end, if it has the structure CVC or CVː (where C is any consonant and V is any vowel), or on the third syllable from the end, if the second one had the structure CV. Morphophonology Proto-Semitic allowed only syllables of the structures CVC, CVː, or CV. It did not permit word-final clusters of two or more consonants, clusters of three or more consonants, hiatus of two or more vowels, or long vowels in closed syllables. Most roots consisted of three consonants. However, it appears that historically the three-consonant roots had developed from two-consonant ones (this is suggested by evidence from internal as well as external reconstruction). To construct a given grammatical form, certain vowels were inserted between the consonants of the root. There were certain restrictions on the structure of the root: it was impossible to have roots where the first and second consonants were identical, and roots where the first and third consonants were identical were extremely rare. Correspondence of sounds with daughter languages See Semitic languages#Phonology for a fuller discussion of the outcomes of the Proto-Semitic sounds in the various daughter languages. Correspondence of sounds with other Afroasiatic languages See table at Proto-Afroasiatic language#Consonant correspondences. Grammar Nouns Three cases are reconstructed: nominative (marked by *-u), genitive (marked by *-i), accusative (marked by *-a).. There were two genders: masculine (marked by a zero morpheme) and feminine (marked by *-at/*-t and *-ah/-ā). The feminine marker was placed after the root, but before the ending, e.g.: *ba‘l- ‘lord, master’ > *ba‘lat- ‘lady, mistress’, *bin- ‘son’ > *bint- ‘daughter’. Besides, there was a small group of feminine nouns that didn’t have formal markers: *’imm- ‘mother’, ‘ewe’, *’atān- ‘she-donkey’, *‘ayn- ‘eye’, *birk- ‘knee’ There were three numbers: singular, plural and dual (only in nouns). There were two ways to mark the plural: affixation masculine nouns formed their nominative by means of the marker *-ū, their genitive and accusative by *-ī, i.e., by lengthening the vowel of the singular case suffix; feminines also formed their plural by lengthening a vowel — namely, by means of the marker *-āt; apophonically (by changing the vocalisation pattern of the word, as seen e.g. in Arabic: kātib ‘writer’ — kuttāb ‘writers’) — only in the masculine. The dual was formed by means of the markers *-ā in the nominative and *-āy in the genitive and accusative. The endings of the noun: Pronouns Like most of its daughter