The Phonology of Pharyngeals and Pharyngealization in Pre-Modern Aramaic Robert D. Hoberman Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 105, No. 2. (Apr. - Jun., 1985), pp. 221-231. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0279%28198504%2F06%29105%3A2%3C221%3ATPOPAP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O Journal of the American Oriental Society is currently published by American Oriental Society. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/aos.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Fri Jan 11 09:19:02 2008 THE PHONOLOGY OF PHARYNGEALS AND PHARYNGEALIZATION IN PRE-MODERN ARAMAIC When the method of comparative reconstruction is applied to modern Aramaic dialects, it affords a glimpse at a variety of Aramaic which existed between the latest classical Aramaic and the appearance of the modern dialects. In that variety of pre-modern Aramaic, the pharyngeal consonants (A and r)interacted with the pharyngealized consonants (the "emphatics") according to regular, conditioned sound changes. Such a regular interaction of pharyngeals with pharyn- gealized sounds is unknown in other languages, although a similar interaction occurs in the same geographical region in Kurdish. old Aramaic pharyngeal and pharyngealized conso- 1. INTRODUCTION nant~.~Linguists have assumed, as the phonetic termi- nology would suggest, that the relationship between OF ALL THE ANALYTICAL TECHNIQUESwhich have been pharyngeals and pharyngealization should be intimate, developed in the nearly two centuries of modern work but in fact, in Arabic, the best-known language on language, none deserves to be called a classic more which has both, they interact only sporadically. Yet, than the method of comparative reconstruction. A at some time in the not-too-distant past, in a variety straightforward application of the comparative method of Aramaic which was ancestral to the dialects of can often shed new light on linguistic typology as well Azerbaijan and Koy Sanjaq, pharyngeals and pharyn- as on the history of peoples. In this paper I will apply gealization interacted with each other with a regular- the comparative method to a pair of modern Aramaic ity unknown in any other language. dialects, that of the Jews of Azerbaijan in north- The modern Aramaic dialects discussed in this paper western Iran, documented in several works by Irene belong to the group of Aramaic dialects spoken in the Garbell (1964, 1965a,b), and that of the Jews of Koy twentieth century in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan east of Sanjaq, in northern Iraq, for which I gathered infor- the Tigris River, that is, in northwestern Iran, north- mation from speakers.' Though these two dialects are ern Iraq, and adjacent parts of Turkey. In addition to closelv related to each other and perhaps mutually intelligible, they differ strikingly in their treatment of The term "old Aramaic" is used here to refer to the common Aramaic phonology best attested in Biblical Aramaic and ' The Jews of Koy Sanjaq, as apparently all the Aramaic- Classical Syriac. The pharyngeals are voiced "and voiceless h speaking Jews, have emigrated to Israel. My field work was (traditionally represented among Semitists as ' and h). The conducted among speakers of the dialect now settled in phonetics of pharyngealized sounds, such as the Arabic Moshav Shtulah, Israel, a village in which most of the resi- "emphatics," are described in section 2 of this paper. Pharyn- dents speak Aramaic, and where the language is still learned gealization is sometimes accompanied by additional coarticu- by children. I would like to thank Saleh, Nazimah, and Zerah lations such as velarization and labialization, and is indicated Eliyahu and other members of their family not only for the here with a dot beneath. If the proto-Semitic emphatics were time they gave and the interest they took in my work on their ejectives (glottalized), as in the Ethiopian branch today, and language, but also for their extraordinary hospitality. My not pharyngealized, as in Arabic and Neo-Aramaic, then the field work on Neo-Aramaic in Israel in 1976-1978 was distinguishing feature of these consonants had already become supported by a fellowship from the Social Science Research pharyngealization in Aramaic well before the changes de- Council. I would like to thank Jay Jasanoff for detailed, scribed in this paper were taking place. See Dolgopolsky 1977 helpful discussion of this material. for one possible reconstruction of the history. 