Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic languages comprising indigenous languages of the Levant. It emerged from Proto-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 Sutean and the Canaanite languages (Hebrew, Phoenician–Punic, Edomite and Moabite).
The term was coined by Carl Brockelmann in 1908,The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook, Chapter V, page 425 who separated Fritz Hommel's 1883 classification of Semitic languages into Northwest (Canaanite and Aramaic), East Semitic (Akkadian, its Assyrian and Babylonian dialects, Eblaite) and Southwest (Arabic, Old South Arabian languages and Abyssinian).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."
Brockelmann's Canaanite sub-group includes Ugaritic, Phoenician and Hebrew. Some scholars now regard Ugaritic either as belonging to a separate branch of Northwest Semitic (alongside Canaanite) or a dialect of Amorite.
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.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", in: 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). SIL Ethnologue in its system of classification (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. South Gileadite and Samalian have been identified as language varieties falling outside Aramaic proper but with some similarities to it, possibly in an "Aramoid" or "Syrian" subgroup.
It is clear that the Taymanitic script expressed a distinct linguistic variety that is not Arabic and not closely related to Hismaic or Safaitic, while it can tentatively be suggested that it was more closely related to Northwest Semitic.
Historical development
The time period for the split of Northwest Semitic from Proto-Semitic or from other Semitic groups is uncertain. Richard C. Steiner suggested in 2011 that the earliest attestation of Northwest Semitic is to be found in snake spells from the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, dating to the mid-third millennium BC. However, other scholars question these findings. Amorite personal names and words in Akkadian and Egyptian texts from the late third millennium to the mid-second millennium BC and the language of the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions dated to the first half of the second millennium otherwise constitute the earliest traces of Northwest Semitic, the first Northwest Semitic language attested in full being 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 and ancestor of the Greek alphabet, the later Latin alphabet, the Aramaic (Square Hebrew), Syriac, and Arabic writing systems, Germanic runes, and ultimately Cyrillic.
From the 8th century BC, the use of Imperial Aramaic by the Neo-Assyrian Empire (935–608 BC) and the succeeding Neo-Babylonian Empire (612–539 BC) and Achaemenid Empire (539–332 BC), a form of the Aramaic language, spread throughout the Northwest Semitic region of the Levant, northern regions of the Arabian peninsula and southern regions of Anatolia, and gradually drove most of the other Northwest Semitic languages to extinction. The ancient Judaeans adopted Aramaic for daily use, and parts of the Tanakh 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 the State of Israel.
After the Muslim conquests of the 7th century, Arabic began to gradually replace Aramaic throughout the region. Classical Syriac-Aramaic survives today as the liturgical language of the Assyrian Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox Church, Chaldean Catholic Church, and other churches of Syriac Christians. It is spoken in modern dialects with an estimated one million fluent speakers by endangered indigenous populations scattered throughout the Middle East, most commonly by the Assyrians, Gnostic Mandeans, the Arameans (Syriacs) of Maaloula and Jubb'adin, and Mizrahi Jews. There is also an Aramaic substratum in Levantine and Mesopotamian Arabic.
Phonology
Sound changes
Phonologically, Ugaritic lost the sound ṣ́, replacing it with (ṣ) (the same shift occurred in Canaanite and Akkadian). That this same sound became 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 (’arṣ), Punic (’arṣ), Tiberian Hebrew (’ereṣ), Biblical Hebrew (’arṣ) and Aramaic (’ar‘ā’).
The vowel shift from to distinguishes Canaanite from Ugaritic. Also, in the Canaanite group, the series of Semitic interdental fricatives become sibilants: (ḏ), (ṯ) and (ṱ) became , (š) and (ṣ) respectively. The effect of this sound shift can be seen by comparing the following words:
shiftUgariticAramaicBiblical Hebrewtranslation (ḏ)→𐎏𐎐𐎁ḏanabuדנבאdanḇāזנבzānāḇtail (ṯ)→ (š)𐎘𐎍𐎘ṯalāṯuתלתtəlāṯשלשšālōšthree (ẓ)→ (ṣ)𐎑𐎍𐎍ẓilluטללאṭillālāצלṣēlshadow
Vowels Proto-Northwest Semitic had three contrastive vowel qualities and a length distinction, resulting in six vocalic phonemes: *a, *ā, *i, *ī, *u, and *ū. While *aw, *ay, *iw, *iy, *uw, and *uy are often referred to as diphthongs, they do not seem to have had a different status as such, rather being a normal sequence of a short vowel and a glide.
