Re: [tied] Re: middle-eastern questions

On Sat, 17 Feb 2001 22:36:46 -0000, "Lisa Jacqueline Emerson"
<eris@...> wrote:

>Aaah, I see. So basically they're all just dialects of each other?
>Also, I forgot to mention Aramaic and Ugaritic. The latter would be
>a dialect as well? Did they all come from one particular Semitic
>ancestor, splitting off at some point, or are they related to each
>other in a different way (say, something like Hebrew producing
>Canaanite, Ugaritic, and Phoenician, or whatever)?

They're all (North-West)Semitic languages, which means that they are
all supposed to derive from a common ancestor (Proto-(North-West-)
Semitic, P(NW)S). It is my understanding that the family tree would
look something like this:

PNWS
_____________| |______
| | ? |
| (Proto-) Ugaritic
| Canaanite
| | |
Aramaic Hebrew Phoenician


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...