Lines of internal evidence include the following:
• Graphematic/phonological weight of univerbated morphemes;
• Correspondence between graphematic wordhood and the scope of sandhi phenomena;
• Correspondence between graphematic word boundaries and morphosyntactic boundaries;
• Correspondence between graphematic word boundaries and syntactic boundaries.
1.7.3.1. Graphematic/phonological weight of univerbated morphemes
The assignment of prosodic wordhood shares certain characteristics across languages (§1.4.2). One point of commonality is that function morphemes have a tendency to be prosodically deficient. Furthermore, prosodically deficient morphemes are often minimal in ways that can be measured without access to prosody per se, viz. the fact that they are often short. Compare, for example, the English function morphemes for and before: for can be prosodically deficient, as in the following example:
(64) (I ˈwentω) (ˈoutω) (for ˈteaω) (beˈforeω) (ˈdinnerω)
For and before are functionally equivalent in this example in that they are both prepositions. Yet for is prosodically weaker than before: the former carries no stress accent, whereas the latter may carry either primary or secondary stress depending on the particular point being made.
If in written English words were divided on prosodic grounds, we might obtain the following result, where before is separated, but for is not:
(65) Iwent out fortea before dinner.
The consequence of these observations for present purposes is that it should be possible to infer principles of word division on circumstantial grounds from the kinds of units that are separated. Thus, finding that graphematically dependent words were both phonologically short and semantically functional might constitute circumstantial evidence that word division operated on the basis of prosody, since these are the kinds of morphemes that are prosodically deficient cross-linguistically.
It is also possible to use the phonological/graphematic weight of univerbated morphemes to distinguish between phonological and semantic word division. Thus, on the one hand separating words on semantic and prosodic grounds yields the same result for the representation of for tea in (64) in both cases, namely, fortea. However, the two underlying word division strategies can be distinguished by comparing the treatment of non-prosodically weak forms. Thus in before dinner semantic word division yields a single orthographic word beforedinner, while prosodic word division yields two separate words before dinner.
1.7.3.2. Sandhi phenomena
We noted at §1.4.2.2 above that prosodic wordhood is cross-linguistically associated with junctural phenomena, that is, the sharing of phonological features across a morpheme boundary within the prosodic word, but not at its boundaries. Assimilation of morpheme-final /-n/, is associated in Tiberian Hebrew and Phoenician with the level of the prosodic word, and, where this coincides with graphematic word boundaries, will be used as evidence for the correspondence between graphematic words and prosodic words.
1.7.3.3. Consistency and the correspondence with morphosyntactic boundaries
An important line of evidence regarding the target of word division in a given writing system is the level of its morphosyntactic consistency, that is, the regularity with which word division corresponds with the boundaries of what one might term
‘dictionary words’.
Those familiar with the writing systems of languages with their roots in Western Europe have come to expect word division to be consistent at the level of morphosyntax. In principle, consistent morphosyntactic word division would treat morphemes equally according to their morphosyntactic status rather than phonological proportions. Thus, for example, all prepositions should be treated in the same way, either by writing them independently, or by univerbating them with a neighbouring morpheme. This is because all prepositions play the same morphosyntactic role, regardless of their phonological size.
In modern written English, for example, prepositions are always written as separate graphematic words, regardless of their prosodic status, e.g.:
(66) (I ˈwentω) (for ˈtea
(67) (I ˈwentω) (beˈforeω) (the ˈjudgeω)
In (66), for is proclitic, and forms a single prosodic word with tea. By contrast, in (67), before has its own primary stress, and constitutes a prosodic word in its own right. From a morphosyntactic perspective, however, for and before are both prepositions, and both govern their respective nps tea and the judge in the same way.
This parallel morphosyntactic status is reflected in the system of word division, where both for and before are written as separate graphematic words.
