On the Afel Stem in Western Neo-Aramaic

Steven E. Fassberg

1. Introduction

The historical reconstruction of Aramaic from its earliest attestations to the modern-day dialects can, at times, be difficult. For example, how far back was the dialectal split between the eastern and western branches of Aramaic?1 The reconstruction at other times, however, can be relatively straightforward. For instance, a basically linear development is discernible in the Aramaic of Syria-Palestine. One begins with the Middle Aramaic attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls, moves on to the Late Aramaic corpora of Jewish Palestinian, Christian Palestinian and Samaritan Aramaic, and concludes with Western Neo-Aramaic.2

The study of Western Neo-Aramaic began in 1863 with the publication by Jules Ferrette (1863) of transcriptions of a text and vocabulary items from Maʿlula. Since then, the dialect of Maʿlula has been fortunate that outstanding Semitists have turned their attention to it. The greatest of Semitists, Theodor Nöldeke, commented on Ferrette’s material already in 1867, and contributed more insights in an article from 1917–1918 following Gotthelf Bergsträsser’s publication of the texts (1915) collected by Eugen Prym and Albert Socin. Many scholars have investigated Western Neo-Aramaic, but three in particular have shaped the field: Bergsträsser with the publication of texts (1915; 1919–1920), a glossary (1921), and a short grammatical description (1928, 80–9), Anton Spitaler with a grammar (1938) and texts (1957), and especially Werner Arnold with an unparalleled wealth of oral texts (1989; 19901; 19911; 19912) as well as a synchronic grammar (19902), which includes not only Maʿlula, but also the two other Western Neo-Aramaic dialects spoken in the nearby villages of Baxʿa and Jubbʿadin. Moreover, Arnold has recently published a comprehensive dictionary of the three villages (2019). To date the comparative notes in Spitaler’s grammar remain the fullest historical treatment of Maʿlula. Since the publication of that grammar, however, thanks to the intensive investigation into the literary dialects of Late Western Aramaic and the rich material from Maʿlula, Baxʿa, and Jubbʿadin that Arnold has presented, scholars now have the wherewithal to investigate further the links between older Western Aramaic and Western Neo-Aramaic. A detailed diachronic description of the development of Western Late Aramaic into Western Neo-Aramaic remains a desideratum.

2. Afel

In general, the verbal system of Western Neo-Aramaic has diverged less from earlier Aramaic than have the verbal systems of other varieties of Neo-Aramaic. The morphosyntax of Maʿlula, Baxʿa, and Jubbʿadin is, on the whole, easily derived from older Western Neo-Aramaic forms,3 though it shares innovations paralleled in other non-Western varieties of Neo-Aramaic, for example, the tendency of native Aramaic reflexive-passive t-stems to disappear, leaving behind only lexical traces.

I wish to focus on one phenomenon of the verbal system that Spitaler noted in his grammar (1938, §120c) but did not attempt to explain: the presence in Maʿlula of Afel verbs that in older Aramaic are inflected in Peal, and in Arabic in the 1st form. Spitaler collected a number of such verbs, some of which are frequent in the language. He cited four Aramaic roots: nḏr ‘praise’, rhṭ ‘run’ xwy ‘burn’, ykl (ʾaukel) ‘overpower’. The list of borrowings from Arabic is significantly longer: ʿṣy ‘be stubborn’, ʿzm ‘invite’, bdw ‘begin’, dʿw ‘curse’, ḍll ‘remain’, dwy ‘echo’, ḍžž ‘rumble, roar’, fzz ‘jump up’, ġḍb ‘be angry’, ġrq ‘fall asleep’, ġyb ‘be absent’, hwn ‘be light’, ḥky ‘speak’, ḥll ‘settle’, ḥqq ‘be right’, ḥrf ‘answer’, ḥss ‘notice’, ksb ‘earn’, ndm ‘regret’, nṭṭ ‘leap, spring up’, qdr ‘be able’, ṣʿd ‘rise, ascend’, ṣbr ‘wait’, ṣḥw ‘guard against’, tʿb ‘become tired’, tmm ‘remain’, wṣf ‘prescribe’, xṣṣ ‘concern, affect’, zʿl ‘be angry’, ẓhr ‘show oneself’. Spitaler commented that most of the verbs are intransitive. I think this fact is significant, as I shall try to show below.

