37.3582, Confs: Linguistics and Semitic Philology Conference

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3582. Mon 02 Nov 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.3582, Confs: Linguistics and Semitic Philology Conference

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Date: 30-Oct-2026
From: Christopher Long [cmlong884 at gmail.com]
Subject: Linguistics and Semitic Philology Conference


Linguistics and Semitic Philology Conference
Short Title: LSP
Theme: Semitic Sibilants

Date: 06-Nov-2026 - 06-Nov-2026
Location: Online
Contact: Christopher Long
Contact Email: cmlong884 at gmail.com
Meeting URL: https://forms.gle/7yW6zTz3pErTbu6g9

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Phonetics; Phonology;
Typology; Writing Systems
Subject Language(s): Ancient Greek (to 1453) (grc, anci1242)
                     Hebrew (heb, hebr1245)
                     Phoenician (phn, phoe1239)
                     Shehri (shv, sheh1240)
                     Ugaritic (uga, ugar1238)
Language Family(ies): Indo-European (indo1319); Semitic (semi1276)

Schedule update and abstracts for the Linguistics and Semitic
Philology Conference: Semitic Sibilants. We have moved the start time
one hour earlier to make sufficient room for breaks and discussion:
now 7:00am–2:30pm (EST) / 1:00pm–8:30pm (CET), Nov. 6, 2026 (online).
Full schedule below.
Description: An online conference bringing together presenters from
several countries, including general linguists and Semitic
philologists, to discuss sibilants in the Semitic languages, both
ancient and modern. Languages covered range from Hebrew, Phoenician,
and Ugaritic to Modern South Arabian, Neo-Aramaic, Greek, and
Proto-Semitic.
Schedule:
Introduction (7:00am EST/1:00pm CET)
Vera Tsukanova: The system of sibilants in early Phoenician (7:10am
EST/1:10pm CET).
Benjamin Suchard: Whence the sigma? The separate borrowing of the
Greek letters and their names (7:35am EST/1:35pm CET).
Noam Faust: Shibilant sift in Modern Hebrew and the typology of
sibilant co-occurrence (8:00am EST/2:00pm CET).
Half-hour coffee/tea break (8:25am EST/2:25pm CET).
Ola Wikander: Armies, Boxes, and Lords of the Earth: ṣĕbāʾôt, ḏbꜣ.t ,
and Elkunirša – affricates, sibilants, and ejectives in contact
(9:00am EST/3:00pm CET).
Roey Schneider: Sibilant-guttural interchange in Modern South Arabian
(9:25am EST/3:25pm CET).
10-minute break (9:50am EST/3:50pm CET)
Michael Leff: A Reassessment of Proto-Semitic s₁ (10:00am EST/4:00pm
CET).
Christopher Long: Hearing a hiss and saying a lisp: Ugaritic θ
(10:25am EST/4:25pm CET).
Full-hour lunch/dinner break (10:50am EST/4:50pm CET).
Janet Watson & Jarred Brewster: The acoustics and articulation of
sibilants in Shehret, a language of southern Arabia (12:00pm
EST/6:00pm CET).
Joachim Kokkelmans: The S(h)ibboleth story from the perspective of a
typology of sibilant inventories in the world’s languages (12:25pm
EST/6:25pm CET).
10-minute break (12:50pm EST/6:50pm CET)
Simon Korneev: Lašōn haḍḍādǣ? A lateral interpretation of the
tzade–schin interchange at Qumran (1:00pm EST/7:00pm CET).
Geoffrey Khan: Affrication of sibilants in Neo-Aramaic (1:25pm
EST/7:25pm CET).
Conclusion (open discussion) (1:50pm EST/7:50pm CET).
Abstracts:
Vera Tsukanova: The system of sibilants in early Phoenician (7:10am
EST/1:10pm CET).
The phonetic realization of the Phoenician sibilants remains a matter
of uncertainty. In my talk I am going to concentrate on the situation
in early Phoenician, namely in the 8th –7th centuries BCE, when
Phoenician was used as a written language on the territories where
Anatolian languages were spoken. The Phoenician inscriptions from
Cilicia and Syria contain a number of Anatolian proper nouns. The new
grammar of the Luwian language (Yakubovich, Rieken 2026) allows us to
take a new look at the Phoenician rendering of the Luwian proper nouns
containing sibilants.
