User:SomeGuyWhoRandomlyEdits/East Semitic languages

The East Semitic languages are one of three divisions of the Semitic languages. The East Semitic group is attested by three distinct languages, Akkadian, Eblaite and possibly Kishite, all of which have been long extinct. They were influenced by the non-Semitic Sumerian language and adopted cuneiform writing.

East Semitic languages stand apart from other Semitic languages, which are traditionally called West Semitic, in a number of respects. Historically, it is believed that the linguistic situation came about as speakers of East Semitic languages wandered further east, settling in Mesopotamia during the 3rd millennium BC, as attested by Akkadian texts from this period. By the early 2nd millennium BC, East Semitic languages, in particular Akkadian, had come to dominate the region.

Phonology

Modern understanding of the phonology of East Semitic languages can be derived only from careful study of written texts and comparison with the reconstructed Proto-Semitic. Most striking is the reduction of the inventory of back consonants, the velar and pharyngeal fricatives, as well as glottals. Akkadian preserves *ḫ and (partly) *ḥ only as a single phoneme transcribed ḫ and usually reconstructed as a voiceless velar or uvular fricative. All of the sounds *ʾ, *h, *ʿ, *ġ have been lost. Their elision appears to give rise to the presence of an e vowel where it is not found in other Semitic languages (for example, Akk. bēl 'master' < PS. *ba‘al). It also appears that the series of interdental fricatives became sibilants (for example, Akk. šalšu 'three' < PS. *ṯalaṯ). However, the exact phonological makeup of the languages is not fully known, and the absence of features may have been the result of the inadequacies of Sumerian orthography to describe the sounds of Semitic languages, rather than their real absence.

The word order in East Semitic may also have been influenced by Sumerian by being subject–object–verb, rather than the West Semitic verb–subject–object.

References

Sources

Bibliography

• Edwards, I.; Gadd, C.; Hammond, N. (1970). "II". Early history of the Middle East. The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. I (revised ed.). London; New York: CUP (published 1902–2005). ISBN 9780521070515. Retrieved 2021-04-28.
• Foster, B.; Foster, K. (2009). Civilizations of Ancient Iraq. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691137223. Retrieved 2021-05-28.
• Hansen, D.; Ehrenberg, E. (2002). Leaving No Stones Unturned: Essays on the Ancient Near East and Egypt in Honor of Donald P. Hansen. ISBN 9781575060552. Retrieved 2021-04-28.
• Jacobsen, T. (1939a). Sumerian King List (PDF) (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Oriental Institute (published 1939–1973). ISBN 978-0226622736. Archived from the original on 2015-04-20. Retrieved 2021-05-23.
• Katz, D. (1993). Gilgamesh and Akka (1st ed.). Groningen, the Netherlands: STYX Publications. ISBN 9789072371676.
• Hasselbach, R. (2005). Sargonic Akkadian: A Historical and Comparative Study of the Syllabic Texts. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. ISBN 9783447051729. Retrieved 2021-04-28.
• Maier, J. (2008-05-01). Gilgamesh: A Reader. University of Michigan: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. ISBN 9780865163393.
• Ristvet, L. (2014). Ritual, Performance, and Politics in the Ancient Near East. ISBN 9781107065215.
• Sommerfeld, Walter (2021). Vita, Juan-Pablo (ed.). The "Kish Civilization". Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East. Vol. 1. BRILL. pp. 545–547. ISBN 9789004445215. Retrieved 23 February 2022. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
• Van De Mieroop, Marc (2002). Erica Ehrenberg (ed.). In Search of Prestige: Foreign Contacts and the Rise of an Elite in Early Dynastic Babylonia. p. 125-137 [133]. ISBN 9781575060552. Retrieved 23 February 2022. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
• Wyatt, L. (2010-01-16). Approaching Chaos: Could an Ancient Archetype Save C21st Civilization?. ISBN 9781846942556.
• Zadok, R.; Zadok, A. (1988). The Pre-Hellenistic Israelite Anthroponymy and Prosopography. Uitgeverij Peeters.

Journals

• Hallo, W. (1963). "Beginning and End of the Sumerian King List in the Nippur Recension". Journal of Cuneiform Studies. 17 (2). doi:10.2307/1359064. Retrieved 2021-04-28.
• Kitchen, A.; Ehret, C.; Assefa, S.; Mulligan, C.J. (2009). "Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Semitic languages identifies an Early Bronze Age origin of Semitic in the Near East". Proc Biol Sci. 276 (1668): 2703–10. doi:10.1098/rspb.2009.0408. PMC 2839953. PMID 19403539.

External links

• Jacobsen, T. (1939b) [c. 2025–165 BC]. Zólyomi, G.; Black, J.; Robson, E.; Cunningham, G.; Ebeling, J. (eds.). "Sumerian King List". ETCSL. Translated by Glassner, J.; Römer, W.; Zólyomi, G. (revised ed.). United Kingdom: Oxford. Retrieved 2021-05-23.

Further reading

Geography

Language

• Black, Jeremy Allen; Baines, John Robert; Dahl, Jacob L.; Van De Mieroop, Marc. Cunningham, Graham; Ebeling, Jarle; Flückiger-Hawker, Esther; Robson, Eleanor; Taylor, Jon; Zólyomi, Gábor (eds.). "ETCSL: The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature". Faculty of Oriental Studies (revised ed.). United Kingdom. Retrieved 2022-09-23. The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL), a project of the University of Oxford, comprises a selection of nearly 400 literary compositions recorded on sources which come from ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and date to the late third and early second millennia BCE.
• Renn, Jürgen; Dahl, Jacob L.; Lafont, Bertrand; Pagé-Perron, Émilie (2022) [1998]. "CDLI: Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative" (published 1998–2022). Retrieved 2022-09-23. Images presented online by the research project Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) are for the non-commercial use of students, scholars, and the public. Support for the project has been generously provided by the Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Institute of Museum and Library Services (ILMS), and by the Max Planck Society (MPS), Oxford and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); network services are from UCLA's Center for Digital Humanities.
• Sjöberg, Åke Waldemar; Leichty, Erle; Tinney, Steve (2022) [2003]. "PSD: The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary" (published 2003–2022). Retrieved 2022-09-23. The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project (PSD) is carried out in the Babylonian Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology. It is funded by the NEH and private contributions. [They] work with several other projects in the development of tools and corpora. [Two] of these have useful websites: the CDLI and the ETCSL.