▪ It cannot be excluded, or even seems likely, that all three values are related. Together with others, Kogan2015 thinks that »protCSem *
ʕamm- ‘people’ [cf. ʕMː (ʕMM)_2] probably represents a semantic extension of the kinship term WSem *
ʕamm- ‘grandfather, ancestor’ [cf. ʕMː (ʕMM)_1] «, which in Ar specialized into ‘paternal uncle’, replacing protSem *
dād- ‘paternal uncle’.
1
. The idea, put forward in BDB1906, that ‘people’ prob. originally means *‘those united, connected, related’, lets one think whether this “binding together” might be somehow related to the binding together of a ‘turban’, Ar
ʕimāmaẗ. But neither this word nor a vb. *
ʕmm ‘to bind together’ is attested throughout Sem, except in the fig. sense of ‘to encompass, comprise, cover’[ʕMː (ʕMM)_2], and this rarely outside Ar. Is
ʕimāmaẗ an Ar spezialisation then, developed from the idea of ‘kinship’ and ‘belonging together’ (*‘uniting’ the hair, or the piece of cloth, or covering it
completely, in its
wholeness)? For another possibility see below.
▪ For ʕMː (ʕMM)_2, the most adequate entry to treat the corresponding semantic field in would be
†ʕamm ‘company of men, crowd; numerous party’ rather than the (prob. denom.) verb
ʕamma. The reason why the data nevertheless will be arranged under
ʕamma is the fact that the more original n. has become obsolete in MSA and n.s with a similar value are derived from the vb.
▪ Given that ʕMː (ʕMM)_3
ʕimāmaẗ ‘turban’ stands rather isolated within Sem *ʕMM (see above), should one perh. put it together with WSem *ĠMM ~ ĠMY/W ‘to be dark, dim’, a root that in Ar usually has preserved initial *
ġ- (cf. Ar ↗
ġamma ‘to cover, veil, conceal’, ↗
ġamām ‘clouds’,
ʔaġammᵘ ‘covered with dense hair’), but in Can and Aram has undergone the regular sound shift *
ġ >
ʕ : Ug
ʕmm (D pass.) ‘to be covered, veiled, darkened’, Hbr
ʕāmam ‘to darken, dim’, JudAram
ʕᵃmam ‘to be(come) dim, dark(ened)? Semantically, the ‘turban’ as *‘(head) cover, (kind of) veil’ would be quite plausible. But would it be justifiable also from a phonological point of view? Should initial *
ġ- have been preserved in some places, but undergone an irregular shift *
ġ >
ʕ in
ʕimāmaẗ ? Rather unlikely.
ʕimāmaẗ would then have to be a loan from Hbr or Aram. But these langs have nothing that would fit, and Syr
ʕᵃmamtā ‘a mitra’ is a loan from Ar…