UgariticRendsburg, Gary A. “Modern South Arabian as a Source for Ugaritic Etymologies”. In: Journal of the American Oriental Society 107, no. 4 (1987): 623–28. https://doi.org/10.2307/603304. ( ) is an extinct Northwest Semitic language known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeologists in 1928 at Ugarit,Ugaritic is alternatively classified in a "North Semitic" group, see including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycle. The script is described as “a special alphabetic Cuneiform,” reflecting an idiom related to Canaanite and Hebrew languages.
Like Hebrew the short script of Ugarit has twenty-two characters, which are nearly identical to Hebrew in terms of their phonetic values, though not in terms of the visual elements or media of their inscription. Early samples of Hebrew are scratched on stone or potsherds whereas Ugaritic is punched on clay, like cuneiform.
A scholar of the period hailed Ugaritic as "the greatest literary discovery from antiquity since the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform.”
Corpus
The Ugaritic language is attested in texts from the 14th through the early 12th century BC. The city of Ugarit was destroyed roughly 1190 BC.
At Ras Shamra some 1800 inscriptions have been unearthed, as well as 150 at the so-called “Northern Palace” at Ras Ibn Hani (a few kilometers west of Ras Shamra), and two fragments (a handle and a cylinder seal) at Ugarit’s harbour at Minet el-Beida. Elsewhere too, in places such as Lebanon, Syria, Tel Beit Shemesh, and Cyprus, a few inscribed objects – handles, a sherd, a knife, an alphabet – have been found.KTU² = Manfried Dietrich, Oswald Loretz, Joaquín Sanmartín (eds.), The Cuneiform alphabetic texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani and other places (Münster: Ugarit, 1995).Stanislav Segert, A Basic Grammar of the Ugaritic Language (Berkeley / Los Angeles / London: University of California Press) p. 3.
Literary texts discovered at Ugarit include the Legend of Keret or Kirta, the legends of Danel (AKA 'Aqhat), the Myth of Baal-Aliyan, and the Death of Baal. The latter two are also known collectively as the Baal Cycle. These texts reveal aspects of ancient Northwest Semitic religion in Syria-Canaan during the Late Bronze Age.
Edward Greenstein has proposed that Ugaritic texts might help solve biblical puzzles such as the anachronism of Ezekiel mentioning Daniel in actually referring to Danel, a hero from the Ugaritic Tale of Aqhat.
Phonology Ugaritic had 28 consonantal phonemes (including two semivowels) and eight vowel phonemes (three short vowels and five long vowels): a ā i ī u ū ē ō. The phonemes ē and ō occur only as long vowels and are the result of monophthongization of the diphthongs аy and aw, respectively. Triphthongs too were contracted frequently: aya, iya > â; iyi > î; ăyu, iyu, uyu > û but āyu > â.Sivan (2009), pp. 37–43.
+Consonants Labial Interdental Dental/Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal plain emphatic Nasal Stop voiceless voiced Fricative voiceless voiced () Approximant Trill
The following table shows Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Ugaritic, Akkadian, Classical Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew:
Proto-Semitic UgariticAkkadian Classical Arabic Tiberian Hebrew Imperial Aramaic 𐎀 ∅ / (a, i, u) ء א 𐡀/∅ 𐎛 𐎜 𐎁 b ب ב 𐡁 𐎂 g ج ג 𐡂 𐎄 d د ד 𐡃 𐎅 ∅ / ه ה 𐡄 𐎆 w / ∅ / و ו 𐡅 𐎇 z ز ז 𐡆 𐎏 ;sometimes ذ 𐡃 (older 𐡆) 𐎈 ∅ / ḫ / e ح ח 𐡇 𐎃 ḫ خ 𐎉 ṭ ط ט 𐡈 𐎊 y / ي י 𐡉 𐎋 k ك כ 𐡊 𐎍 l ل ל 𐡋 𐎎 m م מ 𐡌 𐎐 n ن נ 𐡍 𐎒 s س ס 𐡎 𐎝 s2 𐎓 ∅ / / ḫ / e ع ע 𐡏 𐎙 ∅ / / ḫ غ 𐎔 p ف פ 𐡐 𐎕 ṣ ص צ 𐡑 ض 𐡏 (older 𐡒) 𐎑 ;sporadically ظ 𐡈 (older 𐡑) 𐎖 q ق ק 𐡒 𐎗 r ر ר 𐡓 𐎌 š ش שׂ 𐡎 (older 𐡔) س שׁ 𐡔 𐎘 ث 𐡕 (older 𐡔) 𐎚 t ت ת 𐡕
Writing system
