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71-476: Sabaic was written in the South Arabian alphabet , and like Hebrew and Arabic marked only consonants, the only indication of vowels being with matres lectionis . For many years the only texts discovered were inscriptions in the formal Masnad script (Sabaic ms 3 nd ), but in 1973 documents in another minuscule and cursive script were discovered, dating back to the second half of the 1st century BC; only

142-517: A Relativiser like ḏ- , ʾl , mn- ; in free relative clauses this marking is obligatory. Unlike other Semitic languages in Sabaic resumptive pronouns are only rarely found. Although the Sabaic vocabulary is found in relatively diverse types of inscriptions (an example being that the south Semitic tribes derive their word wtb meaning "to sit" from the northwest tribe's word yashab/wtb meaning "to jump"), nevertheless it stands relatively isolated in

213-465: A daughter proto-language or in Proto-Semitic itself. Some thus suggest that weakened *š̠ may have been a separate phoneme in Proto-Semitic. Proto-Semitic is reconstructed as having non-phonemic stress on the third mora counted from the end of the word, i.e. on the second syllable from the end, if it has the structure CVC or CVː (where C is any consonant and V is any vowel), or on

284-605: A few of the latter have so far been published. The South Arabic alphabet used in Yemen , Eritrea , Djibouti , and Ethiopia beginning in the 8th century BC, in all three locations, later evolved into the still in use Ge'ez alphabet . The Ge'ez language however is no longer considered to be a descendant of Sabaic or of Old South Arabian ; and there is linguistic evidence that Semitic languages were concurrently in use, being spoken in Eritrea and Ethiopia as early as 2000 BC. Sabaic

355-568: A language has such sounds, it nearly always has [sʼ] so if *ṣ was actually affricate [tsʼ] , it would be extremely unusual if *θ̣ ṣ́ was fricative [θʼ ɬʼ] rather than affricate [t͡θʼ t͡ɬʼ] . According to Rodinson (1981) and Weninger (1998), the Greek placename Mátlia , with tl used to render Ge'ez ḍ (Proto-Semitic *ṣ́ ), is "clear proof" that this sound was affricated in Ge'ez and quite possibly in Proto-Semitic as well. The evidence for

426-572: A merger of the two to [s] occurs in various other languages such as Arabic and Ethiopian Semitic. On the other hand, Kogan has suggested that the initial merged s in Arabic was actually a "hissing-hushing sibilant", presumably something like [ɕ] (or a "retracted sibilant"), which did not become [s] until later. That would suggest a value closer to [ɕ] (or a "retracted sibilant") or [ʃ] for Proto-Semitic *š since [t͡s] and [s] would almost certainly merge directly to [s]. Furthermore, there

497-508: A relatively close object and those showing a more distant one. Nonetheless, it is very difficult to reconstruct Proto-Semitic forms on the basis of the demonstratives of the individual Semitic languages. A series of interrogative pronouns are reconstructed for Proto-Semitic: *man ‘who’, *mā ‘what’ and *’ayyu ‘of what kind’ (derived from *’ay ‘where’). Reconstruction of the cardinal numerals from one to ten (masculine): All nouns from one to ten were declined as singular nouns with

568-483: Is attested in some 1,040 dedicatory inscriptions, 850 building inscriptions, 200 legal texts, and 1300 short graffiti (containing only personal names). No literary texts of any length have yet been brought to light. This paucity of source material and the limited forms of the inscriptions has made it difficult to get a complete picture of Sabaic grammar. Thousands of inscriptions written in a cursive script (called Zabur ) incised into wooden sticks have been found and date to

639-776: Is based on triads of related voiceless , voiced and " emphatic " consonants. Five such triads are reconstructed in Proto-Semitic: The probable phonetic realization of most consonants is straightforward and is indicated in the table with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Two subsets of consonants, however, deserve further comment. The sounds notated here as " emphatic consonants " occur in nearly all Semitic languages as well as in most other Afroasiatic languages, and they are generally reconstructed as glottalization in Proto-Semitic. Thus, *ṭ, for example, represents [tʼ] . See below for

