DOCSLIB.ORG

ROTWELSCH, Hebrew Loanwords in 431 ——

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
ROTWELSCH, Hebrew Loanwords in 431 —— ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HEBREW LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS Volume 3 P–Z General Editor Geoffrey Khan Associate Editors Shmuel Bolokzy Steven E. Fassberg Gary A. Rendsburg Aaron D. Rubin Ora R. Schwarzwald Tamar Zewi LEIDEN • BOSTON 2013 © 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-17642-3 Table of Contents Volume One Introduction ........................................................................................................................ vii List of Contributors ............................................................................................................ ix Transcription Tables ........................................................................................................... xiii Articles A-F ......................................................................................................................... 1 Volume Two Transcription Tables ........................................................................................................... vii Articles G-O ........................................................................................................................ 1 Volume Three Transcription Tables ........................................................................................................... vii Articles P-Z ......................................................................................................................... 1 Volume Four Transcription Tables ........................................................................................................... vii Index ................................................................................................................................... 1 © 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-17642-3 ROTWELSCH, hebrew loanwords in 431 ——. 2003. “The fate of the consonantal root and Rotwelsch, Hebrew Loanwords in the binyan in optimality theory”. Recherches lin- guistiques de Vincennes 32:31–60. Bolozky, Shmuel. 2002. “The ‘roots’ of denomina- Rotwelsch (or Gaunersprache, i.e., German tive Hebrew verbs”. Language processing and for ‘language of swindlers’) is the term used acquisition in languages of Semitic, root-based for the argot employed by crooks, thieves, and morphology, ed. by Joseph Shimron, 131–146. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. vagabonds in the German-speaking portions of del Olmo Lete, Gregorio. 2008. Questions of central Europe, with its home in southwestern Semitic linguistics: Root and lexeme, the history Germany especially. The latter portion of the of research. Trans. by Wilfred G. E. Watson. term, Welsch, suggests any foreign and unintel- Bethesda, Maryland: CDL. Faust, Noam and Ya’ar Hever. 2010. “Empirical and ligible speech (as a comparison, note Yiddish theoretical arguments in favor of the discontinu- Wellisch ‘Italian’); while the former portion of ous root in Semitic languages”. Brill’s Annual of the term, Rot derives either from Rotwelsch Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics 2:80–118. Rot ‘beggar’ (perhaps ultimately from German Goldenberg, Gideon. 1994. “Principles of Semitic word-structure”. Semitic and Cushitic studies, ed. rot ‘red’ > ‘false, faithless’), German Rotte by Gideon Goldenberg and Shlomo Raz, 29–64. ‘gang, band’, or Middle Dutch rot ‘foul, dirty’ Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz (= idem. 1998. Studies (see further Girtler 2010:21–22). This socio- in Semitic linguistics. Jerusalem: Magnes, 10–45). ——. 2005. “Semitic triradicalism and the biradical lect originated in the Middle Ages (the term question”. Semitic studies in honor of Edward Rotwalsch [sic] is first attested about 1250), Ullendorff, ed. by Geoffrey Khan, 7–25. Leiden: though the most abundant sources for the cant Brill. derive from lexicons and word lists from the Goldenberg, Gideon and Ariel Shisha-Halevy. 