抄録
The aim of this paper is to examine linguistic characteristics of the inscriptions written in South Arabian alphabet and found in Ethiopia. They are first attestations of the language situation of pre-Aksumite Ethiopia.
A. J. Drewes has advanced his hypothesis concerning the language of those inscriptions. He divides them into two groups according to the linguistic differences they manifest. Group I, as he calls it, is written in more or less pure Sabaen, whereas the language of the group II has many characteristics of their own, and he thinks that they were written by native Ethiopians.
Our main purpose is try to describe linguistic features of the inscriptions in detail and find mutual relations of the features. Then we will proceed to investigate Drewes' hypothesis and demonstrate that the existence of group II can be ascertained and that the language was not used only for writing, but also for everyday use. They wrote their mother tongue which shared some characteristics with Geez.
This is to say that the native people was not under strong pressure of Sabaens, which fact is also supported by recent archaeological findings from the time when those inscriptions were drafted. Although it is certain that there was symbiosis of the Ethiopians and Sabaean immigrants, the latter was a minor group then.
