> I would really like to know why the one Semitic language that is said to
> retain an old free accent, viz. Ethiopic, is quoted by two sources with a
> form of 'seven' accenting it in the very same place as IE. It is plain
> that the IE accent of 'seven' does not directly reflect that of any of the
> other Semitic accent types. Since the accentuation of Ethiopic is not
> noted in the writing I find it all the more remarkable that forms are just
> quoted from "tradition" which match the IE loanword exactly.
The "tradition" is from Ge'ez to present-day. It does not say anything
about the accent in PSem, that is, if Ge'ez shifted or retained a PSem
accent.
> Is there
> something about that tradition we should know?
Lambdin writes the following p. 5:
"C. Stress
According to the tradition adopted in this text, stress (accent) for the
vast amjority of words may be described by two simple rules:
(a) All finite verbal forms without object suffixes are stressed on the
next-to-last (i.e penultimate) syllable. Thus:
nabára, qatálat, yeqáttel, yeqattélu. The sole exception is the 2nd
person feminine plural of the Perfect in -kén (e.g. nabarkén).
(b) Most other words, including nouns, adjectives, and adverbs, are
stressed on the last syllable unless this ends in a final -a, in which
case the stress is on the preceding syllable.
The relatively few exceptions to these rules are in the pronominal system,
including the pronominal suffixes on nouns and verbs. All deviations from
the two basic rules given above will be noted in the lessons where
appropriate. Words in construct (see Lesson 4) tend to lose their stress
or, at most, retain only a secondary stress. The same is true of the
proclitic negative 'i- and of prepositions before a noun."
As for trusting the tradition (on stress, consonant gemination and
presence/absense of e - otherwise the script is fully indicative),
Lambdin writes (p. 2):
"These problems may be resolved in two ways: the first is to examine the
evidence of corresponding forms in other Semitic languages; the second is
to consult the reading tradition preserved by scholars in the modern
Ethiopic Church. Neither of these, if taken alone, is conclusive: Semitic
historical linguistics is itself ambiguous on certain crucial questions
because of insufficient data; the modern reading tradition, as published
by various European scholars, contains many contradictions and is heavily
influenced by the informants' own modern languages (usually Amharic). In
developing the grammar of Ge'ez in the following lessons I have followed
as closely as possible the traditional pronounciation as studied and
published by E. Mittwoch, _Die Traditionelle Aussprache des Äthiopischen_
(Berlin 1926). All major deviations from this tradition are noted in the
appropriate sections of the lessons; these result either from a choice
among variant forms or from an attempt to minimize the influence of
Amharic present in the pronounciation."
In the sections on numerals no deviation is noted so I assume he is
quoting the indigenous reading tradition. My UNI library does not have
Mittwoch's book.
all the best,
Harald