2012 Languages of the Ancient Near East: An Annotated Bibliography

I also wish to express my sincere thanks to Mrs F. Malha for the great care and professional skill which she exercised in preparing the text for printing. Further, I cannot let go unexpressed my deep appreciation for the work realized by Peeters Publishers and the Orientaliste typography, whose skilful care is apparent over again in the way this book is printed and edited. Last but not least, I must thank my wife Malgorzata for help ing me to bring this work to a happy end.

This PDF is a draft of Part I of an in-progress textbook on comparative and historical Semitic linguistics, which will be published in the open-access series Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures. My sincere thanks to the general editor of CSLC, Geoffrey Khan, for his kind permission to make this first part of the book available to students and colleagues while the rest of the book is in preparation.

The Semitic Languages, 2nd ed., 2019

Orbis, 1994

I once amused myself with making out a case why Ethiopic should be classified with Hebrew (on account of many startling lexical resemblances) or with Akkadian (by virtue of similarities in the vocalism of the imperfect-and phonetic developments in Akkadian and Amharic are surprisingly close) or with Syriac (for certain identical syntactical constructions) or Arabic (with like features in the sound pattern and the formation of internal plurals). ULLENDORFF (1961:13) 1 The fact that not all the languages under consideration in this article were spoken at the same time, and that another, temporal, classification exists, stemming to a considerable extent from the attempt to overcome this difficulty, should not concern us here. 2 I refrain from referring to specific studies, as the list is long, cannot and need not be exhaustive. The works and the views they express are basically well-known and need not be repeated.

American Anthropologist, 1972

ciple of marked and unmarked linguistic categories, the discussion of the relation between syntactic and semantic structures, and linguistic change in social contexts, are three examples of such important new developments. The reviewer agrees with the author that the orientation of the book, on the whole, has not suffered. An understanding of the development which has occurred since and which will be made in the future will presuppose an insight into the relations described in the book. The Indo-European and Semitic Languages. SAUL LEVIN. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1971. xlii + 775 pp., illustrations, chapter notes, appendix, index. $25.00 (cloth). Reviewed by GEORGE CARDONA University o f Pennsylvania and Center f o r Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences This work attempts t o establish a relation between Indo-European (IE) and Semitic by considering, in greater detail than any comparable work known to me, morphologic and syntactic materials. The author treats

2009

Reviewed by Gonzalo Rubio (Pennsylvania State University) This is the first volume of a four-volume reference work on Arabic language and linguistics. 1 The second (Eg-Lan) volume was published in late 2006, and the third one (Lat-Pu) in early 2008. This is an unusually fast pace for a project of this nature, and the editors and the publisher must be congratulated for their diligence. As its title indicates, this encyclopedia includes articles on a wide variety of linguistic topics, from language acquisition to computational linguistics and descriptive grammar. Nevertheless, the present review will focus exclusively on entries that pertain, in one way or another, to historical linguistics. The entry on "Afro-Asiatic languages" by Andrzej Zaborski (35-40) is necessarily brief, but it provides the reader with a general idea of the kinship that relates the various branches of this large family: Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and (for those who distinguish it from Cushitic) Omotic. A particularly interesting feature of Zaborski's presentation lies in his questioning the accuracy of the family tree model (the Stammbaummodell) as a rendition of the historical connections between the branches of Afroasiatic (see also Rubio 2003, 2006). However, the bibliography for this entry is a bit puzzling. There is no mention of Lipiński (2001). It is true that many have pointed out the idiosyncrasies that plague Lipiński's manual, especially the fact that no references are provided in the text of such a massive volume, so the reader never knows if something is a commonly accepted theory or a minority opinion, and whether a specific point is someone else's idea or the author's. Still, as Voigt (2003) has noted, in spite of all its shortcomings, Lipiński's overview shows much more awareness of recent developments in the study of Semitic and Afroasiatic languages than Kienast's (2001) does, but only the latter is listed in this entry's bibliography. If idiosyncrasies were a reason

