguistics by P. Bennett, p.135), which implies a proto-Semitic sh sound. There is no way that this sh could have become s within Hebrew, which implies that SARIS, if indeed derived from the word for "head", is a loan word.

Proto-Semitic s-acute would normally become sin in Hebrew, and sh in Akkadian (and Arabic). But Hebrew sin and samekh were indeed sometimes confused (cf. Shibboleth). So if the Akkadian etymology given in K-B etc is wrong, this could be a shared proto-Semitic word. But then a question for a grammarian: how would you account for the Akkadian plural form given in K-B in which the first syllable of the word inflects, not the second one?

--
Peter Kirk
peter.r.kirk AT ntlworld.com
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/






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