Thread by @bnuyaminim

Time for some #Semitic geekery concerning 'hollow verbs'. These are verbs which have a vowel (usually long) where strong verbs have their second radical consonant, like #Arabic qām-a 'he stood up', ya-qūm-u 'he will stand up', #Hebrew qām, yā-qūm (same meanings). 1/9

It's controversial whether these hollow verbs already had this shape in Proto-Semitic. The alternative is that they originally had the consonant *w or *y as their second radical, but that this dropped out in various languages, causing vowel contraction. 2/9

I think the forms like ya-qūm- are Proto-Semitic, where they developed from even earlier forms like ya-qwum-. But because other forms (like Arabic and Hebrew qām-) show irregular correspondences between different languages, Proto-Semitic retained a consonant here IMO. 3/9

The first and second person forms actually show that Arabic and Hebrew go back to different patterns here: Arabic qum-ta 'you (m.sg.) stood up' < *qawum-ta vs. Hebrew qam-tā < *qawam-ta. For details, see: 4/9 academia.edu/31406146/The_H…

Important evidence for this reconstruction comes from #Geez (Classical #Ethiopic). This inflects most verbs of this type like qōm-a, qōm-ka, etc, which can't go back to Proto-Semitic *qām-. Instead, it reflects *qawum-, like Arabic. So confirmation for a PS consonant *w here. 5/9

One strange thing is that Arabic and Geez mainly reflect forms with *i or *u in the stem (like *qawum-a 'he stood up', *śayim-a 'he placed'), while most of the Hebrew and Aramaic forms reflect *a in the stem, like *qawam-a > qām, *śayam-a > śām 'he placed'. 6/9

Forms with *i and *u do occur, like *mawit-a > Hebrew mēṯ 'he died', *bawuθ-a > bōš 'he was ashamed', but they're marginal. It's uncomfortable that the most common Arabic and Geez type is nearly absent from Hebrew and Aramaic, and vice versa. 7/9

Now I just noticed that Geez has a verb that preserves a consonantal w in these forms: śawʕ-a 'he sacrificed', śawāʕ-ka 'you (msg) sacrificed', etc. This regularly reflects a stem *śawaʕ-: *a before gutturals was reduced in open syllables but lowered to ā in closed syllables. 8/9

So Hebrew and Geez both reflect verbs with all three vowel qualities in the stem:

Hebrew qām < *qawam-a vs. mēṯ *mawit-a vs. bōš < *bawuθ-a;

Geez śawʕ-a < *śawaʕ-a vs. śēm-a < *śayim-a vs. qōm-a < *qawum-a.

What a relief! 😅 9/9