Benjamin Suchard: Whence the sigma? The separate borrowing of the
Greek letters and their names (7:35am EST/1:35pm CET).
The Greek alphabet is clearly derived from a North Semitic ancestor,
traditionally identified as Phoenician. The mismatch between the Greek
and North Semitic sibilant letters and their names, however, has long
stymied researchers. In shape, Greek xi matches North Semitic samekh
and Greek sigma matches North Semitic shin. The name xi, however, does
not resemble samekh at all; instead samekh is a better match for
sigma. Previous explanations resort to unlikely scenarios such as
imperfect learning or plain confusion on behalf of the Greek adopters
of the alphabet and are ultimately unconvincing.
In this talk, we will consider the additional evidence from the
letters’ sound values and connect it with the affricate hypothesis.
This states that before ca. 1000 BCE, Northwest Semitic samekh and
shin were pronounced [ts] and [s], respectively. Greek xi is used for
various combinations of plosives and sibilants, matching the value of
North Semitic samekh during the second millennium BCE, while sigma is
the basic voiceless sibilant, like second-millennium shin. This
suggests that the letter shapes and sound values were borrowed during
the second millennium, as suggested by Joseph Naveh and Willemijn
Waal.
The letter-name mismatch can then be understood if the names were only
borrowed later, after deaffrication of samekh and backing of shin had
taken place. Without altering the alphabetic order, shape, or value of
their own letters, the Greeks accepted that the [s] was called
(something like) samekh. The lack of affricates in first-millennium
Northwest Semitic left the Greeks without a name for the letter
representing [ks] etc., leaving xi with the default name type for
obstruent letters that do not occur in North Semitic, C-i (cf. phi,
chi, psi). As the letter names are one of the strongest pieces of
evidence connecting the Greek alphabet with Phoenician in particular,
the possibility that the Greek letter names are secondary opens up
avenues to explore other routes of alphabet transmission.
Noam Faust: Shibilant sift in Modern Hebrew and the typology of
sibilant co-occurrence (8:00am EST/2:00pm CET).
Modern Hebrew exhibits a rare sibilant co-occurrence restriction: in
words with [+ant]…[-ant] sibilant sequences like /suʃi/ ‘sushi’, the
order of values is sometimes switched and the form is pronounced
[ʃusi]. The opposite order, as in /ʃasi/ ‘chassis’, is faithfully
realized. We argue that this “shift” (Gietz et al. 2023) is best
analyzed using Element Theory (Kaye et al. 1985) and placed in the
larger context of sibilant harmony (e.g. Hansson 2010). Both shift and
harmony can be made to follow from the need to left-align a marked
specification. Accordingly, we provide a formal typology in Optimality
Theory covering both phenomena.
Ola Wikander: Armies, Boxes, and Lords of the Earth: ṣĕbāʾôt, ḏbꜣ.t ,
and Elkunirša – affricates, sibilants, and ejectives in contact
(9:00am EST/3:00pm CET).
In the presentation, I argue that the Hebrew word ṣĕbāʾôt (“[of]
armies”), famously used in the “throne name” of the Hebrew deity YHWH,
has been influenced by the Egyptian ḏbꜣ.t (”box, shrine, base”) – not,
as has been suggested in some previous scholarship, as a direct loan
from that word or stem, but as a loan-blend or phono-semantic matching
with inherited terminology (the latter also reflected in ršp ṣbʾi,
“Resheph of the Army”, at Ugarit). Inferences are drawn as to the
sibilant/affricate phonemes of these words and their articulation, the
renderings of “emphatic” sounds, etc., in light of these interactions.
A similar discussion is carried out in relation to the Hittite
borrowed-from-Canaanite divine title Elkunirša (“El,
creator/owner/acquirer of the Earth”) and the rendition of similar
phonemes in that name. I will also touch upon the realization of the
Ugaritic sign <s̀>, which in all probability encodes an affricate and
occurs in some famous loans into Ugaritic. All in all, the
presentation discusses borrowings and matchings of sibilants,
affricates and “emphatics” in contact between Northwest Semitic and
other ANE languages.
Roey Schneider: Sibilant-guttural interchange in Modern South Arabian
(9:25am EST/3:25pm CET).
