The Rise And Fall Of Ergativity In Aramaic

Author : Eleanor Coghill
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 404 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2016
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780198723806

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The Rise and Fall of Ergativity in Aramaic by Eleanor Coghill Pdf

This book traces the changes in argument alignment that have taken place in Aramaic during its 3000-year documented history. Eastern Aramaic dialects first developed tense-conditioned ergative aligment in the perfect, which later developed into a past perfective. However, while some modern dialects preserve a degree of ergative aligment, it has been eroded by movement towards semantic/Split-S alignment and by the use of separate marking for the patient, and some dialects have lost ergative alignment altogether. These dialects therefore show an entire cycle of alignment change, something which had previously been considered unlikely. Eleanor Coghill examines evidence from ancient Aramaic texts, recent dialectal documentation, and cross-linguistic parallels to provide an account of the pathways through which this alignment change took place. She argues that what became the ergative construction was originally limited mostly to verbs with an experiencer role, such as 'see' and 'hear', which could encode the experiencer with a dative. While this dative-experiencer scenario shows some formal similarities with other proposed explanations for alignment change, the data analysed in this book show that it is clearly distinct. The book draws important theoretical conclusions on the development of tense-conditioned alignment cross-linguistically, and provides a valuable basis for further research.

Author : Oz Aloni
Publisher : Open Book Publishers
Page : 370 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2022-02-10
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781800643048

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The Neo-Aramaic Oral Heritage of the Jews of Zakho by Oz Aloni Pdf

In 1951, the secluded Neo-Aramaic-speaking Jewish community of Zakho migrated collectively to Israel. It carried with it its unique language, culture and customs, many of which bore resemblance to those found in classical rabbinic literature. Like others in Kurdistan, for example, the Jews of Zakho retained a vibrant tradition of creating and performing songs based on embellishing biblical stories with Aggadic traditions. Despite the recent growth of scholarly interest into Neo-Aramaic communities, however, studies have to this point almost exclusively focused on the linguistic analysis of their critically endangered dialects and little attention has been paid to the sociological, historical and literary analysis of the cultural output of the diverse and isolated Neo-Aramaic communities of Kurdistan. In this innovative book, Oz Aloni seeks to redress this balance. Aloni focuses on three genres of the Zakho community’s oral heritage: the proverb, the enriched biblical narrative and the folktale. Each chapter draws on the author's own fieldwork among members of the Zakho community now living in Jerusalem. He examines the proverb in its performative context, the rewritten biblical narrative of Ruth, Naomi and King David, and a folktale with the unusual theme of magical gender transformation. Insightfully breaking down these examples with analysis drawn from a variety of conceptual fields, Aloni succeeds in his mission to put the speakers of the language and their culture on equal footing with their speech. The Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have kindly supported the publication of this volume

Author : Geoffrey Khan,Paul M. Noorlander
Publisher : Open Book Publishers
Page : 367 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2021-01-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781783749508

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Studies in the Grammar and Lexicon of Neo-Aramaic by Geoffrey Khan,Paul M. Noorlander Pdf

The Neo-Aramaic dialects are modern vernacular forms of Aramaic, which has a documented history in the Middle East of over 3,000 years. Due to upheavals in the Middle East over the last one hundred years, thousands of speakers of Neo-Aramaic dialects have been forced to migrate from their homes or have perished in massacres. As a result, the dialects are now highly endangered. The dialects exhibit a remarkable diversity of structures. Moreover, the considerable depth of attestation of Aramaic from earlier periods provides evidence for pathways of change. For these reasons the research of Neo-Aramaic is of importance for more general fields of linguistics, in particular language typology and historical linguistics. The papers in this volume represent the full range of research that is currently being carried out on Neo-Aramaic dialects. They advance the field in numerous ways. In order to allow linguists who are not specialists in Neo-Aramaic to benefit from the papers, the examples are fully glossed.

Author : Geoffrey Haig,Geoffrey Khan
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 986 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2018-12-03
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783110421682

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The Languages and Linguistics of Western Asia by Geoffrey Haig,Geoffrey Khan Pdf

The languages of Western Asia belong to a variety of language families, including Indo-European, Kartvelian, Semitic, and Turkic, but share numerous features on account of being in areal contact over many centuries. This volume presents descriptions of the modern languages, contributed by leading specialists, and evaluates similarities across the languages that may have arisen by areal contact. It begins with an introductory chapter presenting an overview of the various genetic groupings in the region and summarizing some of the significant features and issues relating to language contact. In the core of the volume the presentation of the languages is divided into five contact areas, which include (i) eastern Anatolia and northwestern Iran, (ii) northern Iraq, (iii) western Iran, (iv) the Caspian region and south Azerbaijan, and (v) the Caucasian rim and southern Black Sea coast. Each section contains chapters devoted to the languages of the area preceded by an introductory section that highlights significant contact phenomena. The volume is rounded off by an appendix with basic lexical items across a selection of the languages. The handbook features contributions by Erik Anonby, Denise Bailey, Christiane Bulut, David Erschler, Geoffrey Haig, Geoffrey Khan, Rene Lacroix, Parvin Mahmoudveysi, Hrach Martirosyan, Ludwig Paul, Stephan Procházka, Laurentia Schreiber, Don Stilo, Mortaza Taheri-Ardali, Christina van der Wal Anonby.