Consonants + Proto-Northwest Semitic consonant phonemes Type Manner Voicing Labial Interdental Alveolar Lateral Postalveolar Palatal Velar/Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal Obstruent Stop voiceless *p *t *k emphatic *ṭ *q/ḳ *ʼ, ˀ voiced *b *d *g Fricative voiceless *ṯ *s *ś *š *ḫ *ḥ *h emphatic *ṯ̣/θ̣/ẓ *ṣ *ṣ́/ḏ̣ voiced *ḏ *z *ġ/ǵ *ʻ, ˤ Resonant Trill *r Approximant *w *l *y Nasal *m *n Suchard proposes that: "*s, both from original *s and original *ṯ, then shifted further back to a postalveolar *š, while deaffrication of *ts and *dz to *s and *z gave these phonemes their Hebrew values, as well as merging original *dz with original *ḏ. In fact, original *s may have been realized as anything between and ; both values are attested in foreign transcriptions of early Northwest Semitic languages".
Emphatics In Proto-Northwest Semitic the emphatics were articulated with pharyngealization. Its shift to backing (as opposed to Proto-Semitic glottalization of emphatics) has been considered a Central Semitic innovation.
According to Faber, the assimilation *-ṣt->-ṣṭ- in the Dt stem in Hebrew (hiṣṭaddēḳ ‘he declared himself righteous’) suggests backing rather than glottalization. The same assimilation is attested in Aramaic (yiṣṭabba ‘he will be moistened’).
Grammar
Nouns Three cases can be reconstructed for Proto-Northwest Semitic nouns (nominative, accusative, genitive), two genders (masculine, feminine) and three numbers (single, dual, plural). Number/case‘dog(s)’ (m.)‘bitch(es)’ (f.)sg.nominative*kalbu(m)*kalbatu(m)sg.genitive*kalbi(m)*kalbati(m)sg.accusative*kalba(m)*kalbata(m)du.nominative*kalbā(na)*kalbatā(na)du.genitive/accusative*kalbay(na)*kalbatay(na)pl.nominative*kalabū(na)*kalabātu(m)pl.genitive/accusative*kalabī(na)*kalabāti(m)
Pronouns Proto-Northwest Semitic pronouns had 2 genders and 3 grammatical cases. independent nominativeencliticaccusativegenitivenominative1.sg.*ʔanāku/ *ʔana*-nī*-ī, *-ya *-tu2.sg.masc.*ʔanta*-ka*-ta2.sg.fem.*ʔanti*-ki*-ti3.sg.masc.*hūʔa*-hu*-a3.sg.fem.*hīʔa*-hā*-at1.pl.*naḥnu/ *naḥnā*-nā2.pl.masc.*ʔantum*-kum*-tum2.pl.fem.*ʔantin*-kin*-tin3.pl.masc.*hum(ū)*-hum*-ū3.pl.fem.*hin(na)*-hin*-ā
Numerals Reconstruction of Proto-Northwest Semitic numbers. NumberMasculineFeminineOne*ʔaḥadum*ʔaḥattumTwo*ṯnāna*ṯintānaThree*ṯalāṯatum*ṯalāṯumFour*ʔarbaʕatum*ʔarbaʕumFive*ḫamisatum*ḫamisumSix*siṯṯatum*siṯṯumSeven*sabʕatum*sabʕumEight*ṯamāniyatum*ṯamāniyumNine*tisʕatum*tisʕumTen*ʕaśaratum*ʕaśrum
Verbs +Paradigm of the strong verb (G-stem)Suffix conjugation (Perfect)Prefix conjugations (Imperfect)1st person*qaṭal-tu'I have killed'*ʔa-qṭul(-u/-a)'I will kill'*qaṭal-nā'we have killed'*na-qṭul(-u/-a)'we will kill'2nd person*qaṭal-ta'you have killed'*ta-qṭul(-u/-a)'you will kill'*qaṭal-ti'you have killed'*ta-qṭul-ī(-na)'you will kill'*qaṭal-tum'you have killed'*ta-qṭul-ū(-na)'you will kill'*qaṭal-tin'you have killed'*ta-qṭul-na'you will kill'3rd person*qaṭal-a'he has killed'*ya-qṭul(-u/-a)'he will kill'*qaṭal-at'she has killed'*ta-qṭul(-u/-a)'she will kill'*qaṭal-ū'they have killed'*ya-qṭul-ū(-na)'they will kill'*qaṭal-ā'they have killed'*ta-qṭul-na'they will kill' The G fientive or G-stem (Hebrew qal) is the basic, most common, unmarked stem. The G-stem expresses events. The vowel of the prefix of the prefix conjugations in Proto-Northwest Semitic was *-a- and the stem was *-qṭul- or *-qṭil-, as in *ya-qṭul-u 'he will kill', while the stem of the suffix conjugation had two *a vowels, as in *qaṭal-a 'he has killed'.
The G stative is like the fientive but expressing states instead of events. For the prefix conjugation of stative roots, the vowel of the prefix was *-i- and it contained an *a vowel, e.g. *yi-kbad-u 'he will become heavy', while the second vowel of the suffix conjugation was either *-i-, as in *kabid-a 'he is/was/will be heavy', or *-u-, as in *ʕamuq-a 'it is/was/will be deep'. Whether the G-stem stative suffix conjugation has *i or *u in the stem is lexically determined.