Le Gérondif en Phénicien

A single Latin manuscript, Berne codex 123 (folio 7a), preserves a statement by Isidorus Hispalensis who tells of twelve parts of speech in Phoenician, consisting of the usual eight with the addition of the article, the ‘impersonal mode’ (having no set person or number), the infinitive and the ‘gerund’. This paper proposes identifying the gerund with the infinitive followed by a personal pronoun, a construction attested in Phoenician inscriptions from Byblos, Zincirli, Karatepe and Çineköy, and occurring sporadically in Ugaritic, Hebrew and South-Arabian. It is argued that it represents an earlier stage or a variant of the Ethio-Semitic ‘gerund’ denoting an action simultaneous or anterior to the one expressed by another verb in the perfect or the imperfect. Its absence in Aramaic, North-Arabian and Classical Arabic once again shows the weakness of the hypothesis of a ‘Central Semitic’.