A Compound Etymology for Biblical Hebrew זוּלָתִי ‘Except’

This paper suggests an alternative derivation for the Biblical Hebrew preposition זוּלָתִי ‘except’. It does not derive from an alleged verbal root ZWL, but is rather to be compared with Akkadian ša lā and Aramaic dī lā with the same meaning and thus originates from the fusing of three elements: the West Semitic relative particle *dū, the Semitic negative particle *lā, and the pronominal morpheme *-tī. This derivation has better comparative Semitic support than the traditional derivation; it also accounts for a large number of instances of the problematic hireq compaginis.