Vocabulary Common to Akkadian and South-East Semitic (Ethiopic and South-Arabic)

Abstract

THE PROBLEM of the dialectal relationship between Akkadian and Ethiopic aroused the interest of many scholars in Semitics. ilaupt in his Studies on the comparative grammar of the Semitic languages, with special reference to Assyrian, published in the Journal of the Roy. As. Soc. 10. 244-51 (1878) and Prologomena to a comparative Assyrian grammar in The Proceedings of the American Oriental Society 1887 p. 47-65 was the first, as far asI know, to admit, on the basis of some grammatical facts and some words common to both groups, a dialectal unity of Akkadian and Ethiopic within the group of the Semitic languages. Haupt was followed by Christian, Akkader und Siidaraber als ditere Semitenschichte, Anthropos 14-5. 729-39 (1919-20), who adding but a few points to those mentioned by Haupt connects Akkadian and South-East Semitic and considers as altere semitische Sprachen Akkadian, MinaeanSabaean, Ethiopic, modern South-Arabic,2 as opposed to Kanaanite, Aramaic and Arabic which belong to the jiingeren semitischen Sprachen. Mayer Lambert, Le groupement des langues semitiques, in Cinquentenaire de l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, 1921, p. 51-60, without mentioning the preceding articles, connects Ethiopic with Akkadian on the basis of some phonological and grammatical facts. iommel, Ethrologie und Geographie des alten Orients, p. 153 admits too, without entering into details, that South-East Semitic is related to Akkadian. Finally Ungnad, Das Wesen des Ursemitischen p. 23, considers Akkadian and South-East Semitic 8 as belonging to the Oriental group as opposed to Aramaic, Kanaanite and Arabic which are Occidental languages. The points discussed by the preceding authors in order to prove that both Akkadian and SouthEast Semitic formed a dialectal unity in the Semitic group will not be mentioned here.4 They are not convincing enough to prove this assertion, as it has been pointed out by J. Cantineau, Accadien et Sudarabique,5 Bull. Soc. Linguistique 33. 175-204 (1932) who concludes that there is no dialectal unity between Akkadian and South-East Semitic, but admits that both these groups might have preserved some archaic features.6 The situation is well summed up by Marcel Cohen, who reviewing Ungnad op. cit. in BSL 1927, p. 163 says: Dans la masse homogine des langues semitiques on trouve assez de phenomenes communs a toutes les langues prises deux a 1 The following abbreviations are used below: