Case in Semitic: Roles, relations, and reconstruction by Rebecca Hasselbach (review)

At first sight, case in Semitic may not seem a very promising topic for an entire monograph: the reconstruction of Proto-Semitic case morphemes is mostly uncontroversial (e.g. Weninger 2011:165), and the functions of the Semitic cases are well established, documented, and discussed in the available literature (see e.g. the bibliography of the book under review). Controversial topics such as the alleged ergativity of Proto-Semitic (see pp. 55ff.) have already been given exhaustive treatment (e.g. Zaborski 1999, Waltisberg 2002). Nevertheless, Rebecca Hasselbach resumes the discussion by combining basic notions of historical and typological linguistics (especially pp. 2ff., 14ff., 90ff.) with Semitic data and proposing some new views on the prehistoric case system (see especially pp. 322–32). On the whole, the book will be most beneficial to linguists unfamiliar with the Semitic case system and for Semiticists seeking to familiarize themselves with notions of typological linguistics.

After a brief ‘Introduction’ (1–15) including some methodological considerations, H presents the morphological evidence from various Semitic languages and discusses the available literature (‘The Semitic case system: Basic evidence and traditional reconstruction’, 16–89). Semitic basically possesses three case morphemes: nominative -u, genitive -i, and accusative -a. In some older languages, these endings may be expanded by the final consonants -m or -n (mimation/nunation) with language-specific functional scope (e.g. Akkadian -um, -im, -am or Arabic -un, -in, -an, the latter in indefinite function; on mimation/nunation in general see Diem 1975). Apart from this triptotic declension with three case markers, in Arabic and less prominently in Ugaritic there is another diptotic one with only two case morphemes, lacking mimation/nunation altogether and consisting of the endings nominative -u and genitive/accusative -a (44ff.). The distinction between triptotic and diptotic declensions will become crucial to H’s reconstructions later on (see below). Whether Old South Arabian in its attested historical stages truly had a case system similar to that of Arabic as implied on pp. 26ff., following Stein 2003:95ff., is uncertain (Sima 2006:96).

Ch. 3, ‘Linguistic typology’ (90–124), introduces basic notions such as markedness, grammatical roles, and relations, as well as head vs. dependent marking and typological universals. Ch. 4, ‘Grammatical roles and the alignment of Semitic’ (125–81), is devoted to the discussion of grammatical roles in Semitic, including some conspicuous usages of the accusative, for example, after particles such as Arabic ʾinna ‘verily’ and some others, Hebrew hinnẹ ‘behold’ (142ff.), or the direct object marker ʾẹṯ with passive in Hebrew (150ff.). Some topics (e.g. syntactic pivot, pp. 145ff.) are discussed at length that have so far been only marginal to the discussion in Semitics. H can also show once again that there is no evidence for an ergative alignment in Semitic (passim). Ch. 5, ‘Head- and dependent-marking in Semitic’ (182–257), deals with these features in relation to the Semitic noun phrase, discussing, for example, prepositional phrases and various possessive constructions. The semantics of Semitic case markers is outlined in Ch. 6, ‘The function of case markers in Semitic’ (258–326), which provides a good overview of the many case functions attested.

‘The “accusative” -a’ (266–313) as well as ‘The “absolute” ending -∅’ (313–22) are particularly highlighted since the functions of nominative and genitive are more restricted (see pp. 258ff., 264ff.). The absolute ending -∅ is explained as ‘the original acc that underwent the regular loss of final short vowels’ (320), although this alleged regular loss of short vowels is basically a conjecture based on the absent case vowels in the Akkadian bound form (‘constructus’) before genitive (20). Such a vowel loss within a fixed syntagm like the constructus chain seems somewhat problematic. In addition, it is primarily limited to Akkadian and can be postulated as common Semitic only with difficulty. At the end of the chapter, H gives a reconstruction of the basic cases of Semitic (322ff.), distinguishing between Proto-Semitic...