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A Proper View of Arabic, Semitic, and More A Proper View of Arabic, Semitic, and More Gary A. Rendsburg Aaron D. Rubin John Huehnergard Rutgers University Pennsylvania State University Harvard University The recent contribution by George Mendenhall in the pages of this journal1 is so riddled with errors and idiosyncratic views, it demands a response. The author’s main contention is that the roots of Arabic are to be found in the language(s) of the Late Bronze Age Levant (Ugaritic especially). In his own words: “It is here suggested, accordingly, that the origins of the linguistic phenomena characteristic of Arabic are to be located in the population of Syro-Palestinian groups who, in response to the increasing turmoil and violence of the Late Bronze Age, migrated south to the relatively remote and untouched regions of Arabia. Thus, instead of viewing Arabia as the early homeland from which the later Semitic language groups departed, we should view it as a late refuge to which population groups from Syria and Palestine migrated. They took with them, of course, their material culture, and above all their Bronze Age linguistic repertoire” (p. 18). Now, to be fair, there is nothing impossible in the scenario that Mendenhall presents— except for a) the lack of any archaeological data to support this view, and b) the specious and spurious nature of the linguistic arguments that he musters. Let us examine it in detail. 1. Mendenhall relies heavily on his reading of the Byblos Syllabic texts,2 but he has con- vinced few scholars of his “decipherment.” In the words of one critical review, “Mendenhall’s imagination is vast enough to enchant us with etymological possibilities. Unfortunately, this is not enough to convince us as to the validity and success of his decipherment. Far-fetched etymologies, forcing of known and accepted linguistic rules of other well known languages, together with much too much unreliable data, play a major role in this scholarly work. This makes Mendenhall’s decipherment of the enigmatic inscriptions from Byblos no less enig- matic than the inscriptions themselves. I am afraid that until a bilingual or another ‘tripod’ appears on stage, there can be no proof for this (or any other) deciphering attempt for these inscriptions.”3 2. Mendenhall claims that diglossia “is attested not only at Late Bronze Ugarit, but has also become increasingly in evidence from pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions” (p. 18). It is hard to imagine what evidence he would muster to defend this statement. Both corpora, especially the latter, are extremely limited. Now, many linguists would argue that every language in the world with a written tradition is characterized by diglossia, since people always write and speak differently. So it is very likely that diglossia existed in ancient Ugarit and in pre-Islamic Arabic,4 but the data are lacking to demonstrate the point and to highlight the lexical and 1. G. E. Mendenhall, “Arabic in Semitic Linguistic Theory,” JAOS 126 (2006): 17–26. All internal references are to this article. 2. G. E. Mendenhall, The Syllabic Inscriptions from Byblos (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1985). 3. S. Izre’el, JAOS 108 (1988): 519–21, in particular 520. For other critical reviews, see G. J. Hamilton, JBL 106 (1987): 693–95; and W. L. Moran, CBQ 50 (1988): 508–10. 4. One recalls the view of K. Vollers, Volkssprache und Schriftsprache im alten Arabien (Strassburg: K. J. Truebner, 1906), that Arabic diglossia extends back to pre-Islamic times. See also C. A. Ferguson, “The Arabic Koine,” Language 35 (1959): 616–30. For an alternative view, arguing for the beginning of Arabic diglossia in the first Islamic century, see J. Blau, “The Beginnings of Arabic Diglossia: A Study of the Origins of Neoarabic,” AAL 4:4 (1977): 1–28. Journal of the American Oriental Society 128.3 (2008) 533 534 Journal of the American Oriental Society 128.3 (2008) grammatical differentiations that presumably existed between the literary and colloquial registers in these two instances. Contrast the effort (by one of the present authors) to dem- onstrate diglossia in ancient Hebrew, with a much larger corpus and with sufficient data to (hopefully) have proven the point.5 3. A statement such as “Ostracon 2 from Kamid el-Loz is Arabic” (p. 20) is without jus- tification. The ten inscribed sherds found at Kamid el-Loz are written in an alphabet (“alt- kanaanäischer Schrift” according to Günter Mansfeld, who first published the texts) with some signs that resemble their ancient South Arabian equivalents,6 but that does not mean that the language of this inscription is Arabic—unless, of course, one accedes to Menden- hall’s view that anything Arabian is by definition Arabic. More importantly, Ostracon 2 has only five signs, and of these only three appear to be actual letters. Mansfeld read a single word here, as either btm or rtm or dtm, with the following comment, “wenn auch keiner dieser Stämme in den altsemitischen Sprachen bisher bekannt