The Ugaritic alphabet is a cuneiform script used beginning in the 15th century BC. Like most Semitic scripts, it is an abjad, where each symbol stands for a consonant, leaving the reader to supply the appropriate vowel. Only after an aleph is the vowel indicated (ʾa, ʾi, ʾu). With other consonants one can often guess the unwritten vowel, and thus vocalize the text, from (a) parallel cases with an aleph, (b) texts where Ugaritic words are written in Akkadian cuneiform syllables, (c) comparison with other West-Semitic languages, for example Hebrew and Arabic, (d) generalized vocalization rules,An example of this last method in Sivan, A Grammar of the Ugaritic Language, p. 116: "[The] pattern of correspondences between the thematic vowel with the second radical and the prefix vowel (thematic u and i taking prefix vowel a; thematic a taking prefix i) is helpful in reconstructing the vocalized forms of the G stem prefix conjugation." Two more examples of rules of thumb are: abstract nouns preferably have the vowel -u- (Pierre Bordreuil & Dennis Pardee, A Manual of Ugaritic (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2001) p. 33); and stative verbs in the perfect use the qatila vowel pattern. and (e), in poetry, parallelisms are also helpful to interpret the consonantal skeleton.
Clay tablets written in Ugaritic provide the earliest evidence of both the Levantine ordering of the alphabet, which gave rise to the alphabetic order of the Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets; and the South Semitic order, which gave rise to the order of the Ge'ez script. The script was written from left to right.
The so-called "long alphabet" has 30 letters while the "short alphabet" has 22. Other languages (particularly Hurrian) were occasionally written in the Ugaritic alphabet, although no such inscriptions have been found outside of Ugarit.
The origins of the graphical choice and visual logic surrounding the letters of the alphabet are still debated and proving a single origin for the design remains difficult to this day.
Grammar Ugaritic is an inflected language, and as a Semitic language its grammatical features are highly similar to those found in Arabic, Hebrew, and Akkadian. It possesses two genders (masculine and feminine), three cases for nouns and adjectives (nominative, accusative, and genitive [also, note the possibility of a locative case]); three numbers: (singular, dual, and plural); and verb aspects similar to those found in other Northwest Semitic languages. The word order for Ugaritic is verb–subject–object (VSO), possessed–possessor (NG), and noun–adjective (NA). Ugaritic is considered a conservative Semitic language, since it retains most of the Proto-Semitic phonemes, the basic qualities of the vowel, the case system, the word order of the Proto-Semitic ancestor, and the lack of the definite article.
Morphology Ugaritic, like all Semitic languages, exhibits a unique pattern of stems consisting typically of "triliteral", or 3-consonant consonantal roots (2- and 4-consonant roots also exist), from which nouns, adjectives, and verbs are formed in various ways: e.g. by inserting vowels, doubling consonants, and/or adding prefixes, suffixes, or infixes.
Verbs
Introduction
Ugaritic verbs are based on mostly three-literal roots (like all Semitic languages) (a few verbs have two- or four-consonant roots). For example, r-g-m, ‘to say’. By adding prefixes, infixes, and suffixes, and varying the vowels, the various verbal forms are formed. (Because in Ugaritic vowels are hardly written, these vowel variations often are not clearly visible).
Verbs can take several of a dozen stem patterns, or binyanim, that change the basic meaning of the verb, and make it for example passive, causative, or intensive. The basic form (in German: Grundstamm) is the G stem.
The verbal forms for each stem can be divided in five verbal form groups: the suffix conjugation, also called qtl (pronounced qatal), or perfect; the prefix conjugation, also called yqtl (pronounced yiqtol), or imperfect; imperatives; two infinitives; an active and a passive participle.
Verbs have one of three different vowel patterns, -a-, -i-, and -u-: in the qtl (G stem): qatala, qatila, or qatula (cf. Hebrew qaṭal, kavēd, qaṭon); in the yqtl (G stem): yiqtalu, yaqtilu, or yaqtulu.
There is no one-on-one link between morphology and tense (past, present or future). This is because Ugaritic is an aspect language: verbal forms do not primarily indicate the timing of activities, but they indicate aspect: the suffix conjugation (qtl) has perfective aspect, it is used when viewing an activity as having a completion; the prefix conjugation (yqtl) has imperfective aspect, it is used when it is deemed irrelevant whether the activity has an end or beginning.
