Language and Linguistics

Prof. Ogle traces the Classical roots of descriptions of feminine beauty in poetry of the English renaissance.

Fay's commentary and emmendation of Goetz and School's edition of Varro's de Lingua Latina.

Sihler's critique of Ferrero's history of Rome, using Cicero and Caesar's work to evaluate the Italian scholar's use of source material.

Carl Buck examines the wide range of words of speaking found in Indo-European languages.

Edgerton's review of Hertel's text of the Paficatantra with specific reference to Hertel's interpretation of the Beast myth.

Allan Johnson, a famous scholar of ancient civic administration, traces the development of Athenian financial administration in the Hellenistic era.

Leech argues against a simplistic view of the Greeks as radical fatalists, underlining their view of the equally prevalent Greek ideas of individual freedom and self-determination.

This book uses the multiple Aramaic translations of Exodus to reveal important similarities and differences between five Aramaic dialects in the use of genitive constructions: the Syriac Peshitta, Targum Onkelos, three corpora of the Palestinian Targum, the Samaritan Targum, and fragments of a Christian Palestinian Aramaic translation of Exodus.

A record of the author’s investigation concerning the situation of the Syriac-speaking churches during the 1960s. The author provides statistics about parishes, schools, organizations, and cultural activities. The book lists most of the educational institutions with hundreds of photographs, as well as biographies and photos of Syriac writers and Orientalists specializing in Syriac studies.

The ninth-century Syriac-Arabic lexicon of Bar Ali stands with Bar Bahlul’s as a main witness to contemporary Syriac lexicography. Hoffmann presents the first half of the work—the second was edited by Gottheil—with a critical apparatus.

The Nomocanons of the Eastern Orthodox traditions are valuable historical sources for the church traditions they represent. Franz Cöln presents here the collated text of a Nomocanon attributed to Miha’il of Malig and preserved in Garshuni and Arabic manuscripts.

Bruno Kirschner publishes here the Syriac text of seven full acrostic Sogiatha hymns and accompanies each with a brief introduction and a German translation. Kirschner also includes a general introduction to acrostic poetry in the Syriac tradition.

Moberg had already published a German translation of Barhebraeus’s longer Syriac grammar based on a critically established Syriac text and here presents that text in this volume, along with an introduction (in French) and two indices (Syriac and French).

This volume contains four East Syriac treatises: two dealing with words forms and lexicography, two dealing with the interpretation of difficult words in the Bible. The book will be of interest to students of Syriac grammar and biblical interpretation.

Baethgen produces here both the Syriac text and a German translation with notes, including remarks on Elias’s grammar in connection with Greek and Arabic grammatical traditions; the Syriac text includes textual notes.

In this brief work, Larsow discusses the evidence for Syriac dialects, other than the well-known eastern and western varieties, and he especially makes use of material from the lexica of Bar Ali and Bar Bahlul.

The Franciscan Tommaso Obicini (1585-1632) was an early pioneer of Oriental studies. This large volume of his is a classified vocabulary list in three languages: Arabic, Syriac, and Latin. A table of contents and index (in Latin) are included.

The dating of some Archaic Biblical Hebrew poems to the late second millennium – early first millennium BCE on the basis of a handful of linguistic forms in common with second millennium Ugaritic and Amarna-Canaanite texts is brought into question. This critique highlights the problems with the arguments and hypotheses presented in the literature, and concludes that there is no compelling evidence to support the use of linguistic data for dating purposes.

Arthur Allgeier presents a survey of medieval translations of the Psalms in comparison with the translations of Jerome’s Psalterium iuxta Hebraeos in order to contrast the use of the underlying Hebrew text in the translation.

Drawing on the more progressed fields of Greek and Roman and Arabic rhetoric, Haefeli here presents Aphrahat’s style in terms of numerous stylistic categories. Naturally, the work is brimming with examples (in Syriac and German) from Aphrahat.

Duval’s thorough Syriac grammar takes its place beside Nöldeke’s “compendious” grammar as a standard resource for every student and scholar of Syriac.

With a written history of nearly five thousand years, the Semitic languages comprise one of the world’s earliest and longest attested families. This volume provides an overview of this important language family, including both ancient and modern languages. After a brief introduction to the history of the family and its internal classification, subsequent chapters cover topics in phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. Each chapter describes features that are characteristic of the Semitic language family as a whole, as well as some of the more extraordinary developments that take place in the individual languages.

This splendid collection from the Khedivial Library contains Arabic calligraphy produced from the first century until AH 1240 (AD 1825).

Scientific and comparative study of noun derivation in Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic.

Professor Lepsiuis’ created the standard alphabet for reducing unwritten languages and foreign graphic systems to a uniform orthography in European letters. The validity and strength of this alphabet is tested by Whitney and the American Oriental Society.