Journal of Semitic Studies XXX VII// Spring

SECOND HARVEST: sibbolsd REVISITED(YET AGAIN)

ALICE FABER

NEW HAVEN, CT

There is little explicit metalinguistic comment in ancient textsto aid modern scholars in their linguistic analysis of these texts.So it comes as somewhat of a surprise to find that what littlemetalinguistic material there is at our disposal is not wellunderstood, and thus does not inform modern analysis. A casein point is Jud. 12:6, the so-called ' sibbokd incident'. Thisincident concerns use by Gileadite sentries of two differentpronunciations of the word nViaiP, apparently sibbokd andsibbokd, to distinguish between friendly, Gileadite forces andenemy Ephraimite forces. Those who said sibbokd rather thansibbokd were presumed to be enemy forces and consequentlyslaughtered. This incident gives rise to five related linguisticquestions:

a. What actually was the Gileadite pronunciation of theword, and what was the Ephraimite pronunciation?

b. Was this difference a general phenomenon, or was itrestricted to nViaiP?

c. Does nViaw mean 'watercourse' or 'ear of grain'?d. What is the etymology of the word, i.e., what was the

original sibilant?e. In which dialect did the initial sound undergo anomalous

phonological development relative to other Hebrew dia-lects?

Previous discussions of the question have not explicitlyaddressed all of these questions. In particular, some treatmentsneglect the rather obvious fact that the Gileadite sound at thebeginning of lV?i3B? must have been totally absent in theEphraimite dialect; otherwise the Ephraimites would surelyhave been able to imitate the authentic Gileadite pronunciation,just as English speakers from parts of the midwestern UnitedStates whose normal pronunciation of wash is [was] can mimicthe pronunciation [WD^S] using the vowel nucleus in farce [fos],

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especially if their lives depend on it. It follows from theplausibility of this claim that, if rViaiT underwent anomalousdevelopments, it must have been in Gileadite, since that is theonly way that the Gileadite initial sound in nViaw would havebeen absent from the Ephraimite phonological repertory.Alternatively, divergent phonological developments affectingthe initial sound in n^iatP could have given rise to a sound inGileadite that was totally absent in Ephraimite. This 'absence'constraint, then, rules out some possible scenarios that havebeen proposed to explain the Biblical account of the n'jiawincident.

There are three basic scenarios that have been discussed inrecent years. These scenarios differ with regard to the initialsound in nViStf and with regard to the meaning of the word,but they agree with regard to the sibilant inventory of Proto-Semitic and the regular sound changes affecting the PS inven-tory in the history of Hebrew. Since there is a logical distinctionbetween assigning a word containing a voiceless sibilant to oneof the four sibilant correspondence sets and determining thephonetic content of the reconstructed sibilant phonemes positedto account for the four correspondence sets (Faber 1981), theetymological issues will be dealt with first. For Speiser (1942),Swiggers (1981), and Rendsburg (1988), n^iStf reflects PS *0,which had merged with */ in Ephraimite, as in other Canaanitedialects, but was maintained in Gileadite. For Blau (1977),nViattf reflects */, which had merged with *s and */ in Ephrai-mite but was maintained in Gileadite. For Beeston (1979),however, n^iatP reflects PS *s which was maintained in Ephrai-mite but shifted, idiosyncratically, to /// in Gileadite, under theinfluence of a different root *sbl 'watercourse'.

Each of these potential scenarios is problematic, but each isproblematic in a different way. The structure of Jud. 12:6implies that the Ephraimite and Gileadite dialects weremutually intelligible and that the [Q—[s] distinction there wascomparable to the distinction between [a*] and [si] in word indifferent varieties of New York City English; speakers whohabitually say [waid] experience difficulty producing [wa*d] andspeakers who habitually use [wa*d] experience difficulty pro-ducing [waid].1 It is implausible that one of two dialects so

1 For a more entertaining (albeit dated) treatment of this New York Cityanalogy to the nViaiP incident, see Speiser (1942:13).