Spitaler (1938, §121) wrote of the tendency in Maʿlula for weak verbs to shift from one verbal category to another. This phenomenon is also true for earlier periods of Aramaic. Spitaler mentioned I-ʾ verbs influencing medial II-w/y verbs, and geminates influencing I-n. Of relevance to the discussion is the Afel-looking participle mōmar ‘saying’ from the root ʾmr, whose creation Spitaler (1938, §121, §162b) attributed to a similarity with the II-w/y Afel verbal forms and an imperfect analogy of the type

ōqem (Afel ‘he raised’) : mōqem (Afel ‘he raises’) ::

ʾōmar (Peal ‘he says’) : X

X = mōmar.4

Another germane example given by Spitaler (1938, §171b) is the Afel verb appi ‘he gave’, which is commonly derived from the root yhb ‘gave’ (Bergsträsser, 1928, 84). According to Bergsträsser, a shift such as 3fs *yahbat > *yabbat led to an analogy of the type

xassat (‘she covered’; III-y root) : appat (‘she gave’) ::

xassi (‘he covered’) : X

X= appi.5

In his brief discussion, Spitaler did not include as examples of the shift from Peal to Afel the preterite Peal II-w/y áqam ‘he arose’ and ámet ‘he died’, but I believe that the initial vowels in these forms show an incipient move to Afel, like mōmar and appi mentioned above, and thus are relevant to the discussion at hand.

3. Explanation of the Phenomenon

Why is there a movement of older Aramaic Peal verbs and Arabic 1st stem verbs to Afel in Maʿlula? Is it the result of contact with another language? Is it an internal semantic development in Maʿlula, or can its origins be reconstructed back to an earlier period of Aramaic?

3.1. Contact with Arabic?

Because of the considerable influence of Arabic on Maʿlula and the widescale absorption of Arabic verbs into the vocabulary of Maʿlula, one might be tempted to seek the origins of the phenomenon in the centuries of contact that existed between Aramaic and Arabic in Syria. The mutual influences of the two languages have been described by Arnold and Behnstedt (1993). The authors noted that the Aramaic Afel is extremely productive in Western Neo-Aramaic, but that the Arabic 4th stem has mostly disappeared from the spoken Arabic of the Qalamūn area, and those 4th form verbs that have survived reflect the influence of literary Arabic, e.g., aslam/yislem ‘convert to Islam’ (Arnold and Behnstedt 1993, 57–58). In his description of the Damascene dialect, Heinz Grotzfeld (1965, 27) gave more examples of literary 4th stem forms that appear in the vernacular: ʾazhar ‘bloom’, ʾaḥka ‘speak’, ʾaznab ‘sin’, ʾamkan ‘be able’, ʾaṣbaḥ ‘become’, ʾaxṭa ‘sin’. Arnold and Behnstedt pointed out that sometimes the Aramaic Afel verbs of Arabic etymology are derived not only from 4th form verbs, but also from 1st form verbs and from nouns:

The merger of the 4th and 1st forms in many Neo-Arabic dialects has been attributed to phonetic factors—the aphaeresis of the initial alif in the Perfect (ʾafʿala > fʿal) and Imperative ʾafʿil > fʿel as well as the conditioned neutralisation of u and i, which led to blurring of the distinction between the Imperfect of both forms: yufʿil > yəfʿel.6 A confusion of 1st and 4th forms is known already in Middle Arabic texts, where it is especially common in geminates and other weak verbs.7 In the light of the movement from the 4th form to the 1st form in the Neo-Arabic of the region, it is clear that the Aramaic phenomenon in Maʿlula of the shift of Peal to Afel cannot be attributed to Arabic influence.

3.2. Shift of Peal to Afel in Western Neo-Aramaic

A tendency of Peal verbs to shift to Afel appears to be unknown in the dialects of NENA, Central Neo-Aramaic, and Mandaic,8 but does occur in all three Western Neo-Aramaic dialects. Because we possess more oral texts from Maʿlula than from Baxʿa or Jubbʿadin, it is not surprising that there are more examples from Maʿlula than from the other two dialects.

Is the movement from Peal to Afel an internal semantic development in Maʿlula? In different Semitic languages the C-stem is sometimes intransitive with an ingressive nuance, i.e., entering into a state or condition, e.g., Hebrew הֶאֱדִים ‘become red’, הִלְבִּין ‘become white’, Syriac ܐܰܓܪܶܒ ‘become leprous’, ܐܰܢܗܰܪ ‘begin to shine’ and Arabic ʾaqbala ‘approach’, ʾaslama ‘become a Muslim’.9 A weakening of ingressivity seems to have led on occasion to a blurring of the difference between verbs that occur in both the G and C stems, and this can be detected, for instance, in Syriac ܗܦܰܟ and ܐܰܗܦܷܟ ‘turn around’, and ܟܬܰܒ and ܐܰܟܬܶܒ ‘write’.10 The Hebrew of the Second Temple period—Late Biblical Hebrew, the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Rabbinic Hebrew—also testifies to the merger of Qal and Hifil. Some transitive and intransitive Qal verbs move to Hifil, e.g.,

