Semitic Languages in Contact. (Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, 82)
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143 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXXV N° 1-2, januari-april 2018 144 SEMITICA BUTTS, A.M. — Semitic Languages in Contact. (Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, 82). Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden-Boston, 2015. (23,5 cm, XXVI, 427). ISBN 978-90-04-30014-9. ISSN 0091-8461. € 150,-; $ 194.00. This volume collects twenty studies on language contact in Semitic languages. The editor is to be commended for putting together such a well-rounded sample of case studies, which are almost exclusively of a very high quality and give a good overview of different types of contact spanning the entire Semitic family, from prehistoric substrates to histori- cally attested borrowing to modern bilingualism. His activity is also made clear in the excellent preface (vii–x), which introduces many relevant concepts, and presumably also in the additional front and back matter, such as a list of con- tributors including short biographies (xx–xxvi) and an index of subjects (423–427). I will briefly summarize the contents of each paper and occasionally add a remark or two before evaluating the volume as a whole. Ahmad Al-Jallad and Ali Al-Manaser present three Tha- mudic B (Ancient North Arabian) texts occurring on a slab of basalt from north-eastern Jordan, one of which they iden- tify as ‘A Thamudic B Abecedary in the South Semitic Letter Order’ (1–15). Although Thamudic B is still poorly under- stood, cognate evidence allows the authors to provide plau- sible readings for the non-abecedarian texts. In the second half of text 1a, w ws2{῾} l-h mn fnw[-k] is interpreted as ‘and may he be strengthened by means of [your] countenance’, taking mn fnw[-k] literally as ‘from your face’; perhaps we could also see this as ‘by you’ or ‘because of you’, a gram- maticalization parallelled by Biblical Hebrew mippne. The final section of this article discusses the unexpected order of some consonants in the abecedary and suggests that the writer may have learnt it by dictation from an Amiritic (Ancient South Arabian) source, based on the reflexes of some phonemes in this dialect of Sabaic. David Appleyard’s ‘Ethiopian Semitic and Cushitic. Ancient Contact Features in Ge‘ez and Amharic’ (16–32) is 145 BOEKBESPREKINGEN — SEMITICA 146 a lucid investigation of Cushitic contact features in Ethiose- author gives an overview of how Egyptian consonants are mitic. Appleyard discusses all major parts of grammar, transliterated in Phoenician orthography, shedding some light focusing on Ge‘ez and Amharic, the two most culturally on the phonology of both languages, and discusses phono- important Ethiosemitic languages. It is very satisfying to get logical, lexical, onomastic and formulaic Egyptianisms in more specifics than the commonly stated, vague ‘Cushitic the Phoenician and Punic inscriptions. He also considers the influence’, especially given the considerable diversity found Phoenician term šd ᾿lnm ‘necropolis’, literally ‘field of the within Cushitic itself. An important role is played by the gods’, and the possibility that this is a calque of Egyptian hr.t Agaw languages (= Central Cushitic), which matches their nṯr ‘idem’, literally ‘what is under the god’. location, close to or overlapping the parts of Ethiopia where The Northwest Semitic theme is continued by Eran Semitic is spoken today. Cohen’s ‘Head-Marking in Neo-Aramaic Genitive Construc- Samuel Boyd and Humphrey Hardy’s ‘Hebrew Adverbi- tions and the ezafe Construction in Kurdish’ (114–125). alization, Aramaic Language Contact, and mpny ᾿šr in Exo- While the use of the construct state steadily declined and dus 19:18’ (33–51) first considers different Biblical Hebrew died out during the history of Aramaic, a similar construction adverbalizers, i.e. “subordinators, or subordinating conjunc- occurs in the Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Zakho, e.g. tions, that mark an intra-clausal, adverbial relation” (33), and bēṯ-ıd gōra ‘the man’s house’. This construction is most their development. Following Gideon Goldenberg’s approach likely rooted in Middle Aramaic expressions like Syriac to Semitic syntax, they demonstrate the relationship between bayt-ēh d-ḡaḇrā ‘idem’, originally ‘his house, of the man’. adverbalizers and genitive constructions and identify two Cohen considers whether the preservation and reanalysis of productive patterns of adverbialization, where the comple- this construction in Jewish Zakho might be due to contact ment is preceded by either a preposition alone or a preposi- with Kurmanjî (= Northern Kurdish), which has similar con- tion and a relativizer; in the course of time, the former pat- structions. As the author notes, however, there are some tern was lost. Noting that one example of the latter pattern, important differences that make this connection more tenu- mpny ᾿šr ‘because’, only occurs in two literarily problematic ous: besides the looser restrictions on possible heads and contexts (Ex 19:18 and Jer 44:23), the authors then tenta- specialized marking of attributes in Neo-Aramaic as com- tively suggest that it is a calque of a similar Aramaic expres- pared to Kurdish, we might add the use of the marked form sion and therefore indicates later reworking of these verses. before attributive adjectives in Kurdish versus the lack of the Hebrew and Aramaic also feature in the next contribution, corresponding construction in this context in Neo-Aramaic. Yochanan Breuer’s ‘The Distribution of Declined Participles Thus, it seems preferable to me to consider the Neo-Aramaic in Aramaic-Hebrew and Hebrew-Aramaic Translations’ (52– construction a separate development. 