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closely related would have been exempt from the merger of *dand */, one of the most characteristic of the Canaanite soundchanges. In Phoenician and in Hebrew, *0and */are merged inthe earliest orthographic records.2 In the Proto-Sinaitic inscrip-tions (c. 15 oo BC), which of course do not necessarily representa Canaanite or pre-Canaanite dialect, there is a single symbolfor *6/*s and a distinct symbol for */. A similar pattern occursin contemporary (mid-second millennium) Egyptian transcrip-tions of Canaanite names and words: Egyptian / representsCanaanite */, and s represents Canaanite *6 and */; c representsCanaanite *s. Slightly later, letters from Palestine and Byblos inthe El Amarna archive use the Akkadian SA series to representCanaanite *6/*s/*s, while letters from Jerusalem use AkkadianSA to represent Canaanite */ and §A to represent Canaanite */.There is in the Jerusalem letters also one doubtful instance of$A representing Canaanite *6 in a place name. Letters fromboth areas use Akkadian ZA to represent Canaanite *J\

While it is difficult to know how to interpret this evidence -the fact that two Canaanite sounds are represented with thesame Egyptian symbol or with the same Akkadian series doesnot constitute evidence that the sounds had merged and thefact that two Canaanite sounds are represented with twodifferent Egyptian or Akkadian symbols does not necessarilymean that they were distinct in Canaanite - it appears that *6and */ had merged, at least in northern Canaanite dialects, byc. 1400 BC, some 200 years before the period of the Judges.Dialects in which the merger took place and dialects in which itdid not would have had 200 years of divergent development bythe time of the rhSyo incident, and, presumably, would havediffered in other respects than in the realization of *6. Thus,even assuming a reconstructed *6blt - for which, as Beeston(1988) notes, there is virtually no independent evidence - it isimplausible to assume either that the realization of *0 wouldhave been the most salient difference between the two hypo-thetical dialects or that the two dialect types would have beenconsidered mutually intelligible by their speakers.

The idiosyncratic change of *s to /// required by Beeston'sscenario is likewise implausible, because it violates the 'absence'

2 In the text, I follow Diem's (1974) presentation of the orthographicfacts, but not his interpretation of the history of the Canaanite sibilants, inparticular, his claim that */ was a late Hebrew/Aramaic innovation ratherthan a retention from Proto-Semitic.

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constraint discussed above. That is, even though, according toBeeston, the Gileadites had jsj in nViSP, they had /// in theirphonological inventory, in words like solom and h?al, and, thus,should have had no difficulty in mimicking the Gileaditepronunciation sibbokO. Like Beeston, Blau (1977) takes thebiblical text at face value in assuming that the Gileadites saidSibboled and the Ephraimites said sibboleO. Unlike Beeston,however, Blau treats this as a systematic difference between thedialects rather than as an idiosyncratic feature involving theword n iaiT. He suggests that in the Ephraimite dialect, */(and */) had merged with *s as jsj, so that the Ephraimites didnot have /// in their phonological inventory and thus could notsay sibboled.

Blau's scenario, then, provides the most plausible account ofthose reviewed of the nViaw incident. In relying on a latechange, idiosyncratic to one of the dialects, it allows for themutual intelligibility of the dialects, and, furthermore, itconforms to the 'absence' constraint, in relying on an appro-priate difference between the phonemic inventories of the twodialects. However, such an account depends crucially onreconstruction of a form beginning with */ as well as onconformity with otherwise attested developments affecting */in the history of Hebrew. The primary lexicographic evidenceregarding the etymology of nViaw appears in Table 1.3

Table I. Items meaning 'ear of grain' in the variousSemitic languages

AkkadianUgariticHebrewSyriacJewish AramaicPal. Aramaic

subbultu; iabbiljsabbil 'plant'4

fbltiibbokdtebeltahaltaIbl

3 Attributions for the forms in Table 1 can be found in Faber (MS) s.v.*sbl. The Judeo-Aramaic tub/a, adduced by Speiser (1942) in support of areconstruction *6ubbul-t or the like, is not included since it most likelyrepresents a hypercorrection of a form with /(Blau 1977).

