Der ugaritische Kausativstamm und die Kausativbildungen des Semitischen: Eine morphologisch-semantische Untersuchung zum S-Stamm und zu den umstrittenen nichtsibilantischen Kausativstammen des Ugaritischen.

• Author: Kaufman, Stephen A.

In the early years of Ugaritology it was commonplace to claim that the normal causative stem in Ugaritic was surely hafel or afel, whereas the numerous plainly causative forms with initial s- were cultic terms borrowed from Akkadian. Since Ugaritic was deemed to be a Canaanite language--along with Phoenician and Hebrew--such a solution eliminated the need to deal with the problem of how a language, classified within one of the subdivisions of West Semitic, could have failed to share in the innovation of the H/ causative common to all the rest of West Semitic--an innovation already attested in Amorite and Late Bronze (i.e., Amarna) West Semitic texts contemporary with the Ugaritic material. It also eliminated a troubling lack of symmetry; for if the Ugaritic causative is safel, then Ugaritic is the only Semitic language wherein the initial consonant of the personal pronouns and that of the causative morpheme are different (i.e., neither laryngeal/laryngeal nor sibilant/sibilant). (The Ethiopic pronouns w tu and y ti, of course, are derived from forms such as *huwatu, *hiyati.)

While most scholars still consider Ugaritic to be a Canaanite language (incorrectly so, in my opinion), few still hold the position that Ugaritic had anything other than an s- causative stem. Those that do should be convinced to yield by this book. In chapter 3 of his work, Tropper studies in detail...