710-526: Is certain although few modern languages preserve the sounds. The pronunciation of *ś ṣ́ as [ɬ ɬʼ] is still maintained in the Modern South Arabian languages (such as Mehri ), and evidence of a former lateral pronunciation is evident in a number of other languages. For example, Biblical Hebrew baśam was borrowed into Ancient Greek as balsamon (hence English "balsam"), and the 8th-century Arab grammarian Sibawayh explicitly described

781-467: Is debated: The precise sound of the Proto-Semitic fricatives, notably of *š , *ś , *s and *ṣ , remains a perplexing problem, and there are various systems of notation to describe them. The notation given here is traditional and is based on their pronunciation in Hebrew, which has traditionally been extrapolated to Proto-Semitic. The notation *s₁ , *s₂ , *s₃ is found primarily in

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852-415: Is heavily influenced by North Arabic, are also generally considered a form of Sabaic. The Himyarites , whose spoken language was Semitic but not South Arabic, used Sabaic as a written language. Since Sabaic is written in an abjad script leaving vowels unmarked, little can be said for certain about the vocalic system. However, based on other Semitic languages, it is generally presumed that it had at least

923-406: Is more naturally interpreted as deaffrication. Evidence for *š as /s/ also exists but is somewhat less clear. It has been suggested that it is cross-linguistically rare for languages with a single sibilant fricative to have [ʃ] as the sound and that [s] is more likely. Similarly, the use of Phoenician 𐤔 *š , as the source of Greek Σ s , seems easiest to explain if the phoneme had

994-545: Is not consistent in Sabaic. The first clause in an inscription always has the order (particle - ) subject – predicate (SV), the other main clauses of an inscription are introduced by w - "and" and always have – like subordinate clauses – the order predicate – subject (VS). At the same time the Predicate may be introduced by f . Examples: Sabaic is equipped with a number of means to form subordinate clauses using various conjunctions: In Sabaic, relative clauses are marked by

1065-521: Is the norm. The minuscule Zabūr script does not seem to have a letter that represents the sound ẓ , and replaces it with ḍ instead; for example: mfḍr ("a measure of capacity"), written in the Musnad script as: mfẓr . As in other Semitic languages Sabaic had both independent pronouns and pronominal suffixes. The attested pronouns, along with suffixes from Qatabanian and Hadramautic are as follows: No independent pronouns have been identified in any of

1136-480: Is thought to have been from Akkad. The earliest text fragments of West Semitic are snake spells in Egyptian pyramid texts, dated around the mid-third millennium BC. Proto-Semitic itself must have been spoken before the emergence of its daughters, so some time before the earliest attestation of Akkadian, and sufficiently long so for the changes leading from it to Akkadian to have taken place, which would place it in

1207-481: Is usually indicated in the singular by the ending – t  : bʿl "husband" (m.), bʿlt "wife" (f.), hgr "city" (m.), fnwt "canal" (f.). Sabaic nouns have forms for singular, dual and plural. The singular is formed without changing the stem, the plural can however be formed in a number of ways even in the very same word: The dual is already beginning to disappear in Old Sabaic; its endings vary according to

1278-585: Is various evidence to suggest that the sound [ʃ] for *š existed while *s was still [ts] . Examples are the Southern Old Babylonian form of Akkadian, which evidently had [ʃ] along with [t͡s] as well as Egyptian transcriptions of early Canaanite words in which *š s are rendered as š ṯ . ( ṯ is an affricate [t͡ʃ] and the consensus interpretation of š is [ʃ] , as in Modern Coptic. ) Diem (1974) suggested that

1349-652: The Horn of Africa between 1500 and 500 BC. Proto-Semitic had a simple vowel system, with three qualities *a, *i, *u, and phonemic vowel length, conventionally indicated by a macron: *ā, *ī, *ū. This system is preserved in Classical Arabic. The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic was originally based primarily on Arabic , whose phonology and morphology (particularly in Classical Arabic ) is extremely conservative, and which preserves as contrastive 28 out of

1420-841: The Proto-Sinaitic script in about the late 2nd millennium BCE. It was used for writing the Old South Arabian languages Sabaic , Qatabanic , Hadramautic , Minaean Hasaitic , and Geʽez in Dʿmt . The earliest instances of the Ancient South Arabian script are painted pottery sherds from Raybun in Hadhramaut in Yemen, which are dated to the late 2nd millennium BCE. There are no letters for vowels, though some can be indicated via matres lectionis . Its mature form

