Ancient South Arabian
| Old South Arabian | |
|---|---|
| Sayhadic | |
| Geographic distribution |
Southern Arabia |
| Linguistic classification |
Afro-Asiatic
|
| Subdivisions |
|
| Glottolog | sayh1236 |
Old South Arabian (or Epigraphic South Arabian, or Ṣayhadic) is a group of four closely related extinct languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. There were a number of other Old South Arabian languages (e.g. Awsānian), of which very little evidence has survived, however. A sole surviving Sayhadic language is attested in Jabal Rāziḥ in far north-west of Yemen, though the varieties of speech in neighboring areas have both Arabic and Sayhadic features, and it is difficult to classify them as either Arabic dialects with a Sayhadic substratum, or Sayhadic languages that have been restructured under pressure of Arabic.
It was originally thought that all four members of this group were dialects of one Old South Arabian language, but in the mid-twentieth century Beeston finally proved that they did in fact constitute independent languages. The Old South Arabian languages were originally classified (partly on the basis of geography) as South Semitic, along with Arabic, Modern South Arabian and Ethiopian Semitic; more recently however, a new classification has come in use which places Old South Arabian, along with Arabic, Ugaritic, Aramaic and Canaanite/Hebrew in a Central Semitic group; leaving Modern South Arabian and Ethiopic in a separate group. This new classification is based on Arabic, Old South Arabian and Northwest Semitic (Ugaritic, Aramaic and Canaanite) sharing an innovation in the verbal system, an imperfect taking the form *yVqtVl-u (the other groups have *yVqattVl); Nebes showed that Sabaean at least had the form yVqtVl in the imperfect.
Even though has been now accepted that the four main languages be considered independent, they are clearly closely related linguistically and derive from a common ancestor because they share certain morphological innovations. One of the most important isoglosses retained in all four languages is the suffixed definite article - (h)n. There are however significant differences between the languages.
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