Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical proto-language ancestral to historical Semitic languages of the Middle East. Locations which have been proposed for its origination include northern Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Levant with a 2009 study proposing that it may have originated around 5,700 years BP.[1] The Semitic language family is considered a component of the larger Afroasiatic macro-family of languages.
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The earliest attestations of a Semitic language are in Akkadian, dating to ca. the 23rd century BC (see Sargon of Akkad) and Eblaite, but earlier evidence of Akkadian comes from personal names in Sumerian texts. Researchers in Egypt also claim to have discovered Canaanite snake spells that "date from between 3000 and 2400 B.C.".[2]
Migration from Arabia into the fertile crescent has been a constant pattern of human movement in the Middle East since antiquity. As such, the Arabian peninsula has long been accepted as the original Semitic Urheimat by a majority of scholars.[3][4][5][6] Older theories positing Mesopotamia as the Semitic homeland were severely undermined by the identification of the non-Semitic Sumerian culture in Mesopotamia in the late 19th century, which is now generally believed to have predated the Semitic culture in Mesopotamia by many centuries. A mainstream view nowadays maintains that the first wave of Semitic-speakers infiltrated Mesopotamia in the first half of the third millennium BC. A second Amorite wave is generally believed to have followed around 2000 BC. This Amorite wave was responsible for emergence of the Old Babylonian Empire and of such urban centers in the west as Ugarit. An Aramean wave of migration towards the fertile crescent followed in the second half of the second millennium BC. The emergence of the Israelite nation in Canaan should have occurred around this time, although the origin of the Israelites remains a matter of debate. The Arab waves of migration toward the fertile crescent started in the last millennium BC and culminated in the 7th century CE with the great Islamic expansion, which by far surpassed all previous expansions, reaching a maximum extent from southern France to the borders of China.
The presence of a non-Semitic culture predating the Canaanites in Canaan has not been proven by archeology. However, a traditional account transmitted by many Greek historians and accepted unanimously in pre-modern times points to a Phoenician (Canaanite) origin in Mesopotamia, to which the Phoenicians had reportedly arrived from the Arabian shores of the Persian Gulf. Although many attempts have been made to discredit this entire story, it remains accepted.[7]
Given that Proto-Semitic would have been an Afroasiatic language, some believe that the first prehistoric speakers of the ancestral Proto-Semitic language came from Ethiopia, which would have been the Proto-Semitic homeland.[8] New research, however, suggests that South Semitic may have been introduced to Ethiopia sometime before the 8th century BC. This is also supported by the presence of nouns in Proto-Semitic that seemingly make an African origin for the language impossible – ice, oak, horse and camel. The camel[9] and horse[10] did not arrive in Africa until nearly two thousand years after Semitic languages were being written in the Mesopotamia area.
Other more recent work suggests Syria/Mesopotamia as the homeland for Proto-Semitic, due to the flora and fauna described by it, which include oak, pistachio and almond trees and the horse. The presence of ice and four different words for hill also suggest a colder, more mountainous area than Arabia. Eblaite, one of the oldest Semitic languages, when deciphered turned out to have almost no non-Afroasiatic nouns in its lexicon, suggesting a very long presence in the Syria area. Bitumen and naphtha were also well known and have root words, and these are resources not found in Africa or Arabia, but commonly in the northern parts of the Levant. Christopher Ehret argues on this basis that there are two possible homelands for Semitic, Northern Mesopotamia where Western Semitic broke away from Eastern Semitic; or the Levant. Ehret states "Because of the many indications that non-Semitic languages predominated in Mesopotamia and all around its northern and eastern flanks in the pre-state eras—and that Akkadian therefore was likely intrusive to that region—the second solution seems by far the more probable of the two. The Levant regions, as the part of Asia nearest and more directly connected to Africa, also make much better sense as the proto-Semitic territory, considering the solely African locations of all the rest of the Afrasan family."[11] A more recent study by Andrew Kitchen and others using Bayesian techniques in phylogenetic analysis identifies a place of origin for Semitic in the Levant, suggesting that Akkadian is the most basal of Semitic languages.[12]
Juris Zarins has suggested the development of a Circum-Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex of cultures in the period of the 6,200 BCE climatic crisis, stretching from the Red Sea shoreline and northeastward into modern day Syria and Iraq, which spread Proto-Semitic languages through the region.[13] This complex may have developed from the fusion of Harifian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B cultures in the Southern Levant, first evidenced in the Munhata culture and later Yarmukian culture of the region.