BRILL eBooks, 2006

Reviewed by Gonzalo Rubio (Pennsylvania State University) This is the first volume of a four-volume reference work on Arabic language and linguistics. 1 The second (Eg-Lan) volume was published in late 2006, and the third one (Lat-Pu) in early 2008. This is an unusually fast pace for a project of this nature, and the editors and the publisher must be congratulated for their diligence. As its title indicates, this encyclopedia includes articles on a wide variety of linguistic topics, from language acquisition to computational linguistics and descriptive grammar. Nevertheless, the present review will focus exclusively on entries that pertain, in one way or another, to historical linguistics. The entry on "Afro-Asiatic languages" by Andrzej Zaborski (35-40) is necessarily brief, but it provides the reader with a general idea of the kinship that relates the various branches of this large family: Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and (for those who distinguish it from Cushitic) Omotic. A particularly interesting feature of Zaborski's presentation lies in his questioning the accuracy of the family tree model (the Stammbaummodell) as a rendition of the historical connections between the branches of Afroasiatic (see also Rubio 2003, 2006). However, the bibliography for this entry is a bit puzzling. There is no mention of Lipiński (2001). It is true that many have pointed out the idiosyncrasies that plague Lipiński's manual, especially the fact that no references are provided in the text of such a massive volume, so the reader never knows if something is a commonly accepted theory or a minority opinion, and whether a specific point is someone else's idea or the author's. Still, as Voigt (2003) has noted, in spite of all its shortcomings, Lipiński's overview shows much more awareness of recent developments in the study of Semitic and Afroasiatic languages than Kienast's (2001) does, but only the latter is listed in this entry's bibliography. If idiosyncrasies were a reason

Series: Studia Semitica Upsaliensia 30 Publication year: 2018 Publisher: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis Editors: Nadia Vidro, Ronny Vollandt, Esther-Miriam Wagner, Judith Olszowy-Schlanger Available to download (open access): www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1192909/FULLTEXT01.pdf A paperback version will also be available soon for purchase: http://acta.mamutweb.com/Shop/List/-Studia-Semitica-Upsaliensia-ISSN-0585-5535/74/1

International Journal of Arabic Linguistics, 2019

This paper discusses the classification of the languages of Ancient North Arabia and Arabic as presented in the introduction of Routledge's The Semitic Language's handbook.

This course will provide both a geographical and chronological survey of the Ianguages and scripts attested in the ancient Near East and its periphery, and also an intensive introduction to the theoretical study of writing systems. The problems of genetic linguistics, language contact, language spread, the sociology of writing and literacy, the emergence, spread and typology of writing systems, and the diversity of media and scribal practice will also be discussed. lie shall also survey the textual corpora surviving from the civilizations of the ancient Near East, with special attention to the possible interrelations between method of communication and information to be communicated.

This history emphasizes the continuous linguistic accumulation, manifold connections and mutual enrichment among various Semitic languages, which have shared a long and complex history. The Middle East is the oldest field of cultural interaction where the most ancient languages and the most influential ideas were born, evolved, and intermingled. Every Semitic language emerged from this diverse cultural environment and drew upon a common repertoire of inherited and imported expressions such as oral languages (including constantly changing regional dialects and various scripts), music (Semitic and non-Semitic), visual images, and foreign languages. This constant linguistic flux became the driving force behind the development of a culture that experienced a relentless linguistic reorientation throughout its ancient and medieval history and has lasting consequences on the formation and transformation of its modern languages. The main origins of this linguistic flexibility lie in the age long discrepancy (or inconsistency including periodical temporary unity) between written and oral language and between the conventionalized symbols and the actual sound of language. This discrepancy drove a continuous cycle of birth and death of a stream of languages in the Middle East. Although Semitic language was the original inventor of alphabetic script, the alphabet form of writing did not come easily within the Semitic language group because of this inherited discrepancy. During the third Millennium BC, most ancient Semitic languages adopted cuneiform, a highly conservative and logographic script. It was not until 1100 BC that a semi-alphabetic script was created. Several alphabetic scripts emerged and became extinct during the next fifteen centuries because an important part of the Semitic languages, the vowels that defined meaning and grammatical structure, were not fully presented. As a result, only spelling (not the way to be read) of the written language was standardized; thus the pronunciation of the written language remained unregulated and fluid. Consequently, local languages and dialects disappeared as quickly as they appeared. The authority of written languages was often challenged by active and innovative oral languages and quickly branched out after every minor phonetic shift.