1491-807: The Semitic language family . There is no consensus regarding the location of the Proto-Semitic Urheimat : scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant , the Sahara , the Horn of Africa , the Arabian Peninsula , or northern Africa. The Semitic language family is considered part of the broader macro-family of Afroasiatic languages . The earliest attestations of any Semitic language are in Akkadian , dating to around

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1562-518: The 24th to 23rd centuries BC (see Sargon of Akkad ) and the Eblaite language , but earlier evidence of Akkadian comes from personal names in Sumerian texts from the first half of the third millennium BC. One of the earliest known Akkadian inscriptions was found on a bowl at Ur , addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiagnunna of Ur ( c.  2485 –2450 BC) by his queen Gan-saman, who

1633-485: The Arabic descendant of *ṣ́ , now pronounced [dˤ] in the standard pronunciation or [ðˤ] in Bedouin-influenced dialects, as a pharyngealized voiced lateral fricative [ɮˤ] . (Compare Spanish alcalde , from Andalusian Arabic اَلْقَاضِي al-qāḍī "judge".) The primary disagreements concern whether the sounds were actually fricatives in Proto-Semitic or whether some were affricates, and whether

1704-688: The Arabic script, which most linguists believe developed from the Nabataean script in the fourth century AD, which in turn developed from the Aramaic script. The languages of the Southern Musnad script also differ greatly from the Northern Arabic language,in terms of script, lexicon, grammar, styles, and perhaps sounds, and the letters of the script increase. The Musnad is derived from Arabic with one sibilant letter (some call it samikh) or

1775-544: The Canaanite sound change of *θ > *š would be more natural if *š was [s] than if it was [ʃ] . However, Kogan argues that, because *s was [ts] at the time, the change from *θ to *š is the most likely merger, regardless of the exact pronunciation of *š while the shift was underway. Evidence for the affricate nature of the non-sibilants is based mostly on internal considerations. Ejective fricatives are quite rare cross-linguistically, and when

1846-519: The Levant around 3750 BC, with a later single introduction from South Arabia into the Horn of Africa around 800 BC. This statistical analysis could not, however, estimate when or where the ancestor of all Semitic languages diverged from Afroasiatic. It thus neither contradicts nor confirms the hypothesis that the divergence of ancestral Semitic from Afroasiatic occurred in Africa. In another variant of

1917-600: The Middle Sabaic period; these represent letters and legal documents and as such includes a much wider variety of grammatical forms. In the Late Sabaic period the ancient names of the gods are no longer mentioned and only one deity Raḥmānān is referred to. The last known inscription in Sabaic dates from 554 or 559 AD. The language's eventual extinction was brought about by the later rapid expansion of Islam, bringing with it Northern Arabic or Muḍarī , which became

1988-494: The Old Sabaic inscriptions the Proto-Semitic diphthongs aw and ay seemed to have been retained, being written with the letters w and y ; in the later stages the same words are increasingly found without these letters, which leads some scholars (such as Stein) to the conclusion that they had by then contracted to ō and ē (though aw → ū and ay → ī would also be possible) Sabaic, like Proto-Semitic , contains three sibilant phonemes, represented by distinct letters;

2059-553: The Radmanite dialect the letter h is sometimes infixed in plurals where it is not etymologically expected: thus bnhy (sons of; Constructive State) instead of the usual bny ; it is suspected that this h represents the vowel ā . Long vowels ū and ī certainly seem to be indicated in forms such as the personal pronouns hmw (them), the verbal form ykwn (also written without the glide ykn ; he will be), and in enclitic particles - mw , and - my probably used for emphasis. In

2130-481: The Semitic realm, something that makes it more difficult to analyze. Even given the existence of closely related languages such as Ge'ez and Classical Arabic, only part of the Sabaic vocabulary has proved able to be interpreted; a not inconsiderable part must be deduced from the context and some words remain incomprehensible. On the other hand, many words from agriculture and irrigation technology have been retrieved from

2201-414: The affricate interpretation of Akkadian s z ṣ is generally accepted. There is also a good deal of internal evidence in early Akkadian for affricate realizations of s z ṣ . Examples are that underlying || *t, *d, *ṭ + *š || were realized as ss , which is more natural if the law was phonetically || *t, *d, *ṭ + *s || > [tt͡s] , and that *s *z *ṣ shift to *š before *t , which

