Taymanitic

Taymanitic
Region	Taymāʾ
Era	second half of the 6th century BC
Language family	Afroasiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic Northwest Semitic? Taymanitic
Writing system	Ancient North Arabian
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None(mis)
Glottolog	taym1240

Taymaniticwas the language and script of the oasis ofTaymāʾin northwestern Arabia, dated to the second half of the 6th century BC.

Classification

Taymanitic does not participate in the key innovations ofProto-Arabic,precluding it from being considered a member of theArabic language family.It shares one key isogloss withNorthwest Semitic:the changew>yin word-initial position. Examples includeyrḫfor *warḫum 'moon, month' andydʿforwadaʿa'to know'.

It is clear that Taymanitic script expressed a distinct linguistic variety that is not Arabic and not closely related toHismaicorSafaitic,while it can tentatively be suggested that it was more closely related to Northwest Semitic.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemes

		Bilabial	Alveolar			Palatal	Velar	Pharyn- geal	Glottal
			plain	sibilant	lateral
Nasal		m	n
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t	ts			k		ʔ
	voiced	b	d	dz			ɡ
	ejective		tʼ	tsʼ	tɬʼ		kʼ
Fricative	voiceless			s	ɬ		x	ħ	h
	voiced						ɣ	ʕ
Liquid	trill		r
	central				l
Semivowel						j	w

Vowels

Monophthongphonemes

	Short		Long
	Front	Back	Front	Back
Close	i	u	iː	uː
Open	a		aː

There were two diphthongs of a vowel and semivowel:/aj/and/aw/.

Characteristics

Taymanitic exhibits two major features which are innovative:

1. The changew>yin word-initial position:yrḫfor *warḫum 'moon, month' andydʿforwadaʿa'to know'.
2. The mergers *z,*ḏ> *z,*s³,*ṯ> *s³,and *ṣ,*ẓ> *ṣ(loss of interdentals).

Unlike Arabic, Taymanitic does not exhibit the merger of Proto-Semitic [s] and [ts].