ist.”7 True, Mendenhall reads the inscription in the opposite direction, with the five symbols yielding lmtry (p. 20), but in no way can this term be deemed to be Arabic. And even if it were, no linguist would weave such a major hypothesis (of Arabic origins) from a single thread (an ostracon consisting of three to five graphemes).8 4. Mendenhall denies that fayin is a proto-Semitic consonant. He states, “As a matter of fact, there is no epigraphic evidence whatever for ghayn in Semitic until the LB texts of Ugarit, and it exists nowhere but in Ugaritic and the proto-Arabic language complex” (p. 21). This statement is patently wrong. But before addressing the issue itself, we first note that Mendenhall seems totally unaware of the history of research on this matter.9 As is well known among Semitists, already more than half a century ago, Rudolf Rufizicka proposed that /f/ is not a proto-Semitic consonant, but rather was an Arabic innovation.10 Rufizicka’s position, in turn, gained further support from Karl Petrácek.11 The response to this view 5. G. A. Rendsburg, Diglossia in Ancient Hebrew (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1990). 6. See G. Mansfeld, “Scherben mit altkanaanäischer Schrift vom Tell Kamid el-Loz,” in D. O. Edzard et al., Kamid el-Loz-Kumidi: Schriftdokumente aus Kamid el-Loz (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt Verlag, 1970), 29–41; and G. Mansfeld and W. Röllig, “Zwei Ostraka von Tell Kâmid el-Lôz und ein neuer Aspekt für die Entstehung des kanaanäischen Alphabets,” Die Welt des Orients 5 (1970): 265–70. 7. Mansfeld, “Scherben mit altkanaanäischer Schrift vom Tell Kamid el-Loz,” 31. 8. Additional epigraphic evidence that Mendenhall could have cited in support of his theory, but which he elected not to, is forthcoming from the discovery of two Ugaritic abecedaries (one found at Beth Shemesh in 1933 [KTU 5.24] and one found at Ugarit in 1988) arranged in the order of the Old South Arabian alphabet. For details, see J. Tropper, Ugaritische Grammatik (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2000), 13–15 (and the references cited there). For some historical considerations of the more recent find, see the summary (and the references cited) in I. Singer, “A Political History of Ugarit,” in Handbook of Ugaritic Studies, ed. W. G. E. Watson and N. Wyatt (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 614. In any case, even if Mendenhall had utilized these finds for his theory, they would demonstrate very little, given their very limited scope. 9. Even though a fine summary of the scholarly literature is found in a widely used standard reference work (still useful, notwithstanding the passage of decades): S. Moscati, ed., An Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1964), 38–39. 10. R. Rufizicka, “La question de l’existence du g%, dans les langues sémitiques en général et dans la langue ugar- itienne en particulier,” ArOr 22 (1954): 176–237. 11. K. Petrácek, “Der doppelte phonologische Charakter des Ghain im klassischen Arabisch,” ArOr 21 (1953): 240–62; and “Die Struktur der semitischen Wurzelmorpheme und der Übergang ‘ain > g%ain und ‘ain > r im Ara- bischen,” ArOr 23 (1955): 475–78. Two Lines Short Rendsburg et al.: A Proper View of Arabic, Semitic, and More 535 came from Otto Rössler, who, in two classic articles, demonstrated that /f/ is indeed a proto- Semitic consonant.12 Astoundingly, nowhere does Mendenhall refer to these earlier studies.13 And now to the issue itself. Recent research (building on Rössler’s earlier studies) has established beyond a reasonable doubt that /f/ was a separate phoneme in early Akkadian, distinct from both /º/ and /h/. In Old Akkadian the recently borrowed writing system was not equipped to represent /f/ consistently, but clear examples are written with the HA/HI/HU series of signs, e.g., za-ha-ar-tim /safartim/ ‘small’ (feminine singular adjective), za-ah-ra /safra/ ‘they (dual) are small,’ both from the root sfr.14 In Old Babylonian, writings of the reflex of Proto-Semitic /f/ vacillate between the H-signs and W; for an example of the former, see Akkadian halapu /falapu/ ‘cover, close,’ cognate with Arabic fallafa ‘wrap, cover,’ Ugaritic flp ‘husk’ (cf. Hebrew πl[ ‘cover, wrap’).15 As this illustration demonstrates (unlike with the reflex of /º/), no vowel raising occurs in the vicinity of /f/, thus providing further evidence that the two consonants were originally distinct. Also relevant are the data from Amorite, with the following personal names attested: ha-za-la and a-za-lu-um = /fazal-/ ‘gazelle’; hu-za-lum and ú-za-lum = /fuzalum/ ‘little ga- zelle’; and pu-ur-hu-sa-nu = /purfusanu/ ‘flea’—yielding the conclusion that “/f/ [dürfte] im Amurritischen als selbständiges Phonem erhalten sein.”16 When we turn to the world of greater Canaan, we note that Egyptian transcriptions of Semitic words demonstrate beyond doubt that “/f/ is a phoneme distinct from ºayin, as it is consistently transcribed by Egyptian q and g in roots containing Proto-Semitic */f/.
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