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2272-541: The change s 3 > s 1 , for example: ˀks 1 wt ("clothes"), normal Sabaic ks 3 wy . The exact nature of the emphatic consonants q , ṣ , ṭ , ẓ and ḍ also remains a matter for debate: were they pharyngealized as in Modern Arabic, or were they glottalized as in Ethiopic (and reconstructed Proto-Semitic)? There are arguments to support both possibilities. In any case, beginning with Middle Sabaic

2343-516: The conventional transcription and still maintained by some of the authors in the field is that *š was a voiceless postalveolar fricative ( [ʃ] ), *s was a voiceless alveolar sibilant ( [s] ) and *ś was a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative ( [ɬ] ). Accordingly, *ṣ is seen as an emphatic version of *s ( [sʼ] ) *z as a voiced version of it ( [z] ) and *ṣ́ as an emphatic version of *ś ( [ɬʼ] ). The reconstruction of *ś ṣ́ as lateral fricatives (or affricates)

2414-418: The evidence for the "maximal extension" positions that extend affricate interpretations to non-sibilant "fricatives" is largely structural because of both the relative rarity of the interdentals and lateral obstruents among the attested Semitic language and the even greater rarity of such sounds among the various languages in which Semitic words were transcribed. As a result, even when the sounds were transcribed,

2485-402: The evident 29 consonantal phonemes. Thus, the phonemic inventory of reconstructed Proto-Semitic is very similar to that of Arabic, with only one phoneme fewer in Arabic than in reconstructed Proto-Semitic, with *s and *š merging into Arabic / s / ⟨ س ⟩ and *ś becoming Arabic / ʃ / ⟨ ش ⟩ . As such, Proto-Semitic is generally reconstructed as having

2556-580: The exact phonetic nature of these sounds is still uncertain. In the early days of Sabaic studies, Old South Arabian was transcribed using Hebrew letters. The transcriptions of the alveolars or postvelar fricatives remained controversial; after a great deal of uncertainty in the initial period the lead was taken by the transcription chosen by Nikolaus Rhodokanakis and others for the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum ( s , š , and ś ), until A. F. L. Beeston proposed replacing this with

2627-492: The first and third consonants were identical were extremely rare. Three cases are reconstructed: nominative (marked by *-u ), genitive (marked by *-i ), accusative (marked by *-a ). There were two genders: masculine (marked by a zero morpheme) and feminine (marked by *-at / *-t and *-ah / -ā ). The feminine marker was placed after the root, but before the ending, e.g.: *ba‘l- ‘lord, master’ > *ba‘lat- ‘lady, mistress’, *bin- ‘son’ > *bint- ‘daughter’. There

2698-473: The following phonemes (as usually transcribed in Semitology): *ʼ , ˀ [ ʔ ] The reconstructed phonemes *s *z *ṣ *ś *ṣ́ *ṯ̣, which are shown to be phonetically affricates in the table above, may also be interpreted as fricatives ( /s z sʼ ɬ ɬʼ θʼ/ ), as discussed below. This was the traditional reconstruction and is reflected in the choice of signs. The Proto-Semitic consonant system

2769-500: The fourth millennium BC or earlier. Since all modern Semitic languages can be traced back to a common ancestor, Semiticists have placed importance on locating the Urheimat of the Proto-Semitic language. The Urheimat of the Proto-Semitic language may be considered within the context of the larger Afro-Asiatic family to which it belongs. The previously popular hypothesis of an Arabian Urheimat has been largely abandoned since

2840-453: The fricatives/affricates. In modern Semitic languages, emphatics are variously realized as pharyngealized ( Arabic , Aramaic , Tiberian Hebrew (such as [tˤ] ), glottalized ( Ethiopian Semitic languages , Modern South Arabian languages , such as [tʼ] ), or as tenuis consonants ( Turoyo language of Tur Abdin such as [t˭] ); Ashkenazi Hebrew and Maltese are exceptions and emphatics merge into plain consonants in various ways under

