A Comparative Lexical Study of Qur?anic Arabic

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 581
guistic diffusion enhanced by commercial and cultural currents. 15
Linguistic diffusion followed what Rabin calls 'axes of social contact'
taking place in 'the northern marginal area' (extending from Palestine,
via Ugarit, to Mesopotamia), the 'central axis' (the Arabian peninsula
and the Syrian home of Aramaic), and the 'southern marginal
area' (the Ethiopian group on the African mainland). 16 This geographical
division introduces the thorny question of the classification
of the Semitic languages.
Various methodological criteria have been suggested for the classification
exercise and a great number of classificatory patterns, generally
based on a geographical distribution of languages, have been
propounded over the years. 17 These patterns tend to segregate the
Semitic languages into two, three, or four geographical areas which,
in turn, are at times further divided into sub-areas. 18 Of particular
15 Noeldeke 1911: 620; Garbini 1965: 8; Rabin 1963: 104, 106, 113; Zaborski
1991: 373; Saenz-Badillos 1993: 8; Versteegh 1997: 13; Bennett 1998: 21.
lb Rabin 1963: 107, 114. In the northern marginal area, Rabin refers to constant
political, cultural, and religious currents of influence in all directions; in the central
axis, the caravan routes, already operative as early as the beginning of the 2nd mill.
B.C., were responsible for bringing the Arabian tribesmen into contact with the
sophisticated Mediterranean sea-coast; in the southern marginal area, political and
trade relations with Arabia were established. Rabin remarks that, unlike what standard
dialect geography assumes regarding the conservative nature of marginal areas,
in the case of the Semitic languages, the centre of radiation for a number of innovations
was in the northern marginal area, that is the strip of land along the Mediterranean.
17 Hetzron 1974, 1976 believes that a genetic classification is possible provided
the appropriate criteria, such as archaic heterogeneity, shared morpholexical innovations,
and also lexical items with regular sound correspondences, are adopted.
Emphasis on morphological criteria is made, amongst others, by De Moor 1973:
88, fn. 1 and Hetzron 1974: 186.
18 Burrini 1978: 119 refers to J.S. Vater who, as early as 1806-17, in the Mithridates
spoke about the northern (or Aramaic) Semitic, the central (or Canaanite) Semitic,
and the southern (or Arabic) Semitic groups. Noeldeke (1887) and Brockelmann
(1910) distinguished between North Semitic and South Semitic. Note also Hommel's
(1891) option for an East—West division; Kautzsch's (1910) four geographical areas
(South, Central, North, and East Semitic); and Christian's (1919-20) North-East
and North-West Semitic contrasted by South-East and South-West Semitic. This
arrangement is also adopted by Leslau 1956, but the distribution of the languages
within the various sub-groups is not the same. Christian (1919-20) also opts, like
Bauer and Leander (1922) for a chronological classification, and distinguishes between
the Ancient (Akkadian and Hebrew) and the Young (Phoenician, Aramaic, Arabic,
and Ethiopian) Semitic groups. Likewise, Garbini 1965: 9 makes reference to three
chronological phases: Ancient Semitic (Akkadian, South Arabian and Ethiopian),
Middle Semitic (Amorite, etc.), and Neo-Semitic (the contemporary modern languages).
Moscati 1959 proposes three groups, the Eastern, North-Western, and
South-Western Semitic, whereas Diakonoff (1965) divides the Semitic languages into
Northern Peripheral, Northern Central, Southern Central, and Southern Peripheral.
Blau (1978) identifies East Semitic on the one hand and North West Semitic (Ugaritic,