The Arabic Language

ṯalāṯa
, with Akkadian 
šalāšum
; Hebrew 
šalōš
; Syriac 
tǝlāt
; Geʿez 
šalās
). South Arabian also had interdentals in its older stage, and in Old Akkadian 
and Ugaritic there are still traces of the interdentals.
In the series of the velars (/ḫ/, /ġ/) and the pharyngals (/ḥ/, /ʿ/), only Arabic 
and Epigraphic South Arabian have the full set. In most other Semitic languages, 
the voiceless members of both pairs, /ḫ/ and /ḥ/, have merged into /ḥ/, and the 
voiced members, /ġ/ and /ʿ/, into /ʿ/ (e.g., cf. Arabic 
ġarb
‘sunset’/
ʿayn
‘eye’, with 
Hebrew 
ʿereb
‘evening’/
ʿayin
‘eye’; Arabic 
ʾaḫ
‘brother’/
ʾaḥad
‘one’, with Hebrew 
ʾāḥ
/
ʾeḥād
). In Ugaritic, both sets are distinguished in writing. In Akkadian, only 
/ḫ/ appears, whereas the other velars and pharyngals have merged into /ʾ/ (e.g., 
ʾerēbum
‘to enter’, 
ʾešrum
‘ten’, cf. Arabic 
ġarb
/
ʿašr
), but there are indications that 
originally this language, too, contained all four phonemes.
In morphology, Arabic has a full nominal declension, with three case endings: 
-u
(nominative), 
-i
(genitive), 
-a
(accusative). Old Akkadian has the same declensional 
endings, but in the later stages of the language (Neo-Babylonian, Neo-Assyrian) 
the endings are often confused and finally disappear completely. In the older 
North-west Semitic languages, such as Ugaritic, the declensional endings are still 
found, but in the later languages of this group, such as Hebrew, they have disap
-
peared. In Epigraphic South Arabian there is no declension, but certain ortho
-
graphic peculiarities seem to point to the original existence of such a system. In 
Ethiopic there is one oblique ending 
-a
, which probably goes back to an original 
accusative ending.
There are also features in Arabic that as far as we know were never present 
in any of the other Semitic languages and must, therefore, be innovations that 
took place independently within Arabic. In morphology, the use of the ending 
-n
(nunation) as a marker of indefiniteness is not matched by any of the other 
Semitic languages. The 
-m 
ending (mimation) in Akkadian nouns does not denote 

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Arabic as a Semitic Language 
23
indefiniteness, and in South Arabian 
-m 
may have served as an absolutive marker, 
contrasting with 
-n 
as a marker of definiteness. We have seen above that the use 
of a definite article is a feature shared by Arabic, Canaanite and Aramaic. But 
Arabic stands alone in the choice of the element 
ʾl-
for this article instead of 
h-
, as 
in North Arabic. In the 
fāʿala
form of the verb that Arabic shares with the South 
Semitic languages, it alone has developed an internal passive 
fūʿila
.
In the phonemic inventory of Arabic (see Table 2.1), the following six features 
may be mentioned, in addition to the presence of the sets of interdentals, velars 
and pharyngals that are often identified as part of the common stock of the 
Semitic languages.
First, a characteristic feature of the Semitic languages is the presence of 
so-called emphatic consonants. In Arabic, these are articulated by a process of 
velarisation or pharyngalisation: the tip of the tongue is lowered, the root of the 
tongue is raised towards the soft palate, and in the process the timbre of the neigh
-
bouring vowels is shifted towards a central-back realisation (see below, Chapter 6, 
p. 86). The velarised consonants in Arabic correspond to glottalised consonants 
(consonants accompanied by a glottal stop) in the Ethiopian Semitic languages. 
This correspondence has led to some speculation as to the original character of 
the emphatic consonants in proto-Semitic. According to some scholars, it is easier 
to imagine a shift from glottalised to velarised consonants than vice versa, so 
that the velarised realisation in Arabic is to be regarded as a secondary develop
-
ment. Within the comparativist paradigm, it is usually assumed that originally 
the Semitic languages had five emphatic consonants,