2911-564: The gender and the number. At the same time external plurals and duals have their own endings for grammatical state, while inner plurals are treated like singulars. Apart from the construct state known in other Semitic languages, there is also an indeterminate state and a determinate state, the functions of which are explained below. The following are the detailed state endings: The three grammatical states have distinct syntactical and semantic functions: As in other West Semitic languages Sabaic distinguishes between two types of finite verb forms:

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2982-462: The grammatical state: ḫrf-n "two years" (indeterminate state) from ḫrf "year". Sabaic almost certainly had a case system formed by vocalic endings, but since vowels were involved they are not recognizable in the writings; nevertheless a few traces have been retained in the written texts, above all in the construct state . As in other Semitic languages Sabaic has a few grammatical states, which are indicated by various different endings according to

3053-399: The influence of Indo-European languages ( Sicilian for Maltese, various languages for Hebrew). An emphatic labial *ṗ occurs in some Semitic languages, but it is unclear whether it was a phoneme in Proto-Semitic. The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic has nine fricative sounds that are reflected usually as sibilants in later languages, but whether all were already sibilants in Proto-Semitic

3124-493: The language of culture and writing, totally supplanting Sabaic. The dialect used in the western Yemeni highlands, known as Central Sabaic, is very homogeneous and generally used as the language of the inscriptions. Divergent dialects are usually found in the area surrounding the Central Highlands, such as the important dialect of the city of Ḥaram in the eastern al- Jawf . Inscriptions in the Ḥaramic dialect, which

3195-432: The letters representing ṣ and ẓ are increasingly interchanged, which seems to indicate that they have fallen together as one phoneme. The existence of bilabial fricative f as a reflex of the Proto-Semitic *p is partly proved by Latin transcriptions of names. In late Sabaic ḏ and z also merge.In Old Sabaic the sound n only occasionally assimilates to a following consonant, but in the later periods this assimilation

3266-402: The literature on Old South Arabian , but more recently, it has been used by some authors to discuss Proto-Semitic to express a noncommittal view of the pronunciation of the sounds. However, the older transcription remains predominant in most literature, often even among scholars who either disagree with the traditional interpretation or remain noncommittal. The traditional view, as expressed in

3337-403: The most maximal interpretation, with all the interdentals and lateral obstruents being affricates, appears to be mostly structural: the system would be more symmetric if reconstructed that way. The shift of *š to h occurred in most Semitic languages (other than Akkadian, Minaean , Qatabanian ) in grammatical and pronominal morphemes, and it is unclear whether reduction of *š began in

3408-492: The noun: Like most of its daughter languages, Proto-Semitic has one free pronoun set, and case-marked bound sets of enclitic pronouns. Genitive case and accusative case are only distinguished in the first person. For many pronouns, the final vowel is reconstructed with long and short positional variants; this is conventionally indicated by a combined macron and breve on the vowel (e.g. ā̆ ). The Semitic demonstrative pronouns are usually divided into two series: those showing

3479-729: The numbers written out in words. Zabūr , also known as "South Arabian minuscules ", is the name of the cursive form of the South Arabian script that was used by the Sabaeans in addition to their monumental script, or Musnad. Zabur was a writing system in ancient Yemen along with Musnad. The difference between the two is that Musnad documented historical events, meanwhile Zabur writings were used for religious scripts or to record daily transactions among ancient Yemenis. Zabur writings could be found in palimpsest form written on papyri or palm-leaf stalks. The South Arabian alphabet

3550-491: The object; thus: qtl-hmw "he killed them"; ḫmr-hmy t'lb "Ta'lab poured for them both"; when the suffixes are added to nouns they indicate possession: ' bd-hw "his slave").The independent pronouns serve as the subject of nominal and verbal sentences: mr' 't "you are the Lord" (a nominal sentence); hmw f-ḥmdw "they thanked" (a verbal sentence). Old South Arabian nouns fall into two genders: masculine and feminine. The feminine

3621-538: The other South Arabian languages. First- and second-person independent pronouns are rarely attested in the monumental inscription, but possibly for cultural reasons; the likelihood was that these texts were neither composed nor written by the one who commissioned them: hence they use third-person pronouns to refer to the one who is paying for the building and dedication or whatever. The use of the pronouns in Sabaic corresponds to that in other Semitic languages. The pronominal suffixes are added to verbs and prepositions to denote

