Traces of South Arabian Causative-Reflxive Verbal Stem in Arabic?

This is a preliminary research on four consonantal roots in Classical Arabic lexical repertoires which have šīn or sīn as first radical and their correspondent three consonantal roots, either in Classical Arabic or Ancient South Arabian and Modern South Arabian languages, in order to investigate possible relations between the causativereflexive verbal stem (s1-fʿl) and these Arabic quadriliteral roots. The paper is intended to introduce the main points and potentiality of this research. A full list of four consonantal roots beginning with šīn and sīn, found in Ibn Manẓūr's Lisān al-ʿArab, which have a twin three consonantal root in Arabic or South Arabian, would be given. Some examples of these items will be analyzed in detail, both on phonetic and semantic bases, to discuss their possible interpretations. In some cases it will be clear that we are dealing with loan-words, though sometimes the lack of a direct linguistic link drives the analysis to be cautious or speculative. In other cases it may be assumed that a s- verbal prefix (with eventual variations in its phonetic outcome) was possibly operative in Arabic or in some of its ancient or non classical dialects, to generate words from a hypothetical causative-reflexive verbal stem (*s-fʿl) similar to the one in use in South Arabian languages (s1-fʿl), as well as in other Semitic languages.