2009. Egyptian, Semitic and general grammar: Studies in early modern period through the 19th cen- memory of H. J. Polotsky. Jerusalem: The Israel tury. Among the most important sources is the Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Rotwelsch vocabulary that appears in Liber Greenberg, Joseph Harold. 1950. “The patterning of Vagatorum (1510), a work which also provides root morphemes in Semitic”. Word 6:162–181. Izre’el, Shlomo. 2009. “Constructive constructions: key insights into the lifestyle and customs of the Semitic verbal morphology and beyond”. Golden- vagabonds, including their tricks and strategies berg and Shisha-Halevy 2009, 106–130. (cf. Jütte 1988:106). Moscati, Sabatino. 1964. An introduction to the While the base of Rotwelsch is German(ic), comparative grammar of the Semitic languages: Phonology and morphology. Wiesbaden: Harras- its lexis includes an exceedingly high percent- sowitz. age of Hebraisms, derived either from Hebrew Schwarzwald (Rodrigue), Ora. 2000. “Verbal roots directly (with typical Ashkenazi pronunciation) and their links to nouns (in Hebrew)”. Raphael or via the intermediary of (Western) Yiddish. Nir jubilee book: Studies in communication, lin- guistics and language teaching, ed. by Ora (Rodri- According to one estimate, fully twenty-two gue) Schwarzwald, Shoshana Blum-Kulka, and percent of the Rotwelsch lexis revealed in the Elite Olshtain, 426–438. Jerusalem: Carmel. aforementioned Liber Vagatorum derives from ——. 2002a. Studies in Hebrew morphology I: Unit 2, basic concepts (in Hebrew). Tel-Aviv: The Open Hebrew (Jütte 1987:136). The presence of so University of Israel. many Hebraisms reflects the fact that Jews were ——. 2002b. Studies in Hebrew morphology III: involved in the relevant livelihoods. Officially Unit 9, roots and patterns a (in Hebrew). Tel-Aviv: excluded from the guilds and civic enterprises The Open University of Israel. ——. 2009. “Three related analyses in Modern during the Middle Ages and beyond, Jews Hebrew morphology”. Goldenberg and Shisha- resorted to such occupations as hucksters, itin- Halevy 2009, 277–301. erant merchants, conveyers of movable goods, Ussishkin, Adam. 1999. “The inadequacy of the con- and the like (and were often joined in these sonantal root: Modern Hebrew denominal verbs and output-output correspondence”. Phonology endeavors by the ‘gypsies’, whose Sinti-Romani 16:401–442. dialect thus also contributes heavily to the Zaborski, Andrzej. 1991. “Biconsonantal roots and Rotwelsch lexicon). As typically happens, such triconsonantal root variation in Semitic: Solutions business ventures frequently entailed less-than- and prospects”. Semitic studies in honor of Wolf Leslau on the occasion of his eighty-fifth birthday, honest, if not illegal and fraudulent, deals that November 14th, 1999, ed. by Alan S. Kaye, vol. 2, required a secret language or coded argot. In 1675–1703. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. such fashion, one can understand how numer- ous Hebraisms entered Rotwelsch, even when Tamar Zewi spoken by non-Jews who partnered with Jews (University of Haifa) in these deceitful and criminal activities. © 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-17642-3 432 ROTWELSCH, hebrew loanwords in ’ganna∫); Jerid ‘fair, market, exhibition ַגּ ָנּב .Rotwelsch was used into the 20th century (cf keseƒ); Kies ֶכּ ֶסף .yerid); Kesef ‘silver’ (cf ְיִריד .and still survives to some extent as an ele- (cf ’kis ‘pocket’); Kippe ‘box, coffer ִכּיס .ment of folklore in the villages of Schopfloch ‘money’ (cf ,quppa); Macker ‘acquaintance, partner ֻק ָפּה .and Schillingsfürst (both situated in the Fran- (cf ;(’makkir ‘acquaintance ַמ ִכּיר .conian part of Bavaria). The language may fellow swindler’ (cf ma™ane); Malbusch ַמ ֲח ֶנה .also be heard as an entertainment