THE CASE FOR PROTO-SEMITIC AND PROTO-ARABIC CASE: A REPLY TO JONATHAN OWENS
THE CASE FOR PROTO-SEMITIC AND PROTO-ARABIC CASE: A REPLY TO JONATHAN OWENS

Summary/Abstract: In several works (1998a;b, 2006/9, 2015), Professor J. Owens has developed a revisionist history of the Arabic system of nominal case inflection. Rather than reconstructing the case system of Classical Arabic, cognate with Akkadian and Ugaritic, for Proto-Arabic, he proposed several scenarios in favor of a caseless variety of Proto-Semitic from which the modern Arabic dialects descend. This article engages with the Owens’ methodology, data, and claims in a defense of the traditional reconstruction – Proto-Arabic had a nominal case system similar to Classical Arabic that was lost in the modern dialects. We reconstruct a historical scenario to explain the eventual breakdown and disappearance of case in modern Arabic.

• Details
• Contents