Level?
In spite of the well-known phonological difficulty (Ugr. d presupposes
*ḏ in the prototype, as against *z patent in Aramaic and Arabic (One cannot exclude, however, that the root-variant with *ḏ is behind
ḥḏw (III) ‘to face,
to be in front of)), it is very
likely that all the aforementioned forms have the same etymological background
(cf. DRS 838‒839, 854). The dialectal distribution of this root with respect
to PWS
*rˀy is no less puzzling, particularly in EthS where it seems to be
completely absent from the languages of the northern branch (unless one compares Tgr.
ḥaza ‘to seek, to try’, semantically not improbable, but has become
highly prominent almost throughout the southern one