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3692-574: The perfect and imperfect may be summarized as follows (the active and the passive are not distinguished in their consonantal written form; the verbal example is fʿl "to do"): The perfect is mainly used to describe something that took place in the past, only before conditional phrases and in relative phrases with a conditional connotation does it describe an action in the present, as in Classical Arabic. For example: w-s 3 ḫly Hlkʾmr w-ḥmʿṯt "And Hlkʾmr and ḥmʿṯt have pleaded guilty (dual)". The imperfect usually expresses that something has occurred at

3763-462: The perfect which is conjugated with suffixes and the imperfect which is conjugated with both prefixes and suffixes. In the imperfect two forms can be distinguished: a short form and a form constructed using the n (long form esp. the n-imperfect ), which in any case is missing in Qatabānian and Ḥaḍramite. In actual use it is hard to distinguish the two imperfect forms from each other. The conjugation of

3834-493: The region could not have supported massive waves of emigration before the domestication of camels in the 2nd millennium BC. There is also evidence that Mesopotamia and adjoining areas of modern Syria were originally inhabited by a non-Semitic population. That is suggested by non-Semitic toponyms preserved in Akkadian and Eblaite. A Bayesian analysis performed in 2009 suggests an origin for all known Semitic languages in

3905-703: The renovation of the Ma’rib Dam in 1986, which was carried out at the expense of Sheikh Zayed and in conjunction with the celebration of victory in the North Yemen Civil War against the Kingdom of Yemen . The inscription was published in a scientific article written by the Frenchman Christian Robin as the last official Musnad inscription. Proto-Semitic Proto-Semitic is the reconstructed proto-language common ancestor to

3976-575: The representation with s followed by the subscripts 1–3. This latest version has largely taken over the English-speaking world, while in the German-speaking area, for example, the older transcription signs, which are also given in the table below, are more widespread. They were transcribed by Beeston as s 1 , s 2 , and s 3 . Bearing in mind the latest reconstructions of the Proto-Semitic sibilants, we can postulate that s 1

4047-494: The resulting transcriptions may be difficult to interpret clearly. The narrowest affricate view (only *ṣ was an affricate [t͡sʼ] ) is the most accepted one. The affricate pronunciation is directly attested in the modern Ethiopic languages and Modern Hebrew, as mentioned above, but also in ancient transcriptions of numerous Semitic languages in various other languages: The "maximal affricate" view, applied only to sibilants, also has transcriptional evidence. According to Kogan,

4118-542: The same time as an event previously mentioned, or it may simply express the present or future. Four moods can be distinguished: The imperative is found in texts written in the zabūr script on wooden sticks, and has the form fˁl(-n) . For example: w-'nt f-s 3 ḫln ("and you (sg.) look after"). By changing the consonantal roots of verbs they can produce various derivational forms, which change their meaning. In Sabaic (and other Old South Arabian languages) six such stems are attested. Examples: The arrangement of clauses

4189-477: The sound designated *š was pronounced [ʃ] (or similar) in Proto-Semitic, as the traditional view posits, or had the value of [s] . The issue of the nature of the "emphatic" consonants, discussed above, is partly related (but partly orthogonal) to the issues here as well. With respect to the traditional view, there are two dimensions of "minimal" and "maximal" modifications made: Affricates in Proto-Semitic were proposed early on but met little acceptance until

4260-403: The sound of [s] at the time. The occurrence of [ʃ] for *š in a number of separate modern Semitic languages (such as Neo-Aramaic , Modern South Arabian , most Biblical Hebrew reading traditions) and Old Babylonian Akkadian is then suggested to result from a push-type chain shift , and the change from [t͡s] to [s] "pushes" [s] out of the way to [ʃ] in the languages in question, and

4331-715: The theory, the earliest wave of Semitic speakers entered the Fertile Crescent via the Levant and eventually founded the Akkadian Empire . Their relatives, the Amorites , followed them and settled Syria before 2500 BC. Late Bronze Age collapse in Israel led the South Semites to move southwards where they settled the highlands of Yemen after the 20th century BC until those crossed Bab-el-Mandeb to

