Verbs and war scroll: studies in the Hebrew verbal system and the Qumran war scroll (original) (raw)
Related papers
Semitic Linguistics and Manuscripts : A Liber Discipulorum in Honour of Professor Geoffrey Khan
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
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.
The Diachrony of Non-Canonical Subjects in Northwest Semitic
A syntactic pattern involving non-canonical subject marking in some Northwest-Semitic languages is fascinating for two main reasons: 1) it cannot be reconstructed to the proto-language and it must have developed relatively late in the history of the family, which affords us an opportunity to observe its development through textual attestations (cf. Barðdal and Eythórsson 2009); 2) the predication is by and large non-verbal, which seems to counter explanations based on passive derivations and agentivity as a possible origin (Haspelmath 2001). I suggest instead that non-canonical subjects originated from free datives in clauses where the typical agreement cannot be applied. In such cases, the dative, which is animate, definite and associated with the subject, eventually outranked the original subject, which is typically a nominalization and never animate or definite. I further discuss the special features of the non-canonical subject and argue that it is quite stable.
Ugarit-Forschungen 53 (2022 [2024])
The article discusses the history and development of the common Semitic word meaning "horse", appearing in Ugaritic as ssw (or ssw), in Hebrew as sus, and in Akkadian as szsiJ(m) I szsii 'um. An origin in a borrowing from a Luwian plural form *azzuinzi (i.e., /atswintsi/) is argued (based on earlier arguments published in 2017), and further arguments about the specific loan trajectory are given, including data from loans in Late Egyptian, to explain, amongst other things, the -w of the Ugaritic word and other developments in specific Semitic languages. These discussions also yield partially new results for the phonetics of the Ugaritic letter , concerning which certain new suggestions are evaluated, and for the sibilant • This article forms part of my project on inherited Northwest Semitic poetic motifs and formulae (named "The Words of the Storm Gods"), under the aegis of the Pro Futura Scientia programme, funded by the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. Much of the work was carried out during my highly stimulating visiting fellowship year in Cambridge (2021-2022), based at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities and at Wolfson College. I presented many of the ideas making up the article at the Cambridge Semitics/Middle Eastern Philology seminar in May of 2022; I want to thank GEOFFREY KHAN and JOHAN LUNDBERG for the very generous welcome they gave me, as well as all those who took part for their very positive feedback and input (also including, but not limited to, ESTARA ARRANT and BENJAMIN KANTOR). Further work was carried out at the Swedish Institute of Classical Studies in Rome. I also presented a version of the paper at a seminar in Gothenburg in March 2023, where JAN RETSO acted as a discussion partner and gave many highly valuable remarks, for example concerning the meaning of the Semitic root *rkb. I also had the opportunity to present some of these ideas at the Gottingen seminar in April 2023 -I want to thank REINHARD MOLLER and CLEMENS STEINBERGER (and the entire seminar) for having me, and for many interesting comments. A further opportunity for feedback was a presentation at the conference "Tools, Trades, and Technologies -Exploring Prehistory through Archaeolinguistics", organised by JENNY LARSSON and the Language and Myth in Prehistory project at the Swedish Collegium, in October 2023, where ALWIN KLOEKHORST gave an important pointer concerning the recent work of STEFAN NORBRUIS. Huge thanks also to CRAIG MELCHERT for important comments and gr~ceful answers to various questions. The Lund Old Testament seminar also provided many valuable remarks.