Ugaritic verbs can have several moods, both indicative and injunctive (jussive, cohortative). Moods are most clearly visible in the prefix conjugation (see below).
Suffix conjugation
The suffix conjugation (qtl) has perfective aspect. Taking the root RGM (which means "to say") as an example, ragama may be translated as “he says” (at this very moment), or “he has said” (and has finished speaking).
The vowel between the second and third root consonant can be -a-, -i-, or -u-. Most verbs describe an activity (so-called “active verbs”) and have -a-. Verbs describing a state or property (“stative verbs”) have -i- or (rarely) -u-.
The paradigm of the suffix conjugation (or Perfect) is as follows for the a-verb RGM, the i-verb ŠBʿ (“to be (become) satiated”), and the u-verb MRṢ (“to fall ill”):
+ Morphology of the Ugaritic suffix conjugation (in the simple active pattern, G stem) model a-verb i-verb u-verb Singular 1st masc. & fem. STEM-tu rgmt RaGaMtu “I say, have said” šabiʿtu “I amsatiated” maruṣtu “I fall ill, have fallen ill” 2nd masculine STEM-ta rgmt RaGaMta “you (m.) say” šabiʿta (etc.) maruṣta (etc.) feminine STEM-ti rgmt RaGaMti “you (f.) say” šabiʿti maruṣti 3rd masculine STEM-a rgm RaGaMa “he says” šabiʿa maruṣa feminine STEM-at rgmt RaGaMat “she says” šabiʿat maruṣat Dual 1st masc. & fem. STEM-nayā rgmny RaGaMnayā “the both of us say” šabiʿnayā maruṣnayā 2nd masc. & fem. STEM-tumā rgmtm RaGaMtumā “you two say” šabiʿtumā maruṣtumā 3rd masculine STEM-ā rgm RaGaMā “they both (m.) say” šabiʿā maruṣā feminine STEM-tā rgmt RaGaMtā “they both (f.) say” šabiʿtā maruṣtā Plural 1st masc. & fem. STEM-nū (?) rgmn (?) RaGaMnū (?) “we say” šabiʿnū (?) maruṣnū (?) 2nd masculine STEM-tum(u) rgmtm RaGaMtum(u) “you (m. Pl.) say” šabiʿtum(u) maruṣtum(u) feminine STEM-tin(n)a rgmtn RaGaMtin(n)a “you (f. Pl.) say” šabiʿtin(n)a maruṣtin(n)a 3rd masculine STEM-ū rgm RaGaMū “they (m.) say” šabiʿū maruṣū feminine STEM-ā rgm RaGaMā “they (f.) say” šabiʿā maruṣā
Prefix conjugation
The prefix conjugation yqtl- takes three forms: yiqtal-, yaqtil-, and yaqtul-. The specific pattern is determined by the stem consonants.In general, if the second or third root consonant is a laryngal (ʾaleph, ʿayin, h, ḥ, ḫ, or ġ), the imperfect has the yiqtal- form; else the type is yaqtul- for so-called strong, I-n, II-w, and II-gem verbs, and yaqtil- for I-wy, II-y, and III-y verbs (for those verbal classes see the section on strong and weak verbs). But there are quite a few exceptions [Sivan (2001), pp. 116–117, and passim pp. 117–177]. Therefore, there is no simple one-on-one relation with the three qtl vowel patterns, qatal, qatil, and qatul, because the qtl vowel pattern depends not on the consonant pattern, but on a verb's meaning (active or stative).
For example, the following three verbs all have a qtl of the qatal type, but their yqtl patterns differ:
{| class="wikitable" |- ! colspan="2" | verb !! colspan="2" | qtl !! type !! colspan="2" | yqtl |- | QRʾ || “to call, invoke” || qaraʾa || “he calls” || yiqtal- || yiqraʾu || “he will call” |- | YRD || “to go down” || yarada || “he goes down” || yaqtil- || yaridu || “he will go down” |- | RGM || “to say, speak” || ragama || “he says” || yaqtul- || yargumu || “he will say”
The Imperfect paradigms for the three patterns are as follows, for the verbs RGM, “to say” (yaqtul- pattern), ŠʾiL, “to ask” (yiqtal- pattern), and YRD, “to go down” (yaqtil pattern):