A Comparative Lexicon of Ugaritic and Canaanite

Abstract

I. K. H. Halayqa investigates lexical correspondences of Ugaritic and Canaanite: “Ugaritic was a spoken and written language in an area adjacent to various Canaanite dialects, such as the language of the El-Amarna letters from the city states in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine and Phoenician in Lebanon. Ugaritic was still a spoken language in the El-Amarna period, to which Old Canaanite belongs. Therefore the generic relationship between Ugaritic and Canaanite cannot be dispensed. It therefore seems appropriate to compare etymologically all the Ugaritic lexemes to those of the Northwest Semitic languages, in particular with the Canaanite branch. . . . The position of the Ugaritic language among the Northwest Semitic languages remains a question of lively debate. Ugaritic has been grouped with Amorite, Canaanite, Arabic and Old South Arabic. It has even been considered early Hebrew or early Phoenician or has been seen as a separate Northwest Semitic language distinct from Canaanite and Aramaic. Nevertheless, neither general acceptance nor satisfactory classification has been firmly established. . . . The process of searching and investigating all the possible Canaanite correspondences for 2254 Ugaritic lexemes has lead to the emergence of our lexicon, which contains 1643 certain and uncertain lexemes (1302 + 341) In other words, of 2254 lexemes only 1643 have been found with certain and uncertain Canaanite cognates