Early North Arabic language
| Early North Arabic | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Spoken in |
Saudi Arabia , Syria , Jordan | |
| speaker | (extinct) | |
| Linguistic classification |
|
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639 -1 |
- |
|
| ISO 639 -2 |
sem (other Semitic languages) |
|
| ISO 639-3 |
xna |
|
The breakfast North Arab (also Altnordarabisch ) is a West Semitic language in pre-Islamic times in large areas of North and Central Arabia , in the present states of Saudi Arabia , Syria and Jordan was spoken. It is closely related to Arabic , but, contrary to what has long been assumed, not its early form.
swell
The early North Arabic is exclusively through several tens of thousands, but mostly very short, inscriptions from the 8th century BC. Passed down to the 4th century AD. These inscriptions are written in the early North Arabic script , a consonant alphabet closely related to the Old South Arabic script . The vast majority (98%) of the early North Arabian inscriptions are rock graffiti, monumental inscriptions are only preserved in large numbers from Dedan . Most of the text is written in Dadanite and Safait, but the other dialects are hardly known.
Dialects
Early Northern Arabic can be divided into several differently well-documented dialects. Macdonald 2004 differentiates between the following varieties:
- Oasis North Arabic: Saudi Arabia, Syria
- Taymanite
- Dadanite (formerly Dedanite and Lihyan )
- Dumaitic (Dūmat al-Ǧandal)
- individual finds also from Mesopotamia ("Chaldean")
- Safaitic : language of the nomads in Syria, Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia
- Hismaic : Language of the nomads in the Hisma desert (Jordan), formerly Thamudic
- Thamudic : collective term for inscriptions that cannot be assigned to any of the other dialects
- Hasaite : Some short inscriptions from Northeast Arabia; hardly known, assignment therefore uncertain
According to the system
Most dialects of early North Arabic had 28 consonantic phonemes like Classical Arabic , the phonetic realization of which in most cases probably coincided with Classical Arabic. Like this (and the other Semitic languages) had it next to voiced and unvoiced also emphatic consonants , either by glottalization or pharyngealization were realized. Uncertainties exist at the phonemes f ( [ p ] or [ f ] ), g ( [ g ] , [ ɟ ] or [ ʤ ] ) and q ( [ q ] or [ K ]). Most early North Arabian dialects possessed as the Arab both alveolar / postalveolar sibilant s 1 [ ʃ ] and s² [ ɬ ] (?), In Taymanitischen there is yet a third volume ( s 3 [ s ] , which in other dialects) s 1 had collapsed.
Since the early North Arabic script shows neither short nor long vowels , hardly anything can be said about the vowel inventory of Early North Arabic.
morphology
Due to the brevity and formulaic nature of most of the inscriptions, the morphology is poorly known. As in all Semitic languages, the early North Arabic morphology is based on three-consonant roots; As far as is known, the form was very similar to Classical Arabic.
Nouns and adjectives
The early North Arabic noun distinguishes the genera masculine (unmarked) and feminine (suffix -t ) as well as three numbers ( singular , dual , plural ). Their formation depends heavily on whether the noun stands alone ( status absolutus ) or in close connection with another noun or pronoun ( status constructus ). While the dual is formed with the ending - n (status absolutus) or - (y) (status constructus), the plural formation of the masculine is complex, as in Arabic, as both inner and outer (also called broken or healthy ) plurals are common. The outer plural is formed in the masculine with the ending - n (only in the status absolutus) and in the feminine through - t .
- Status absolutus:
- Masculine: ẓby-n "male gazelles" (Safaitisch)
- Feminine: ẓby-t "female gazelles" (Safaitisch)
- Status constructus
- Masculine: bnw N "The Sons of N" (Dadanite)
The inner plurals were evidently formed by changes in the vowel structure, which left only minor traces in the consonant script:
- ʾYm (Arabic ʾayyām ) "days" to ym (Arabic yawm ) "day"
It is uncertain whether early North Arabic, like Classical Arabic, had a case inflection through vowel endings.