4 The existence of the Akkadian variation sabbil is, most likely, unrelatedto the anomalous sibilant in MSA. Akkadian has a class of words containingjr l\ or a labial in which s occurs instead of the expected / (reflecting */ and*s) (Faber 1986). Goetze (1952) takes this class as evidence for a fifth Proto-Semitic voiceless sibilant. For further discussion, see Faber (1986).

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ArabicESASocotriMehriGeez

sunbul; sabulah 'wheat's'blt (Zodiac sign)sebolehseblitsab/

Relying on the Modern South Arabian forms listed in Tablei, Beeston suggests that the most appropriate reconstructionfor the lexical item 'ear of grain' is *sblt. In Hebrew (andpresumably Akkadian, Ugaritic, Aramaic, and EpigraphicSouth Arabian, all of which have regular reflexes of *s), *schanged to /// under the influence of the phonetically similar*Ib/ 'watercourse, pathway', reflected in Hebrew hil 'path' andsovel 'well' and Arabic sabil 'way, public fountain'.

There are two problems with this approach. First of all,Beeston's */abi/ 'path' is attested only in Hebrew and Arabic(and the Hebrew form appears, on the basis of the initialcluster sv-, to be an Aramaism), so it is difficult to see how itcould have provided the analogical source for a change of *s to/ in Akkadian, Ugaritic, Aramaic, and ESA. Secondly, outsideof the MSA languages, the forms in Table i unambiguouslysupport the reconstruction *sblt. Rather than treating the MSAforms as an anomaly to be explained, Beeston is treating themas regular and the forms supporting *sblt as anomalous. Thistreatment presupposes a clear understanding of phonologicaland phonetic developments affecting the MSA sibilants, anunderstanding that is totally lacking in the literature.

It seems, rather, that the anomalous MSA forms in Table imust be explained in the context of the rather confused picturepresented by MSA sibilants.5 First of all, as Rendsburg notes,there are as many Mehri, Harsusi, Jibbali, and Socotri items inwhich Hebrew / corresponds to MSA s as there are items inwhich Hebrew / corresponds to MSA /. If we are not to positstill another voiceless sibilant for Proto-Semitic, either theinstances of MSA s corresponding to Hebrew / or the instancesof MSA / corresponding to Hebrew / must be attributed tosome factor other than regular phonological development.

In Mehri, Harsusi, and Socotri, h sometimes occurs insteadof /, and in Jibbali a new labialized I" contrasting with / has

5 Much of the following discussion parallels the comprehensive treat-ment of Leslau (1937).

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developed (Johnstone 1984).6 It is not clear whether these twosplits are related, although a review of the MSA forms listed inFaber (MS) as inherited from Proto-Semitic or West Semiticsuggests a tendency for Jibbali /* to occur in lexical itemswhich have / in Mehri, Harsusi, and Socotri, while Jibbali /tends to occur in items which have h in the other languages. Inall four languages, / can also occur as the reflex of *k; Steiner(1982) suggests that there were, in fact, two palatalizations, onepan-MSA, affecting all MSA languages in only a few lexicalitems, and another restricted to Jibbali (there Sheri), affectingmany more instances of *k, as well as *k and *g. There are alsoexamples, listed in Table 2,7 of apparent cognates in which oneMSA language has a regular reflex of */ while another has aregular reflex of *s.

Table 2.

Hebrew

nefd

h?al

seO

'soul'

'ask'

'penis,posterior'

Regular

Socotri

Socotri

JibbaliMehri

Jibbali

MSA

nhofnsfolhoiol

IBlit

l-et

'soul''breathe''call forpayment'idem'penis'

'privateparts'

Anomalous MSA

Hars.JibbaliHars.

Soc.

nefese'tns/sstsol

seh

'soul''soul''call a debt'

'backside'

As both Beeston and Rendsburg note, there are instancesbeyond those in Table 2 of either direct borrowing fromArabic or change in sibilant pronunciation under Arabicinfluence. Replacement of / with s or of / with /, even ininherited MSA lexical items, could be the result of such Arabicinfluence. Similarly, given that MSA / is the regular correspon-dence for Arabic /, speakers could hypercorrectly replaceinherited MSA / (corresponding to Arabic s) with /. Both ofthese processes, borrowing from Arabic and reshaping ofnative MSA lexical items under Arabic influence, have produced

6 I use herein I" for Johnstone's / which is susceptible of graphicconfusion with /.

7 For source citations for the items in Table 2, see Faber (MS), s.v. *nfs,*s?l, *st.

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doublets, some of which are listed in Table 3.8 The presence ofthese doublets (of which many more could, no doubt, beadduced) suggests that development of an anomalous sibilantshould be treated as an intra-MSA development, in cases whereno parallel regular forms are attested as well as in cases ofdoublets like those in Table 3.