This talk examines the reflexes of Proto-Semitic *s (traditionally *š)
in the Modern South Arabian languages. It argues that one
debuccalization of *s, blocked in certain phonological environments,
accounts for the Soqotri alternation as well as for the uniform h of
Mehri, Harsusi, Bathari and Hobyot and the uniform ʃ of Jibbali, and
discusses the place of this development within the Semitic
debuccalization of *s in grammatical morphemes.
Michael Leff: A Reassessment of Proto-Semitic s₁ (10:00am EST/4:00pm
CET).
The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic *s₁ as [ʃ] or [s] has been debated
for over a century. The former is difficult to reconcile with both the
typology of languages with a single plain sibilant and strong evidence
for early [s] realizations in daughter languages such as Old Akkadian
and Eblaite. The latter requires palatalizations across Babylonian,
Northwest Semitic, and Modern South Arabian, usually driven by a push
chain at odds with the cuneiform record. Although intermediate
articulations and variation between [s] and [ʃ], whether conditioned
or free, have been proposed, the evidence adduced for them has thus
far been limited. In practice, such proposals are often invoked to
accommodate early [ʃ] reflexes or otherwise unaccounted-for
sign-series variation but remain marginal to accounts of the
development of *s₁ in daughter languages. An allophonic Proto-Semitic
*s₁, consistent with its status as the sole plain sibilant, accounts
for both early [s] and [ʃ] reflexes, as well as early Akkadian
sign-series interchanges that conditioning alone cannot explain,
without recourse to hypothetical palatalizations or push chains. The
divergent reflexes of *s₁ in daughter languages are therefore best
understood as branch-specific resolutions of its Proto-Semitic
allophony, which may also bear on late *s₁/*s₃ mergers.
Christopher Long: Hearing a hiss and saying a lisp: Ugaritic θ
(10:25am EST/4:25pm CET).
This paper discusses the phonetic realization of Ugaritic θ based on
the loaning of Hurrian and Hittite s into Ugaritic as θ. I suggest
that the realization of Hurrian and Hittite sibilant loans into
Ugaritic with interdental graphemes reflects a situation comparable to
Late Old French loans into Medieval Greek, with Hurrian and Hittite
being argued to have been ‘2-sibilant languages’ with a denti-alveolar
s (Hittite as a ‘hidden 2-sibilant language’), and Ugaritic to have
been a ‘1-sibilant language’ with a retracted s at the time of the
loans, coercing the denti-alveolar sibilants of the donor languages to
be realized as interdentals in Ugaritic. A parallel to this soundshift
is suggested to be attested in the loaning of the Indo-European name
*ʕaθtar- into Semitic. The model presented here offers a window into
seeing how conflicting phonological inventories of languages in
contact can inform how sounds are loaned and approximated from one
language into another.
Janet Watson & Jarred Brewster: The acoustics and articulation of
sibilants in Shehret, a language of southern Arabia (12:00pm
EST/6:00pm CET).
In this paper, we examine the acoustic and articulatory aspects of the
sibilant series in Shehret in comparative perspective with Mehri.
Drawing on acoustic, electropalatographic, and visual data, we offer
insights into longstanding ambiguities in the descriptive literature:
the phonetic distinction between Shehret /s/, /s̃/, /š/; and the
distinction between /s̃/ in Shehret and /š/ in Mehri. The principal
disagreements revolve around the place of articulation of /s̃/ and
/š/, on the one hand, and their identity or difference with respect to
primary place of articulation, on the other. Researchers on Shehret
have tended to appropriate some version of Johnstone's (1981: xiv)
description of lip pouting and lesser contact with the palate as the
feature that distinguishes /s̃/ from /š/ (e.g. Rubin 2014: 26; Dufour
2016: 24). Others describe labialization alone as distinguishing /s̃/
from /š/ (e.g. Simeone-Senelle 1997: 382). By contrast, the acoustic
and articulatory evidence presented here, collected from speakers in a
phonetics lab as well as in the field in Dhofar, corroborate the
analysis found in Bellem & Watson (2018) of three distinct places of
articulation: alveolar [s], alveopalatal [ɕʷ], and palatoalveolar [ʃ]
for /s/, /s̃/, /š/ respectively for those speakers who preserve a
categorical distinction. Future directions will aim to shore up these
provisional conclusions with interspeaker and cross-dialectal
comparison and extend our analysis into the emphatic series of
Shehret.