The determination was that the breakfast North Arabian significantly from the Arabian and South Arabian delimits by the definite article h - or hn - expressed. Adjectives that do not differ from nouns in terms of inflection follow their reference word as an adjective attribute and congruent with it in gender, number and determination.
Pronouns
Early Northern Arabic distinguishes between two types of personal pronouns: independent personal pronouns , which mark the subject of a sentence, and enclitic personal pronouns , which express its object after a verb and a preposition and its owner after a noun: s 1 ʿd-h "help him / her" , lh "for him", ʾb-h "his father".
Verbs
The early North Arabic verb can be conjugated according to persons, number, gender (in the 3rd person) and, to a limited extent , tense / aspect, diathesis (active / passive) and mode. Basically there are two types of verb conjugation: The prefix conjugation, which marks person, number and gender by prefixes and sometimes suffixes, and the suffix conjugation formed exclusively by suffixes:
- Prefix conjugation:
- y-qry "may he read" (Safaitisch)
- Suffix conjugation:
- bn-t "she built"
The equally widespread terms perfect and imperfect do not apply to early northern Arabic. Instead, the suffix conjugation / “perfect” marks both completed and unfinished and even desired actions, while the prefix conjugation / “imperfect” expresses wishes, purposes, and actions completed in certain environments.
In addition to the finite forms mentioned, participles are also known that were mainly formed by changing the internal vowel structure: qtl "killed", cf. qtl "he killed".
syntax
The nature of the early North Arabian inscriptions makes the analysis of the syntax even more difficult than that of the morphology, but some statements can already be made. In Dadanite, the usual order of sentences with a verbal predicate was : subject - predicate - object (SVO), followed by adverbial phrases:
| sentence | N 1 wN 2 | ʾZlh | h-ẓll | l-ḏġbt | b-khl | bʿd ml-hm | b-bdr |
| Syntactic Analysis | subject | predicate | object | Prepositional phrase 1 | Prepositional phrase 2 | Prepositional phrase 3 | Prepositional phrase 4 |
| translation | N 1 and N 2 | have run | the ẓll ceremony | for Ḏġbt | in cool | for their winter crops | in Bdr |
This is a clear difference to classical Arabic, although VSO is also frequently used in Safaitic. The predicate could also be a noun or a noun expression: ʾn N 1 bn N 2 "I (am) N 1 , son of N 2 " .
Dictionary
The well-known early North Arabian lexicon is very small despite the large number of inscriptions, as most of the texts consist of personal names. The main source for understanding the early North Arabic word material is Classical Arabic and also the modern Arabic dialects. However, to this day a large part of the early North Arabic lexicon is incomprehensible, so that the interpretation of many inscriptions is also highly controversial.
literature
Overview and grammar
- Walter W. Müller : The Altarabische and the classical Arabic . In: W. Fischer (Ed.): Outline of Arabic Philology. Volume I: Linguistics. Pp. 17-36. Reichert, Wiesbaden 1982
- MCA Macdonald: Reflections on the linguistic map of pre-Islamic Arabia . (PDF; 627 kB). In: Arabian archeology and epigraphy , 11/1 (2000), pp. 28-79.
- MCA Macdonald: Ancient North Arabian . In: Roger D. Woodard (Ed.): The Cambridge encyclopedia of the World's ancient languages . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, ISBN 0-521-56256-2 , pp. 488-533 (with detailed bibliography; basis of this presentation)
Important text editions
- Werner Caskel : Lihyan and Lihyanisch. West German Publishing House, Cologne 1954.
- Alexander Sima : The Lihyan inscriptions from al-ʿUḏayb (Saudi Arabia). ( Epigraphic research on the Arabian Peninsula 1 ) Leidorf, Rahden / Westfalen 1999. (Excerpt: semitistik.uni-hd.de )
- Alexander Sima : The Hasaite Inscriptions. In: Norbert Nebes (Hrsg.): New contributions to Semitic studies ( Jena contributions to the Middle East , 5). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2002, pp. 167-200.
- Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum . Pars IV and V. Paris 1889–1951. [ Readings partly out of date ]