▪ WehrCowan1979 treats LʔM_1 through LʔM_3 in
one lemma, suggesting that they are semantically related. StarLing, too, does not separate the cognates of LʔM_1 and LʔM_2, not without adding, however, that the two values are quite far from each other and it therefore is legitimate to have serious doubts about their belonging together. According to the author (Militarev?), even the relation between Akk
līmu (*
liʔmu) ‘one thousand’, Hbr
lᵊʔōm,
lᵊʔôm ‘nation, people’ and Ar
laʔama ‘to put together, gather together, assemble’, as put forward by Klein1987 and Tropper2008 (‘thousand’ and ‘people’ as a larger number of things or persons, a *‘collective, assembly’, held together by mutual agreement) cannot be taken for granted.
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▪ In contrast, BDB1906 speculates that the notion of ‘lowness, commonness’ (LʔM_2), expressed in Ar
laʔuma ‘to be low, ignoble’,
liʔām (pl.) ‘common ones’, may be the basic value of √LʔM from which Hbr
lᵊʔōm ‘people’, »prop. ‘common, vulgar people’«, is derived. – It remains unclear, however, where BDB would place LʔM_1 in this picture.
▪ BadawiHinds1986 keeps EgAr
lāʔam (vb. III, tr.) ‘to suit, be compatible with’ (LʔM_1) apart from
laʔam u (vb. I, intr.) ‘to behave with deceit or cunning’ (LʔM_2), treating them as two homonymous roots. Interestingly enough, in EgAr, LʔM_2 has variants based on √LʕN (↗
laʕana ‘to curse’) in all its forms.
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It seems that
fuṣḥā terminology is reinterpreted here by the vernacular to make better sense of the abstract moral concept of
luʔm for the common people.
▪ Irrespective of due reservations as to the belonging of some values (‘thousand’, ‘wickedness’, etc.) to the same Sem root, StarLing reconstructs Sem *LʔM, *LMM ‘to get together; to unite by common consent; peace treaty’, *
liʔa/ām- ‘union, fraternity, people’ and puts this together with Eg
rmṯ ‘person’ (< *
l˅m-˅k ?, cf. Fay
lōm-i ‘id.’), WChad *
lilim- ‘assembly for special occasions’ (reconstr. from evid. in 1 lang), CChad *
luma (?) ‘market’ (< *‘gathering of people’?), EChad *
lam˅m- (based on forms like
lùm,
lámmà,
lũmmè) ‘to gather’ (intr.), pile’; LEC *
lamm- ‘companion, relative’ (cf. Som
lammaan ‘to be companion’, Or
lammii ‘(close) relations’
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), HEC *
lamm- ~ *
m˅ll- ‘close relative; person’ (based on
moollo ‘close relative’,
lámmi ‘person’), SCush *
lama(l)- ‘age-set’ (
lama ‘serpentine ochre marking on body’ in 1 lang). The common ancestor of all these is reconstructed as AfrAs *
liʔam- ‘to get together; to be relative, companion’.