Shalom & Kol Tuv
Reuven Chaim Klein
Beitar Illit, Israel
Author of: God versus Gods & Lashon HaKodesh
ORCiD | LinkedIN | Google Scholar | Amazon
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Shalom & Kol Tuv
Reuven Chaim Klein
Beitar Illit, Israel
Author of: God versus Gods & Lashon HaKodesh
ORCiD | LinkedIN | Google Scholar | Amazon
I was also interested in this question some time ago. Cannot quickly find the original sources, but I believe it's the other way around: insertion of r in later stages of Aramaic as evidenced by the etymology of כורסא < Akkadian kussu and דרמשק ~ dmśk in Old Aramaic, see also similar strictly r-less forms in Arabic and Amarna and even Egyptian. The conditioning for this phenomenon is not clear though.
On 21/03/2023 14:53, RCK wrote:
I was wondering what you would think of the idea of Hebrew being a (quasi-)non-rhotic language in comparison to Aramaic, as the letter ר is dropped in the Hebrew forms of such Aramaic words as שרביט and כרסא to become the Hebrew words שבט and כסא. Does this make sense? Is there perhaps another explanation for the phenomenon of the disappearing ר? There's tons of words with a disappearing ר like this including דרמשק/דמשק מרכלית/מכלית עריסה/עיסה and זוטא /זוטרא. There are probably more.
Shalom & Kol Tuv
Reuven Chaim Klein
Beitar Illit, Israel
Author of: God versus Gods & Lashon HaKodesh
ORCiD | LinkedIN | Google Scholar | Amazon
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In some of the words you mention the /r/ seems to have developed secondarily by some kind of dissimilation of a geminate. This applies, for example, to כרסא and דרמשק. This dissimilation was somewhat more prevalent in Aramaic than in Hebrew. In some cases an /n/ appears, e.g. madda` > manda`. Both /r/ and /n/ are sonorant consonants.
There are definitely some cases of loss of /r/, although although "disappearing r" is sometimesa case of assimilation, and some r sounds in Aramaic are a result of dissimilation. One case that springs to mind is Aramaix יימא, אימא etc for אמר ...
But I think to call it non-rhotic, even quasi, is to overstate it a bit. You'd usually expect some regular predictable r loss for that....
Still, it's a nice point, especially if r was pronounced sometimes as a type of uvular approximant even in ancient times, in some contexts... Geoffrey Kahn's presents evidence of that from alKirkesani....I would think that approximants would be less phonetically stable that a tapped r.....
I would say that the issues with the resh are an inner Aramaic development, and not related to proto-West Semitic. In other words, Hebrew without the resh in these forms is more original. We have good early comparative linguistic forms in the Amarna letters as well as early northwest Semitic inscriptions. So, the resh didn’t disappear, it emerged. But it’s always interesting to explore different ideas.
{RCK: Interesting. And what would you say would cause the REISH to randomly appear in certain words?} Dissimulation. Aramaic has a number of other features like the prosthetic aleph, which are not derived from Proto-West Semitic. Hebrew is more original. Also, Aramaic is not a Canaanite language, so it has linguistic developments distinct from the Canaanite branch (Hebrew, Phoenician, Moabite, etc).
Your question is intriguing, but I believe that reaching a definite conclusion is not possible due to the complexity of the situation when considering other Semitic languages. Firstly, it should be noted that the Hebrew word כסא contains a dagesh in the ס, which indicates its pronunciation as "kisse". This could be a sign of the assimilation of the rhotic to the preceding /s/. However, when examining cognates in other Semitic languages, we find that the Akkadian equivalent is "kussûm", while the Arabic equivalent is "kursiyy". It is known that the Arabic word is a loan word from Aramaic, and it is possible that the Hebrew word is also derived from Akkadian. Nevertheless, it remains uncertain whether the original word contained a rhotic that was later assimilated, or if it contained a geminated consonant that later dissimilated to /rs/. The latter process has been observed in a few cases in Aramaic, typically with /n/, which is also a liquid consonant. An example of this is "arnona", which is derived from Latin "annona".
With regards to the word שבט, its Akkadian equivalent is "šabbiṭum", its Geez equivalent is "səbṭ", and its Arabic equivalent is "sibṭ". Most of the cognates appear to lack the rhotic, and there is even a secondary form in Aramaic, שבטא.
Lastly, a similar process can be observed with the word דמשק. The word contains a dagesh in the מ, indicating its pronunciation as "dammeseq". In old Aramaic inscriptions, the word is written similarly as דמסק, but in later dialects, we find דרמשק. This suggests that some sort of dissimilation process may be occurring.
Shalom & Kol Tuv
Reuven Chaim Klein
Beitar Illit, Israel
Author of: God versus Gods & Lashon HaKodesh
ORCiD | LinkedIN | Google Scholar | Amazon