Concerts a partir de l’any 1898

ian, e.g. ūbil < *iwbil, "he brought"; Šūbil < *šuwbil, "send!", šūšur <

*šuyšur, "is kept in order". Original iy is instead monophthongized to I, e.g. ide < *iyda', "he knows". In Arabic, instead, iw changes to iy > t at the end of a syllable; e.g. īqā' < *'iwqā', "rhythm", from the root wq'.

Also uy develops to iy > ī, sometimes to uw > ū; e.g. bid < *buyd, "lay­

ings (of eggs)", from the root byd; mūqin < *muyqin, "certain", from the root yqn. When the Phoenician orthography was fixed, the suffix -iy of the first person singular was still pronounced -iya after nouns in the oblique cases, e.g. 'by, " o f my father". With the loss of final short vowels it was reduced to -iy, which in time was simplified to -J, but the writing with y was preserved and even extended by analogy to nomina­

tive nouns (e.g. 'my, "my mother"), despite the fact that Phoenician does generally not use any matres lectionis. The same development is attested in Palaeosyrian by synchronic variants; e.g. i-a-la-nu ['iyalānu]

and i-la-nu-um or ì-la-núm ['īlānum], "a large tree". In Hebrew, uw

DIPHTHONGS 171

becomes ū and iy changes in i ; e.g. hūšab < *huwtab, "he set"; yīraš <

*yiyrat, "he will inherit". Corresponding reductions are also common in Ethiopian languages.

22.14. The rising diphthongs yi- and yu- of the prefixed verbal forms of the third person are not indicated in Palaeosyrian, but they are proba­

bly signified in Old Akkadian by the spellings i-ik-mi- lyikmī-l, "he cap­

tured" (root kmy), i-is-e- /yiš'ē-/, "he searched" (root š'y), u-ub-lam /yūblam/, "he brought" (root wbl), u-ur-da-ni /yūrdanni/, "it went down on me" (root wrd). Similar spellings occur in Old Assyrian; e.g. ú-ub-lu lyublūl, "they brought"; i-ìš-qú-ul /yitqul/, "he weighed out". In Amor­

ite, yi- is only expressed by i-, but yu- is attested by the name Iu-um-ra-a5-DiNGiR /Yumraś-'El/, "El grieved". In Assyro-Babylonian, yi- is reduced to i- and yu- to u-. Also ya- is monophthongized to e.g. idu <

*yadu, "hand", but the alternative spellings with a- and /- in Palaeosyr­

ian indicate the change ya- > yi-, without monophthongization; e.g.

a-me-tum /yamittum/ and i-me-tum lyimettuml, "right side". This change explains the form yi- > i- of the prefixed personal in most Semitic lan­

guages (§40.31) and, occasionally, of the first syllable ya- in the basic stem of verbs like yāda', "he recognized"; e.g. in the Edomite proper name Qwsyd' transcribed KOOT8T| in a bilingual ostracon from the 3rd century B.C.

22.15. Secondary diphthongizations are to be found in Semitic lan­

guages when two vowels meet. In such a case, either the two vowels coalesce and there is crasis (e.g. Arabic ī+ū > ū; ū+ī > i; Tigrinya d+a >

a; Amharic a+a > a), or a "hiatus-filling" semivowel y or w is pro­

duced. The so-called "weak" verbs, the root of which is monosyllabic and contains a long vowel ā, l, ū, give frequently rise to such secondary diphthongs, e.g. qūm, "to get up", śīm, "to place", kūn, "to be". Thus, the active participle of qūm is in Aramaic either qym /qāyim/, or q'ym with a medial mater lectionis, or q'm with ' substituting the y after ā.

While the form qym goes back to the 6th century B.C., the glottal stop replaces the glide y only in the 2nd century B.C. Also in modern South Ethiopic, the glottal stop may replace w or y, as in e'àdā, "to tell", and we'a, "to go down", in one of the Gurage dialects, against ewādā and wayā in other dialects. The situation in Arabic is similar to that of Ara­

maic. In Pre-Classical Arabic, as apparent in the consonantal text of the Qur'ān, the active participle of the same verb is q'ym /qāyim/, "stand­

ing", which was reinterpreted in Classical Arabic as qā'imun. Such

changes are well-known to Arab grammarians who call them 'ibdāl nahwī or sarfì, "grammatical substitution", but consider usually that hamza is replaced by wāw or ya, although the etymological form is, e.g., miyar, "provisions", while mi*or is a secondary form historically.

Safaitic inscriptions use sometimes ' as in k'n /kā'in/, "being", but in some cases y is written even instead of an etymological ', chiefly in the neighbourhood of the vowel i, as in hnyt /hāniyat/, "maid" (root hn'). In Epigraphic South Arabian, there is no trace of the practice of substitut­

ing ' for w/y after ā, and the modern Arab colloquials are identical in this respect with the Pre-Classical language. E.g., in Syro-Palestinian dialects, the participle "seeing" of šūf is šāyef and, in Maghrebine dialects, the participle "lodging" of bāt is bāyit. Because cuneiform script lacks specific signs with semivowels, spellings like im, sa-i-mu, "fixing" (root śīm), are ambiguous. Assyriologists explain them usually as šā'imu, but occasional Standard Babylonian forms as da-a-a-ik /dāyda-a-a-ik/, " k i l l i n g " , seem to indicate that one should always read šāyim, etc. In Hebrew, the forms qām, "standing", met, "dead", imply the monophthongization of the secondary diphthongs: *qāyim > qām,

*māyit > met. In modern Ethiopian languages, w can be used in medial position as a transitional consonant between two vowels, e.g. duwa from Arabic du'ā', "Muslim prayer".

22.16. There is a series of nominal patterns extended by a diphthong, like fay 'al, faw 'al, fay 'āl, fay 'ūl, fu 'ayI, fu' 'ayI, fi' 'awl, known not only from Arabic but also from other Semitic languages. In particular, the patterns faw 'al "and fu 'ayl — the latter used for diminutives — are attested also in Aramaic (e.g. 'lym, "lad") (§29.10). The monosyllabic patterns fayl má fawl alternate sometimes with noun types ClC and CūC (§29.9), and a possible example of a fay I noun paralleled by a CāC type is provided by the word bayt, "house", apparently related to Cushitic bati, "roof" (Oromo), borrowed in Gafat with the same meaning.

22.17. Verbal Stem I I I with lengthened first vowel — attested in Ara­

bic, Ethiopic, and Syriac (§41.5) — kan give rise to a secondary diph­

thong developed from the long vowel. This is perhaps non evident when comparing, e.g., Classical Arabic ġawġa'a or ġawġā, "to cluck" (of hens), with Syro-Palestinian colloquial gāga, because the verb derives from an onomatopoeia, but colloquial horab, "to strike up a war song", is best explained as *hawrab < hārab, "to wage war", since aw > 6 is the normal reduction in Syro-Palestinian colloquials. The existence of a

GEMINATED OR LONG CONSONANTS 173

fā 'ala > faw 'ala I fay 'ala stem in Ethiopic is implied by forms of the types qotala and qetala. As for Syriac, e.g., the form gawzel, "he set fire on", is best interpreted as a Stem I I I ā > aw of the root gzl, "to plun­

der". These developments are important for a right understanding of the secondary stems of the monosyllabic verbs with a long vowel (§44.5-9).