The Semantics of Word Division in Northwest Semitic Writing Systems: Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite and Greek (Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS))

Much focus in research on alphabetic writing systems has been on correspondences between graphemes and phonemes. The present study sets out to complement these by examining the linguistic denotation of markers of word division in several ancient Northwest Semitic (NWS) writing systems, namely, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Moabite, and Hebrew, as well as alphabetic Greek. While in Modern European languages words on the page are separated on the basis of morphosyntax, I argue that in most NWS writing systems words are divided on the basis of prosody: ‘words’ are units which must be pronounced together with a single primary accent or stress, or as a single phrase.

After an introduction providing the necessary theoretical groundwork, Part I considers word division in Phoenician inscriptions. I show that word division at the levels of both the prosodic word and of the prosodic phrase may be found in Phoenician, and that the distributions match those of prosodic words and prosodic phrases in Tiberian Hebrew. The latter is a source where, unlike the rest of the material considered, the prosody is well represented. In Part II, word division in Ugaritic alphabetic cuneiform is analyzed. Here two-word division strategies are identified, corresponding broadly to two genres of text: viz, literary, and administrative documents. Word division in the orthography of literary and of some other texts separates prosodic words. By contrast, in many administrative (and some other) documents, words are separated on the basis of morphosyntax, anticipating later word division strategies in Europe by several centuries. Part III considers word division in the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition of Biblical Hebrew. Here word division is found to mark out ‘minimal prosodic words’. I show that this word division orthography is also found in early Moabite and Hebrew inscriptions. Word division in alphabetic Greek inscriptions is the topic of Part IV. Whilst it is agreed that word division marks out prosodic words, the precise relationship of these units to the pitch accent and the rhythm of the language is not so clear, and consequently this issue is addressed in detail. Finally, the Epilogue considers the societal context of word division in each of the writing systems examined, to attempt to discern the rationales for the prosodic word division strategies adopted.

Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) is a project funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 677758), and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations

1. Introduction
1.1. What is a word?
1.2. Why Northwest Semitic and Greek?
1.3. Wordhood in writing systems research
1.4. Linguistic levels of wordhood
1.5. Word division at the syntax-phonology interface
1.6. Previous scholarship
1.7. Method
1.8. Outline

Part I Phoenician
2. Introduction
2.1. Overview
2.2. Literature review
2.3. Corpus
2.4. Linguistic and sociocultural identity of the inscriptions
2.5. Proto-alphabetic
2.6. Shared characteristics of word division
2.7. Divergence in word division practice

3. Prosodic words
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Distribution of word division
3.3. Graphematic weight of function words
3.4. Morphosyntax of univerbated syntagms
3.5. Sandhi assimilation
3.6. Comparison of composition and distribution with prosodic words in Tiberian Hebrew
3.7. Conclusion

4. Prosodic phrase division
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Syntax of univerbated syntagms
4.3. Comparison with prosodic phrases in Tiberian Hebrew
4.4. Syntactic vs. prosodic phrase level analysis
4.5. Verse form
4.6. Conclusion

Part II Ugaritic alphabetic cuneiform
5. Introduction
5.1. Overview
5.2. Literature review
5.3. Basic patterns of word division and univerbation
5.4. Exceptions to the basic patterns of word division
5.5. Line division
5.6. Contexts of use
5.7. Textual issues
5.8.