component Machne ‘camp’ (cf ’malbuš); Mammon ‘wealth ַמ ְלבּוּשׁ .from showmen at popular fairs. In addition, ‘clothing’ (cf ma≠al ַמ ַﬠל .mamon); maul ‘cheater’ (cf ָממוֹן .occasional words entered various local dialects (cf ִמוֹביל .Siewert 2003:45–61; ¤ Germanic Languages, ‘betrayal’); mebeln ‘to bring, buy’ (cf) Hebrew Loanwords in). mo∫il ‘carrier, conveyer’); meloche ‘work’ (cf. .melaúa); meramme sein ‘to betray’ (cf ְמ ָל ָאכה As intimated above, the number of Hebrew r-m-y ‘to deceive, betray’ + German sein רמ"י elements in the Rotwelsch vocabulary is truly merka∫a ֶמְר ָכּ ָבה .staggering. What follows is merely a sampling. ‘to be’); Merkof ‘wagon’ (cf ְמ ִצ ָיאה .In the examples listed, if the Rotwelsch term ‘chariot’); Mezie ‘find, good buy’ (cf connotes the same as its Hebrew derivation, meßi±a ‘find’); schachern ‘to conduct business’ .(s-™-r סח"ר .then the gloss for the latter is not presented. (cf Only in cases where the semantic connection is But even the basic vocabulary of ordinary less obvious, or if the part of speech is differ- items includes words of Hebrew origin (some ent (e.g., Rotwelsch verb derived from Hebrew of these, of course, may relate to the business ;(bayiμ ַבּ ִית .adjective), is a gloss included for the Hebrew ventures as well): Bais ‘house’ (cf ַי ַﬠר .egel); Jaar ‘forest’ (cf≠ ֵﬠ ֶגל .source as well. In all instances, the spelling of Egel ‘calf ’ (cf ’yayin); Kelef ‘dog ַי ִין .the Rotwelsch lexemes is taken from the head ya≠ar); Jajin ‘wine’ (cf ken); Lechem ֵכּן .kele∫); ken ‘yes’ (cf ֶכּ ֶלב .words listed in Wolf’s (1956) standard diction- (cf ’le™em); Mockum ‘city, place ֶל ֶחם .ary (though spelling is highly variable, natu- ‘bread’ (cf ָנוֹצה .maqom ‘place’); Nuze ‘feather’ (cf ָמקוֹם .rally). The transcription of the Hebrew terms (cf par≠oš); Peger ַפְּרעֹשׁ .is a simplified version of the Masoretic real- noßa); Parosch ‘flea’ (cf ;(par ַפּר .peger); Por ‘ox, steer’ (cf ֶפּ ֶגר .ization; the Ashkenazi pronunciation, which ‘corpse’ (cf y-m ‘to put, give’); Sackin-» שׂי"ם
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Language of the Old Testament: Biblical Hebrew “The Holy Tongue”
    E-ISSN 2281-4612 Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Vol 4 No 1 ISSN 2281-3993 MCSER Publishing, Rome-Italy March 2015 Language of the Old Testament: Biblical Hebrew “The Holy Tongue” Associate Professor Luke Emeka Ugwueye Department of Religion & Human Relations, Faculty of Arts, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, PMB 5025, Awka- Anambra State, Nigeria Email: [email protected] phone - 08067674763 Doi:10.5901/ajis.2015.v4n1p129 Abstract Some kind of familiarity with the structure and thought pattern of biblical Hebrew language enhances translation and improved ways of working with the language needed by students of Old Testament. That what the authors of the Scripture say also has meaning for us today is not in doubt but they did not express themselves primarily for us or in our language, and so it requires training on our part to understand them in their own language. The features of biblical Hebrew as combined in the language’s use of imagery and picturesque description of things are of huge assistance in this training exercise for a better operational knowledge of the language and meaning of Hebrew Scripture. Keywords: Language, Old Testament, Biblical Hebrew, Holy Tongue 1. Introduction Hebrew language is the language of the culture, religion and civilization of the Jewish people since ancient times. It belongs to the northwest ancient Semitic family of languages. The word Semitic, according to Kitchen (1992) is formed from the name Shem, Noah’s eldest son (Genesis 5:32). It is an adjective derived from ‘Shem’ meaning a member of any of the group of people speaking Akkadian, Phoenician, Punic, Aramaic, and especially Hebrew, Modern Hebrew and Arabic language.
    [Show full text]
  • Saudi Dialects: Are They Endangered?
