Жалпы Семит Тілінің Қайта Құрылымы

Hypothetical reconstructed proto language

Proto Semitic is the reconstructed proto language common ancestor to the Semitic language family. There is no consensus regarding the location of the Proto Semitic Urheimat: scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant, the Sahara, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, or northern Africa. According to more recent sources nowadays the likeliest place of origin is North Africa. The Semitic language family is considered part of the broader macro family of Afroasiatic languages.

The sounds notated here as "emphatic consonants" occur in nearly all Semitic languages as well as in most other Afroasiatic languages, and they are generally reconstructed as glottalization in Proto Semitic. Thus, *ṭ, for example, represents See below for the fricatives/affricates. In modern Semitic languages, emphatics are variously realized as pharyngealized (Arabic, Aramaic, Tiberian Hebrew (such as ), glottalized (Ethiopian Semitic languages, Modern South Arabian languages, such as ), or as tenuis consonants (Turoyo language of Tur Abdin such as ); Ashkenazi Hebrew and Maltese are exceptions and emphatics merge into plain consonants in various ways under the influence of Indo European languages (Sicilian for Maltese, various languages for Hebrew). An emphatic labial *ṗ occurs in some Semitic languages, but it is unclear whether it was a phoneme in Proto Semitic. The classical Ethiopian Semitic language Geʽez is unique among Semitic languages for contrasting all three of , , and While and occur mostly in loanwords (especially from Greek), there are many other occurrences whose origin is less clear (such as hepʼä 'strike', häppälä 'wash clothes'). According to Hetzron, Hebrew developed an emphatic labial phoneme ṗ to represent unaspirated in Iranian and Greek.

Proto Semitic is reconstructed as having non phonemic stress on the third mora counted from the end of the word, i. e. on the second syllable from the end, if it has the structure CVC or CVː (where C is any consonant and V is any vowel), or on the third syllable from the end, if the second one had the structure CV.

Proto Semitic allowed only syllables of the structures CVC, CVː, or CV. It did not permit word final clusters of two or more consonants, clusters of three or more consonants, hiatus of two or more vowels, or long vowels in closed syllables. Most roots consisted of three consonants. However, it appears that historically the three consonant roots had developed from two consonant ones (this is suggested by evidence from internal as well as external reconstruction). To construct a given grammatical form, certain vowels were inserted between the consonants of the root. There were certain restrictions on the structure of the root: it was impossible to have roots where the first and second consonants were identical, and roots where the first and third consonants were identical were extremely rare.

Like most of its daughter languages, Proto Semitic has one free pronoun set, and case marked bound sets of enclitic pronouns. Genitive case and accusative case are only distinguished in the first person. + Proto Semitic pronouns independentnominative enclitic nominative genitive accusative 1. sg. anā̆/anākū̆ kū̆ ī/ ya nī 2. sg. masc. antā̆ tā̆ kā̆ 2. sg. fem. antī̆ tī̆ kī̆ 3. sg. masc. šua a šū̆ 3. sg. fem. šia at šā̆/ šī̆ 1. du. ? nuyā ? niyā ? nayā ? 2. du. antumā tumā kumā/ kumay 3. du. šumā ā šumā/ šumay 1. pl. niḥnū̆ nū̆ nī̆ nā̆ 2. pl. masc. antum tum kum 2. pl. fem. antin tin kin 3. pl. masc. šum/šumū ū šum 3. pl. fem. šin/šinnā ā šin
For many pronouns, the final vowel is reconstructed with long and short positional variants; this is conventionally indicated by a combined macron and breve on the vowel (e. g. ā̆). The Semitic demonstrative pronouns are usually divided into two series: those showing a relatively close object and those showing a more distant one. Nonetheless, it is very difficult to reconstruct Proto Semitic forms on the basis of the demonstratives of the individual Semitic languages. A series of interrogative pronouns are reconstructed for Proto Semitic: *man ‘who’, *mā ‘what’ and *’ayyu ‘of what kind’ (derived from *’ay ‘where’).

The Proto Semitic language was a language of nominative accusative alignment, which is preserved in most of its descendant languages. The basic word order of Proto Semitic was VSO (verb — subject — direct object), and the modifier usually followed its head. The words ṯawr ‘buffalo’ and ḳarn ‘horn’ are suspected to be borrowings from Proto Indo European Sergei Starostin adduces several dozens of Semito Indo European correspondences, which he considers to be borrowings into Proto Semitic from Proto Anatolian or a disappeared branch of Proto Indo European.

See List of Proto Semitic stems (appendix in Wiktionary).