Bellem, A. & J.C.E. Watson 2018. ‘South Arabian sibilants and the
Śḥerɛ̄t s̃ ~ š contrast’. In: L. Nehmé & A. al-Jallad, To the Madbar
and back again: Studies in the languages, archaeology, and cultures of
Arabia dedicated to Michael C.A. Macdonald. 622–644. Brill. Dufour, J.
2016. Recherches sur le verbe subarabique modern. Habilitation sous la
direction de M. Gilles Authier, EPHE. École pratique des hautes
études. Johnstone, T.M. 1981. Jibbāli Lexicon. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. Rubin, A. 2014. The Jibbali (Shahri) Language of
Oman. Leiden: Brill. Simeone-Senelle, M.C. 1997. ‘The Modern South
Arabian Languages’. In: R. Hetzron, The Semitic Languages. 378–423.
New York: Routledge.
Joachim Kokkelmans: The S(h)ibboleth story from the perspective of a
typology of sibilant inventories in the world’s languages (12:25pm
EST/6:25pm CET).
The Shibboleth story (Judges 12:6) has caused much ink to flow, from
the Middle Ages to the modern day, as various hypotheses have been
brought forward to explain the phonetic mismatch that led the
Ephraimites to pronounce "Shibboleth" as "Sibboleth" (see e.g.
Marquart, 1888; Speiser, 1942; Marcus, 1992; Faber, 1992; Rendsburg,
1992; Hendel, 1996; Woodhouse, 2003; Emerton, 2014 [1985]). Some
convincing hypotheses involve the interaction between a sibilant and a
non-sibilant (for example, the Ephraimite pronunciation [s]ibboleth
for a Gileadite target [θ]ibboleth, as proposed by Speiser, 1942).
This contribution focuses instead on the possibility that, if the
interaction involved was one pertaining only to sibilants, plenty of
hypotheses were overlooked by the literature due to an incomplete
knowledge of possible sibilant inventories. In particular, there is a
typological bias in favour of the [s]‑[ʃ] contrast, leading scholars
to often disregard other possible contrasts. As Kokkelmans (2021)
shows, the world's languages exhibit between zero and four places of
articulation for sibilants, with seven attested contrasts in place of
articulation. For example, Basque contrasts retracted alveolar [s̠]
with dental [s̪], so that a speaker of English is likely to pronounce
[s̠]ibboleth as [s]ibboleth. Kokkelmans (2021, pp. 267–271, 378)
predicts 18 typologically possible mismatches involving sibilant
places of articulation, out of which the four statistically most
likely are described in detail.
Simon Korneev: Lašōn haḍḍādǣ? A lateral interpretation of the
tzade–schin interchange at Qumran (1:00pm EST/7:00pm CET).
Proto-Semitic is now typically reconstructed with two lateral
obstruents, *ś (= [ɬ] or [t͜ɬ]) and *ḍ (= [ɬ’ ~ t͜ɬ’]); both are
commonly stated to have lost phonemic status in Hebrew, merging with
the reflexes of PS *s (=[ʦ]) and PS *ṣ (= [s’ ~ ʦ’]), respectively.
While these mergers are complete in Jewish traditions of Hebrew
attested since the Middle Ages, Samaritan Hebrew has *ś = *š instead,
and retention of at least one lateral obstruent is not infrequently
assumed for pre-Hellenistic Hebrew (Schneider 2024, 130). Steiner
(1977, 117ff.) suggests the preservation of an independent *ḍ (= [ɬ’ ~
t͜ɬ’]) reflex in some early Hebrew based on the distribution of the
synonymous roots צח״ק and שׂח״ק in the Hebrew Bible. This paper
adduces a further argument for the retention of a lateral emphatic
phoneme in certain varieties of ancient Hebrew based on a new
interpretation of a spelling interchange recently identified at
Qumran, taking into account the cross-linguistic typology of
delateralization as well as patterns of possible Aramaic interference
in Second Temple Hebrew.
In a recent article, Yuditsky and Ariel (2018) collect instances of a
peculiar-looking interchange between schin and tzade at Qumran, adding
to the known patterns of sibilant interchanges in Second Temple
Hebrew. A palatalized allophone of ṣ, probably realized [ʃ’ ~ t͜ʃ’],
is stipulated (ibid.) in the Hebrew of the several scrolls in which
the interchange is attested. This paper suggests an articulatory
motivation for the somewhat surprising postalveolar emphatic *[ʃ’ ~
t͜ʃ’] by considering the place of articulation of early Hebrew lateral
obstruents.
