Arabic-L:LING:'hair' etymology

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Fri 18 Apr 2008
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1) Subject:'hair' etymology

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1)
Date: 18 Apr 2008
From:"Almog Kasher" <almogk at gmail.com>
Subject:'hair' etymology

As Uri Horesh mentioned, Arabic sh normally corresponds to Hebrew s',
whereas Arabic s corresponds to Hebrew sh (or s).
Yet, the sh in the Arabic word shams does not correspond to the (first  
token
of) sh in the Hebrew word shemesh, but is rather
explained by Semitists as a case of dissimilation. That is, we cannot  
simply
explain away the two meanings of the Arabic root
sh-3-r by merely stating that one of these sh's corresponds to Hebrew  
sh.
The studies I have consulted (I admit, very few) hold that Arabic sh-3- 
r, in
the sense of knowledge, corresponds to the (Biblical) Hebrew
root s'-3-r, which appears, as far as I know, only once in a verb  
conveying
(probably) this meaning (in Deut. 32, 17).
Arabic sh-3-r, in the sense of hair, also, as Uri Horesh has already
mentioned, corresponds to Hebrew root s'-3-r.
On the other hand, the Hebrew root sh-3-r corresponds to Arabic s-3-r  
(in
the sense of estimating).
I haven't encountered any suggestion concerning the alleged etymological
connection between these two meanings
of Arabic sh-3-r (and Hebrew s'-3-r).

Remark: Adherents of the Proto-Semitic theory reconstruct the triad s'  
- sh
- s for PS (the exact actualization is not certain).
They claim that in Arabic, s' was shifted to sh, whether sh - to s.  
Luckily,
Sibawayhi, the famous grammarian from the 8th century,
provides us with a phonetic description of Arabic as pronounced in the  
8th
century. This enables us to reconstruct an intermediary
stage between PS and the Arabic as we know it. According to his  
description,
the phoneme actualized today as sh was pronounced
at his time as the consonant at the end of the German word ich (or as
something similar). The exact 8th century's actualization of
the phoneme pronounced today as s is disputable, but is might be
reconstructed as sh or as something similar.
Therefore we can reconstruct the following shifts in Arabic:
PS s' -> 8th cent. ch? -> today sh.
PS sh -> 8th cent. sh? -> today s.

I will be happy to receive any comment.

Almog Kasher
Bar-Ilan University

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