The Imperative Forms of Proto-Semitic and a New Perspective on Barth's Law (Report‪)‬

1. INTRODUCTION Over a century ago Jakob Barth suggested, (1) in what has come to be known as Barth's Law, that the quality of the vowel following the consonantal pronominal prefix in the G-stem depends on the thematic vowel of the verbal base, i.e., a dissimilarity between the two vowels. Thus, the assumed Proto-Semitic [henceforth: PS] forms are: *ya-qtul, *ya-qtil and *yi-qtal. Since that time, this law has been confirmed from various facts in the various branches of the Semitic languages.