One of the sub-branches of Central Semitic, Northwest Semitic, contains a number of languages with no established hierarchical relation among them: Ugaritic, Aramaic, Canaanite, Deir Alla, and Samalian. Over the years, scholars have attempted to establish a more accurate sub-branching for Northwest Semitic or to suggest a different genetic affiliation for some languages, usually Ugaritic. In this paper, we will argue that Aramaic and Canaanite share a direct ancestor, on the basis of a number of morphosyntactic features: the fs demonstrative *ðaˀt, the direct object marker *ˀayāt, the development of dative subjects with adjectival predicates, the use of the construct state with prepositions, the G imperfect inflection of geminate verbs, and the plural form of *bayt. We will also address arguments that Ugaritic is a Canaanite dialect, or that Canaanite and Ugaritic are more closely related. This proposal not only outlines a more coherent family tree for Northwest Semitic, but also accounts for numerous “Aramaic”-like features in some Canaanite dialects, primarily Biblical Hebrew, which have thus far been treated as the result of language contact in the early Iron Age.
Although D. Petrovich’s recent book The World’s Oldest Alphabet: Hebrew as the Language of the Proto-Consonantal Script advances several claims about the origin of the alphabet and biblical history, its main arguments are linguistic. In particular, Petrovich identifies the language of the early alphabetic inscriptions as Hebrew as part of a larger argument for the historicity of the biblical Exodus tradition. In this review essay, I will summarize and critique Petrovich’s linguistic arguments. Along the way, I will consider two important questions in the classification of the Canaanite languages
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