In historical linguistics, the Canaanite shift is a vowel shift/sound change that took place in the Canaanite dialects, which belong to the Northwest Semitic branch of the Semitic languages family. This sound change caused Proto-NW-Semitic *ā (long a) to turn into ō (long o) in Proto-Canaanite. It accounts, for example, for the difference between the second vowel of Hebrew שלום (šalom, Tiberian šālōm) and its Arabic cognate سلام (salām). The original word was probably *šalām-, with the ā preserved in Arabic, but transformed into ō in Hebrew. The change is attested in records from the Amarna Period, dating it to the mid-2nd millennium BCE.[1]
This vowel shift is well attested in Hebrew and other Canaanite languages, but its exact nature has historically been contested.
Brockelmann (1908) held that the Canaanite Shift only affected stressed vowels, formulating the shift as *ā́ > *ṓ.
Bauer and Leander (1922) treat the cases of apparently preserved *ā as evidence for their theory of Hebrew as a mixed language.
Birkeland (1940) discounted some of Brockelmann’s most important counterexamples of the Canaanite Shift. Based on irregular correspondences and evidence from Arabic and Phoenician spellings, he explains II-wy and III-wy perfect forms like קָם and גָּלָה as relatively late contractions from triradical forms like *qawama and *galawa, which postdate the operation of the Canaanite Shift. Word-final cases of -å, in Birkeland’s view, are late restitutions, resulting from dialect borrowing. Having thus eliminated most of the counterexamples that motivated the proponents of stress conditioning, he posits an unconditioned shift of *ā > *ō.
Suchard (2019) found that the Canaanite Shift was absent from words where *ā was preceded by *u or *w in the preceding syllable. He explained the handful of words where *ā shifted to *ō despite *u in the preceding syllable (such as ִרמּוֹן rimmōn ‘pomegranate’ from *rummān-um) as a product of dissimilation of *u to *i when *u was adjacent to a bilabial consonant, a separate sound change which became known as Suchard's Law.
The shift was so productive in Canaanite languages that it altered their inflectional and derivational morphologies wherever they contained the reflex of a pre-Canaanite *ā, as can be seen in Hebrew, the most attested of Canaanite languages, by comparing it with Arabic, a well-attested non-Canaanite Semitic language.
Classical Arabic فاعل (fāʻil) vs. Tiberian Hebrew פועל (pōʻēl)[2]
| Arabic | Translation | Hebrew | Translation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| كاتِب kātib | writer | כּוֹתֵב kōṯēḇ | writer, writing | |
| فاتِح fātiḥ | opener | פּוֹתֵחַ pōṯēaḥ | opener, opening (attrib.) | |
| كاهِن kāhin | soothsayer, augur, priest | כֹּהֵן kōhēn | priest (male descendant of Aaron) |
Classical Arabic ات- (-āt) vs. Tiberian Hebrew ות- (-ōṯ)
| Arabic | Hebrew | Translation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| بَنات banāt | בָּנוֹת bānōṯ | girls, daughters | |
| مِئات miʼāt | מֵאוֹת mēʼōṯ | hundreds | |
| مَلِكات malikāt | מְלָכוֹת məlāḵōṯ | queens |
Classical Arabic فعال (fi‘āl, fa‘āl) vs. Tiberian Hebrew פעול (pă‘ōl, pā‘ōl)
| Arabic | Hebrew | Translation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| حمار ḥimār | חמור ḥămōr | donkey | |
| سلام salām | שלום šālōm | peace | |
| لسان lisān | לשון lāšōn | tongue |
Classical Arabic فأل (faʼl) vs. Tiberian Hebrew פול, פאל (pōl)
| Arabic | Hebrew | Translation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| كأس kaʼs | כוס kōs | glass | |
| رأس raʼs | ראש rōš | head, chief |
| Arabic | Hebrew | Translation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| لا lā | לא lō | no | |
| ذراع ḏirāʻ | זרוע zərōaʻ | arm | |
| عالم ʻālam | עולם ʻōlām | world, universe |
In one of the above lexical items (rōš), the shift did not only affect originally long vowels, but also originally short vowels occurring in the vicinity of a historically attested glottal stop in Canaanite.
Transcriptions of the Phoenician language reveal that the change also took place there – see suffete.
Often when new source material in an old Semitic language is uncovered, the Canaanite shift may be used to date the source material or to establish that the source material is written in a specifically Canaanite language. The shift is especially useful since it affects long vowels whose presence is likely to be recorded by matres lectionis such as aleph and waw, even in a defective consonantal script. In languages where the shift occurs, it also gives historical linguists reason to suppose that other shifts may have taken place.