Common Origin of Ethiopian Semitic: the Lexical Dimension*
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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. -
The Concept of Ministry in the Arabic Political Tradition Its Origin, Development, and Linguistic Reflection
The Concept of Ministry in the Arabic Political Tradition Its origin, development, and linguistic reflection IVAN V. SIVKOV Abstract The paper presents the results of an analysis of the term “ministry” (wizāra) as one of the pivotal concepts in the Arabic/Islamic political tradition. The ministry as key political/administrative institution in the Arabic/Islamic traditional state machinery is researched from a historical/institutional perspective. The concept of ministry is treated from the point of its origin and historical development, as well as its changeable role and meaning in the variable Arabic political system. The paper is primarily dedicated to the investigation of the realization of the concept of ministry and its different types and branches in the Arabic language through the etymological and semantic examination of the terms used to denote this institution during the long period of administrative development of the Arabic world from its establishment as such and during the inception of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate to its usage in administrative apparatus of modern Arab states. The paper is based on Arabic narrative sources such as historical chronicles, collections of the official documents of modern Arabic states, and the lists of its chief magistrates (with special reference to government composition and structure). Keywords: term, terminology, concept, semantic, etymology, value, derivation Introduction The term wazīr is traditionally used to denote the position of vizier who was the state secretary, the aide, helper and councilor of the caliph/sultan of the highest rank in the administrative apparatus of ʿAbbāsid Caliphate and its successor states (e.g., Būyids, Fāṭimids, Ayyūbids and Salǧūqs). -
519 Ethiopia Report With
Minority Rights Group International R E P O R Ethiopia: A New Start? T • ETHIOPIA: A NEW START? AN MRG INTERNATIONAL REPORT AN MRG INTERNATIONAL BY KJETIL TRONVOLL ETHIOPIA: A NEW START? Acknowledgements Minority Rights Group International (MRG) gratefully © Minority Rights Group 2000 acknowledges the support of Bilance, Community Aid All rights reserved Abroad, Dan Church Aid, Government of Norway, ICCO Material from this publication may be reproduced for teaching or other non- and all other organizations and individuals who gave commercial purposes. No part of it may be reproduced in any form for com- financial and other assistance for this Report. mercial purposes without the prior express permission of the copyright holders. For further information please contact MRG. This Report has been commissioned and is published by A CIP catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. MRG as a contribution to public understanding of the ISBN 1 897 693 33 8 issue which forms its subject. The text and views of the ISSN 0305 6252 author do not necessarily represent, in every detail and in Published April 2000 all its aspects, the collective view of MRG. Typset by Texture Printed in the UK on bleach-free paper. MRG is grateful to all the staff and independent expert readers who contributed to this Report, in particular Tadesse Tafesse (Programme Coordinator) and Katrina Payne (Reports Editor). THE AUTHOR KJETIL TRONVOLL is a Research Fellow and Horn of Ethiopian elections for the Constituent Assembly in 1994, Africa Programme Director at the Norwegian Institute of and the Federal and Regional Assemblies in 1995. -
1 United States District Court District of Connecticut Dr. Al Malik
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF CONNECTICUT DR. AL MALIK OFFICE FOR FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONSULTANCY, Plaintiff, No. 3:19-cv-1417 (JAM) v. HORSENECK CAPITAL ADVISORS, LLC, Defendant. ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN PART MOTION TO DISMISS This case is about a consulting fee dispute. The plaintiff claims that the defendant agreed to pay the plaintiff about $1.5 million for consulting services in 2018 but that the defendant has only paid about half that amount. The plaintiff has filed this lawsuit alleging numerous claims, and the defendant in turn has moved to dismiss the claims for statutory theft and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. I will grant in part and deny in part the motion to dismiss. BACKGROUND The following facts are drawn from the complaint and are assumed to be true solely for the purpose of this motion to dismiss. Doc. #1. Plaintiff Dr. Al Malik Office for Financial and Economic Consultancy (“Malik”) is an eponymous sole proprietorship owned and operated by Dr. Ahmed Al Malik, a citizen and resident of Saudi Arabia. Malik provides consulting services for entities seeking funds from investors in Saudi Arabia. Doc. #1 at 1 (¶ 1). Defendant Horseneck Capital Advisors, LLC (“Horseneck”) is a Connecticut limited liability company that raises investment capital for businesses in the United States. Horseneck is 1 based in Greenwich, Connecticut, and is owned and managed by Christopher Franco. Id. at 1 (¶ 2). Malik has sued Horseneck principally seeking payment for consulting services that Malik rendered in Saudi Arabia for one of Horseneck’s investment fund clients. -