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4402-411: The third syllable from the end, if the second one had the structure CV . Proto-Semitic allowed only syllables of the structures CVC , CVː , or CV . It did not permit word-final clusters of two or more consonants, clusters of three or more consonants, hiatus of two or more vowels, or long vowels in closed syllables. Most roots consisted of three consonants. However, it appears that historically

4473-755: The third sīn. Six signs are used for numbers: The sign for 50 was evidently created by removing the lower triangle from the sign for 100. The sign for 1 doubles as a word separator. The other four signs double as both letters and numbers. Each of these four signs is the first letter of the name of the corresponding numeral. An additional sign ( 𐩿 ) is used to bracket numbers, setting them apart from surrounding text. For example, ‏ 𐩿𐩭𐩽𐩽𐩿 ‎ These signs are used in an additive system similar to Roman numerals to represent any number (excluding zero). Two examples: Thousands are written two different ways: Perhaps because of ambiguity, numerals, at least in monumental inscriptions, are always clarified with

4544-415: The three-consonant roots had developed from two-consonant ones (this is suggested by evidence from internal as well as external reconstruction). To construct a given grammatical form, certain vowels were inserted between the consonants of the root. There were certain restrictions on the structure of the root: it was impossible to have roots where the first and second consonants were identical, and roots where

4615-525: The vowels a , i , and u , which would have occurred both short and long ā , ī , and ū . In Old Sabaic, the long vowels ū and ī are sometimes indicated using the letters for w and y as matres lectionis . In the Old period this is used mainly in word-final position, but in Middle and Late Sabaic it also commonly occurs medially. Sabaic has no way of writing the long vowel ā , but in later inscriptions, in

4686-406: The work of Alice Faber (1981), who challenged the older approach. The Semitic languages that have survived often have fricatives for these consonants. However, Ethiopic languages and Modern Hebrew, in many reading traditions, have an affricate for *ṣ . The evidence for the various affricate interpretations of the sibilants is direct evidence from transcriptions and structural evidence. However,

4757-749: The works of Yemeni scholars of the Middle Ages and partially also from the modern Yemeni dialects. Foreign loanwords are rare in Sabaic, a few Greek and Aramaic words are found in the Rahmanistic , Christian and Jewish period (5th–7th centuries AD) for example: qls1-n from the Greek ἐκκλησία "church", which still survives in the Arabic al-Qillīs referring to the church built by Abrahah in Sana'a . South Arabian alphabet The Ancient South Arabian script (Old South Arabian: 𐩣𐩯𐩬𐩵 ms nd ; modern Arabic : الْمُسْنَد musnad ) branched from

4828-638: Was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 2009 with the release of version 5.2. The Unicode block, called Old South Arabian, is U+10A60–U+10A7F. Note that U+10A7D OLD SOUTH ARABIAN NUMBER ONE (𐩽) represents both the numeral one and a word divider. Yemeni archeologist and linguist Mutaher al-Eryani , was keen to record a memorial in the Musnad script and in the Sabaean language, commemorating

4899-418: Was also a small group of feminine nouns that didn't have formal markers: *’imm- ‘mother’, *laxir- ‘ewe’, *’atān- ‘she-donkey’, *‘ayn- ‘eye’, *birk- ‘knee’ There were three numbers: singular, plural and dual (only in nouns ). There were two ways to mark the plural: The dual was formed by means of the markers *-ā in the nominative and *-āy in the genitive and accusative. The endings of

4970-542: Was probably pronounced as a simple [s]or [ʃ], s 2 was probably a lateral fricative [ɬ], and s 3 may have been realized as an affricate [t͡s]. The difference between the three sounds is maintained throughout Old Sabaic and Middle Sabaic, but in the Late period s 1 and s 3 merge. The subscript n did not start appearing until after the Early Sabaic period. The Middle Sabaic Haramitic dialect often shows

5041-620: Was reached around 800 BCE and its use continued until the 6th century CE, including Ancient North Arabian inscriptions in variants of the alphabet, when it was displaced by the Arabic alphabet . In Eritrea and Ethiopia, it evolved later into the Geʽez script , which, with added symbols throughout the centuries, has been used to write Amharic , Tigrinya and Tigre , as well as other languages (including various Semitic , Cushitic , Omotic , and Nilo-Saharan languages ). The Musnad script differs from

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