    Academic Research Publishing Group English Literature and Language Review ISSN(e): 2412-1703, ISSN(p): 2413-8827 Vol. 2, No. 12, pp: 131-141, 2016 URL: http://arpgweb.com/?ic=journal&journal=9&info=aims Saudi Dialects: Are They Endangered? Salih Alzahrani Taif University, Saudi Arabia Abstract: Krauss, among others, claims that languages will face death in the coming centuries (Krauss, 1992). Austin (2010a) lists 7,000 languages as existing and spoken in the world today. Krauss estimates that this figure could come down to 600. That is, most the world's languages are endangered. Therefore, an endangered language is a language that loses her speakers within a few generations. According to Dorian (1981), there is what is called ―tip‖ in language endangerment. He argues that a language's decline can start slowly but suddenly goes through a rapid decline towards the extinction. Thus, languages must be protected at much earlier stage. Arabic dialects such as Zahrani Spoken Arabic (ZSA), and Faifi Spoken Arabic (henceforth, FSA), which are spoken in the southern region of Saudi Arabia, have not been studied, yet. Few people speak these dialects, among many other dialects in the same region. However, the problem is that most these dialects' native speakers are moving to other regions in Saudi Arabia where they use other different dialects. Therefore, are these dialects endangered? What other factors may cause its endangerment? Have they been documented before? What shall we do? This paper discusses three main different points regarding this issue: language and endangerment, languages documentation and description and Arabic language and its family, giving a brief history of Saudi dialects comparing their situation with the whole existing dialects.
    [Show full text]
  • A Comprehensive NLP System for Modern Standard Arabic and Modern Hebrew
    A Comprehensive NLP System for Modern Standard Arabic and Modern Hebrew Morphological analysis, lemmatization, vocalization, disambiguation and text-to-speech Dror Kamir Naama Soreq Yoni Neeman Melingo Ltd. Melingo Ltd. Melingo Ltd. 16 Totseret Haaretz st. 16 Totseret Haaretz st. 16 Totseret Haaretz st. Tel-Aviv, Israel Tel-Aviv, Israel Tel-Aviv, Israel [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract 1 Introduction This paper presents a comprehensive NLP sys- 1.1 The common Semitic basis from an NLP tem by Melingo that has been recently developed standpoint for Arabic, based on MorfixTM – an operational formerly developed highly successful comprehen- Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Modern Hebrew (MH) share the basic Semitic traits: rich sive Hebrew NLP system. morphology, based on consonantal roots (Jiðr / The system discussed includes modules for Šoreš)1, which depends on vowel changes and in morphological analysis, context sensitive lemmati- some cases consonantal insertions and deletions to zation, vocalization, text-to-phoneme conversion, create inflections and derivations.2 and syntactic-analysis-based prosody (intonation) For example, in MSA: the consonantal root model. It is employed in applications such as full /ktb/ combined with the vocalic pattern CaCaCa text search, information retrieval, text categoriza- derives the verb kataba ‘to write’. This derivation tion, textual data mining, online contextual dic- is further inflected into forms that indicate seman- tionaries, filtering, and text-to-speech applications tic features, such as number, gender, tense etc.: katab-tu ‘I wrote’, katab-ta ‘you (sing. masc.) in the fields of telephony and accessibility and wrote’, katab-ti ‘you (sing. fem.) wrote, ?a-ktubu could serve as a handy accessory for non-fluent ‘I write/will write’, etc.
    [Show full text]
  • An Introduction to the Relevance of and a Methodology for a Study of the Proper Names of the Book of Mormon
    An Introduction to the Relevance of and a Methodology for a Study of the Proper Names of the Book of Mormon Paul Y. Hoskisson Since the appearance of the Book of Mormon in 1830, its proper names have been discussed in diverse articles and books.1 Most of the statements proffer etymologies, while a few suggest the signicance of various names. Because of the uneven quality of these statements this paper proposes an apposite methodology. First, though, a few words need to be said about the relevance of name studies to our understanding of the Book of Mormon. Relevance With the exception of a few modern proper names coined for their composite sounds,2 all names have meanings in their language of origin. People are often not aware of these meanings because the name has a private interpretation, or the name has been borrowed into a language in which the original meaning is no longer evident, or the name is very old and the meaning has not been transmitted. For example, the English personal name Wayne is an old form of the more modern English word wain, meaning a “wagon” or “cart,” hence the surname Wainwright, “builder/repairer of “3 However, to our contemporary ears Wayne no longer has a meaning; it is simply a personal name. With training and experience, it is often possible to dene the language of origin, the meaning, and, when applicable, the grammatical form of a name. Names like Karen, Tony, and Sasha (also written Sacha from the French spelling) have been borrowed into English from Danish,4 Italian,5 and Russian6 respectively.