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. -
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. -
Gurage) Morphology∗
Chaha (Gurage) Morphology∗ Sharon Rose University of California, San Diego 1. Introduction Chaha (cha) is a Gurage dialect belonging to the Ethiopian branch of the Semitic language family. It is a member of the Western Gurage group of dialects along with Ezha, Gyeta, Endegegn and Inor. Chaha itself also has some sub-dialects, Gura and Gumer. The data for this article come from the dialect spoken in the main Chaha town of Endeber and neighboring villages, such as Yeseme. Endeber is located approximately 180 kilometers south-west of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. The 1994 census ∗ Many thanks to Hailu Yacob and Tadesse Sefer for contributing data, and to Alan Kaye for editorial assistance. I am extremely grateful to Degif Petros Banksira for extensive comments on the article, leading to significant improvements. Errors are my responsibility. The following abbreviations are used: acc. = accusative; f = feminine; m = masculine; p = plural; s = singular; impf. = imperfect; pf. = perfect; juss. = jussive; conv. = converb; inf. = infinitive; impl. = impersonal; caus. = causative; neg. = negative; def.fut. = definite future; indef.fut. = indefinite future; O = object. Person, gender and number combinations such as 3fs correspond to subject marking unless otherwise indicated. Symbols are in accordance with IPA except for the palatal affricates, for which I use [c] and [j]. Note that the vowel I transcribe as [] is other authors’ (Leslau, Hetzron) [ä] and my [] is their []. 1 divides the Gurage into three groups according to language: Soddo, Silte and Sebat Bet. Sebat Bet translates as ‘seven houses’ and is a linguistic-cultural term referring to the seven main groups of the Western Gurage. -
What Native Christians in the Middle East Continue to Face: Why It Matters for Both the Caring and the Unconcerned
What Native Christians in the Middle East Continue to Face: Why it Matters for Both the Caring and the Unconcerned By Habib C. Malik [The annual Earl A. Pope Guest Lecture in World Christianity, delivered at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, at 7:00 pm.] There have been Christians and Christian communities living in the Middle East since the dawn of Christianity. After the better part of twenty centuries in and around the Land of the Lord’s Incarnation and Resurrection, however, the presence of these native Christians is threatened with nothing less than termination. What exists today of these communities are the few tenacious remnants scattered throughout the Levant, Iraq, and Egypt of the earlier far larger and more geographically prevalent ones that have steadily dwindled over time due to sustained stresses and pressures brought on historically for the most part from the encounter with Islam. Today, in the early 21st century, the rise of militant and violent Islamism combined with a pervading apathy in the wider world as to the plight of these beleaguered Christian communities threaten to hasten the final demise of Christianity in and around its original birthplace. The bleak future for Christians native to the Middle East, I submit to you tonight, relates organically to the state of Christians and Christianity in today’s largely post-Christian secular Europe, and in the West as a whole. Many will dismiss this alleged connection out of hand, but it continues to impose itself thunderously in the face of all such denial and disinterest. -
The Similarity and Mutual Intelligibility Between Amharic and Tigrigna Varieties
The Similarity and Mutual Intelligibility between Amharic and Tigrigna Varieties Tekabe Legesse Feleke Verona Univerisity Verona, Italy [email protected] Abstract without major difficulties (Demeke, 2001; Gutt, 1980). However, the similarity among the lan- The present study has examined the sim- guages is often obscured by the attitude of the ilarity and the mutual intelligibility be- speakers since language is considered as a sym- tween Amharic and two Tigrigna vari- bol of identity (Lanza and Woldemariam, 2008; ties using three tools; namely Levenshtein Smith, 2008). Hence, there are cases where vari- distance, intelligibility test and question- eties of the same languages are considered as dif- naires. The study has shown that both ferent languages (Hetzron, 1972; Hetzron, 