Author : Benjamin Hary,Sarah Bunin Benor
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 706 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2018-11-05
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781501504631

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Languages in Jewish Communities, Past and Present by Benjamin Hary,Sarah Bunin Benor Pdf

This book offers sociological and structural descriptions of language varieties used in over 2 dozen Jewish communities around the world, along with synthesizing and theoretical chapters. Language descriptions focus on historical development, contemporary use, regional and social variation, structural features, and Hebrew/Aramaic loanwords. The book covers commonly researched language varieties, like Yiddish, Judeo-Spanish, and Judeo-Arabic, as well as less commonly researched ones, like Judeo-Tat, Jewish Swedish, and Hebraized Amharic in Israel today.

Author : Hiwa Asadpour,Thomas Jügel
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2022-08-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783110790368

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Word Order Variation by Hiwa Asadpour,Thomas Jügel Pdf

In the Iranic-Semitic-Turkic contact area, where many languages are described as verb-final, ‘Targets’ (Goals, Recipients, etc.) tend to appear in the immediate postverbal position, a pattern violating the alleged ‘basic word order’. Investigating empirical material, the present volume examines the idea of its contact-induced origin by combining various languages from inside and outside this contact area: the Greek variety Romeyka, Indic Domari, Iranic Balochi Kurdish, Middle Persian, Parthian, Bactrian and Sogdian, Nilotic Maa, Semitic Arabic and Aramaic, Sibiran and Iran-Turkic. The contributors investigate word order variation of transitive, ditransitive, and copula structures as well as intransitives with Targets. Their analyses highlight the relevance of grammatical, discourse-pragmatic, and cognitive principles. The volume highlights the importance of Target structures for linguistic theory by offering new perspectives and will be of interest to typologists and linguists interested in word order variation and information structure.

Author : Jessica Coon,Diane Massam,Lisa deMena Travis
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 1297 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780198739371

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The Oxford Handbook of Ergativity by Jessica Coon,Diane Massam,Lisa deMena Travis Pdf

This volume offers theoretical and descriptive perspectives on the issues pertaining to ergativity, a grammatical patterning whereby direct objects are in some way treated like intransitive subjects, to the exclusion of transitive subjects. This pattern differs markedly from nominative/accusative marking whereby transitive and intransitive subjects are treated as one grammatical class, to the exclusion of direct objects. While ergativity is sometimes referred to as a typological characteristic of languages, research on the phenomenon has shown that languages do not fall clearly into one category or the other and that ergative characteristics are not consistent across languages. Chapters in this volume look at approaches to ergativity within generative, typological, and functional paradigms, as well as approaches to the core morphosyntactic building blocks of an ergative construction; related constructions such as the anti-passive; related properties such as split ergativity and word order; and extensions and permutations of ergativity, including nominalizations and voice systems. The volume also includes results from experimental investigations of ergativity, a relatively new area of research. A wide variety of languages are represented, both in the theoretical chapters and in the 16 case studies that are more descriptive in nature, attesting to both the pervasiveness and diversity of ergative patterns.

Author : Margaretha Folmer
Publisher : PSU Department of English
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2022-03-11
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781646022076

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Elephantine Revisited by Margaretha Folmer Pdf

The Judean community at Elephantine has long fascinated historians of the Persian period. This book, with its stellar assemblage of important scholarly voices, provides substantive new insights and approaches that will advance the study of this well-known but not entirely understood community from fifth-century BCE Egypt. Since Bezalel Porten’s pioneering Archives from Elephantine, published in 1968, the discourse on the subject of the community of Elephantine during the Persian period has changed considerably, due to new data from excavations, the discovery and publication of previously unknown texts, and original scholarly insights and avenues of inquiry. Running the gamut from archaeological to linguistic investigations and encompassing legal, literary, religious, and other aspects of life in this Judean community, this volume stands at a crossroads of research that extends from Hebrew Bible studies to the history of early Jewish communities. It also features fourteen new Aramaic ostraca from Aswan. The volume will appeal to students and scholars of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Judaism, as well as to a wider audience of Egyptologists, Semitists, and specialists in ancient Near Eastern studies. In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume include Annalisa Azzoni, Bob Becking, Alejandro F. Botta, Lester L. Grabbe, Ingo Kottsieper, Reinhard G. Kratz, André Lemaire, Hélène Nutkowicz, Beatrice von Pilgrim, Cornelius von Pilgrim, Bezalel Porten, Ada Yardeni, and Ran Zadok. Moreover, a video recording of an interview conducted with Porten on his long career in Elephantine studies accompanies the book through a link on the Eisenbrauns website.

