The Unfolding Of Language by Guy Deutscher

Author:Guy Deutscher [Deutscher, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781407070285
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

In fact, using the evidence from such verbs in various Cushitic languages, linguists have come to the conclusion that in the ancestor language of Cushitic (and perhaps of other Afro-Asiatic branches) there was a vowel mutation from u or i in the past tense to a in the present/future tense. So it would seem that the a-mutation goes back even beyond the earliest stratum of Semitic, to a time before Proto-Semitic started diverging from Proto-Cushitic, probably at least 8,000 years ago.

The evidence thus suggests that the a-mutation is an extremely old pattern. But if this is so, then why is this mutation only found in a few exceptional hollow verbs? Why is it that the regular verbs form their future tense with an entirely different pattern (the template )? The most plausible explanation seems to be that the a-mutation was originally much more widespread, and was also the fashion among the normal three-consonant verbs. So, for example, the future tense of the verb a-ktum ‘I covered’ would simply have been a-ktam. But at a later stage, the a-mutation was displaced by the more elaborate future template (as a part of the general overhaul the system underwent with the development of the mature root-and-template system). The few Akkadian verbs that still show the a-mutation are just the last survivors, those which managed to hold out against the new template most obstinately. So even if from the later perspective of the mature Semitic system the a-mutation may look like nothing more than an unmotivated and rather embarrassing irregularity, the a-mutation was probably around long before the other templates had even been thought of.

Let’s now put together everything we have uncovered so far: some time in the prehistoric period, the ancestor of the Semitic languages must have started out with ‘normal’ verbs, with sturdy stems like mūt, nīk, ktum or ptil, which had both consonants and vowels to their name. The first step in the evolution of the root-and-template design may have been taken as early as 8,000 years ago, when, for some strange reason, a vowel mutation emerged in the future tense: the vowel of the ancient stem changed to a:

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