1977; Tigrigna varieties have almost equal pho- Hudson, 2013; Smith, 2008). Therefore, due to netic and lexical distances from Amharic. politics, sensitivity to ethnicity and the lack of The study also indicated that Amharic commitment from the scholars, the exact number speakers understand less than 50% of the of languages in Ethiopia is not known (Bender and two varieties. Furthermore, the study Cooper, 1976; Demeke, 2001; Leslau, 1969).Fur- showed that Amharic speakers are more thermore, except some studies for example, Gutt positive about the Ethiopian Tigrigna va- (1980) and Ahland (2003) cited in Hudson (2013) riety than the Eritrean variety. However, on the Gurage varieties, and Bender and Cooper their attitude towards the two varieties (1971) on mutual intelligibility of Sidamo dialects, does not have an impact on their intelli- the degree of mutual intelligibility among various gibility. The Amharic speakers’ familiar- varieties and the attitude of the speakers towards ity to the Tigrigna varieties seems largely each others’ varieties has not been thoroughly in- dependent on the genealogical relation be- vestigated. -
Amharic-Arabic Neural Machine Translation
AMHARIC-ARABIC NEURAL MACHINE TRANSLATION Ibrahim Gashaw and H L Shashirekha Mangalore University, Department of Computer Science, Mangalagangotri, Mangalore-574199 ABSTRACT Many automatic translation works have been addressed between major European language pairs, by taking advantage of large scale parallel corpora, but very few research works are conducted on the Amharic-Arabic language pair due to its parallel data scarcity. Two Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Gated Recurrent Units (GRU) based Neural Machine Translation (NMT) models are developed using Attention-based Encoder-Decoder architecture which is adapted from the open-source OpenNMT system. In order to perform the experiment, a small parallel Quranic text corpus is constructed by modifying the existing monolingual Arabic text and its equivalent translation of Amharic language text corpora available on Tanzile. LSTM and GRU based NMT models and Google Translation system are compared and found that LSTM based OpenNMT outperforms GRU based OpenNMT and Google Translation system, with a BLEU score of 12%, 11%, and 6% respectively. KEYWORDS Amharic, Arabic, Neural Machine Translation, OpenNMT 1. INTRODUCTION "Computational linguistics from a computational perspective is concerned with understanding written and spoken language, and building artifacts that usually process and produce language, either in bulk or in a dialogue setting." [1]. Machine Translation (MT), the task of translating texts from one natural language to another natural language automatically, is an important application of Computational Linguistics (CL) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). The overall process of invention, innovation, and diffusion of technology related to language translation drive the increasing rate of the MT industry rapidly [2]. The number of Language Service Provider (LSP) companies offering varying degrees of translation, interpretation, localization, language, and social coaching solutions are rising in accordance with the MT industry [2]. -
ENCYCLOPEDIA of HEBREW LANGUAGE and LINGUISTICS Volume 1 A–F
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HEBREW LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS Volume 1 A–F 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 -
Explorations in Ethiopian Linguistics: Complex Predicates, Finiteness and Interrogativity
ABHANDLUNGEN FÜR DIE KUNDE DES MORGENLANDES Band 91 Explorations in Ethiopian Linguistics: Complex Predicates, Finiteness and Interrogativity Edited by Ronny Meyer, Yvonne Treis and Azeb Arnha Deutsche MorgenHindische Gesellschaft Harrassowitz Verlag ABHANDLUNGEN FUR DIE KUNDE DES MORGENLANDES Im Auftrag der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft herausgegeben von Florian C. Reiter Band 91 Board of Advisers: Christian Bauer (Berlin) Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst (Berlin) Lutz Edzard (Oslo/Erlangen) Sebastian Gunther (Gottingen) Jurgen Hanneder (Marburg) Herrmann Jungraithmayr (Marburg) Frank Kammerzell (Berlin) Karenina Kollmar-Paulenz (Bern) Jens Peter Laut (Gottingen) Michael Streck (Leipzig) 2014 Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden Explorations in Ethiopian Linguistics: Complex Predicates, Finiteness and Interrogativity Edited by Ronny Meyer, Yvonne Treis and Azeb Amha 2014 HarrassowitzVerlag · Wiesbaden Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet tiber http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie� detailed bibliographic data are available in the internet · at http://dnb.dnb.de. For further information about our publishing program consult our website http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de © Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft 2014