The Semantics of Word Division in Northwest Semitic Writing Systems: Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite and Greek

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Much research in writing systems has focused on grapheme/phoneme correspondences. This monograph complements that by examining graphic word-level units in ancient North West Semitic (NWS) writing systems, particularly Hebrew, Aramaic, Phoenician, and Ugaritic. In contrast to Modern European languages, where word division often reflects morphosyntactic elements, NWS writing systems are argued to target prosodic units. Here, written 'words' consist of elements pronounced together with a single primary accent. This differs from Semantic word division found in Middle Egyptian hieroglyphics. The study begins with Tiberian Hebrew and Aramaic, where word division marks 'minimal prosodic words' that must be pronounced as single phonological units. After exploring the context of this word division strategy, the monograph compares Tiberian word division with early epigraphic NWS, revealing an almost identical distribution of orthographic wordhood. The most plausible explanation is that this word division has a consistent underlying basis in NWS writing from its earliest forms. The analysis then shifts to Ugaritic alphabetic cuneiform, identifying two word division strategies that correspond to different text genres: poetry and prose. The 'poetic' word division exemplifies mainstream 'prosodic word division,' while the other reflects morphosyntactic elements, anticipating later European word division strategies by several centuries.