By Giorgio Banti
Excerpt:
An Ancient South Arabian (ASA) loanword in NS was identified by Cerulli (1959: 119), i.e., NS addôon m. ‘slave’. But a systematic study of the contacts between ASA, Himyaritic, and NS has not been done yet. Nevertheless, a few possible ASA (or Himyaritic) loanwords can be identified in NS.
NS addôon m. and addóon f. ‘slave’ (pl. addoomó m.) has -n < -m in syllable coda, a regular development in NS (cf. § 1.) Cerulli (1959: 119) connected it with Sabaic ’dm ‘servants, vassals, religious servants’. This particular semantic development of the well-known Semitic root ’DM still survives in Modern Yemeni Ar. ’awādim ‘domestics’ (Ricks 1989: 5). Notice that -oo- is here probably from *-a- or *-ā-, a development that took place in the donor language, not in NS. Modern South Arabian (MSA) languages have several instances of accented *-āɹ- > -ōɹ- (> -ūɹ-).
NS gêel m. ‘camel’ has -ee- < -aa-, that is still preserved, e.g., in NS compounds like haruub-gâal m. ‘vessel for milking camels’ or daba-ggáalle m. ‘ground squirrel’ (lit. ‘having a camel tail’), etc. East Cushitic *gaala ‘camel’ is from Semitic *gamal- ‘id.’ and the most likely intermediary has been a language spoken in Southern Arabia when camels were introduced to the eastern Horn ca. 2000 years ago, as argued in Banti (2000: 49 f.). Gml ‘camel’ is well attested in Sabaic. However, the loss of -m- is not regular in ASA, nor in NS or any known East Cushitic language, and points to a different language: loss of -m- between vowels occurs several times in Southern Ethiosemitic and in MSA.
Link to paper
Excerpt:
An Ancient South Arabian (ASA) loanword in NS was identified by Cerulli (1959: 119), i.e., NS addôon m. ‘slave’. But a systematic study of the contacts between ASA, Himyaritic, and NS has not been done yet. Nevertheless, a few possible ASA (or Himyaritic) loanwords can be identified in NS.
NS addôon m. and addóon f. ‘slave’ (pl. addoomó m.) has -n < -m in syllable coda, a regular development in NS (cf. § 1.) Cerulli (1959: 119) connected it with Sabaic ’dm ‘servants, vassals, religious servants’. This particular semantic development of the well-known Semitic root ’DM still survives in Modern Yemeni Ar. ’awādim ‘domestics’ (Ricks 1989: 5). Notice that -oo- is here probably from *-a- or *-ā-, a development that took place in the donor language, not in NS. Modern South Arabian (MSA) languages have several instances of accented *-āɹ- > -ōɹ- (> -ūɹ-).
NS gêel m. ‘camel’ has -ee- < -aa-, that is still preserved, e.g., in NS compounds like haruub-gâal m. ‘vessel for milking camels’ or daba-ggáalle m. ‘ground squirrel’ (lit. ‘having a camel tail’), etc. East Cushitic *gaala ‘camel’ is from Semitic *gamal- ‘id.’ and the most likely intermediary has been a language spoken in Southern Arabia when camels were introduced to the eastern Horn ca. 2000 years ago, as argued in Banti (2000: 49 f.). Gml ‘camel’ is well attested in Sabaic. However, the loss of -m- is not regular in ASA, nor in NS or any known East Cushitic language, and points to a different language: loss of -m- between vowels occurs several times in Southern Ethiosemitic and in MSA.
Link to paper
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