The Call of *Yaqtulu : The Central Semitic Imperfective, Nominalisation and Verbal Semantics in Cyclical Flux
The article discusses the discrepancy between the *yaqattal and *yaqtulu imperfectives (the former known from East Semitic, Ethiosemitic and Modern South Arabian and the latter from Central Semitic). It argues that original nominalised phrases such as “he is a killer” came about based on an earlier “he is one who killed”, and that these were subsequently reinterpreted as imperfectives. A compariso