Taymanitic

Taymanitic
Region Taymāʾ
Era mid-1st millennium BCE
Language codes
ISO 639-3 None (mis)
Glottolog taym1240[1]

Taymanitic is the dialect and script of the oasis of Taymāʾ in northwestern Arabia, attested starting in the 6th century BCE, though references to the existence of an indigenous script in Taymāʾ are attested in outside sources from the 8th century BCE.[2]

Classification

Taymanitic does not participate in the key innovations of Proto-Arabic, precluding it from being considered a member of the Arabic language family. It shares one key isogloss with Northwest Semitic: the change w > y in word-initial position. Examples include yrḫ for *warḫum 'moon, month' and ydʿ for wadaʿa 'to know'.[3]

it is clear that 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.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemes[4]
  Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Labia-
lized velar		 Pharyn-
geal		 Glottal
Plosive p b t d   k ɡ         ʔ  
Ejective plosive     tʼ       kʼ              
Affricate     ts dz                    
Ejective affricate     tsʼ                      
Lateral fricative     ɬ                      
Lateral ejective affricate     tɬʼ                      
Fricative     s       x ɣ     ʕ ħ h  
Nasal   m   n                    
Trill       r                    
Approximant           j       w        
Lateral approximant       l                    

Vowels

Monophthong phonemes
Short Long
Front Back Front Back
Close i u iː uː
Open a aː
Diphthong phonemes[4]
  Closer component
is front		 Closer component
is back
Opener component is unrounded aɪ aʊ

Characteristics

Taymanitic exhibits two major features which are innovative:[3]

  1. The change w > y in word-initial position: yrḫ for *warḫum 'moon, month' and ydʿ for wadaʿa 'to know'.
  2. The mergers *z, *ḏ > *z, *s3, *ṯ > *s3, and *ṣ, *ẓ > *ṣ (loss of interdentals).

Unlike Arabic, Taymanitic does not exhibit the merger of Proto-Semitic [s] and [ts].

References

  1. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Taymanitic". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. ↑ dan. "The Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia - Home". krc.orient.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2016-05-29.
  3. 1 2 "Al-Jallad. The earliest stages of Arabic and its linguistic classification (Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics, forthcoming)". www.academia.edu. Retrieved 2015-12-08.
  4. 1 2 "The Language of the Taymanitic Inscriptions and its Classification". Retrieved 2016-09-14.
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