Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
and
Northwest Semitic
Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic languages comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant. It emerged from Proto-Semitic language, Proto-Semitic in the Early Bronze Age. It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite l ...
. Northwest Semitic languages largely fall into the Canaanite languages (such as
Ammonite
Ammonoids are extinct, (typically) coiled-shelled cephalopods comprising the subclass Ammonoidea. They are more closely related to living octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish (which comprise the clade Coleoidea) than they are to nautiluses (family N ...
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
) and
Aramaic
Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...
.
Overview
Distinctive features of Central Semitic languages include the following:
* An innovative
negation
In logic, negation, also called the logical not or logical complement, is an operation (mathematics), operation that takes a Proposition (mathematics), proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P, P^\prime or \over ...
marker *bal, of uncertain origin.
* The generalization of ''t'' as the suffix conjugation past tense marker, levelling an earlier alternation between *k in the first person and *t in the second person.
* A new prefix conjugation for the non-past tense, of the form ''ya-qtulu'', replacing the inherited ''ya-qattal'' form (they are schematic verbal forms, as if derived from an example triconsonantal root ''q-t-l'').
* Pharyngealization of the emphatic consonants, which were previously articulated as ejective.
Different classification systems disagree on the precise structure of the group. The most common approach divides it into Arabic and Northwest Semitic, while SIL Ethnologue has South Central Semitic (including Arabic and Hebrew) vs. Aramaic.
The main distinction between Arabic and the Northwest Semitic languages is the presence of broken plurals in the former. The majority of Arabic nouns (apart from
participle
In linguistics, a participle (; abbr. ) is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from a verb and used as an adject ...
s) form plurals in this manner, whereas virtually all nouns in the Northwest Semitic languages form their plurals with a
suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...
. For example, the Arabic بَيْت ''bayt'' ("house") becomes بُيُوت ''buyūt'' ("houses"); the Hebrew בַּיִת ''bayit'' ("house") becomes בָּתִּים ''bāttīm'' ("houses").