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The East Semitic languages are one of three divisions of the
Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant ...
. The East Semitic group is attested by three distinct languages,
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic ...
, Eblaite and possibly
Kishite Kish ( Sumerian: Kiš; transliteration: Kiš ki; cuneiform: ; Akkadian: kiššatu, near modern Tell al-Uhaymir) is an important archaeological site in Babil Governorate (Iraq), located 80 kilometers south of Baghdad and 12 kilometers east of th ...
, all of which have been long
extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
. They were influenced by the non-Semitic
Sumerian language Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer. It is one of the oldest attested languages, dating back to at least 3000 BC. It is accepted to be a local language isolate and to have been spoken in ancient Mesopotamia, in the area that is modern-day ...
and adopted
cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge- ...
writing. East Semitic languages stand apart from other Semitic languages, which are traditionally called West Semitic, in a number of respects. Historically, it is believed that the linguistic situation came about as speakers of East Semitic languages wandered further east, settling in
Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the ...
during the 3rd millennium BC, as attested by Akkadian texts from this period. By the early 2nd millennium BC, East Semitic languages, in particular
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic ...
, had come to dominate the region.


Phonology

Modern understanding of the
phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
of East Semitic languages can be derived only from careful study of written texts and comparison with the reconstructed Proto-Semitic. Most striking is the reduction of the inventory of back consonants, the velar and pharyngeal fricatives, as well as glottals. Akkadian preserves and (partly) only as a single
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
transcribed and usually reconstructed as a voiceless velar or
uvular fricative Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula The palatine uvula, usually referred to as simply the uvula, is a conic projection from the back edge of the middle of the soft palate, composed of conne ...
. All of the sounds have been lost. Their
elision In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...
appears to give rise to the presence of an e vowel where it is not found in other Semitic languages (for example, Akk. ''bēl'' 'master' < PS. ''*
ba‘al Baal (), or Baal,; phn, , baʿl; hbo, , baʿal, ). ( ''baʿal'') was a title and honorific meaning "owner", "lord" in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied to ...
''). It also appears that the series of interdental fricatives became sibilants (for example, Akk. ''šalšu'' 'three' < PS. ''*''). However, the exact phonological makeup of the languages is not fully known, and the absence of features may have been the result of the inadequacies of Sumerian orthography to describe the sounds of Semitic languages, rather than their real absence. The
word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
in East Semitic may also have been influenced by Sumerian by being subject–object–verb, rather than the West Semitic verb–subject–object.


References

* Huehnergard, J. 1995. “Semitic Languages.” Pp. 2117–2134 in ''Civilizations of the Ancient Near East''. Jack Sasson (editor). New York. Languages attested from the 3rd millennium BC Semitic languages {{semitic-lang-stub