Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ The meaning ‘to lacerate the skin (with a whip)’ seems to go back to an original sense of ‘to loosen\peel off the flesh from the bones’, well attested in ClassAr.
▪ Accord. to Ehret1989 #21, ¹salaqa ‘to loosen the flesh from the bones’ may be analyzed as an extension in * Ḳ (»intensive (effect)«) from pre-protSem *√SL¹ ‘to draw out or off’; so also ↗salaḫa (< *SL + »extendative fortative« * Ḫ) ‘to skin, flay, throw off the slough’.
▪ Leslau2006 thinks that Ar ¹salaqa ‘to peel off (flesh) from (the bone)’ has cognates in Akk (šalāqu ‘to cut open, split’) and EthSem (e.g., Gz śalaqa~salaqa ‘to grind fine, crush, peel, husk’); if this is valid, one may reconstruct protSem *ŠLḲ ‘to cut, crush, peel off’, which, however, would be homonymous with protSem *ŠLḲ ‘to boil, cook’, rather reliably reconstructed on the basis of wider attestation (Kogan2011) (cf. ↗³salaqa) – rather unlikely, esp. so in light of the semantic distance between ‘cutting, splitting’ and ‘scraping, peeling’. Therefore, it would probably make more sense to see the Akk and EthSem items together with Ar ↗šalaqa (u, šalq) ‘to split lengthwise’ (< protSem *ŚLḲ?) rather than with ¹salaqa ‘to lacerate, flay, etc.’.
▪ Or is ‘to lacerate the skin’ a development from ‘to remove (hair, etc.) with boiling water’ (↗²salaqa), in its turn perh. the result of semantic extension from ‘to boil, cook in boiling water’ (↗³salaqa), perh. under the influence of ↗salaḫa ‘to skin, flay, etc.’?
▪ The basic meanings attached to ¹salaqa, i.e., ‘to loosen\peel off (the flesh from the bones)’, ‘to lacerate, skin, scrape off’ etc., seem to have given rise to a number of semantic extensions building on them either literally or figuratively – see below, section DISC.
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1. In the light of the oscillation of Akk and JudAram cognates between initinal s and š (see Ar ↗ salla) Ehret’s reconstruction of an underlying biconsonantal nuclear root “*√SL” should perhaps be modified into “*√SL/ŠL”. Cf. in this context also OrelStolbova1994’s reconstruction (#2274) of protSem *šul (< AfrAs *sol ) ‘to pull’.

hist

▪ ^†ʔaslaqa, vb. IV, ‘1 (said of a man) his camel’s back became white after the healing of galls; 2 to hunt, snare, trap, a she-wolf (silqaẗ), to hunt wolves’ – Lane iv 1872, Hava1899 (and Wahrmund1887).

cogn

▪ Ar SLQ: 1 From pre-protSem *SL ‘to draw out or off’ (> Ar ↗salla ‘to draw out slowly’) + * Ḳ (Ehret1989 #21)? If valid, cognate extensions could be ↗salaʔa ‘to purify butter, press sesame oil’, ↗salaba ‘to take from with violence, rob, plunder, steal’, ↗salata ‘to draw one thing from another’, ↗salaḥa ‘to drop excrement’, ↗salaḫa ‘to skin, flay, throw off the slough; undress’, ↗saliʕa ‘to split, cleave’, ↗salafa ‘to harrow, level, plane, make even, prepare for sowing (land)’; perh. partial overlapping/merger with salaḫa. – Or akin to #2 (<#3?), perh. influenced by salaḫa ‘to skin, flay, etc.’. – ?Cf. also Leslau2006: Akk šalāqu ‘to cut’ (CAD: ‘to cut open, split’), Ar ¹salaqa ‘to peel off (flesh) from (the bone)’, Gz śalaqa (var. salaqa) ‘to grind fine, crush, peel, husk’, Tña säläqä, Amh sälläqä, Gur säläqä ‘to grind fine’, Amh šäläqqäqä ‘husk, shell, hull’, etc. – ?2 ‘to remove (hair, etc.) with boiling water’ ↗²salaqa. – ?3 ‘to boil, cook in boiling water’ ↗³salaqa. – 4–33 […].
▪ …

