Language and Linguistics

Hasting’s Great Texts of the Bible was a massive, twenty volume set of Bible Studies. Under each biblical book comments were added to the lections in order to provide homiletical support. Conscientious about the difficulty of locating material in a resource of about 10,000 pages, Hastings had an index prepared. Knowing that clergy and biblical scholars tend to seek subjects for study, the index was prepared as an alphabetical index rather than a simple scriptural one. Such a resource retains its value for those who continue to use the extensive commentary that Hastings edited. This little index will be helpful to anyone following in Hasting’s impressive footsteps.

This brief contribution to the discussion of Semitic metrics was written by a renowned scholar of biblical languages. Concentrating on the partial acrostic poem in Nahum 1.2-2.3, Bickell addresses the metrics of the piece. Laying out the text in Hebrew and in transliteration, Bickell gives his own translation along with his metrical observations. For anyone interested in the poetic structures of Semitic languages, particularly biblical Hebrew, this booklet will provide considerable insight.

In this essential contribution to the study of Aramaisms in the Bible, noted linguist E. Kautzsch provides a thorough introduction to the subject. Since Aramaisms are not overly abundant in the Bible, Kautzsch has the space to dedicate a significant analysis. For linguists interested in how Aramaic influenced biblical Hebrew, as understood at the turn of the twentieth century, this little book will be of great value.

The full title of this work indicates the scope of its contents: A Catalogue of the Arabic, Persian and Hindustany Manuscripts of the Libraries of the King of Oudh, Compiled by Order of the Government of India. This first volume was the only part of the project completed by editor Aloys Sprenger, and it contains the Persian and Hindustani poetry. This catalogue includes biographies of Persian and Urdu poets, a chapter of works of Persian poets, and a brief chapter on the work of Hindustani poets, which concludes the works.

A rare exploration of the language of the Romani people (popularly called “gypsies”), this study has been the standard reference for those who wish to explore the still poorly understood languages of the Bohemians of the Ottoman Empire. Part language study, part translation exercise, Paspates’ treatment is one of the few available on this topic. Starting out with an introduction and brief grammar, the major portion of the book is a lexicon of Romani. A brief concluding chapter contains stories both in the original language and in French translation. A must-have title for students of Romani, this book is a useful addition to the Gorgias Historical Grammar series.

The Abrohom Nuro library is arguably the richest private collection of Syriac material, especially containing rare titles published in the Middle East in the 1800s and early 1900s. Nuro presents here a checklist of the collection.

This comprehensive reference work provides bibliographical and manuscript data to Arabic works in the field of Syriac studies, both published and unpublished. The book contains over 2,000 subject and title entries.

Sergius of Reshaina (d. 536), translated the (pseudo-)Aristotelian text known as the De Mundo from Greek into Syriac in the early sixth century. The earlier period of Greek-Syriac translation was characterized by freer versions, while in the seventh century there are very good examples of literalism. Since Sergius worked at a time between these two periods, his translation will be of special interest to Greek and Syriac scholars.

Minton Warren illuminates the process by which he and other editors navigate the very difficult task of editing the plays of Terrence from manuscript to edition.

In this article Shipley uses a parent and child manuscript of Livy to show how and why errors come into texts as they are copied and to suggest methods for recognizing such errors and correcting them.

This includes text and commentaries of the inscriptions from Sinope, capital of ancient Pontus and hub of Greek and Persian civilization.

This article provides transcription, text, and commentary on the Latin inscriptions known in Corinth in 1918 and provides a useful tool for understanding the civic life of Corinth under Roman control.

This paper presents the very few surviving inscriptions from this period before Mummius' sack of Corinth and includes some of the few Greek decrees known at the time of the writing of the paper.

William Newbold deciphers inscriptions found under the soot and lava of Vesuvius in which Aramaic speakers used Greek and Latin letters to render their native tongue, occasionally in a mixture of Aramaic and Latin.

This study presents a modern linguistic approach to the function of the Syriac et-verbal prefix. Based on a detailed analysis of a number of early Syriac texts, it proposes a unified account of the different values traditionally attributed to the Syriac et- stems. Farina views the data within a typologically comparative framework derived from a cross-linguistic study of middle conjugations.

Maurice Bloomfield applies the principles of linguistics to find the proper root forms for Ancient Greek words, a task complicated by the vowel shift that occurs when Greek words (particularly verbs) are inflected.

Fitzedward Hall, an editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, examines the construction “had rather” in English as it is used with verbs (Had rather go, etc.), which many grammarians found to be a puzzling grammatical anomaly.

Charles Short gives a clear and thorough overview of the history of the English Bible and its relation to the changing editions of the Greek and Hebrew texts, then gives a detailed analysis of the revised text of Matthew.

Minton Warren, a distinguished scholar of Roman comedy, explores the origins and shades of meaning in the Latin particle 'ne', arguing that it has both emphatic and interrogative meaning.

Basil Gildersleeve, a prolific scholar of Greek and Latin grammar, here analyzes the difficult syntax of Pindar, paying particular attention to dependent clauses and conditional statements.

James Rendel Harris uses known statistics of ancient autographs (that is, the original version of a written document) to posit the general appearance of the epistles in their original form.

Basil Gildersleeve, a prolific scholar of Greek and Latin grammar, here analyzes the development of the final clause in Ancient Greek from Homer to the Athenian dramatists.

James Rendel Harris uses known statistics of ancient autographs (that is, the original version of a written document) to posit the general appearance of ancient documents in their original form.

Edward Hopkins here addresses and debunks the color theory, which assumes that ancient peoples were unable to perceive shades of green and blue because they lack vocabulary parallel to our own words for color.

Allen offers a series of inscriptions from Palestine copied by the Rev. Dr. Selah Merrill in the years I875-77, in the course of journeys undertaken under the auspices of the American Palestine Exploration Society.