result from a push-type chain shift, and the change from to "pushes" out of the way to in the languages in question, and a merger of the two to occurs in various other languages such as Arabic and Ethiopian Semitic. On the other hand, it has been suggested that the initial merged s in Arabic was actually a "hissing-hushing sibilant", presumably something like (or a "retracted sibilant"), which did not become until later. That would suggest a value closer to (or a "retracted sibilant") or for Proto-Semitic since and would almost certainly merge directly to [s]. Furthermore, there is various evidence to suggest that the sound for existed while was still . Examples are the Southern Old Babylonian form of Akkadian, which evidently had along with as well as Egyptian transcriptions of early Canaanite words in which are rendered as . (ṯ is an affricate and the consensus interpretation of š is , as in Modern Coptic.) Diem (1974) suggested that the Canaanite sound change of → would be more natural if *š was than if it was . However, Kogan argues that, because was at the time, the change from to is the most likely merger, regardless of the exact pronunciation of while the shift was underway. Evidence for the affricate nature of the non-sibilants is based mostly on internal considerations. Ejective fricatives are quite rare cross-linguistically, and when a language has such sounds, it nearly always has so if was actually affricate , it would be extremely unusual if was fricative rather than affricate . According to Rodinson (1981) and Weninger (1998), the Greek placename Mátlia, with tl used to render Ge'ez ḍ (Proto-Semitic *ṣ́), is "clear proof" that this sound was affricated in Ge'ez and quite possibly in Proto-Semitic as well. The evidence for the most maximal interpretation, with all the interdentals and lateral obstruents being affricates, appears to be mostly structural: the system would be more symmetric if reconstructed that way. The shift of to h occurred in most Semitic languages (other than Akkadian, Minaean, Qatabanian) in grammatical and pronominal morphemes, and it is unclear whether reduction of began in a daughter proto-language or in Proto-Semitic itself. Some thus suggest that weakened may have been a separate phoneme in Proto-Semitic. Prosody Proto-Semitic is reconstructed as having non-phonemic stress on the third mora counted from the end of the word, i.e. on the second syllable from the