    [Show full text]
  • Classical and Modern Standard Arabic Marijn Van Putten University of Leiden
    Chapter 3 Classical and Modern Standard Arabic Marijn van Putten University of Leiden The highly archaic Classical Arabic language and its modern iteration Modern Standard Arabic must to a large extent be seen as highly artificial archaizing reg- isters that are the High variety of a diglossic situation. The contact phenomena found in Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic are therefore often the re- sult of imposition. Cases of borrowing are significantly rarer, and mainly found in the lexical sphere of the language. 1 Current state and historical development Classical Arabic (CA) is the highly archaic variety of Arabic that, after its cod- ification by the Arab Grammarians around the beginning of the ninth century, becomes the most dominant written register of Arabic. While forms of Middle Arabic, a style somewhat intermediate between CA and spoken dialects, gain some traction in the Middle Ages, CA remains the most important written regis- ter for official, religious and scientific purposes. From the moment of CA’s rise to dominance as a written language, the whole of the Arabic-speaking world can be thought of as having transitioned into a state of diglossia (Ferguson 1959; 1996), where CA takes up the High register and the spoken dialects the Low register.1 Representation in writing of these spoken dia- lects is (almost) completely absent in the written record for much of the Middle Ages. Eventually, CA came to be largely replaced for administrative purposes by Ottoman Turkish, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was function- ally limited to religious domains (Glaß 2011: 836).
    [Show full text]
  • Identifying Semitic Roots: Machine Learning with Linguistic Constraints
    Identifying Semitic Roots: Machine Learning with Linguistic Constraints Ezra Daya∗ University of Haifa Dan Roth∗∗ University of Illinois Shuly Wintner† University of Haifa Words in Semitic languages are formed by combining two morphemes: a root and a pattern. The root consists of consonants only, by default three, and the pattern is a combination of vowels and consonants, with non-consecutive “slots” into which the root consonants are inserted. Identifying the root of a given word is an important task, considered to be an essential part of the morphological analysis of Semitic languages, and information on roots is important for linguistics research as well as for practical applications. We present a machine learning approach, augmented by limited linguistic knowledge, to the problem of identifying the roots of Semitic words. Although programs exist which can extract the root of words in Arabic and Hebrew, they are all dependent on labor-intensive construction of large-scale lexicons which are components of full-scale morphological analyzers. The advantage of our method is an automation of this process, avoiding the bottleneckof having to laboriously list the root and pattern of each lexeme in the language. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first application of machine learning to this problem, and one of the few attempts to directly address non-concatenative morphology using machine learning. More generally, our results shed light on the problem of combining classifiers under (linguistically motivated) constraints. 1. Introduction The standard account of word-formation processes in Semitic languages describes words as combinations of two morphemes: a root and a pattern.1 The root consists of consonants only, by default three (although longer roots are known), called radicals.
