Introduction to the Structure of the Semitic Languages (original) (raw)

2019 The Semitic Languages, 2nd ed.

The Semitic Languages, 2nd ed., 2019

The Semitic Languages presents a comprehensive survey of the individual languages and language clusters within this language family, from their origins in antiquity to their present-day forms. This second edition has been fully revised, with new chapters and a wealth of additional material. New features include the following: • new introductory chapters on Proto-Semitic grammar and Semitic linguistic typology • an additional chapter on the place of Semitic as a subgroup of Afro-Asiatic, and several chapters on modern forms of Arabic, Aramaic and Ethiopian Semitic • text samples of each individual language, transcribed into the International Phonetic Alphabet, with standard linguistic word-byword glossing as well as translation • new maps and tables present information visually for easy reference. This unique resource is the ideal reference for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of linguistics and language. It will be of interest to researchers and anyone with an interest in historical linguistics, linguistic typology, linguistic anthropology and language development.

Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics (Vol. II)

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

Comparative & Historical Semitic Linguistics.Part I (draft)

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.

Reflections on the Classification of the Semitic Languages

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.