The imperative forms of Proto-Semitic and a new perspective on Barth's Law.(Report)

1. INTRODUCTION

Over a century ago Jakob Barth suggested, (1) in what has come to be known as Barth's Law, that the quality of the vowel following the consonantal pronominal prefix in the G-stem depends on the thematic vowel of the verbal base, i.e., a dissimilarity between the two vowels. Thus, the assumed Proto-Semitic [henceforth: PS] forms are: *ya-qtul, *ya-qtil and *yi-qtal. Since that time, this law has been confirmed from various facts in the various branches of the Semitic languages.

In this paper I would like to propose a new perspective on this law, and to suggest that this law is in fact connected to another phenomenon. Accordingly, it is not an independent law but rather a reflection of the process through which the preformative conjugation originates, and the distribution of the vowels can be explained accordingly. This hypothesis can be described as synchronic rules or as diachronic changes; for the sake of clarity I will use the historical linguistic terminology.

In order to support this theory I propose the following three hypotheses, which represent three stages in the postulated development:

A. In PS there was a variety of imperative forms. Among them--if this was not indeed the case for all--were three patterns in which the first and second vowels were not the same: qatil, qatul, and qital.

B. The prefix conjugation is a result of the merging of the prefixes with the basic verbal form, which is the [empty set]-marked form, also used for the imperative mood.

C. The vowel of the prefixes was similar to the original first vowel of these verbal forms, and later the first vowel of the basic form of the verb was reduced to zero.