The T-Stems in Soqotri. A Contribution to Semitic Detransitivising Derivation

Leiden : Brill, 2024.

Bulakh M.

Under the general editorship: A. Rubin, A. Al-Jallad

The book presents the results of a field research on the verbal system of Soqotri, a little-known language spoken on the island of Soqotra in the Arabian sea and belonging to the Modern South Arabian branch of Semitic. The investigation focuses on the so-called T-stems (marked by the infix -t-), mostly employed as derivational means of detransitivisation. The book contains comprehensive descriptions of their synchronic morphology and semantics, as well as an evaluation of their origin, taking into consideration the data from the major branches of Semitic languages. The diachronic dimension involves both the morphological reconstruction and reflections on the semantic development of T-stems in Semitic. Simultaneously, the study is a contribution to the general typology of detransitivising derivation in the languages of the world.

Keywords: verbal morphology, сокотри, современные южноаравийские языки, Soqotri, глагольная морфология, Modern South Arabian, редукция валентности, Valency decrease