Une theorie de l' organisation du lexique des langues semitiques.

• Position: Book review

Une theorie de l' organisation du lexique des langues semitiques: Matrices et etymons. By GEORGES BOHAS and MIHAI DAT. Collection Langages. Lyon: ENS EDITIONS, 2007. Pp. 235 (paper).

The book under review represents a synthesis of the research on word formation in Semitic and the organization of the Arabic lexicon undertaken by Georges Bohas in the last fifteen years. In addition to the Arabic material that formed the basis of Bohas's previous studies, it also includes Hebrew data provided by Mihai Dat. As such, the book, although it extends the analysis to another Semitic language, does not provide any new theories per se.

Bohas's work on word formation in Semitic is well known among Semitists. It has fueled the centuries-old debate of whether the Semitic lexicon is primarily built on biradical or triradical bases, that is, whether triradical roots are original or developed out of a more archaic biconsonantal base.

The concept of a triradical root was originally developed by Arab grammarians in the tenth century C.E. It commonly underlies the analysis of the Semitic lexicon, morphological descriptions, and the organization of the dictionaries of individual Semitic languages. In the last two decades, Bohas has vehemently criticized this concept of a triradical root, in particular its use for the organization of the lexicon. In the present volume, Bohas and Dat summarize arguments previously brought forth against an original triconsonantal root, of which I will mention the most significant in the following paragraphs.

According to Bohas and Dat, the assumption of a triradical root that underlies the organization of the lexicon fails to explain much phonetic and semantic regularity in Semitic, such as polysemy and homonymy (p. 10). The triconsonantal theory often associates words that share the same three basic consonants with the same root, even when its presumed derivatives express unrelated semantic notions, as in the case of sbr, whose meanings range from "to connect" to "pile of food" and "mountain" (p. 22). Furthermore, the assumption that the verb in Semitic in its unaugmented form consists of a triconsonantal root might be further challenged by evidence from weak verbs in which only two consonants are present, as in Arabic rama, da a (3ms perfect). Although the third consonant can be deduced by comparison with other forms in many instances, as in ramaytu and da'awtu (1cs perfect)--which show that the third root consonants are /y/ and /w/ respectively--this is supposedly not possible in all cases or languages (pp. 15-18). In addition, the triconsonantal root is not accessible to native speakers of Semitic languages such as Arabic in an immediate way, as has been shown by experiments conducted by Bohas and Razouk. In these experiments, native speakers were asked to extract the triconsonantal roots of certain words and to determine their patterns. In most cases, they failed to do so (pp. 12, 24f.). Based on this experiment, Bohas concludes that native speakers of Arabic make no conscious use of an underlying root (p. 26). Consequently, the triconsonantal root is no linguistic reality but merely a grammatical tool (p. 28).

Most importantly, the concept of a triconsonantal root cannot account for the phonetic and semantic relationship between words (pp. 22, 29). In order to prove this argument, Bohas and Dat list triconsonantal roots that have two consonants in common and a similar semantic range, such as Arabic bwh, bhh, and bhw, which all share the basic meaning "to calm down" (p. 29). Most of the roots listed either reflect geminates, roots containing a glide or guttural, and roots containing a sonorant (pp. 29-38). Although the examples provided are often similar in meaning, they are hardly ever real synonyms. Nevertheless, according to Bohas, the existence of such semantically and phonetically similar words can hardly be a coincidence. Consequently, he assumes that there exists a phonetic and semantic relationship between the individual members of each set and that it should be possible to propose a biconsonantal base that provides this phonetic and semantic link (p. 39). The main point of criticism Bohas brings forth against the common organization of the Semitic lexicon is that it fails to reflect this seemingly obvious relationship between the respective roots (p. 40). As an alternative to the traditional organization, Bohas proposes the following model, which is developed in detail in chapters 1-6 on the basis of Arabic and Hebrew...