בָּזָה ‘despise’ > הִבְזָה,

גָּדֵל ‘grow’ > הִגְדִּיל,

לָעַג ‘mock’ > הִלְעִיג.11

In the case of a weak verb like יָשִׂים ‘he will place’, the morphological ambiguity—it can be parsed as Qal or Hifil—led to a reinterpretation of the Classical Biblical Hebrew Qal in Late Biblical Hebrew as a Hifil and the subsequent creation of a passive Hufal. Yet, despite the semantic overlapping of G and C in some Semitic languages, I wonder if more is at play in Maʿlula, and a look at earlier Western Aramaic may provide the key.

3.3. Shift of Peal to Afel in Earlier Western Aramaic

I propose that the origin of the shift to Afel lies in the Late Western Aramaic dialects of Jewish Palestinian, Christian Palestinian, and Samaritan Aramaic. The latter two dialects evidence a general retraction of stress, which led to an increase in prosthetic vowels.12 Earlier Aramaic corpora have sporadic anaptyctic vowels before consonantal clusters involving sibilants and dentals, however, the helping vowel is not related to a retraction of stress, e.g., Biblical Aramaic אֶדְרָע ‘arm’, אִשְׁתִּיו ‘they drank’, Syriacܐܶܫܟܰܚ ‘he found’. In the three dialects of Late Aramaic from Syria-Palestine the number of examples with prosthetic vowels grows considerably. In Christian Palestinian and Samaritan Aramaic the prosthetic vowel sometimes occurs before the word-initial cluster and other times breaks up the cluster:13

The creation of prosthetic vowels in Peal stems was probably more extensive in Late Aramaic speech than in the written texts that have survived. The assimilation of the t of t-stems in verbs in these dialects (e.g., Jewish Palestinian אשכח < אשתכח ‘‘he was found’; Fassberg 2012, 30) may also have been interpreted by speakers as Peal intransitive forms with prosthesis. From the vocalisation of Jewish Palestinian, the Samaritan oral tradition, and the use of matres lectionis in Christian Palestinian Aramaic, one sees that there were three prosthetic vowels i, ə, and a; the first two appeared more frequently before sibilants.

I would like to suggest that it was the retraction of stress and the subsequent creation of initial epenthetic vowels, a phenomenon that began in Late Western Aramaic, which led in Western Neo-Aramaic to the reinterpretation of Peal verbs as Afel forms. Maʿlula and Jubbʿadin preserve verbs of the *qatila type, i.e., intransitive verbs that have a reflex of e in the base of the verb in the perfect: iḏmex ‘he slept’, išmeʿ ‘he heard’, isleq ‘he ascended’.14 The retraction of the stress and the creation of a prosthetic vowel may have led speakers to associate Peal intransitive verbs of the shape Vqtel with Afel preterite forms. I surmise that this process began with intransitive verbs and then was extended to transitive verbs of the iqtal type. I think that indirect corroboration for this reconstruction can be found in the fact that many of the verbs which show up in Afel in Maʿlula are indeed intransitive, as noted by Spitaler. Additional pressure for the reinterpretation of Peal forms as Afel would have come from the II-w/y Peal verbs in which the retraction of stress created Afel-looking forms, e.g.

áqam ‘he/they arose’ vs. older Aramaic qām

ámet ‘he died’ vs. older mīṯ

Although Arabic dialects of the region cannot be responsible for this development, it is curious that the creation of prosthetic vowels before word-initial consonantal clusters in *qatila verbs can be found in an Arabic dialect in Syria. As pointed out to me by Simon Hopkins, Palmyrene Arabic shows the curious form ʾönzel ‘he descended’, which developed from nazila > nizil > ʾönzel.15 Unfortunately, Aramaic inscriptions from the same area but from a much earlier period and written in Palmyrene Aramaic give no written indication of prosthesis and a retraction of stress.

4. Conclusion

The shift of Peal verbs to Afel in Western Neo-Aramaic dialects may have begun in an earlier period of Western Aramaic, probably Late Western Aramaic, in which there was a widespread retraction of stress and subsequent creation of prosthetic vowels that resolved word-initial consonantal clusters. This situation might have led in Proto-Western Neo-Aramaic to the reinterpretation of Peal Vqtel (< *qatila) forms as Afel forms. This reanalysis would have been reinforced by the overlap between Peal and Afel verbs in expressing state and condition. Peal and Afel did not merge completely in Maʿlula, but a trend, which may have begun much earlier in Western Aramaic, increased significantly in Western Neo-Aramaic.

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