As Harifian used the Outacha retouch point technique found earlier in the Fayyum, it has been suggested that Proto-Semitic may have come from Egypt across the Sinai.[14] The climatic recovery during the Chalcolithic, led to the development of the secondary products revolution and the Ghassulian culture, pioneering the Mediterranean mixed economy with subsistence horticulture, extensive grain farming, commercial production of olives and wine, and nomadic transhumance pastoralism. The mix has varied historically with climate change. The Ghassulians are usually accepted as being early Semitic speakers.
The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic was originally based primarily on the Arabic language, which preserves 28 out of the evident 29 consonantal phonemes.[15] Thus, the phonemic inventory of reconstructed Proto-Semitic is very similar to that of Arabic, with only one phoneme less in Arabic than in reconstructed Proto-Semitic. As such, Proto-Semitic is generally reconstructed as having the following phonemes (as usually transcribed in Semitology)[16]:
| Labial | Inter- dental |
Dental/ Alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Pharyn- geal |
Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central | Lateral | ||||||||
| Nasal | *m [m] | *n [n] | |||||||
| Stop | voiceless | *p [p] | *t [t] | *k [k] | *ʼ [ʔ] | ||||
| voiced | *b [b] | *d [d] | *g [ɡ] | ||||||
| emphatic | *ṭ [tʼ] | *q [kʼ] | |||||||
| Fricative or affricate |
voiceless | *ṯ [θ] | *š [s] *s [ts] |
*ś [ɬ] | *ḫ [x] | *ḥ [ħ] | *h [h] | ||
| voiced | *ḏ [ð] | *z [dz] | *ġ [ɣ] | *ʻ [ʕ] | |||||
| emphatic | *ṱ [θʼ] | *ṣ [tsʼ] | *ṣ́ [tɬʼ] | ||||||
| Trill | *r [r] | ||||||||
| Approximant | *l [l] | *y [j] | *w [w] | ||||||
| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Pure Vowels | High | *i *iː | *u *uː |
| Low | *a *aː | ||
| Diphthongs | *aj | *aw | |
The probable phonetic realization of most consonants is straightforward, and is indicated in the table with the IPA. Two subsets of consonants however call for further comment:
See Semitic languages#Phonology for a fuller discussion of the various theories concerning the pronunciation of the Proto-Semitic sounds and their outcomes in the various daughter languages.
See table at Proto-Afroasiatic language#Consonant correspondences.
| Person | Singular | Dual | Plural | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | *ʔanāku,[nb 2] *ʔaniya | *niyaħnū, *niyaħnā | ||
| 2nd | masculine | *ʔanka → *ʔanta | *ʔantunā | *ʔantunū |
| feminine | *ʔanti | *ʔantinā | ||
| 3rd | masculine | *suʔa | *sunā [nb 3] | *sunū |
| feminine | *siʔa | *sinā | ||
| English | Proto-Semitic |
|---|---|
| One | *ḥad-, *ʻišt- |
| Two | *ṯin-, *kilʼ- |
| Three | *śalāṯ- → *ṯalāṯ-[nb 4] |
| Four | *arbaʻ- |
| Five | *ḫamš- |
| Six | *šidṯ-[nb 5] |
| Seven | *šabʻ- |
| Eight | *ṯamān- |
| Nine | *tišʻ- |
| Ten | *ʻaśr- |
These are the basic numeral stems without feminine suffixes. Note that in most older Semitic languages, the forms of the numerals from 3 to 10 exhibit gender polarity (also called "chiastic concord" or reverse agreement), i.e. if the counted noun is masculine, the numeral would be feminine and vice versa.