A long-standing issue in the analysis of early Northwest Semitic inscriptions is the apparent lack of systematic relationship between morphosyntactic boundaries and regular word division of this kind. Note, for instance, that three out of four of the following ‘principles’ provided by Millard (1970, 15) in his summary of Northwest Semitic epigraphic evidence for word division are prefaced by ‘sometimes’:28
Words are separated from each other except for (1) single-letter proclitic particles (e.g. k, w, b) (2) sometimes the nota accusativi
(3) sometimes bound forms (construct+regnant noun, infinitive absolute+regnant verb) (4) sometimes the third person plural suffix
The morphosyntactic inconsistency of word division in Northwest Semitic writing systems is usually seen, implicitly at least, as a problem. Thus handbooks and other scholarly literature on word division in alphabetic cuneiform are wont to present word division there as inconsistent, and pay little attention to it. Thus, for example, Sivan (2001, 11) states ‘The Ugaritian scribes were not consistent in dividing words’
(cf. similar remarks in Wansbrough 1983, 222; Huehnergard 2012, 22).29 Tropper, in his monumental grammar (Tropper 2012), which runs to some 1068 numbered pages, affords barely three sides to word division (pp. 68–70), where he simply describes the phenomena.
Claims of inconsistency in word division in early Northwest Semitic inscriptions betray an underlying assumption, namely, that words should be separated from one another on the basis of morphosyntax/semantics, for it is only according to these principles that word division is implicitly being measured, e.g. Huehnergard (2012, 22):
28 Cf. Lehmann (2016, 39*), who states: ‘There would appear to be an increasing disdain for dividing devices in epigraphic research, especially spaces, the more when these are only very small and inconsistent gaps. This may be related to a certain methodological helplessness. The minute size and occasional unsteadiness of such spaces seem to undermine all rules of word separation vs. non-separation hitherto known from dotted writing with graphic separation marks (Millard 1970, Naveh 1973).’
29 Wansbrough (1983, 222): ‘The problem there is the random and hence indeterminate functional load of that device [i.e. the word divider].’
Noun phrases … may appear without a word divider between them, as in bt bʿ l [the house of Ba`l]; but there are many other exceptions where it is not clear why the word divider has been omitted. (My emphasis)
In the light of Sproat’s claim that writing systems, in principle, at least, target a consistent level of linguistic representation (Sproat 2000; §1.3.5), it is worth considering whether in fact word division in these writing systems is consistent, but merely represents a level of language different from that of morphosyntax. Indeed, the present study sets out to do just this, and identify the ORL of word division in these writing systems.
To embark on such a project is not, of course, to deny that the documents considered in this study were written by humans, or to assume, implicitly or otherwise, that humans are not capable of making mistakes. We will, of course, see some level of inconsistency on the grounds of human error. However, discussions of word division in ancient West Semitic orthographies, particularly when considering the epigraphic material, tend to emphasise the inconsistency at the expense of pointing out the consistencies. The impression one gets from the literature is that they simply were not very good at what they did. This, in my view, does a great disservice to the writers of these documents, many of whom must have been highly skilled at their craft.
My claim of consistency in the separation of word-level units in these writing systems rests on the observation that word division in Northwest Semitic inscriptions is not random. For example, we do not regularly find word dividers dissecting morphemes, such as the lexical root. Thus while Millard’s categories 2, 3 and 4 in p. 42 above are evidence of a level of inconsistency, the ubiquity of the orthographic dependency of ‘monoconsontal prefixes’ is rarely highlighted. Indeed, to my knowledge there is only one early Northwest Semitic orthography where these prefixes are written separately, namely, the Ugaritic orthography (on which see
§9.4 below). Furthermore, the remarkable consistency of treatment of these items is at odds with the orthographies of modern European languages, where we do not find equivalent morphemes written as prefixes, and is suggestive that some underlying principle is at work. In seeking to establish the principles underlying word division in West Semitic orthographies, therefore, it seems reasonable to start from the consistencies, and to work out from there to seek to account for the inconsistencies.
Key is the possibility of deriving morphosyntactically ‘inconsistent’ word division from the application of regular, albeit non-morphosyntactic, principles. This is par excellence the case in respect of word division according to prosodic words. Consider the following sentence:
(68) I want an apple and three oranges.
