The I-w verbal class and the reconstruction of the early Semitic preradical vocalism.

• Author: Testen, David

I. INTRODUCTION

It is a truism of linguistic research that synchronic irregularities - deviations from the general pattern of a given linguistic system - frequently afford insights into patterns no longer extant in the system. In the case of the verbal systems of the various Semitic languages, one of the most consistently irregular subsystems is found in fientive (i.e., non-"stative," from the point of view of morphology(1)) basic-stem verbs whose initial radical is reconstructed as *w. The morphological idiosyncrasies of the I-w class have long been recognized and are so conspicuous and so widespread throughout the Semitic languages that one might be tempted to describe them as deviations from the norm which reach as far back into history as we can reconstruct. In the following pages, however, it will be suggested, not only that, despite their eccentricity, the anomalous structures typical of the I-w class have actually arisen from what was the original regular, strong-verb type, but that the I-w type provides crucial evidence for the reconstruction of the very core of Semitic verbal morphology.

II.1 THE WEST SEMITIC MODEL FOR FIENTIVE I-w VERBS

In characterizing the synchronic deviations typical of the I-w fientive class, we must distinguish between the West Semitic and the East Semitic languages. A clear example of the shape assumed by the I-w class in the West Semitic languages may be found in Classical Arabic. The distinctive characteristics of this class in Arabic are (1) the loss of the radical w in the imperative, present, jussive, and subjunctive forms (i.e., the imperative and those forms with a prefixed subject-marker); and (2) the systematic appearance of the thematic vowel i (or a, in the environment of a post-velar radical or [r.sup.2]) in these same forms, at the expense of the other theoretically possible thematic vowels u and a. The past tense stem (wa[C.sub.2]a[C.sub.3]-), unlike the imperative/prefixed stem, follows the regular pattern.(3) In contrast to the irregularities of the I-w fientive class, I-w stative verbs behave like normal verbs of the samia-type or the kabura-type. Contrast the paradigm of Arabic wajada 'he found' with that of a regular fientive Arabic verb such as kataba 'he wrote' (which belongs to the subclass containing u as the thematic vowel) and the paradigm of wabira 'he was hairy' with that of a typical stative-pattern verb, samia 'he heard'.

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There is no explanation within Arabic for the replacement of the expected stem-shape -w[C.sub.2]V[C.sub.3]- (where V = any one of the vowels u, a, or i, as stipulated by the lexicon) by -[C.sub.2]i[C.sub.3] in I-w fientive verbs.

The formation of the I-w verbs in Biblical Hebrew is in close agreement with the Classical Arabic pattern. Here too there is a distinction between two basic configurations, corresponding to the Arabic fientive and stative types. The prefixed stem of the stative type takes the basic shape yiCaC- (< yi-yCaC- < yi-wCaC-, i.e., with the first redical retained, like Arabic ya-wbar-u) - e.g., yisan 'he sleeps' (= Arabic ya-wsan-u), wat-tiqad 'and it burned' - showing evidence of the earlier preradical vowel i expected on the basis of Barth's principle (Barth 1894; see III.3. below). The fientive type shows the same predilection for a thematic i-vocalism that Arabic does, as well as the same loss of the first radical - perfective yasab 'he sat' (< wavab-) vs. imperfective yeseb (< yi-vib-),(4) imperative seb (< vib); as in Arabic, there are examples of verbs which vacillate between the two patterns (e.g., imperfective yeqar (yeqar) 'he is valuable' following the fientive pattern, but waw-consecutive way-yiqar with the stative pattern).(5)

The structure of the fientive I-w class in Hebrew may thus be traced back to an earlier pattern comparable to that of Classical Arabic (yeseb < yi-sib- < ya-vib-, like Arabic ya-vib-u). To the extent that its script allows us to determine, Ugaritic appears to agree with this reconstruction - cf. a-bl 'I bring', y-rd 'he goes down', t-ld-n 'they (du.) bore', rd 'go down (imperative)' (Gordon 1965, 85-86; Segert 1984, 70-71). Phoenician also appears to agree in showing the absence of the first radical, e.g., y-sb (Segert 1976, 147). The first radical is also absent in Aramaic - cf. Old Aramaic (Sefire III) y-sb, imper. sb-w, Biblical Aramaic yi-ttib, Palestinian Jewish Aramaic yi-tteb. In Syriac a reflex of the fientive pattern survives in ne-tteb 'he sits' (with secondary gemination of the second radical, seen also in the Biblical and Palestinian Jewish Aramaic forms) and in imperatives such as teb 'sit' and hab 'give', while elsewhere the stative-stem pattern (< yiCaC- < yiwCaC-) has expanded to provide a new general I-w model, cf. ni( )lad 'he begets', ni( )rat 'he inherits', spelled with an extraneous aleph on the model of the I- class (Brockelmann 1981, 92-94).

