Semitic evidence on some problems of Indo-European prehistory

Abstract

Correspondences in vocabulary and morphology between early IE and Semitic languages reveal some far-reaching prehistoric contacts, whether or not traceable to a remote common language older than proto-IE and proto-Semitic (or the shadowy proto-Afro-Asiatic). In phonology the Germanic cognates are surprisingly close to the Semitic; for example,

(a) The glottal stop shared by Semitic and Germanic languages, as in Arabic , Hebrew {, }: German []Erde, Old English , ‘earth’.

(b) At least one other laryngeal, evinced in IE by an initial vowel other than e-, as in Old High German owl ‘she-lambs’ : ‘young animal’.

(c) The voiceless fricative in Old Norse þiôrr : Arabic {þawrun} ‘bull’ (nominative), whereas otherwise Greek is closer especially in the accusative case-form {taûron} : Arabic {þawran}.

(d) The voiced stop in the Greek noun *{drépos} ‘something plucked’ (attested indirectly in the rare adjective {neodrepeîs} ‘newly plucked’}: Hebrew ‘something mangled’—in the common source the initial consonant was probably glottalic.