Can you see the verb 'to see'?

As we have seen in an earlier blogpost, final weak verbs written with a <y> were probably pronounced as ē in the language of the QCT, e.g. ramē <rmy> < Proto-Arabic *ramaya. This is different from the Classical Arabic language which reads this words as ramā. There is however two verbs in the Qurʔān that don't play nice, they are the reflexes of *raʔaya 'to see' and *naʔaya 'to distance oneself'. In Classical Arabic orthography these are spelled راى <rʔy> raʔā and ناى <nʔy> naʔā respectively, but in the QCT they are written without the final <y>: را <rʔ> and نا <nʔ>.

One's first impression is that such spellings may suggest a pronunciation **raʔā, **naʔā, rather than the predicted **raʔē, **naʔē. As all other final weak verbs get their etymologically correct ending <ʔ> for final-w and <y> for final-y verbs, this is not a very satisfactory explanation.

So how do we account for this discrepancy? I suggest that we assume a fairly early loss of the glottal stop, with subsequent lengthening of the vowel in the language of the QCT.

Proto-Arabic *raʔaya > Loss of ʔ *rāya.

At this point, we still are not at the form that we expect because *rāya would be spelled just like *raʔē as <rʔy>. However, there is a subsequent sound law *āy/wv > āʔv well-attested in cases like the *samāyun 'sky' > samāʔun (as in Classical Arabic), *qāwimun 'standing' > qāʔimun, and finally *ʔaḍāyatun 'watering hole' > *ʔaḍāʔatun.[1]

*rāya > *rāʔa, and this leaves us at the form that we find in the Qurʔān, which may either have been pronounced *rāʔ(a), or simply *rā (with a second loss of ʔ).[2]

A prediction this hypothesis makes, is that the Yemeni dialect of the Minabbih area, which did not undergo the *āy/wv > āʔv shift would have the reflex rāy in the 3sg.m. form, and it does (Behnstedt 1987: 202)! Below is a diachronic Paradigm of the verb 'to see' in the language of the QCT:

	Proto-Arabic	Loss of ʔ	āyv > āʔv	QCT
3sg.m.	*raʔaya	*rāya	rāʔ(a)	<rʔ>
3sg.f.	*raʔat	*rāt	rāt	<rʔt>
2sg.m./2sg.f./1sg.	*raʔayta/i/u	*rāyta/iu	rāyt(a/iu)	<rʔyt>
3pl.m.	*raʔaw	*rāw	rāw	<rʔwʔ>
3pl.f.	*raʔayna	*rāyna	rāyna	Unattested
2pl.m.	*raʔaytum	*rāytum	rāytum	<rʔytm(wh)>
2pl.f.	*raʔaytunna	*rāytunna	rāytunn(a)	Unattested
1pl.	*raʔaynā	*rāynā	rāynā	Unattested

As far as I'm concerned, this conclusively shows that in the language of the QCT *ʔ was lost completely (pace Myself)

The raʔē form remembered?

In Surat an-Naǧm we actually find the Classical spelling راى <rʔy> for this verb twice (and those are the only attestations in this Surah).  This Surah has a clear rhyming scheme, rhyming with an ē <y> from Ayah 1 to 56 (of the 62 Ayah's). Q54:11 uses <rʔy> in the rhyme. [3] This might suggest that the composer of this Ayah invoked a dialectal form, to suit the rhyme. This is, of course, not unlikely, but it is surprising that the second attestation of this verb is not invoked to suit the rhyme, as it appears in the middle of an Ayah (Q54:18). Is this Surah composed in a different dialect altogether? Or is this simply an attempt by scribes to unify the spelling within a single Surah?

Classical Arabic getting it wrong

Another unusual feature of the verb raʔā in the imperfective is that it's the only verb that applies the *Cʔ > C sound law that I have posited even in the reading tradition and Classical Arabic. As such the reflex of *yarʔayu is yarā (or yarē) <yry> in the reading tradition, and not the predicted **yarʔā, **yarʔē. This goes to show just how artificial the reading tradition is, in that it is unable to reconstruct the correct pronunciation in an ambiguous case like this verb. There is one other verb which also underwent this sound law and that is the imperative of saʔala 'to ask', which is read as sal rather than the predicted **isʔal.

[Edit] Lameen Souag pointed out in the comments that this last paragraph was a little confusing. What I meant to say is: In Classical Arabic (and in the Qurʔānic reading tradition) the imperfective of the verb 'to see' undergoes the *Cʔ > C. Within the linguistic system of Classical Arabic, this is irregular, as all other cases of *Cʔ (besides sal) are simply retained. This seems to suggest that somehow the colloquial usage (and/or dialectal usage) of this verb ended up in the Classical Language, whereas this has not happened with less high-frequency words.

