The Three Hamzas in the Ugaritic Alphabet A Comparative Linguistic Study in Light of the Arabic Language

Abstract

This research examines a key issue in comparative linguistics. The three alephs in the Ugaritic alphabet represent a phonetic innovation developed by the Ugaritic to create an advanced system for representing the glottal stop combined with different vowels. This innovation is manifested in three cuneiform signs representing the glottal stop followed by the three vowels corresponding to Arabic short vowels /a/, /u/, and /i/: (ʼa), (ʼu), (ʼi). This feature makes the Ugaritic writing system essentially consonantal, except in the representation of the glottal stop.

These three alephs are not merely an advanced system for precise phonetic transcription; although they play no role in forming abstract morphological patterns (they are not derivational tools), they serve as tools that assist contemporary researchers in reconstructing the morphological system of Ugaritic. This is achieved by studying words containing glottal stops in terms of patterns and forms, in addition to their syntactic functions within sentence structure.

Studying Ugaritic in light of Arabic adopts Arabic as an interpretive tool and a basis for comparison to understand the functions of the three alephs. The hypothesis involves linking them to short vowels by comparing Ugaritic words with initial, medial, and final glottal stops to their Arabic counterparts.