Crazy #Syriac word of the day, from our class reading yesterday: ܚܙܐܘܝܗܝ ḥzauy 'they saw him' (transcriptions again reflect West Syriac pronunciation). More letters in Syriac than in transcription! I wrote about the redundant suffix two weeks ago: 1/10
https://twitter.com/bnuyaminim/status/1455915480208838665?s=20
The III-weak plural ending ܘ- -aw as in ܚܙܘ ḥzaw 'they saw' turns into -au- before suffixes, written -ܐܘ- -ʔw- with an extra alaph to spell the hiatus (two vowels in a row). At least, this is the traditional explanation; forms like *ḥzaw-y turning to ḥzauy. 2/10
In 2010, Aaron Butts questioned this development in an article on the adverbial ending ܐܝܬ- -oiṯ, which shows the same change if it goes back to *-āyt (as seems most likely): 3/10 academia.edu/1432991/The_Et…
Butts objects to Brockelmann's classic account described above: "As is well known, Syriac verbal forms with pronominal object suffixes are usually the result of regular historical changes from Proto-Semitic and are not due to the secondary addition of a suffix to a verb." 4/10
As an example, he cites ܩܛܠܢܝ qaṭlan 'he killed me', which is straight from Proto-Northwest-Semitic *qaṭala-nī, not formed by just adding a suffix to the Syriac base form, ܩܛܠ qṭal. That would have given something like **qṭal-n or **qṭal-an. 5/10
However, this transparently is what happened with some other suffixes: ܩܛܠܗ qaṭle 'he killed him', ܩܛܠܗ̇ qaṭlo 'he killed her', ܩܛܠܟ qaṭloḵ 'he killed you (m.sg.)', ܩܛܠܟܝ qaṭleḵ 'he killed you (f.sg.)' all just add the default form of the suffix. 6/10
True, these suffixes have not been attached to the Syriac base form, but to a Proto-Aramaic base *qaṭál. Contrast PNWS *qaṭala; that should have given forms like **qaṭla for both third person forms and **qaṭlaḵ for both second person forms. 7/10
'They saw' in Proto-Aramaic was already *ḥazaw, not the PNWS *ḥazayū Butts needs for his development: *ḥazayū-hī > *ḥazaʔū-hī > ḥzauy. So that would only work if these weak verbs were more archaic in their suffixed forms for some reason. 8/10
There's a bigger problem: stress. *ḥazayū-hī would be stressed on the penultimate syllable: *ḥazayū́-hī. Even allowing for the other sound changes Butts posits, the pretonic vowel should be lost on the way to Syriac: *ḥazayū́-hī > *ḥazaʔū́-hī > *ḥazʔū́-y > **ḥazuy. 9/10
As you can see, the actual form ܚܙܐܘܝܗܝ ḥzauy has the a-vowel in the wrong place for it to come from *ḥazayū́-hī as Butts suggests. It really does look like ḥzaw with secondarily added suffixes. 10/10
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