Aspects

Verbs in Ugaritic have 2 aspects: perfect for completed action (with pronominal suffixes) and imperfect for uncompleted action (with pronominal prefixes and suffixes). Verb formation in Ugaritic (like all Semitic languages) is based on triconsonantal roots. Affixes inserted into the root form different meanings. Taking the root RGM (which means "to say") for example:

Moods

Ugaritic verbs occur in 5 moods:

Doubly Weak Verbs

In Ugaritic, "doubly weak verbs" refer to verbs whose roots contain two weak (or guttural) consonants. These verbs exhibit irregular patterns in their conjugation due to the inherent instability of the weak consonants, often leading to phonetic variations. This phenomenon is akin to that observed in other Semitic languages, including Hebrew.

For instance, the Ugaritic verb ḥwy, similar to Hebrew היה (h-y-h), "to be" or "to live," is an example of a doubly weak verb. Due to its weak consonants, this verb can undergo phonetic changes, such as the assimilation of waw (w) to yod (y), especially in the absence of an intervening vowel, leading to forms like ḥyy. This characteristic impacts the verb's inflection, resulting in variations that are atypical compared to regular (strong) verbs.^[1]

Patterns

Ugaritic verbs occur in 10 reconstructed patterns or binyanim:

Case

Ugaritic has three grammatical cases corresponding to: nominative, genitive, and accusative. Normally, singular nouns take the ending -u in the nominative, -i in the genitive and -a in the accusative. Using the word malk- (king) and malkat- (queen) for example:

As in Arabic, some exceptional nouns (known as diptotes) have the suffix -a in the genitive. There is no Ugaritic equivalent for Classical Arabic nunation or Akkadian mimation.

State

Nouns in Ugaritic occur in two states: absolute and construct. If a noun is followed by a genitival attribute (noun in the genitive or suffixed pronoun) it becomes a construct (denoting possession). Otherwise, it is in the absolute state. Ugaritic, unlike Arabic and Hebrew, has no definite article.

Gender

Nouns which have no gender marker are for the most part masculine, although some feminine nouns do not have a feminine marker. However, these denote feminine beings such as ʼumm- (mother). /-t/ is the feminine marker which is directly attached to the base of the noun.

Number

Ugaritic distinguishes between nouns based on quantity. All nouns are either singular when there is one, dual when there are two, and plural if there are three or more.

Independent personal pronouns

Independent personal pronouns in Ugaritic are as follows (some forms are lacking because they are not in the corpus of the language):

Suffixed (or enclitic) pronouns

Suffixed (or enclitic) pronouns (mainly denoting the genitive and accusative) are as follows: