Re: Ugaritic Affiliations

On Sep 6, 6:55 pm, "Richard Wordingham" <jrw0...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Yusuf B Gursey" <y...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in messagenews: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.)

How many times have you been warned about using Unicode documents as a
source for any sort of information at all about writing systems?

There are 30, not 31, letters in the Ugaritic script, and they
represent the 27 letters of "Proto-Canaanite" plus two extra aleph
letters (when aleph is followed by i or by u) and an extra sibilant
not used in Semitic words.

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 athttp://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.

Or consulting a grammar of Ugaritic rather than anything put into
Unicode.

.

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