Lateral consonants can have different places of articulation: thus, a
‘liquid’ lateral l can be an alveolar [l], a retroflex [ɭ], a palatal
[ʎ] or a velar [ʟ]. A lateral obstruent’s place of articulation can
influence the outcome of its delateralization: such sounds often
develop into alveolars, postalveolars or velars, retaining their place
of articulation after they lose their laterality. Thus, Proto-Lezgic
lateral fricatives may be reconstructed as velar based on their
widespread reflexation as [x] in the daughter languages (cf. Kibrik
and Kodzasov 1990, 311), while the Pre-Arabic reflex of PS *ś is
reasonably supposed to have been palatal based on its development into
a palatal fricative [ç] by Sibawayh’s time. Likewise, the Old Aramaic
*ḍ reflex (likely [x’ ~ k͜͜x’]) is commonly supposed to have developed
from a velar lateral emphatic.
I argue that the easiest way to explain the schin-tzade interchanges
identified by Yuditsky and Ariel is to suppose the delateralization of
a postalveolar *ḍ reflex in the Hebrew varieties ancestral to the
relevant scribal dialects. A postalveolar place of articulation has
been suggested for early Canaanite *ś reflexes; a matching
postalveolar articulation of the *ḍ reflex in early Hebrew makes a
delateralization into *[ʃ’ ~ t͜ʃ’] typologically likely. This
argument, if accepted, implies the retention of an independent *ḍ
reflex in some pre-Hellenistic Hebrew varieties and thus refines
Steiner’s hypothesis of a lateral emphatic in Classical Biblical
Hebrew. Biblical Hebrew may thus conceivably have been as much a
‘language of the ḍād’ as early medieval Arabic.
References: Kibrik, A., Kodzasov, S. (1990) The comparative study of
Dagestanian languages. The Name. Phonology. Moscow: Moscow University
Press (in Russian). Schneider, R. (2024) The Semitic sibilants.
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Steiner, R.C. (1977) The case for
fricative-laterals in Proto-Semitic. New Haven: American Oriental
Society. Yuditsky, A. and Ariel, Ch. (2018) “Ṣade—Shin change in the
Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Joosten, J, Machiela, D. and Rey, J.-S. (eds)
The reconfiguration of Hebrew in the Hellenistic period: Proceedings
of the seventh International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea
Scrolls and Ben Sira at Strasbourg University, June 2014.
Leiden/Boston: Brill, pp. 245–251.
Geoffrey Khan: Affrication of sibilants in Neo-Aramaic (1:25pm
EST/7:25pm CET).
This lecture examines the affrication of sibilants in North-Eastern
Neo-Aramaic, focusing on the Christian dialects of Barwar and Urmi. It
situates these developments alongside the affrication of
pharyngealised /t/, exploring the interaction of phonetic
conditioning, lexical differentiation and sound symbolism. In Barwar,
historical /š/ develops into a pharyngealised affricate in
environments involving earlier pharyngeals or neighbouring consonants
associated with secondary articulation. Other sibilants yield voiced
affricates. These changes intersect with the development of
pharyngealised /t/ into an affricate, sometimes producing lexical
doublets that preserve the original stop alongside its affricated
counterpart.
The Urmi evidence reveals the expressive potential of affrication. In
non-pharyngealised words, affricates can evoke smallness or
high-pitched sounds. In pharyngealised words, by contrast, affrication
can signal increased force, hardness or intensity. Contrasts between
verbs meaning ‘bruise’ and ‘crush’, or ‘score’ and ‘scratch’,
illustrate how changes affecting sibilants and stops participate in a
shared pattern of expressive differentiation.
The lecture argues that these developments are best understood through
the convergence of historical phonology and ideophonic processes.
Affrication acquires different expressive values according to its
articulatory setting, revealing how phonological change can become a
resource for structuring lexical meaning and generating contrasts
within closely related dialects of the same language.
Register here: https://forms.gle/7yW6zTz3pErTbu6g9
Contact the organizers:
Christopher Long: cmlong884 at gmail.com
Eric Nathan Maroney: enathanmaroney at gmail.com


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