Some Notes on the Ugaritic Counterpart of the Arabic Ghain

chapter 28 Some Notes on the Ugaritic Counterpart of the Arabic ghain

One of the Ugaritic consonants is transliterated ǵ by Gordon and regarded as the counterpart of Arabic ghain. It is thought by him to be represented by sev- eral signs in the Ugaritic alphabet. Thus, UT § 3.3 notes one sign (no. 23) and lists three variants in a footnote (cp. § 4.9), and adds yet another variant in § 4.12. The interpretation of these signs was formerly much discussed, but the view that they represent ǵ is now generally accepted. Where it is possible to identify the Arabic cognates of Ugaritic words, the Arabic usually has ghain, just as the majority of Arabic cognates with Ugaritic words with ʿ have ʿain. Although much uncertainty remains about the meaning of numerous Uga- ritic words, and the resources of the Arabic lexicon are sometimes perhaps too helpful in offering possibilities, the extent of the agreement between the two languages is generally recognized to have established the existence of ǵ in Ugaritic. There is no point in pushing at an open door, and it might appear superfluous to say any more on the subject of the existence of ǵ in Ugaritic. Nevertheless, certain arguments were brought against the theory in the past, and, as far as I am aware, they have never been thoroughly examined and refuted.1 A consensus among scholars is sometimes attained even though opposing arguments have not been answered. The commonly-held opinion is probably correct, but it is scarcely satisfactory that it should be reached and maintained without an attempt to refute the case that has been made against it. The present article will first attempt to answer such a case, which has been advanced against the existence of ǵ in Ugaritic. It will then examine some alleged examples of disagreement between Ugaritic and Arabic over the pres- ence of the consonant in cognate words.

1 J. Blau, UF 11 (1979), pp. 56–7, mentions Růžička’s theory and argues against it that the existence of a separate letter in the Ugaritic alphabet proves the existence of ǵ as a separate phoneme. His argument fails to do justice to the probability that there are examples of more than one sign being used to represent the same consonant. Indeed, the consonant ǵ itself is usually thought to be represented by more than one sign.

In a series of articles written during a period of nearly half a century, the Czech scholar R. Růžička sought to demonstrate that ghain is to be found only in Ara- bic (and South Arabian). It did not, he maintained, exist in Proto-Semitic, and attempts to find traces of it in North-West Semitic languages are misguided. Part of the argument concerns the way in which certain sound changes can take place. Consonants articulated in the larynx may change into consonants articulated in the mouth, but the reverse does not happen. In Arabic, the laryngeal ʿain became the velar ghain in certain words, but ghain could not become ʿain. It is thus inconceivable that Hebrew once had a consonant identical with Arabic ghain and that it merged with Hebrew ʿayin and thus become a laryngeal. The present article will not examine Růžička’s thesis as a whole,2 but only the part of it that concerns Ugaritic. Růžička first developed his theory long before the discovery of the Ras Shamra tablets. The decipherment of the long-forgotten Ugaritic alphabet then offered a challenge to him, because it came to be accepted that one of its consonants was to be identified with Arabic ghain. Růžička must either aban- don his theory or offer a different interpretation of the Ugaritic evidence, and the latter course of action was the one that he pursued. He developed his argument in an article published in 1954, and in the same article he summarized the theory he had advanced in his earlier publications. Růžička asserts in more than one place (pp. 219, 227, 234) that the signs in the Ugaritic alphabet that are usually transliterated ǵ are really representations of the laryngeal ʿ. Although some Ugaritic words with the disputed signs are cognate with Arabic words with ghain, there are others whose Arabic cognates have ʿain. The evidence thus offers, he claims, no more support for ǵ than for ʿ; since, then, he believes there are good reasons for regarding ghain as a sec- ondary development in Arabic, and Arabic alone, the Ugaritic evidence is best explained on the hypothesis that the relevant signs in the alphabet are representations of ʿ, not ǵ. A weak point in Růžička’s argument about Ugaritic is his treatment of the sign that is the first one noted by Gordon for ǵ in UT § 4.12 ( ). In order to explain its use in some circumstances, he postulates a partial Aramaicization

2 His treatment of the LXX evidence for the existence in Hebrew of the velar ḫ as well as of ḥ, which is analogous to the existence of the velar ǵ as well as of ʿ, has been convincingly refuted by J.W. Wevers, “Ḥeth in Classical Hebrew,” in J.W. Wevers and D.B. Redford (ed.), Essays on the Ancient Semitic World (Toronto, 1970), pp. 101–12. On p. 112, Wevers similarly casts doubt on the questioning of the validity of the LXX evidence for the existence of ǵ.