disc

▪ Ehret1989 #21 suggests to analyse ¹salaqa ‘to loosen the flesh from the bones’ as an extension in »intensive (effect)« *-Ḳ from a pre-protSem 2-rad. basis *SL¹ ‘to draw out or off’ (preserved in Ar ↗salla ‘to draw out slowly’). Semantic proximity to other such assumed extensions, like ↗salaḫa (from *SL + »extendative fortative« * Ḫ) ‘to skin, flay, throw off the slough; to undress’, is indeed striking.
▪ Cf., however, Leslau2006 who thinks that one may have to compare Ar ¹salaqa ‘to peel off (flesh) from (the bone)’ to Akk šalāqu ‘to cut’ (CAD: ‘to cut open, split’), Gz śalaqa (var. salaqa) ‘to grind fine, crush, peel, husk’, Tña säläqä, Amh sälläqä, Gur säläqä ‘to grind fine’, Amh šäläqqäqä ‘husk, shell, hull’, etc. It is tempting to reconstruct from these forms a protSem root *ŠLḲ ‘to cut, crush, peel off’, which, however, would be homonymous with protSem *ŠLḲ ‘to boil, cook’ (see SLQ_3), rather reliably reconstructed on the basis of fairly wide attestation in Sem (cf. ↗³salaqa). Leslau’s etymology would not contradict Ehret (see above) if we assume pre-protSem *√ŠL instead of Ehret’s *√SL as the 2-rad. basis from which protSem *ŠLḲ would be an extension in * Ḳ. But Leslau’s hypothesis is perh. not valid, as Akk šalāqu ‘to cut open, split’ rather belongs to Ar ↗šalaqa ‘to split lengthwise’ than to ¹salaqa ‘to loosen the flesh from the bones’; taking together Akk šalāquand Ar šalaqa with Gz śalaqa ‘to grind fine, crush, […]’, one may reconstruct protSem *ŚLQ ‘to cut, crush, split’ and keep this notion apart from that of ‘loosening\peeling off the flesh, etc.’ (? ▪ Apart from the ‘relatives’ that may be due to a shared 2-rad. nucleus from which they all may be extensions (Ehret1989), Ar ¹salaqa does not seem to have genuine cognates in Sem. Its isolated position can possibly be taken as an indicator of the notion of ‘loosening\peeling off the skin’ being a secondary value. But should one go as far as to assume a development from ↗³salaqa ‘to boil, cook by boiling’, via ↗²salaqa ‘to remove (hair, etc.) with boiling water’? At least, the value ‘to boil, cooking by boiling’ is rather widely attested in Sem. A counter-argument against a development from ‘to boil, cook by boiling’ is the large number of SLQ-values that with all probability are based on ‘to loosen\peel, strip off, etc.’ rather than on ‘to boil’. Together with the fact that, in many cases, the semantic distance between these items and ‘to loosen\peel, strip off, etc.’ is quite great, we can assume a deep temporal horizon and, thus, a very old age of the notion of ‘to loosen\peel, strip off, etc.’.
▪ Among the values that may be explained as stemming from an original ‘to loosen\peel, strip off, etc.’ we find not only the idea of ‘lacerating (the skin, esp. by whipping), skinning’, but also several others that are similar to it, either with regard to the action itself or to its results. Thus, the meaning, now obsol., of ‘to pierce (with a spear)’ (^†⁷salaqa) may be a specialisation, as also DaṯAr salaq ‘to cultivate, plough, till’ (<*‘to lacerate the soil, make furrows in it’; cf. also DaṯAr sāliq ‘furrow’, silāqaẗ ‘cultivation, tillage’ – LandbergZetterstein1942); similarly, ^†⁸salaqa ‘to leave prints (on the soil/road; foot, or hoofs)’ is prob. the result of likening the soil, or road, to a skin on which a whip left its traces. The meaning ‘to call out, cry out, shout vehemently (esp. after the death of a person or at a calamity)’ (^†¹¹salaqa) is with all likelihood secondary to its parallel value, ‘to slap and scratch one’s face (mourning woman)’, which seems to be from *‘to leave traces/furrows on one’s face by slapping and scratching it (out of grief etc.)’