The Origin of the Neo-Aramaic Verb<i>dʕr</i>‘To Return’ and its Cognates: A New Proposal

Abstract

The Neo-Aramaic verbal root dʕr ‘to return’ in Ṭuroyo and Mlaḥsô, as well as its cognates dʔr, dyṛ, dyr etc. in the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) dialects, have thus far remained without a consensus amongst scholars as regards etymology. The etymology proposed in this paper is based on the assumption that dʕr ‘to return’, attested already in Bar ‘Ali’s mediaeval lexicon, is related to Syriac dʕr ‘to rebuke’, and that the latter is an irregular reflex of gʕr . More precisely, the etymon is postulated as pre-modern Aramaic gʕr in eṯpə‘el, attested as ʔeṯgəʕar, ʔeggəʕar ‘to be rebuked, be chided away, driven out, driven back ’ , while the paper also accounts for the phonological, morphological and semantic processes which affected that etymon and adduces parallel developments, mainly in classical and modern Aramaic.