---

[1] Interestingly, this sound law appears to not always operate word-internally, while it did operate word-finally, e.g. Moroccan Arabic ḍaya 'lake, pond' < *ʔaḍāyah but sma 'sky' < *samāʔ

[2] This two-step loss of first etymological *ʔ and secondary ʔ < y/w may explain the asymmetry between *aʔu and *āʔu where one yielded <wʔ> spelling from the earliest documents while *āʔu did not. If we assume that the word-final short vowels were around with the first loss, but not with the second loss, we would get the exact forms we find:

*malaʔu > malawu > malawu > malaw > mala
*ǧazāyu > ǧazāyu > ǧazāʔu > ǧazāʔ > ǧazā

[3] Note that the rhyme is broken in Q53:28 by šayʔan. Obviously, in its caseless pronunciation, this word would fit the rhyme. Perhaps it was originally composed without the case ending, and therefore with šay. In the regular reading tradition where Pausal -an is pronounced ā this rhyme works out, but the Warsh reading actually does not break the verse at this point (and therefore the numbering is different), because the rhyme does not work. Still considering the length and syntactic unit, it seems reasonable to suppose the Ayah probably ended here originally.

 

Comments

[Lameen]

Rāyta and rāytum would violate basic Arabic phonotactics - and the orthography rules out rayta, raytum. That suggests that these forms, at least, still had a glottal stop.

yarā lacks the glottal stop not just in the reading traditions but in standard Classical Arabic too, so I'm not sure what your point is in the last paragraph.

[PhoeniX]

Thanks for your comments! I updated the final paragraph a little bit. I hope it's more clear now.

As for the phonotactics: I'm not sure if I'm too worried about phonotactic arguments. Phonotactics can change, and they do, all the time, of course.

Classical Arabic doesn't allow for superheavy syllables at all, yet, in most dialects Arabic allows for superheavy syllables in word-final position (due to the loss of case vowels).

In the Minabbih dialect which has rāy, this verb did get changed to the phonotactics, e.g. rayt 'I saw'. You might imagine that the moment ʔ was lost, it was instantly shortened, but that doens't have to be the case of course.

raʔaya > rāy(a)
raʔaytu > (rāytu) > rayt(u)

I don't think that we can make the a priori assumption that the stage in between brackets never existed, and I would be inclined to say the QCT confirms it.

I have trouble formulating a sound law where:
raʔaya underwent a shift *aʔa > ā but
raʔaytu did not.

You would have to assume a syncope of a of some sort: rʔaytu, and that syncope would have to post-date the *Cʔ > C development. This would give us a phonotactically problematic word-initial cluster, and we have no evidence for such a syncope (it would be hard to find evidence for it, of course).

Or one could write a conditioned sound law for the loss of ʔ like: aʔaCV > āCV. while aʔaCC remained. But the phonetic motivation for such a sound law seems rather limited. I would rather assume a stage of the language where internal superheavy syllables were allowed for some period of time.

Without the sound law aʔa > ā preceding āyv >āʔv though, the form and becomes inexplicable. We would be stuck with a Classical Arabic-like pronunciation of two verbs which just happened to have the same root structure C-ʔ-y, while all other final weak verbs with -y are written with , and rhyme seems to suggest that they were pronounced ē or ay.

So whatever form we assume for the aʔa > ā shift, I think it needs to have happened for the 3sg.m.

[PhoeniX]

There are also actual cases of super heavy syllables in Classical Arabic occasionally as Ahmad Al-Jallad pointed out to me. The Energic ending on dual verbs creates super heavy syllables as in Q10:89 yattabaʕānni. So clearly whatever phonotactics were in place (and anti-superheavy phonotactics were in place of course with wādiyun > wādīn > wādin), they don't seem to be active in Classical Arabic.

[Daniel]

You also regularly get super heavy syllables with derivations from double roots, e.g. ḍāll- "erring" or (al-)ḥāqqa(h).
Of course, one might argue that doubled consonants consonants following a long vowel create a somewhat different environment than two different consonants following a long vowel.

[Daniel]

addendum: Though personally, I think that these should be treated necessarily as different environments.

[PhoeniX]

Thanks for your comment Daniel!

I was going to mention those too. But I agree that a case could be made that VVC1=C2 is a different 'kind' of superheavy syllable.

[Jadhimah]

In Classical Arabic poetry CVVC (superheavy) is treated as CVC (heavy) for the purposes of scansion and there is no difference between them. This could imply that superheavy syllables were actually abundant in early Classical Arabic and that phrases like "mā smuka?" were actually pronounced with a long ā.

The standard Classical Arabic syllable types of CV and CVV/CVC may just be a realignment from an earlier system that was mora-timed (like Japanese), and there were two coda-less syllable types C/CV (short) and CVV (long) that may have both been considered one mora. Classical CVC would have developed from bimoraic C.C (bin.t < b.n.t), CV.C (man < ma.n) and CVV.C sequences (mas.mu.ka < maa.s.mu.ka)

[PhoeniX]

As I said, I see no reason to not break phonotactics if it serves the description.

Phonotactics can occasionally be a very strong tool to understand a whole range of historical developments, and super-heavy syllable avoidance, explains all kinds of behaviors of II-weak and III-weak verbs in Semitic. But when it doesn't, it doesn't, and of course Arabic clearly develops means to avoid such phonotactics at some points, and the moment when this happens is rather difficult to pinpoint. I wouldn't mind placing that before the period that Arabic was first set to writing in the Arabic script.

Your mora-based analysis seems sensible, but I'm not too knowledgeable of moraic theory, so I'm hardly one to judge.