67). It focuses on differences in translation based on a typical Richard Contini and Paola Pagano’s ‘Notes on Foreign Eastern Aramaic feature: declined participles, e.g. katevna ‘I Words in Hatran Aramaic’ (126–157) discusses 52 loan- write’, katvat ‘you write’. This type of participle declension words from Greek, Latin, Iranian, ‘Arabian’ and, in a sepa- does not occur in Hebrew. Breuer investigates their use, rate section, Akkadian. Each word is carefully presented and mainly in Hilḵot Re᾿u, a Rabbinic Hebrew translation of the treated with due philological care. One question that stuck Jewish Babylonian Aramaic text Halaḵot Pesuqot, and in with me is why the authors state that “[t]he Akkadian lexical Targum Onqelos, the translation of the (Hebrew) Pentateuch entries making their appearance in the [Hatran] vocabulary that gained official status in Babylonia and thus incorporates ought to be considered inherited from the Official Aramaic some Eastern features in its otherwise Western Aramaic lan- lexicon” (148); given Hatra’s situation in former Assyria, it guage. He convincingly shows that in both directions of seems possible that Akkadian words were loaned directly translation, the form is selected that stays closest to the origi- into the dialect of immigrating Aramaic speakers, without nal syntax, i.e. the addition or deletion of person marking is Imperial Aramaic acting as an intermediary. It is also remark- mostly avoided. Eastern Aramaic influence also accounts for able that, as in Syriac, Greek γένος ‘kin, kind’ retained its -s the frequent absence of third person subject pronouns in Rab- when borrowed into Hatran as gns ‘clan’, whereas the -ος binic Hebrew as preserved in the Babylonian Talmud. ending is normally replaced by the Aramaic emphatic state Next is Maria Bulakh’s ‘The Proto-Semitic “Asseverative ending -᾿ (146); since γένος, in Greek, is a neuter s-stem, *la-” and the Innovative 1SG Prefixes in South Ethio-Semitic unlike the other cases (which are masculine o-stems, e.g. Languages’ (68–96). Many South Ethiosemitic languages οὐετερανός ‘veteran’ → ᾿wtrn᾿), it may be that the -s was have an l- prefix in some forms of the first person singular felt to belong to the stem here, even though it has been lost prefix conjugation, e.g. Aliyu Amba Argobba ǝl-säkǝr ‘I get outside the nominative–accusative singular. drunk’ (simple Imperfect). Scholars often connect the l in C. Jay Crisostomo’s ‘Language, Writing and Ideologies in these prefixes with the Proto-Ethiosemitic asseverative prefix Contact: Sumerian and Akkadian in the Early Second Mil- *la-. Diving deep into the reconstruction of Proto-South- lennium BCE’ (158–180) is a fascinating study of the socio- Ethiosemitic, Bulakh shows that not all l-prefixes have the linguistic attitudes behind what the author rightfully calls same origin: other sources include the negative prefix *ʔal- “the earliest documented case of language contact” (158). and analogical extension once l- had become a first person Based on texts reflecting these linguistic ideologies and an singular prefix in its own right. This analogical extension examination of the use of Sumerograms in a formula for oath was especially common in forms that were otherwise taking, he presents evidence for the elevated cultural status homophonous with other parts of the paradigm, e.g. due to Sumerian held compared to Akkadian. The status of another the merger of the original 1SG prefix *ʔǝ- and the 3M prefix contemporary Semitic language, Amorite (Northwest *yǝ-. Semitic), is also briefly addressed; examples such as a letter David Calabro’s ‘Egyptianizing Features in Phoenician from a father chiding his son for wanting to learn prestigious and Punic Inscriptions from Egypt’ (97–113) discusses a Sumerian rather than practical Amorite really bring the sub- small but valuable corpus of roughly 200 inscriptions. The ject to life. 147 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXXV N° 1-2, januari-april 2018 148 Lutz Edzard’s ‘Inner-Semitic Loans and Lexical Doublets’ three possible contact-induced changes in Hurrian texts writ- (181–197) provides a broad overview of loanwords in vari- ten in the Ugaritic alphabet: the assimilation of *n, the syn- ous Semitic languages before focusing on lexical doublets tax of genitive phrases, and the borrowing of the enclitic -m. that may be caused by borrowing words from one Semitic Since Hurrian influence on Ugaritic is restricted to lexical language into another, e.g.