Table 3.

LanguageJibbali

Socotri

Inherited formdebl 'honey'Iskf 'roofJifil 'be worthless'leke 'irrigate'IJJUt 'be lost'xfil' 'subside (milk foam)'nele 'forget'ihoh 'armpit'

Arabized or de-Arabized formdebs 'date honey'sJkJf 'roof with branches'sfii 'be worthless'seke 'run in a channel (H,O)'sikjt 'be worthless'sxaf 'drink milk'nisi 'forget'sho 'armpit'

All three factors, the unambiguous nature of the non-MSAcorrespondences in Table 1, the confused state of MSA sibilantcorrespondences, and the possibility of Arabic influence on thephonetic shape of the MSA forms, suggest that it is inappro-priate to give undue weight to the MSA forms in reconstruc-tion of the Proto-Semitic form underlying the correspondencesin Table 1. The best reconstruction, then, is *Iblt. What thisleaves unexplained, however, is the precise nature of thealternation underlying the n iatf story, since it is still necessaryto posit an idiosyncratic change of */ to s in the Ephraimitedialect.

The solution to the latter problem requires a further exami-nation of the Semitic sibilant system. The treatments of thenViSP incident discussed thus far all assume, as already noted,the traditional view of the historical development of thesibilant phonemes in the ancient Semitic languages. In thistraditional view, outlined in Table 4, Hebrew V /// is a directcontinuation of Proto-Semitic */, which changed in Arabic tojsj. And, Hebrew 0 jsj is a direct continuation of PS *s. That is,the traditional view of Semitic sibilants entails the claim thatthe early Hebrew system, except for the change of *6 to /, is

8 Jibbali items in Table 3 are from Johnstone (1982), although not allare cross-referenced there. Socotri items are found in Johnstone (1975) orSteiner (1982).

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conservative with regard to the sibilants. As a result, thediscussions of the n"?iaw incident summarized in this note havehad to rely on ad hoc postulations of idiosyncratic sound shiftsto account for the presence of reflexes other than /// forputative PS */. In a variety of publications over the last decade(Faber 1981, 1984, 1985, MS), I have developed an alternative,more principled treatment of the Semitic sibilants. In myreconstruction, the ancestor of Hebrew ///, Arabic jsj, Akkadian///, and ESA s1 was *[s],9 and the ancestor of Hebrew jsj,Arabic jsj, Akkadian jsj and ESA s3 was an affricate *[ts]. Thethird sibilant, the ancestor of Hebrew ///, Arabic ///, Akkadian/// and ESA s2, was in my reconstruction as in the traditionalone, a lateral fricative *[4] (see Steiner [1977] for details).

Table 4. Semitic sibilant correspondences

ESAI .

2 .

3-4-

PSH*s*s

*e

Akkadian

§

ss

Ugaritics

s

e

Hebrew

sss

Arabics

s

eThis reconstruction requires that two changes be posited in

the history of Hebrew that are not necessary in the traditionalreconstruction. First, in parallel with the traditional reconstruc-tion, *[0] merged with *[s] as s; then, *[s] (reflecting now also*[6]) changed to /, and *[ts] deaffricated to s. It is beyond thescope of this note to present the full argumentation supportingthis reconstruction; it is based heavily on interpretation of theinscriptional corpora, especially of pre-Classical language statesthroughout the Semitic language group. In terms of the historyof Hebrew, an integral part of the reconstruction is the soundchanges that must be posited to bridge the gap from thereconstructed language state to attested Hebrew. One of thesechanges is, of course, that of *[s] to /, which gives rise to thepossibility that there were, simultaneously, closely related dia-lects which differed in the realization of *[s], one having s andanother /. What the nViatf story reveals then is that thishypothetical state of affairs did in fact exist. During the periodof the Judges, the change of *[s] to /had not yet occurred inthe Ephraimite dialect, while it apparently had occurred in the

9 I use the notation *[x] to denote the phonemes in my reconstruction,and the notation *x to denote phonemes in the traditional reconstruction.