222 Journal of the American ( this group, which may be termed Northeastern Neo- Aramaic ancestral to all the modern spoken dialects3 Aramaic, other Aramaic languages are spoken today This decision had the benefit, among others, that the in three villages near Damascus, by Mandeans in resulting spelling could be used with nearly equal ease southwestern Iran, and by the Turoyo people in by speakers of all dialects (Maclean 1895:xvi-xvii), the Tur 'Abdin region of Turkey, west of the Tigris. the more so as the diacritical marks, which represent The Northeastern Neo-Aramaic dialects mentioned the details of vowels, certain consonant modifications, this paper are as follows: IRAQI JEWISH: Zakho (Z), and even the elision of consonants, have a rather low 'Amedia (Am.), Koy Sanjaq (KS), Sulaymaniyyah saliency as compared with the etymological, chiefly (SU~.);IRAQI CHRISTIAX: Alq0~h(Al.); IRANIAN JEW- consonantal, spelling. ISH:Azerbaijan (Az.); IRANIAN CHRISTIAN:Urmi (U). In practice, the missionaries' spelling represents, Note that the city of Urmi (formerly called Rezaiyeh) in part, a comparative reconstruction based on the is in the province of Azerbaijan and the "Azerbaijan" modern dialects,rather than a simple copying of dialect is spoken by the Jews of the city of Urmi as the Syriac orthography. Maclean (1895:xvi-xvii) de- well as of other locales in the vicinity, That means scribes the procedure followed by the Archbishop of that the dialects labeled "Urmi" and "Azerbaijan" are Canterbury's Mission Press at Urmi: separated not by geography but by the social division that existed between the two religious communities. The first impetus for the study of modern Aramaic The spelling of classical Syriac is taken as a basis. came from the desire of European missionaries to Thus when Old Syriac spelling gives the vernacular carry their message to their supposedly benighted sound [allowing for altered diacritical signs], it is coreligionists in western Asia. Semitists on the other adopted, although some other perhaps simpler spelling hand have been interested in modern Aramaic mostly also gives the sound. When some districts follow for the light it could shed on the classical Aramaic Old Syriac and some depart from it, the words are languages. Thus, in a survey of progress in Aramaic spelt in preference according to the former. But studies, Franz Rosenthal, the dean of Aramaicists, when all, or nearly all, the dialects differ from Old writes, "It is one of the proudest boasts of Aramaicists Syriac, the vernacular sound is followed. The that their language is known through continuous mark talqana (lit. the destroyer), which denotes a attestation from the beginning of the first millen- silent or fallen letter, is retained to a considerable nium B.C. to the present. Thus, the existence of the extent, both because a letter thus marked may be modern spoken dialects gives a beautiful patina to the sounded in some dialects though it has fallen in solid metal" (Rosenthal 1978: 88-89). It is therefore others, and also because a Syriac word thus marked not surprising that, although much of the work done may often be made intelligible to those who do not on modern Aramaic has been of a historical nature, use it by the fact of its resemblance (to the eye) to the there has been next to no attempt to reconstruct its corresponding word in the classical language, which linguistic history in more recent centuries-that is, the all who can read and write understand to some interval between the latest documents written by extent. and moreover it is found that a word spelt speakers of the classical Aramaic languages and the etymologically is frequently capable of more than one appearance of the modern dialects. pronunciation, and therefore suits the speech of sev- Though some attempts have been made to clarify eral dialects. puzzling Neo-Aramaic etymologies through the com- parison of contemporary dialects (e.g., Sabar 1976 and Krotkoff 1981), and one systematic comparative Thus the modern spelling, which is now used widely study exists in Polotsky 1961: 1 1-17, the most exten- by Assyrians in the Middle East and even the United sive exercise in dialect comparison has been in the States, constitutes an interdialectal written form development of a practical orthography in the Syriac composed of representations of sounds from the alphabet for the modern literary language.