A Bird's-Eye View of Personal Pronouns and Accusative Markers in Ancient Semitic Languages
In this comparative study of ancient Semitic languages, I present data on the development of personal pronouns and accusative markers. My meta-analysis combines what is known about the major representative languages from both East and West Semitic languages in order to focus on three gradual, corres...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
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Published: |
Oxford University Press
[2018]
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In: |
Journal of Semitic studies
Year: 2018, Volume: 63, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-17 |
Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
Summary: | In this comparative study of ancient Semitic languages, I present data on the development of personal pronouns and accusative markers. My meta-analysis combines what is known about the major representative languages from both East and West Semitic languages in order to focus on three gradual, corresponding developments: (1) the erosion of inflected oblique independent personal pronouns; (2) the disappearance of the case-ending system; and (3) the emergence of the independent object marker. A bird's-eye view of the documented evidence on Semitic languages suggests that in West Semitic languages, both the oblique independent personal pronoun and the case-ending system gradually disappeared. In parallel, a set of object markers was introduced into West Semitic. This process will be shown to progress at a different pace for the various languages in this branch, and to be relevant not only to the North-west Semitic branch, but rather to the span of old West Semitic languages. |
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ISSN: | 1477-8556 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of Semitic studies
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jss/fgx034 |