Attributive constructions in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic

Attributive constructions in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic PDF Author: Ariel Gutman
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961100810
Category : Language arts
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
This study is the first wide-scope morpho-syntactic comparative study of North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects to date. Given the historical depth of Aramaic (almost 3 millennia) and the geographic span of the modern dialects, coming in contact with various Iranian, Turkic and Semitic languages, these dialects provide an almost pristine "laboratory" setting for examining language change from areal, typological and historical perspectives. While the study has a very wide coverage of dialects, including also contact languages (and especially Kurdish dialects), it focuses on a specific grammatical domain, namely attributive constructions, giving a theoretically motivated and empirically grounded account of their variation, distribution and development. The results will be enlightening not only to Semitists seeking to learn about this fascinating modern Semitic language group, but also for typologists and general linguists interested in the dynamics of noun phrase morphosyntax.

Attributive constructions in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic

Attributive constructions in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic PDF Author: Ariel Gutman
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961100810
Category : Language arts
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Get Book Here

Book Description
This study is the first wide-scope morpho-syntactic comparative study of North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects to date. Given the historical depth of Aramaic (almost 3 millennia) and the geographic span of the modern dialects, coming in contact with various Iranian, Turkic and Semitic languages, these dialects provide an almost pristine "laboratory" setting for examining language change from areal, typological and historical perspectives. While the study has a very wide coverage of dialects, including also contact languages (and especially Kurdish dialects), it focuses on a specific grammatical domain, namely attributive constructions, giving a theoretically motivated and empirically grounded account of their variation, distribution and development. The results will be enlightening not only to Semitists seeking to learn about this fascinating modern Semitic language group, but also for typologists and general linguists interested in the dynamics of noun phrase morphosyntax.

Studies in the Grammar and Lexicon of Neo-Aramaic

Studies in the Grammar and Lexicon of Neo-Aramaic PDF Author: Geoffrey Khan
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1783749504
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
The Neo-Aramaic dialects are modern vernacular forms of Aramaic, which has a documented history in the Middle East of over 3,000 years. Due to upheavals in the Middle East over the last one hundred years, thousands of speakers of Neo-Aramaic dialects have been forced to migrate from their homes or have perished in massacres. As a result, the dialects are now highly endangered. The dialects exhibit a remarkable diversity of structures. Moreover, the considerable depth of attestation of Aramaic from earlier periods provides evidence for pathways of change. For these reasons the research of Neo-Aramaic is of importance for more general fields of linguistics, in particular language typology and historical linguistics. The papers in this volume represent the full range of research that is currently being carried out on Neo-Aramaic dialects. They advance the field in numerous ways. In order to allow linguists who are not specialists in Neo-Aramaic to benefit from the papers, the examples are fully glossed.

Attributive Constructions in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic

Attributive Constructions in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic PDF Author: Ariel Gutman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Ergativity and Other Alignment Types in Neo-Aramaic

Ergativity and Other Alignment Types in Neo-Aramaic PDF Author: Paul M. Noorlander
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004448187
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
The alignment splits in the Neo-Aramaic languages display a considerable degree of diversity, especially in terms of agreement. While earlier studies have generally oversimplified the actual state of affairs, Paul M. Noorlander offers a meticulous and clear account of nearly all microvariation documented so far, addressing all relevant morphosyntactic phenomena. By means of fully glossed and translated examples, the author shows that this vast variation in morphological alignment, including ergativity, is unexpected from a functional typological perspective. He argues the alignment splits are rather the outcome of several construction-specific processes such as internal system harmonization and grammaticalization, as well as language contact.

The Semitic Languages

The Semitic Languages PDF Author: John Huehnergard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042965782X
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 773

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Book Description
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-by-word 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.

The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact

The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact PDF Author: Anthony P. Grant
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190876905
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 788

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Book Description
Every language has been influenced in some way by other languages. In many cases, this influence is reflected in words which have been absorbed from other languages as the names for newer items or ideas, such as perestroika, manga, or intifada (from Russian, Japanese, and Arabic respectively). In other cases, the influence of other languages goes deeper, and includes the addition of new sounds, grammatical forms, and idioms to the pre-existing language. For example, English's structure has been shaped in such a way by the effects of Norse, French, Latin, and Celtic--though English is not alone in its openness to these influences. Any features can potentially be transferred from one language to another if the sociolinguistic and structural circumstances allow for it. Further, new languages--pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages--can come into being as the result of language contact. In thirty-three chapters, The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact examines the various forms of contact-induced linguistic change and the levels of language which have provided instances of these influences. In addition, it provides accounts of how language contact has affected some twenty languages, spoken and signed, from all parts of the world. Chapters are written by experts and native-speakers from years of research and fieldwork. Ultimately, this Handbook provides an authoritative account of the possibilities and products of contact-induced linguistic change.