This can be given the following prosodic analysis:
(69) (I ˈwant ω) (an ˈapple ω) (and ˈthree ω) (ˈoranges ω)
A word division strategy demarcating prosodic words would therefore yield:
(70) Iwant anapple andthree oranges.
There is, however, another possible prosodic output, where and occurs in a strong (i.e. accented) form:
(71) (I ˈwant ω) (an ˈapple ω) (ˈand) (ˈthree ω) (ˈoranges ω)
This prosodic variant emphasises the conjunction and, and, in consequence, the addition of the three oranges. Prosodic word division of (71) would obtain the following:
(72) Iwant anapple and three oranges
Now let us conduct a thought experiment. Imagine two separate documents representing I want an apple and three oranges. For both documents prosodic word division is used, but one document represents the prosodic variant in (69), while the other represents the prosodic variant in (71). The results would look inconsistent, but in actual fact the orthographic principles underlying word division in both cases are consistent, but applied to represent two different prosodic variants.
Note, furthermore, that, at least for the present author, the following prosodic variant, with a strong variant of an is not felicitous:30
(73) *(I ˈwant ω) (ˈan ω) (ˈapple ω) (and ˈthree ω) (ˈoranges ω)
The net result of the thought experiment, therefore, is that prosodic word division of I want an apple and three oranges will always result in an and apple written as one word – i.e. morphosyntactic consistency) – whereas and three may or may not be written as one word – i.e. morphosyntactic inconsistency).
In the case of prosodic word division, therefore, we might expect three types of unit:
• Function morphemes that are never written as separate words (the case of an in the above examples);
30 Example (73) is infelicitous because emphasis is contrastive with three. This is to say that it is the quantity of apples and oranges respectively that is being compared. However, an only implies singularity, but does not denote it: one is needed to denote singularity. Accordingly, (73) would need to become I want one apple and three oranges to be felicitous.
• Function morphemes that may be written either as independent words or together with other morphemes (the case of and in the above examples);
• (Morphemes (functional or lexical) that are in principle graphematically independent, and are only written together with prosodically deficient morphemes (e.g. before in (64) above).
1.7.3.4. Correspondence with syntactic boundaries
At §1.5 above it was observed that there is a relationship between prosodic phrasing and morphosyntax. Specifically, the left/right edges of prosodic phrases are expected to align with the respective edges of the maximal projections of corresponding syntactic phrases. Therefore, while the univerbation of smaller functional morphemes is potentially indicative of graphematic wordhood according to prosodic words, general alignment of prosodic words with the left/right edges of syntactic phrases can be taken as evidence of graphematic wordhood targeting prosodic phrases. By contrast, the lack of such alignment can be taken as evidence against such a correspondence. This line of argumentation will turn out to be important both for discounting graphematic word~prosodic phrase correspondence in Ugaritic (§8.2) and in favour of this correspondence in the case of the Phoenician inscription KAI 10 (Chapter 4).
1.7.3.5. Distinguishing word division strategies
How should we test which account is correct? If division by function + content word units arises via the phonological level, so as to mark accent groups, we might expect to see at least one of the following phenomena:
• Separation of units according to phonological properties rather than their syntactic or semantic properties. In this case, we would expect to see words with the same kind of function, e.g. prepositions, treated differently based on their phonological properties.
• Evidence of sandhi phenomena within marked word-level units, but not between them.
Conversely, if the orthography arises via the lexical semantic and morphosyntactic level of representation of the language, we would expect:
• Separation of units according to semantic and syntactic properties, independent of their phonology. In this case, we would expect to see words with the same kind of function treated in the same way, regardless of their phonological properties.
For example, we would expect to see all prepositions treated in the same way, independent of their capacity to carry stress accent.
• Lack of external sandhi phenomena.
Word division could target linguistic levels other than morphosyntax or prosody. It could, for example, target the morpho-semantics, separating units on the basis of
lexical semantics. The rule could be, for example, that a word divider is inserted only after a morpheme that contributes new lexical semantic information. Example (68) with morphemes divided in this way would become:31
(74) Iwant anapple andthree oranges.