The two types of I-w verbs are also clearly attested in Geez (Dillman 1907, 180-81; Lambdin 1978, 191-92), although some restructuring has evidently also taken place in this language. The jussive and imperative stems show the familiar loss of the radical w in many instances (jussive ye-lad, imperative lad = Arabic ya-lid, lid; jussive ye-rad, imperative rad = Arabic ya-rid, rid), although the presence of the thematic vowel a rather than e < *i is unexpected. At the same time, the survival of the radical w, as injussive ye-wgar, imperative wegar (alongside ye-gar, gar), is not rare. As in the w-less forms, it is surprising to note that the theme-vowel is the opposite of what we might expect if we compare the Geez forms retaining w with the stative-type of the other West Semitic languages (yi-w[C.sub.2]a[C.sub.3]-) - i.e., yerad rather than yered (< yi-rid-), yewger rather than yewgar (< yi-wgar-). It is quite likely that the distinction between Geez ye-gar and ye-wger results from the general tendency for irregular verbs to drift toward the model of the regular verbs (leading to the appearance of past wagar-a / juss. yewger / pres. ye-wagger < wagar-a / ye-ger / ye-wagger, on the analogy of regular verbs such as nagar-a / yenger / ye-nagger) and therefore has nothing to do with the distinction between fientive ya-vib-u and stative ya-wbar-u in the other West Semitic languages.(6) The other Southwest Semitic languages seem to support the Arabic model - cf. the Epigraphic South Arabian present y-z corresponding to past wz (Hofner 1943, 94), and the Jibbali (Sheri) subjunctive y-red (corresponding to past ?? 'he went down for water') (Johnstone 1981, xviii).

The I-w verbs of the West Semitic languages, in short, attest to an opposition between fientive ya-[C.sub.2]i[C.sub.3]- (with imperative [C.sub.2]i[C.sub.3]-) and stative yi-w[C.sub.2]a[C.sub.3]-. Such an opposition, we have noted above, defies a simple phonological explanation, in that the fientive form ya-[C.sub.2]i[C.sub.3]- cannot readily be derived from the expected ya-w[C.sub.3]V[C.sub.3]- by any phonological process yet identified. It has been suggested (Brockelmann 1908, 596-97; Bauer and Leander 1965, 378-79) that these forms owe their shape to a loss of the initial syllable in the imperative stem (i.e., wivib- < vib-) and a subsequent restructuring of the present stem form on the basis of the imperative (ya-wvib- < ya-vib- on the analogy of vib-). There is no support elsewhere in the Semitic languages, however, for a loss of initial wi-, rendering a putative change of this sort ad hoc. Moreover, it remains difficult to explain the absence of the first radical in Arabic, where the imperative stem would presumably have taken the form iwvib- (which would have gone to ivib-, like ibar- < iwbar-) paralleling idrib, rather than the form witvib- indicated by the other Semitic languages.

Other analyses, in contrast, have preferred to take the truncated form of the stem (vib-) to be the original shape, and the radical w- of the past stem (wavab-) to be a prefixed element by which what was originally a biradical stem has been incorporated into the triradical model of Semitic morphology. For example, Ahrens observes:

... Wenn nun Brockelmann ... behauptet, der Imper. thib (yon wathaba) habe diese Form aus phonetischen Grunden, indem schon im Ursemitischen von der vorauszusetzenden Form withib die Silbe wi "zur Vermeidung der heterogenen Lautfolge" abgeworfen sei, so darf man an dieser ad hoc aufgestellten Lautregel wohl Zweifel hegen; wir wetden vielmehr, da nicht nur das Hebr., sondern...