. From the secondary ‘to weep, cry out’, a vehemently mourning woman was called a ^†¹silqaẗ or sāliqaẗ, a value that could also be used in a generalized sense of ‘long-tongued and vehemently clamorous, foul, evil, lewd’. From here, or directly from ¹salaqa, has prob. sprung the idea of ↗⁵salaqa ‘to hurt (with one’s tongue)’ (see also ↗salāqaẗ ‘vicious tongue, violent language, violence of language’ and the ClassAr ints-formations ^†sallāq, ^†mislaq and ^†mislāq, all meaning ‘eloquent (speaker); sharp’). (Cf., however, Leslau2006, who has a different view on that matter; see s.v. ↗⁵salaqa.)
▪ Moreover, several items belonging to the root √SLQ can be explained rather plausibly as quasi-PP-s formed on the pattern FaʕīL, f. FaʕīLaẗ (pl. FaʕāʔiLᵘ), thus orig. meaning *‘peeled off, scraped off’, e.g., ^†¹salīq ‘skinned barley and dish prepared from it’, ^†²salīq ‘what falls off from trees (leaves, etc.)’, ^†⁵salīq ‘side of a road’, (SyrAr) ↗¹salīqaẗ ‘dish made of grain cooked with sugar, cinnamon and fennel’ (≈ ^†¹salīq), ↗²salīqaẗ ‘inborn disposition, instinct’ (perh. < *‘what is left after peeling off skin and flesh, kernel’; ^†salāʔiqᵘ (pl., from *sg. ^†³salīqaẗ) ‘marks made by feet\hoofs on the road; marks made by the plaited thongs upon the belly of the camel’. (NB: ^†salīqī ‘natural, or untaught (speech)’ and ^†salīqiyyaẗ ‘dialect’ can look as if belonging here too; most likely, however, they are borrowed from Grk σολοικισμός soloikismós ‘incorrectness in the use of language, solecism’).
▪ Developed from, or at least akin to, ¹salaqa ‘to loosen\peel off (flesh from the bones), lacerate, whip’ are prob. also ^†salaq ‘even plain, smooth, even, tract, of good soil, depressed, even plain in which are no trees; low tract, or portion, of land, that produces herbage, meadow’ as well as ^†sulāq, a ClassAr term for a disease that causes teeth or eyelids to fall out and, hence, leave behind a “lacerated” mouth, or eye. – DaṯAr salqaẗ ‘natte de folioles de palmier’ (LandbergZetterstein1942) is possibly *‘mat made of palm-leaves that have fallen out’.
▪ Perh. even ^†²silq ‘wolf’ (f. ^†²silqaẗ ‘she-wolf’) and ^†⁴silqaẗ ‘water-course, channel in which water flows, between two tracts of elevated, or elevated and rugged, ground’ are akin to ¹salaqa ‘to loosen\peel off (flesh from the bones), lacerate, whip’, the former perh. being *‘the mangy (<*lacerated) one’, the latter the *‘furrows’ left behind in a landscape by a creek etc.
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1. Perh. better *SL/ŠL – see note to section CONC, above.

west

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deriv

For other values of the root, cf. ↗²salaqa, ↗³salaqa, ↗⁴salaqa, ↗⁵salaqa, ↗tasallaqa, ↗sullāq, ↗salq, ↗¹salīqaẗ, ↗²salīqaẗ, ↗salaqūn and ↗salūqī as well as, for the overall picture, root entry ↗√SLQ.

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