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Transjordanian Gileadite dialect. As noted above, one conse-quence of this dialect situation would have been that speakersof the conservative Ephraimite dialect, the dialect without /,would have been unable to produce [s], substituting for iteither the cognate sound in their dialect, [s], or the phoneticallycomparable sound, [4].

In terms of the questions posed at the beginning of this note,Hebrew n iSW continues a Proto-Semitic form *[s]blt. Andthe ordinary change of *[s] to / in Hebrew occurred inEphraimite later than it did in Gileadite, so the nVi3B? storyreflects a linguistic stage in which a jsj phoneme was found inGileadite Hebrew but not in Ephraimite Hebrew. As for themeaning of the word, the comparative evidence suggests 'ear ofgrain'. But, as Swiggers (1981:205-6) notes, the context of thenViatP story requires a meaning involving water. However, theevidence adduced by Beeston (1979) for an additional CentralSemitic *sbl meaning 'path, watercourse', may, ineed, providethe basis for a semantic shift in Hebrew nViatP. Given thereconstruction *[s]blt 'ear of grain' and the ordinary soundchanges that must have occurred in the history of Hebrew, then"?i31P story provides evidence for the chronology of thesechanges. In fact, the only aspect of the story that does notfollow from my reconstruction, together with general linguisticprinciples, is the fatal consequences of the Ephraimites' inabilityto produce [s].

REFERENCES

Beeston, A. F. L. 1962. 'Arabian Sibilants', JSS 3: 222-231.. 1979. 'Hebrew libbolet and fobeF, JSS 14: 175-177.. 1988. 'libbolet: A Further Comment', JSS 33: 259-261.

Blau, Joshua. 1977. '"Weak" Phonetic Change and the Hebrew sin',Hebrew Annual Review 1: 67-119.

Diem, Werner. 1974. 'Das Problem von V im Althebraischen und diekanaanaische Lautverschiebung', ZDMG 124: 221-252.

Faber, Alice. 1981. 'Phonetic Reconstruction', Glossa 15: 233-262.. 1984. 'Semitic Sibilants in an Afroasiatic Context', JSS 29: 189-224.

. 1985. 'Akkadian Evidence for Proto-Semitic Affricates', JCS37: 101-108.

. 1986. 'On the Actuation of Sound Change: A Semitic CaseStudy', Diachronica 3: 163-184.

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. MS. Semitic Sibilants: A Study in Comparative Lexicography. Tobe published by Eisenbrauns.

Goetze, Albrecht. 1958. 'The Sibilants of Old Babylonian', RA 52:137-149.

Johnstone, T. M. 1975. 'The Modern South Arabian Languages',Afroasiatic Linguistics 5.1.. 1977. Harsusi Lexicon (Oxford).. 1982. Jibbali Lexicon (Oxford).. 1984. 'New Sibilant Phonemes in the Modern South ArabianLanguages of Dhofar', James Bynon (ed.) in Current Progress inAfro-Asiatic Linguistics, (Amsterdam), 389-390.

Leslau, Wolf. 1937. 'Der /-Laut in den modernen siidarabischenSprachen', WZKM 44: 211-218.

Rendsburg, Gary A. 1988. 'More on Hebrew libbolet', JSS 33: 255-258.

Speiser, E. 1942. 'The Shibboleth Incident (Judges 12:6)', BASOR85: 10-13.

Steiner, Richard C. 1977. The Case for Fricative Laterals in Proto-Semitic (New Haven).. 1982. Review of Harsusi Lexicon and English-Harsiisi Word-Listby T. M. Johnstone, Afroasiatic Linguistics 8/4: 189-200.

Swiggers, P. 1981. 'The Word libbolet In Jud. xii.6', JSS 24: 205-207.

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