It can be seen that such an orthography of word division yields similar results to word division based on prosody, as in (70). Note in particular the lack of separation between an and apple and and and three in both orthographies. This is because function words are often prosodically deficient (§1.4.2.1); semantic word division will therefore yield results very similar to prosodic word division insofar as function words are not separated by the orthography. The difference, however, is in the extent to which lexical and function words are rigorously distinguished in terms of word division:
semantic word division would in principle not separate function words at all. By contrast, prosodic word division would be expected to separate some function words, since cross-linguistically the set of function morphemes does not map exactly on to the set of prosodically deficient morphemes (§1.4.2.1).
However, conformity to a definition of graphematic wordhood implies only compatibility with such a definition, rather than that the constraints of that strategy alone motivate word division where it occurs. For example, the proposal of a graphematic word division strategy for a particular writing system, e.g. that a graphematic word must comprise at least two consonants (§1.4.5.4) could be falsified by providing a counter example, namely, a single consonant morpheme demarcated by word dividers. But the lack of such counter examples would not necessarily prove that the unit that is marked out by punctuation or spaces can be accounted for at the graphematic level only. If the orthographic word were in fact a representation of the prosodic word, and the language were subject to a phonological constraint such that a prosodic word must be a full syllable CVC, a phonological explanation would also account for the mandatory graphematic weight of two consonants.
In order to establish the linguistic level of a particular word division strategy, it is important to find minimal pairs, that is pairs of morphemes that differ according to only one feature, for example in terms of their semantics, or prosodic independence, and compare their word division orthographies. For example, let us consider again the morphemes for and before in the sentence I went out for tea before dinner (64).
Since both for and before are function morphemes they are semantically parallel.
Semantic word division would therefore not distinguish for from before:
31 This analysis assumes that in this semantic orthographic of word division, pronouns are regarded as function morphemes, on the grounds of referring to elements already introduced in the (implicit) discourse.
(75) I went out fortea beforedinner.
Furthermore, for and before are morphosyntactically parallel, in that they are both prepositions. Accordingly, a morphosyntactic writing system would also not distinguish these two morphemes, as we see in the standard English representation of (64):
(76) Bill went for tea before dinner.
For and before are not, however, prosodically equivalent. In (64) for is not accented and forms a prosodic word with tea, while before is accented and stands as a prosodic word in its own right. Prosodic word division would, therefore, treat the two differently:
(77) Billwent fortea before dinner.
For and before are, furthermore, not graphematically equivalent, in that they consist of one and multiple32 graphematic syllables respectively. In a hypothetical writing system where a minimal graphematic word consisted of at least two graphematic syllables, 〈for〉 would be subminimal, while 〈before〉 would meet the criterion of minimality for the graphematic word. This would lead to word division identical to that seen in the case of prosodic word division at (77):
(78) Billwent fortea before dinner.
In this case, therefore, different minimal pairs need to be found, e.g.:
(79) Bill made toys for children.
The treatment of such minimal pairs in a given writing system is therefore in principle diagnostic of the word division strategy adopted.
The expected differences in writing system outcomes may be summarised as follows:
• Prosodic Word division is a function of the morphemes’ prosodic properties:
prosodically weak function morphemes are expected to be graphematically dependent, while prosodically strong function morphemes are expected to be graphematically independent. Lexical morphemes, insofar as these are prosodically strong, are expected to be graphematically independent.
32 Depending on one’s definition of the graphematic syllable, 〈before〉 could be argued to have either two or three graphematic syllables.
• Semantic Word division is a function of the morphemes’ semantic properties, viz.
their functional/lexical status: function morphemes are expected to be graphematically dependent, while lexical morphemes are expected to be graphematically dependent.
• Morphosyntactic Word division is a function of the morphemes’ morphosyntactic freedom: the less free, and the more morphological the morpheme, the more likely it is to be graphematically dependent.
• Graphematic Word division is a function of the morphemes’ graphematic properties, e.g. graphematic weight: in the West Semitic context graphematically
‘heavier’ morphemes are expected to be graphematically independent, while graphematically ‘lighter’ morphemes are expected to be graphematically dependent.