Les réflexes de sons Proto-sémitiques dans le language de la fille

Reflexes of Proto-Semitic sounds in daughter languages

(This article was expanded by Rick Aschmann from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages, with modifications and additions marked in green.)

Consonants

Each Proto-Semitic phoneme was reconstructed to explain a certain regular sound correspondence between various Semitic languages. Note that Latin letter values (italicized) for extinct languages are a question of transcription; the exact pronunciation is not recorded.

Most of the attested languages have merged a number of the reconstructed original fricatives, though South Arabian retains all fourteen (and has added a fifteenth from *p → f).

In Aramaic and Hebrew, all non-emphatic stops were softened to fricatives when occurring singly after a vowel, leading to an alternation that was often later phonemicized as a result of the loss of gemination.

In languages exhibiting pharyngealization of emphatics, the original velar emphatic has rather developed to a uvular stop [q]. 1. Arabic pronunciation is that of reconstructed Qur'anic Arabic of the 7th and 8th centuries CE. If the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic differs, this is indicated (for example, [ɡʲ]→ ] and ɮˤ]→ ˤ]).

2. Proto-Semitic *ś was still pronounced as ɬ] in Biblical Hebrew, but no letter was available in the Phoenician alphabet, so the letter ש did double duty, representing both /ʃ/ and /ɬ/. Later on, however, /ɬ/ merged with /s/, but the old spelling was largely retained, and the two pronunciations of ש were distinguished graphically in Tiberian Hebrew as שׁ /ʃ/ vs. שׂ /s/ < /ɬ/.

3. Biblical Hebrew as of the 3rd century BCE apparently still distinguished the phonemes ġ /ʁ/ and ḫ /χ/, based on transcriptions in the Septuagint. As in the case of /ɬ/, no letters were available to represent these sounds, and existing letters did double duty: ח /χ/ /ħ/ and ע /ʁ/ /ʕ/. In both of these cases, however, the two sounds represented by the same letter eventually merged, leaving no evidence (other than early transcriptions) of the former distinctions.

4. Although early Aramaic (pre-7th century BCE) had only 22 consonants in its alphabet, it apparently distinguished all of the original 29 Proto-Semitic phonemes, i c i * * * *ś * *ġ *ḫ — although by Middle Aramaic times, these had all merged with other sounds. This conclusion is mainly based on the shifting representation of words etymologically containing these sounds; in early Aramaic writing, the first five are merged with z š š q respectively b t ter with t ṭ s ʿ.[26][27] (Also note that due to begadkefat spirantization, which occurred after this merger, OAm. t→ → i some positions, so that PS *t * m y be re ize s either of t respective y.) The sounds *ġ *ḫ were always represented using the pharyngeal letters ʿ and ḥ, but they are distinguished from the pharyngeals in the Demotic-script papyrus Amherst 63, written about 200 BC.[28] This suggests that these sounds, too, were distinguished in the Old Aramaic language, but written using the same letters as they later merged with.

5. These are only distinguished from the zero reflexes of *h, *ʔ by e-coloring adjacent *a, e.g. pS *ˈbaʕal-um 'ow er or ' → Akk. bēlu(m).[29]

6. Hebrew and Aramaic underwent begadkefat spirantization

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