Joshua C. Sherrill

Since the late 1980s, Semitists have homed in on a “Canaanite” subgroup of Northwest Semitic languages. Archaeology has revealed that the languages of Iron Age Canaan and its surroundings were obviously related and at times mutually intelligible. The linguistic features they had in common were, therefore, inferred features of their reconstructed Proto-Canaanite mother tongue, as distinguishable from other and larger groupings of the Semitic family tree. Several recent lists of the diagnostic features of Canaanite have been produced, updating the foundationally identified features. These lists have have varying methods of accounting for the what makes Canaanite “Canaanite.” Below is a comparison table of those I have found helpful and authoritative.

The dialects in the Iron Age are generally agreed to be on a continuum (Garr 2004). They exhibit some features inherited genetically (tree, phylum model) and others obtained by diffusion or contact (wave model). The dialects include: Phoenician, Ammonite, Edomite, Hebrew, Moabite, and, on the periphery, Deir ʾAlla. Canaanite adjacent on the latter end of the continuum is Aramaic. “Amarna Canaanite”—the dialect reconstructed from the fourteenth-century Amarna letters—is necessarily absent, since it is only indirectly attested via Canaanite word lists and grammar in the otherwise peripheral Akkadian of the scribes who wrote them, all in syllabic cuneiform. Ugaritic, which has been thought a Canaanite language in the past, is more properly a Northwest Semitic language and sister to Proto-Canaanite and Aramaic.

Table

#	Huehnergard (1991)	Groen (2015; 2016)	Pat-El & Wilson-Wright (2016) and Wilson-Wright (2019)	Bekins (2020) Genetic Model	Bekins (2020) Wave Model (in Degrees by Dialect)
1	(• the Canaanite shift, not in itself a significant feature)	• as good as universal adoption of the Canaanite Shift	(1) the “Canaanite shift” *ā > ō		• the Canaanite shift (*ā > ō) (Phoenician, Ammonite, Edomite, Hebrew, and Moabite)
2	• the 1cs pronoun *ʾanōkī < *ʾanōkū̆ < *ʾanākū̆	• the altered form ʾanōkī of the 1csg pronoun	(1) and (2) are related to changes in the pronominal system (e.g., PS *ʾanākū > P-Can. *ʾanōkū > Can. ʾanōḵī)	• the 1cs pronoun *ʾanōkī < *ʾanākū̆
3		• perfective ending 1csg changed into -tī in analogy with pronominal forms	(2) the perfect 1cs *-tū̆ > -tî	• the 1cs suffix form *qataltī < *qataltū̆
4	• the D and C suffix-conjugation forms *qittila and *hiqtila from *qattila and *haqtila, respectively	• a vocalisation pattern i-i in the D- and C-stem	(3) the suffix conjugation in D and C stems *qattila > *qittila and *haqtila > *hiqtila, respectively	• the C-stem suffix form *hiqtila < *haqtila and D-stem suffix form *qittila < *qattila
5		• C-stem morpheme h-
6	• the generalization of the 1cp suffix -nū̆ in all environments (object and possessive suffixal roles)	• 1cpl suffix -nu in analogy to the independent pronoun	(4) the generalization of 1cp suffix -nū into object and possessive suffixal roles	• the bound 1cp pronoun *-nū̆ < *-nā̆ (on analogy with the 1cp suffix form *qatalnū̆)
7			(5) various relative particles derived from grammaticalized *ʾaṯar- “place”		• the relative word אש (*ʾaš) (Phoenician, Ammonite, once in Moabite, possibly in Deir Alla)
8			(6) morpho-syntactic distinctions between infinitives construct and absolute in the G stem
9		• application of mimation in dual and plural
10		• replacement of original *man(n)- with mīya ‘who’
11	(• the prefixed definite article *ha- + double initial consonant, shared by many but not a Proto-Canaanite feature)				• the prefixed definite article -ה (*han-) (Phoenician, Ammonite, Edomite, Hebrew, and Moabite)
12					• the simplification of the diphthongs *ay to ê and *aw to ô (Phoenician, Ammonite, Northern Hebrew, and Moabite)
13					• the deletion of intervocalic h (Phoenician, some cases in Hebrew, Moabite, and Deir Alla)

Biblography

• Bekins, Peter. 2020. Inscriptions from the World of the Bible: A Reader and Introduction to Old Northwest Semitic. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.
• Garr, W. Randall. 2004. Dialect Geography of Syria-Palestine: 1000–586 B.C.E. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985. Repr., Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns.
• Groen, Jorik. 2015. “Northwest Semitic in the Second Millennium BCE.” ResMA thesis, Leiden University, 2015.
• ———. 2016. “On the Phonology of Second Millennium BCE Northwest Semitic.” Orientalia 85: 50–72.
• Huehnergard, John. 1991. “Remarks on the Classification of the Northwest Semitic Languages.” Pages 282–93 in The Balaam Text from Deir ʾAlla Re-evaluated: Proceedings of the International Symposium Held at Leiden, 21–24 August 1989. Edited by J. Hoftijzer and G. van der Kooij. Leiden: Brill.
• Pat-El, Naʾama and Aren Wilson-Wright. 2016. “The Features of Canaanite: A Reevaluation.” ZDMG 166: 41–55.
• Wilson-Wright, Aren M. 2019. “The Canaanite Languages.” Pages 509–32 in The Semitic Languages. 2nd ed. Routledge Language Family Series. Edited by by John Huehnergard and Naʾama Pat-El. New York: Routledge.