    [Show full text]
  • The Biradical Origin of Semitic Roots
    Copyright by Bernice Varjick Hecker 2007 The Dissertation Committee for Bernice Varjick Hecker certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Biradical Origin of Semitic Roots Committee: Robert D. King, Supervisor Robert T. Harms Richard P. Meier Esther L. Raizen Peter F. Abboud THE BIRADICAL ORIGIN OF SEMITIC ROOTS by Bernice Varjick Hecker, M.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May, 2007 Dedication To Mark Southern, who awakened and sustained my interest in the Ancient Near East. Acknowledgments I would first like to thank Prof. Harms, who supervised my earlier paper, for teaching me that there is no way to conclusively prove a theory about an early stage of a prehistoric language but that it was possible to demonstrate its likelihood. His comments at an early stage of this work were invaluable in showing me how to go about doing so. I would also like to thank Prof. King, my dissertation supervisor, who was an unfailing font of support and who gave me excellent advice and direction. My husband, Ran Moran, was the sine qua non of this project. There is no way that I could have completed it without his help, both in accommodating to my schedule and in expending all the resources that I brought to bear on writing this dissertation. v The Biradical Origin of Semitic Roots Publication No._____________ Bernice Varjick Hecker, Ph.D.
    [Show full text]
  • The Modern South Arabian Languages
    HETZRON, R. (ed.). 1997. The Semitic Languages. London : Routledge, p. 378-423. The Modern South Arabian Languages Marie-Claude SIMEONE-SENELLE CNRS - LLACAN. Meudon. France 0. INTRODUCTION 0.1. In the South of the Arabian Peninsula, in the Republic of the Yemen and in the Sultanate of Oman, live some 200,000 Arabs whose maternal language is not Arabic but one of the so- called Modern South Arabian Languagues (MSAL). This designation is very inconvenient because of the consequent ambiguity, but a more appropriate solution has not been found so far. Although there exists a very close relationship with other languages of the same Western South Semitic group, the MSAL are different enough from Arabic to make intercomprehension impossible between speakers of any of the MSAL and Arabic speakers. The MSAL exhibit many common features also with the Semitic languages of Ethiopia; their relationships with Epigraphic South Arabian (SahaydicLanguages, according to Beeston) remain a point of discussion. There are six MSAL: Mehri (=M), HarsVsi (=H), BaT©ari (=B), HobyOt (=Hb), Jibbßli (=J), SoqoTri (=S. As regards the number of speakers and the geographical extension, Mehri is the main language. It is spoken by the Mahra tribes (about 100,000 speakers) and some Beyt Kathir, in the mountains of Dhofar in Oman, and in the Yemen, in the far eastern Governorate, on the coast, between the border of Oman and the eastern bank of Wadi Masilah, and not in the Mukalla area, contrary to Johnstone's statement (1975:2); in the North-West of the Yemen, Mehri is spoken as far as Thamud, on the border of the Rubº al-Khali.
    [Show full text]
  • Notes on the Emergence of New Semitic Roots in the Light of Compounding
    ISSN 0806 -198X Notes on the Emergence of New Semitic Roots in the Light of Compounding LUTZ EDZARD (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg / University of Oslo) Abstract Independently of the question as to whether bi- or triradical roots have historical preponderance in Semitic, there are clear cases of Semitic verbal and nominal roots that have emerged through a process of com- pounding or integration of additional elements (verbal or nominal affixes and even prepositions). In this paper, an attempt will be made to establish a hierarchical typology of such processes of morpho- phonological re-analysis, in both historical and modern times. Key words: affix, re-analysis, root, compounding 1 Introduction It has long been recognized that new roots in Semitic can emerge through the re-analysis of verbal or nominal affixes. On the one hand, there has been the theory of “matrices et éty- mons”, propagated notably by Georges Bohas (e.g., BOHAS 2000) and a number of his pupils, which builds on the observation that roots with two common consonants and a hom- organic, but different third consonant, often share a common semantics. Christopher Ehret (notably EHRET 1995) has developed this theory even further, in trying to reconstruct uni- consonantal semantic core elements at an early stage of Afroasiatic. This well-known line of thought will not be pursued here (for an overview of the pros and cons, cf. e.g., ZA- BORSKI 1991). Rather, with a focus on Arabic and Hebrew, I will give an overview of vari- ous processes that can be described as “compounding”, which involve either the integration of grammatical morphemes—verbal and nominal affixes, including prepositions—or the creation of new roots by exploiting acronyms or the conjunction of clipped elements, cap- tured by the Arabic term na ḥt, literally ‘sculpture’.
