The book, consisting of two volumes, presents a critical edition and an annotated English translation of the work on Hebrew grammar al-Kitāb al-Kāfī fī al-Luġa al-'Ibārniyya by the medieval Karaite grammarian 'Abū al-Faraj Hārūn Ibn Faraj. This was one of the most important works on Hebrew grammar that was written in the Middle Ages, which, however, was lost to knowledge for several centuries and is here recovered from medieval manuscripts for the first time in a modern edition. In addition to the text edition and translation, the book contains an...

This volume deals with medieval comparative Semitic philology (Hebrew/Aramaic/Arabic) as practised by Hebrew philologists in the Arabic speaking lands, from Iraq to Spain, discussing its development through the generations, its technics and its theoretical basis. This research is based upon an analysis of over ten thousand occurrences of comparisons in linguistic works, biblical commentaries and the like, made by fourteen Hebrew scholars from the 10th-12th centuries CE, among them Saʿadiah Gaon, Judah b. Quraysh, David b. Abraham Alfasi, Jonah b. Janah and Isaac b. Barūn. Several...

This volume is a revised and enlarged version of the author's Ph.D. dissertation (1999). It gives a comprehensive analysis of the morphosyntax and syntax of the tenses in the Hebrew text of Ben Sira. Due attention is paid to the heterogeneous character of the textual evidence (three manuscripts from the Desert of Judah and six mediaeval manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza), which complicates any linguistic study of Ben Sira. A descriptive analysis is complemented by a comparison with other contemporaneous, earlier, and later forms of Hebrew. It is argued that the Hebrew of Ben Sira is a...

This book offers a wide range overview of current research issues in Arabic linguistics, extending from the general to the specific. It includes in depth investigations of theoretical and applied topics that are of interest to general and Arabic linguistics: computational analysis of Arabic, Arabic dialectology, acquisition of Arabic as a native language, learning and teaching Arabic as a first or foreign language, sociolinguistic analysis of Arabic, and the status of Arabic in European academe. Despite the seeming diversity of the topics, they fall thematically into two major inter-related...

This book provides a comprehensive grammatical and lexicographical review of all types of late Samaritan Hebrew in all their literary manifestations from the twelfth century to the present. Much of it is devoted to description of Hybrid Samaritan Hebrew (HSH), which since the 13th is used as the main written language of the Samaritan community.
The whole research is based on study of a wide range of texts. All available liturgical material was computer-recorded and then analyzed. A vast array of chronicles, colophons and deeds of sale copied from manuscripts were also computerized....

The Nubi language is spoken in Uganda and Kenya. Nubi is Arabic, since about 90% of its vocabulary is of an Arabic nature. It is often termed a creole, since many of its structural and developmental features resemble those of known creoles. The growth and development of the Nubi language must be situated near Lake Albert towards the end of the nineteenth century. This period is well documented and is described at length in the first part. This volume also provides a detailed description of the Nubi language of Uganda, and it deals with the development of the language and searches for the...

In its examination of parenthesis in Biblical Hebrew, this book presents a linguistic description of Biblical Hebrew parenthetical units through integration of several research disciplines and scholarly approaches: linguistics, discourse studies, text linguistics, textual philology, comparative Semitics, Bible translations, and literature.

For a lifetime Kees Versteegh played a leading role in Arabic linguistics, dialects (diglossia, creolization, pidginization), the history of Arabic grammar, and other fields related to Arabic. From among his global contacts, colleagues contributed to a Liber Amicorum in appreciation of his stimulating efforts to reopen, deepen and complete our knowledge of Arabic Grammar and Linguistics. In three sections, History, Linguistics and Dialects, 27 contributors discuss (alphabetically): bilingual verb construction; contractual language; current developments; language description; language use;...

This book constitutes the first thorough, corpus-based analysis of the verb in Late Maskilic (Jewish Enlightenment) Hebrew prose fiction. It assesses Maskilic Hebrew verbal morphology and syntax both synchronically and within the context of the diachronic Hebrew verbal system.

This volume is the first of its kind to deal with a variety of topics by leading scholars related to the use of Arabic in the media. The contributors examine patterns of language use in traditional as well as 'new' media types, in order to further our understanding of the mechanism at work in the development of modern Arabic, both in its standard and colloquial varieties. The first part of this volume is devoted to a close analysis of various aspects of media Arabic (code-switching, language variation, orthography and constructions of identity); the second part builds on the first, as it...