The Neo-Aramaic Dialect of the Jews of Dohok

The Neo-Aramaic Dialect of the Jews of Dohok PDF Author: Dorota Molin
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004690573
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
This book combines in-depth grammatical analysis with dialectology and typology. It presents important features of Jewish Neo-Aramaic from Dohok (Iraqi Kurdistan), a previously undocumented dialect that is now on the verge of extinction. The first Neo-Aramaic grammar to offer data glossing, this book is accessible for and highly relevant to Semitists, language typologists and historical linguists. It focuses especially on phonology, verbal morphosyntax and syntax. The monograph also highlights features that characterise the wider lišana deni dialect group, which is the most widespread Jewish Neo-Aramaic today. The book leverages the staggering microvariation persisting within North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic to reconstruct the grammaticalisation of some key Neo-Aramaic constructions. It also includes a text sample of prime historiographic value (Jews of Iraq during the Second World War).

Post-predicate elements in the Western Asian Transition Zone

Post-predicate elements in the Western Asian Transition Zone PDF Author: Geoffrey Haig
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3985541213
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
This volume explores word-order phenomena across a phylogenetically diverse sample of languages covering a region loosely referred to as the Western Asian Transition Zone, approximately corresponding to western Iran, northern Iraq, eastern Turkey and the Caucasus. The sample includes representatives from four branches of Indo-European (Iranian, Hellenic, Armenian, Indo-Aryan) as well as Turkic, Semitic, Kartvelian, Northwest Caucasian and Northeast Caucasian. Methodologically, we apply a corpus-based approach to word-order, building on two purpose-built and fully accessible data-bases of spoken language corpora, WOWA (Word Order in Western Asia), and HamBam (Hamedan-Bamberg Corpus of Contemporary Spoken Persian). The majority of the languages are historically OV, yet exhibit high rates of post-verbal elements, and these constitute the primary focus of the volume. One of the major findings is the importance of semantic role in determining pre- versus post-verbal placement of clausal constituents: We identify a consistent bias towards post-verbal placement of spatial Goals, which is amplified by increasing areal proximity to the VO languages of the southwestern periphery of the region (Semitic). In the languages in and adjacent to the Caucasus, on the other hand, we find stronger effects of information structure in triggering post-verbal position. Along with contributions on individual languages and varieties, the volume includes an overview chapter outlining the theoretical background and the data sources, summary chapters on sub-regions, as well as contributions from an experimental and psycholinguistic perspective.

Aramaic Incantation Bowls in Museum Collections

Aramaic Incantation Bowls in Museum Collections PDF Author: James Nathan Ford
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004411836
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
The Frau Professor Hilprecht Collection of Babylonian Antiquities at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena houses one of the major European collections of incantation bowls. Forty bowls bear texts written in the Jewish, Manichaean Syriac or Mandaic scripts, and most of the rest (some twenty-five objects) in the Pahlavi script or in various pseudoscripts. The present volume comprises new editions of the Aramaic (and Hebrew) bowl texts based on high-resolution photographs taken by the authors, together with brief descriptions and photographs of the remaining material. New readings are often supported with close-up photographs. The volume is intended to serve as a basis for further study of magic in late Antiquity and of the Late Eastern Aramaic dialects in which the texts were composed.

Language Contact in Sanandaj

Language Contact in Sanandaj PDF Author: Geoffrey Khan
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111209180
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 614

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Book Description
This book is a detailed study of contact-induced change in the Neo-Aramaic dialect of the Jews of Sanandaj, a town in western Iran. Since its foundation in early 17th century, the city has been home to a significant Jewish community. The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of the town displays different historical layers of contact with various Iranian languages over the course of many centuries. The Iranian languages in question are Gorani, Kurdish, and Persian. Among these, Gorani has had a particularly deep impact on Jewish Neo-Aramaic, whereas the impact of Kurdish, and especially Persian, remains superficial. Jewish Neo-Aramaic records a history of language shift from Gorani to Kurdish in the region. The book offers insights into contact-induced change in social contexts in which a language is maintained as a demarcation of communal identity in a multilingual setting.