Reviewed by Elly van Gelderen, Arizona State University

One of the five volumes derived from the Cambridge encyclopedia of the world’s ancient languages (Woodard 2004), this volume provides an affordable and accessible introduction to The ancient languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia. The four other volumes in this series explore the ancient languages of (i) Europe, (ii) Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Aksum, (iii) Asia and the Americas, and (iv) Asia Minor. Languages are considered ancient if they appear before the fifth century BC. Chapters of this series can easily be used as case studies in a historical linguistics or typology course. Unlike the volume on Asia and the Americas, in which many language families are discussed, this volume presents a nice overview of several ancient Semitic languages.

This book contains eight chapters: a short introduction, five chapters on Northwest Semitic, two on Southern Semitic, and an appendix on Afro-Asiatic. As in other volumes, each chapter includes a description of the name, earliest appearance, and the texts or inscriptions that are left of a particular language or group of languages. These descriptions are very useful. The writing system, phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon of each language are the main focus of each chapter. In this volume, less attention is paid to the writing systems, possibly because they resemble each other and are not quite as spectacular as, for example, the writing systems of Mayan or Olmec.

Ch. 2, by Dennis Pardee, focuses on Ugaritic, an archaic Northwest Semitic language. Its writing system is unique in that it uses cuneiform and ‘it is not unlikely that the cuneiform system is a representation in clay of a linear alphabet’ (7). Pronouns are discussed in relative depth, as is verbal morphology. Example sentences are provided in the section on syntax but are not glossed well. I missed an assessment of what made this language archaic and different from the others.

In Ch. 3 Kyle McCarter provides an interesting discussion of the development of the Hebrew sound system as well as its pronominal and verbal morphology, its loss of case, and its use of construct chains.

Jo Ann Hacket explores Phoenician and Punic in Ch. 4. Phoenician inscriptions occur all over the Mediterranean world. Punic is the dialect of Phoenician found in Carthage, and Punic inscriptions have been found in Northern Africa and Southern Europe. A good discussion of definiteness, demonstrative pronouns, and articles is also included (93–95).

Dennis Pardee’s (very short) sketch of Canaanite dialects appears in Ch. 5. The term Canaanite is used ‘(i) to designate the dialects of Northwest Semitic spoken in the region of Canaan in the second half of the second millennium BC, and (ii) to differentiate the ‘Canaanite’ dialects of the first millennium, primarily Phoenician and Hebrew, from other Northwest Semitic languages […], primarily the Aramaic dialects’ (103). The Canaanite shift (e.g. Proto-Semitic *ā shifts to ō) characterizes this group.

In Ch. 6 Stuart Creason provides a detailed description of Aramaic, which forms the other main branch of Northwest Semitic (with Canaanite), although later in this book (180, 228–29) this classification is reconsidered, and Central Semitic is used for Northwestern as well as Arabic.

Ch. 7, by Norbert Ness and Peter Stein, focuses on Ancient South Arabian. This language is divided into the four dialects of Sabaic, Minaic, Qatabanic, and Hadramitic, which are all written using the (phonetic) Arabian Monumental Script.

Ancient North Arabian, the language of central and northern Arabia and the desert of Syria, is examined in Ch. 8 by M.C.A. MacDonald. Using the form of the definite article (208–09), North Arabian can be divided into Arabic (with ‘al) and Ancient North Arabian (h– or zero).

This volume provides a good introduction to a variety of ancient Semitic languages. Appendix I, by John Huehnergard, is helpful in relating the languages to each other and to the Afro-Asiatic family.

Reference

Woodard, Roger D. 2004. The Cambridge encyclopedia of the world’s ancient languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.