Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Given the isolation of sullāq ‘Ascension (of Christ)’ (and the prob. denom. ↗¹tasallaqa ‘to ascend, mount, climb, scale’) within the root √SLQ, it is very likely that these items are borrowed from Aram sūlqā ‘do.’, slaq ‘to ascend’ (so already Fraenkel1886: 277). For the latter, several etymologies have been proposed (see below, section DISC). Of these, the one with the highest probability seems to be Kogan’s (2015: 386 #15) explanation of protAram *SLḲ as the result of a splitting of an original lateral *Ś- into the combination S-L at an early stage, so that the Aram forms (on which the Hbr and Ar ones are based) should be seen together with Akk šaḳu ‘to grow high, rise, ascend’ and Ar ↗ŠQY ‘to grow’, šāqiⁿ ‘high, inaccessible’ etc.
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hist

▪ Accord. to DHDA first attested pre-813 CE in a verse by ʔAbū Nuwās.
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cogn

▪ Aram slaq, Palm slq, Syr sleq ‘to ascend’, sūlqā ‘Ascension (of Christ)’ > Ar sullāq ‘id.’ (> ¹tasallaqa ‘to ascend, climb’) (Fraenkel1886: 277 and others after him). – Cf. also Hbr *sālaq, attested as a hapax legomenon in Ps 139:8 (1sg.impf ʔässaq ‘I ascend’) which, however, »is an obvious Aramaism« (Kogan2015: 386 #15, following Wagner 1966:87).
▪ (For the theory put forward in BDB1906): ↗³salaqa ‘to boil, cook in boiling water’
▪ (For the hypothesis developed in Kogan2015: 386 #15): Ar < Aram < protAram *slḳ ‘to go up’ < (dissociation sl- < ś- ) *ŚḲ, cognate to Akk šaḳu ‘to grow high, rise, ascend’, Ar ↗ŠQY ‘to grow’, šāqiⁿ ‘high, inaccessible’.
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disc

▪ As Kogan2015 remarks, the isolated position of Ar ¹tasallaqa ‘to ascend, mount, climb, scale’ (as also of ClassAr ^†salaqa ‘do.’, now obsol.) within Ar »makes one wonder about a possible Aram origin« of these items. If so, ¹tasallaqa and ^†salaqa (as well as sullāq from which the vb. V may be denom.) almost certainly are borrowed from Aram sūlqā ‘Ascension’ (so already Fraenkel1886: 277).
▪ Given the Hbr and Aram ‘cognates’, Dolgopolsky2012#300 would reconstruct a CSem *√SLḲ ‘to ascend, climb’ (in his view ancestor not only of Ar ¹tasallaqa ‘do.’, but also of ^†SLQ_18 ^†salaqa ‘to run’¹ and perh. – deglottalization? – even ↗salaka ‘to travel, go along’), to which he juxtaposes IndEur (NaIE) *slenk (~ *sleng ) ‘to creep, crawl, trudge, amble’ (> , e.g., AngSax slincan ‘to creep’ > nEngl ‘to slink’, oHGe slango, nHGe Schlange ‘snake’; oHGe zuo slingan ‘to slide away’, mHGe slingen ‘to crawl along|sich schlängelnd winden, kriechen, schleichen’, etc.² ), all ultimately from a hypothetical Nostr *c'oLḲ˅ (~ *c'oLk˅) ‘to advance with effort (to creep, crawl, climb, etc.)’.
▪ Another view is put forward in BDB1906 where the authors interpret values ‘to ascend’ and ‘to scald, burn’ (↗⁴salaqa) as interdependent, associating Hbr *śālaq ‘to kindle, burn’, (*Š-stem) hissîq ~ hiśśîq ‘to make a fire, burn’ with Aram slaq ‘to ascend’, (*Š-stem) ‘to cause to go up (in flame), offer sacrifice’, Syr sleq, Palm slq , Ar salaqa ‘to ascend’.
▪ In contrast, Kogan2015: 386 #15 points to the scarcity of the Hbr vb. (1sg.impf ʔässaq ‘I ascend’ is a hapax in the Bible) and the isolated position of ‘ascending’ within Ar and concludes (convincingly, as we think) that both with all likelihood are Aramaisms, i.e., neither the Hbr nor the Ar items can count as genuine cognates, so that Aram SLḲ is in itself isolated within Sem. Speculating about the obscure origin of protAram *SLḲ ‘to go up’ Kogan then »wonders whether a clue to the etymology of this root can be found in its highly peculiar morphological behavior, viz. the unexpected assimilation * sl- > ss- [the Hbr 1sg.impf in Ps 139:8 shows ʔässaq instead of *ʔäslaq ‘I ascend’], probably betraying the secondary origin of l . It is, therefore, tempting to follow P. Haupt (1910: 712-3) who compared protAram *slḳ with Akk šaḳu ‘to grow high, rise, ascend’ and Ar ↗ŠQY ‘to grow’, šāqiⁿ ‘high, inaccessible’. If valid, this comparison would imply that the lateral *Ś was split into the combination S L at some early stage of the linguistic history of Aramaic.³ – ProtAram *SLḲ has replaced protSem *ʕLY/W ‘to go up’ [> Ar ↗ʕalā], which is only marginally preserved in Aram.«
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1. In a similar vein, also Barth1902 is convinced that ClassAr ^†¹²salaqa ‘to run’ and ^†saylaq ‘quick, swift (she-camel)’ (^†SLQ_18 in root entry ↗ŠLQ) have to be seen together with ‘climbing, ascension’, interpreting saylaq as, properly, *‘the climbing one’ (»‘stark laufende (eigentl. ‘steigende Kamelin’«). Little convincing. 2. Dolgopolsky2012 gives also some Celtic and additional Germanic and Indic items: (Celt) MBr lencr ‘glissant|schleichend’, »as well as possibly a Brtt word for ‘intestinal worm(s)’: W llyngyr pl. ‘intestinal worms’, MBr lnquernenn, Br lenker(n)enn ‘intestinal worm’«, (Germ) oSwed inf. slinka ‘to crawl’, || oInd [Dhat.] srańk ‘to go, move, creep’ 3. A fine illustration of such a split is provided by JBA ʕarsəlā ‘hammock’ < protSem *ʕarś , extensively discussed in Steiner 1977: 130-6.

west

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deriv

►tasallaqa, vb. V, 1a to ascend, mount, climb, scale (s.th.); b to climb up (plant): perh. denom.; cf. ↗s.v.
►tasalluq n., climbing; ascent: vn. V, perh. denom.
►mutasalliq adj.: al-nabātāt al-matasalliqaẗ, climbing plants, creepers: PA V.

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

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