    [Show full text]
  • Yaron Matras
    THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN MYSTIFYING AND DE-MYSTIFYING GYPSY IDENTITY Yaron Matras ‘Gypsy’: A double signifier No discovery has been as significant to the understanding of the history of the Gyp- sies as the illumination of their linguistic connection with India. Having said this, there arises immediately a need to clarify. For the connection between the Romani language and the languages of India has no bearing at all on the history and origin of the Irish Travellers, and probably little and only indirect significance for an under- standing of the culture of the German or Swiss Jenische, to name but two examples out of many. At the same time it is impossible to understand the Rom, Romacel, Romanichel, Sinte, Manush, or Kaale without knowing something about the origins of their language – romani chib, or romanes, or, as it is referred to in modern lin- guistics: Romani. How might we resolve this contradiction? The answer is very triv- ial: two separate signified entities are captured by the term ‘Gypsy’. GYPSY 1 denotes the social phenomenon of communities of peripatetics or com- mercial nomads, irrespective of origin or language. Whether or not the diverse communities that fall under GYPSY 1 have much in common, is the subject of occa- sional discussions among members of these groups, and of intense research among social scientists describing their cultures. Let us accept both the fact that members of these distinct groups often show interest in one another and may at times feel a sense of common destiny, while at the scientific level comparative research into diverse peripatetic communities is now an established discipline.
    [Show full text]
  • A Tale of Two Morphologies
    A Tale of Two Morphologies Verb structure and argument alternations in Maltese Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines Doktors der Philosophie vorgelegt von Spagnol, Michael an der Geisteswissenschaftliche Sektion Sprachwissenschaft 1. Referent: Prof. Dr. Frans Plank 2. Referent: Prof. Dr. Christoph Schwarze 3. Referent: Prof. Dr. Albert Borg To my late Nannu Kieli, a great story teller Contents Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................. iii Notational conventions .................................................................................................................... v Abstract ............................................................................................................................................... viii Ch. 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 1.1. A tale to be told ............................................................................................................................................. 2 1.2 Three sides to every tale ........................................................................................................................... 4 Ch. 2. Setting the stage ...................................................................................................................... 9 2.1. No language is an island .......................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Notes on Biblical Hebrew
    NOTES ON BIBLICAL HEBREW JACK FELMAN HEBREW AS A SEMITIC LANGUAGE Biblical Hebrew is a member of the Semitic family of some seventy lan- guages/dialects spoken in antiquity in Southwest Asia from the Sinai Desert and Arabian Desert in the south, to the Taurus Mountains of Lebanon in the north, the Zagros Mountains of Iran in the east, and the Mediterranean Sea in the west. Hemmed in by these natural barriers they remained a single collec- tive. Later they expanded a bit into North Africa and into the East African Horn. The Semitic languages were all dialects of one large dialect continuum. Over time however, important centers, usually capital cities, became foci of dialect concentrations and thus ultimately languages developed. These are the five great literary languages: Biblical Hebrew of Jerusalem, Aramaic of Da- mascus, Akkadian of Babylon and Nineveh, Classical Arabic of Mecca and Classical Ethiopic (Ge'ez) of Axum. Akkadian is often termed East Semitic, Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic Northwest Semitic, and Arabic and Ge'ez Southwest Semitic. Semitic itself is one branch of a much larger superfamily (phylum) of Ham- ito-Semitic (also known as Afro-Asiatic) of some 150 languages stretching in a band from Egypt through North Africa to Morocco, south to the East Afri- can Horn, and southwest in a large area around Lake Chad. Four major branches of languages are noted: Ancient Egyptian including Coptic, Berber, Cushitic, and Chadic. These are all considered sister families of languages related to Semitic. Biblical Hebrew as noted is considered a Northwest Semitic language part of the Canaanite group including Phoenician and Punic, Moabite, Edomite, Ammonite, Amorite and most importantly Ugaritic with shares not only a common linguistic connection but also a common literary culture.
    [Show full text]