A Comparative Lexical Study of Qur?anic Arabic

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 587
Arabic practically equidistantly poised between North-West and South
Semitic. The figure for South Semitic is particularly significant given
that the lexical evidence available from this area of Semitic is no
match for the extensive lexical resources available in Hebrew, Aramaic,
and Syriac. Nonetheless, Epigraphic South Arabian and Ge'ez manage
to keep well abreast with North-West Semitic. That Arabic maintained
the closest ties with North-West and South Semitic is ascertained
by the number of cognates shared exclusively with these regions,
namely 9.1% of the corpus. 37 No other areal arrangement is as important.
Within North-West Semitic, the highest number of cognates is
with Hebrew, followed by Aramaic and Syriac. Rather than hinting
at any special relationship with Arabic, this order tends to reflect
the availability of lexical evidence from each of these three languages.
As for South Semitic, the figures for Epigraphic South Arabian and
Ge c ez are almost similar. Again, this is indeed remarkable given the
limited nature of the former's lexical resources in comparison with
those of Ge c ez. The same can be said about Ugaritic and Akkadian
cognates shared with Arabic. The figures for Ugaritic are quite important
given the limited knowledge available about its lexicon in comparison
with the amply documented Akkadian lexicon. The low
figures for Phoenician, rather than hinting at any particular lack of
lexical community with Arabic, reflect the dearth of lexical evidence
from this language.
As regards community in semantic domains, an attempt has been
made to identify the domains that tend to characterize cognates from
the different Semitic varieties. In general, great balance emerges from
the figures for North-West and South Semitic. This is remarkble
given the imbalance in the lexical resources available from these two
areas of Semitic. Even though NWS cognates tend to surpass SS
ones in most semantic domains, namely B. (the physical being), C.
(the soul and the intellect), D. (Man—the social being), E. (social
organisation) and F. (Man and the Universe), nevertheless the statistical
difference is never very substantial. SS cognates are even more
numerous than NWS ones in domains A. (the Universe) and Gl.
(grammatical categories). Moreover, SS cognate items equal those in
!/ When a different filtering criterion is adopted, namely that of looking for cognates
which Arabic shares with SS and NWS that may, or may not, have cognates
in Ug. and ES (+ + \ \), the result is as high as 33.1% for SS-Arab.-NWS
community.