Ugaritic Affiliations
- From: "Richard Wordingham" <jrw0602@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:55:43 GMT
"Yusuf B Gursey" <ybg@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1189014105.865358.122310@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx in thread 'Palestine during/around Jesus' time'
On Sep 5, 12:49 am, Frank Zeeb <nebb...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:Yusuf B. Gursey (RW believes) wrote:Peter T. Daniels (RW believes) wrote:
>> You haven't consulted a Ugaritic grammar. Dad was marginal but had a
>> letter.
> there is still the issue of 3 non-emphatic sibilants for ugaritic but
> 2 for arabic. "nearly identical" is more correct.
Arabic"dad" is in Ugaritic generally written with "dotted z" (don't
I interpreted "dotted z" as arabic DHa:' . so either Dad or Dha:' is
missing.
Digging around, it seems that there 31 characters representing 28 consonants - three for the glottal stop - 'a, 'i and 'u, and two for s^ (s hacek), namely Unicode U+1038C UGARITIC LETTER SHIN, and a form 'without serpent' that is interchangeable with it. (I wouldn't bet on interchangeability.)
If the standard transliteration is broadly consistent with a 'standard' reconstruction of Proto-Semitic (PSem) - call it a spelling to avoid unnecessary dispute - the coronal consonants seem to match up as follows:
Standard_transliteration (ASCIIfication) Shortened_Unicode_name *ASCIIfied_PSem
t (t) to *t
d (d) delta *d
ṭ (t.) tet *t.
ṯ (t_) thanna *t_
ḏ (d_) dhal *d_
s (s) samka *s
z (z) zeta *z
ṣ (s.) sade *s.
š (s^, $) shin *s^, *$ (Competing notations - one character, one PSem phoneme)
l (l) lamda *l
r (r) rasha *r
Unmatched Proto-Semitic:
*t_.
*l- (voiceless lateral fricative)
*l. (emphatic voiceless(?) lateral fricative)
Unmatched Ugaritic:
ẓ (z.) zu
ś, s₂(s', s2) ssu (Competing notations. I'm assuming the grave in WWS Table 5.2 is a typo.)
The non-Roman transliteration I've seen offered for zu include Hebrew teth geresh and ظ U+0638 ARABIC LETTER ZAH. I have no examples of its use.
Now, the non-Roman transliterations I've seen offered for ssu include Hebrew sin, underlined Hebrew unpointed shin, and Arabic sin with a grave accent. The example of use offered by Brian E. Colless is in <samk> 'support (spine)'. The closest my meagre resources offer is Hebrew <semek> 'support' spelt with samekh, not sin.
There is a remarkable statement in the Unicode proposal for Ugaritic - 'The letters I, U and SSU were added to the alphabet to support Hurrian'. The authors of the proposal are Michael Everson, Rick McGowan and Kenneth Whistler, but I don't believe any of them is a Semiticist.
I've seen a claim of two mergers from Proto-Semitic to Ugaritic - of *l- and *$ (as in Akkadian but none of Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic), and of *s. and *l. (as in Hebrew but neither Arabic or Aramaic). The example stem for the latter is PSem */'arl./ 'land' - Ugaritic _'ars._, Hebrew _'eres._, Aramaic _'ar`_ (stem form, I presume), Arabic <'rd.> (in various guises). Other examples can be found at http://www.freeweb.hu/etymological/AEDweb.htm . That dictionary suggests to me that Ugaritic <z.> corresponds to Arabic <z.>, both transliterated 'dz' there, but I can't confirm the transliteration for Ugaritic.
So, what's wrong with my results? Obviously long study would have given me more information.
Richard.
.
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