Author : Anthony P. Grant
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 788 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2020-01-10
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780190876906

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The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact by Anthony P. Grant Pdf

Every language has been influenced in some way by other languages. In many cases, this influence is reflected in words which have been absorbed from other languages as the names for newer items or ideas, such as perestroika, manga, or intifada (from Russian, Japanese, and Arabic respectively). In other cases, the influence of other languages goes deeper, and includes the addition of new sounds, grammatical forms, and idioms to the pre-existing language. For example, English's structure has been shaped in such a way by the effects of Norse, French, Latin, and Celtic--though English is not alone in its openness to these influences. Any features can potentially be transferred from one language to another if the sociolinguistic and structural circumstances allow for it. Further, new languages--pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages--can come into being as the result of language contact. In thirty-three chapters, The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact examines the various forms of contact-induced linguistic change and the levels of language which have provided instances of these influences. In addition, it provides accounts of how language contact has affected some twenty languages, spoken and signed, from all parts of the world. Chapters are written by experts and native-speakers from years of research and fieldwork. Ultimately, this Handbook provides an authoritative account of the possibilities and products of contact-induced linguistic change.

Author : Paul M. Noorlander
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 454 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2021-08-24
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789004448186

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Ergativity and Other Alignment Types in Neo-Aramaic by Paul M. Noorlander Pdf

The alignment splits in the Neo-Aramaic languages display a considerable degree of diversity, especially in terms of agreement. While earlier studies have generally oversimplified the actual state of affairs, Paul M. Noorlander offers a meticulous and clear account of nearly all microvariation documented so far, addressing all relevant morphosyntactic phenomena. By means of fully glossed and translated examples, the author shows that this vast variation in morphological alignment, including ergativity, is unexpected from a functional typological perspective. He argues the alignment splits are rather the outcome of several construction-specific processes such as internal system harmonization and grammaticalization, as well as language contact.

Author : Alena Witzlack-Makarevich,Balthasar Bickel
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
Page : 544 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2019-03-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027263025

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Argument Selectors by Alena Witzlack-Makarevich,Balthasar Bickel Pdf

Capitalizing on the by now widely accepted idea of the construction-specific and language-specific nature of grammatical relations, the editors of the volume developed a modern framework for systematically capturing all sorts of variations in grammatical relations. The central concepts of this framework are the notions of argument role and its referential properties, argument selector, as well as various conditions on argument selections. The contributors of the volume applied this framework in their descriptions of grammatical relations in individual languages and discussed its limitations and advantages. This resulted in a coherent description of grammatical relations in thirteen genealogically and geographically diverse languages based on original and extensive fieldwork on under-described languages. The volume presents a far more detailed picture of the diversity of argument selectors and effects of predicates, referential properties of arguments, as well as of various clausal conditions on grammatical relations than previously published grammatical descriptions.

Author : M. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro,Silvia Štubňová Nigrelli
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 381 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2023
Category : Afroasiatic languages
ISBN : 9781646022311

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Ancient Egyptian and Afroasiatic by M. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro,Silvia Štubňová Nigrelli Pdf

Author : Richard K. Larson,Sedigheh Moradi,Vida Samiian
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
Page : 317 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2020-07-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027260932

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Advances in Iranian Linguistics by Richard K. Larson,Sedigheh Moradi,Vida Samiian Pdf

This volume brings together selected papers from the first North American Conference in Iranian Linguistics, which was organized by the linguistics department at Stony Brook University. Papers were selected to illustrate the range of frameworks, diverse areas of research and how the boundaries of linguistic analysis of Iranian languages have expanded over the years. The contributions collected in this volume address advancing research and complex methodological explorations in a broad range of topics in Persian syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics, typology and classification, as well as historical linguistics. Some of the papers also investigate less-studied and endangered Iranian languages such as Tat, Gilaki and Mazandarani, Sorani and Kurmanji Kurdish, and Zazaki. The volume will be of value to scholars in theoretical frameworks as well as those with typological and diachronic perspectives, and in particular to those working in Iranian linguistics.

Author : Ilja A. Serzant,Leonid Kulikov
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2013-11-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027271303

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The Diachronic Typology of Non-Canonical Subjects by Ilja A. Serzant,Leonid Kulikov Pdf

This volume is an important contribution to the diachrony of non-canonical subjects in a typological perspective. The questions addressed concern the internal mechanisms and triggers for various changes that non-canonical subjects undergo, ranging from semantic motivations to purely structural explanations. The discussion encompasses the whole life-cycle of non-canonical subjects: from their emergence out of non-subject arguments to their expansion, demise or canonicization, focusing primarily on syntactic changes and changes in case-marking. The volume offers a number of different case studies comprising such languages as Italian, Spanish, Old Norse and Russian as well as languages less studied in this context, such as Latin, Classical Armenian, Baltic languages and some East Caucasian languages. Typological generalizations in the form of recurrent developmental paths are offered on the basis of data presented in this volume and in the literature.

Author : Stefano Manfredi
Publisher : Language Science Press
Page : 702 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2024-06-16
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783961102518

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Arabic and contact-induced change by Stefano Manfredi Pdf

This volume offers a synthesis of current expertise on contact-induced change in Arabic and its neighbours, with thirty chapters written by many of the leading experts on this topic. Its purpose is to showcase the current state of knowledge regarding the diverse outcomes of contacts between Arabic and other languages, in a format that is both accessible and useful to Arabists, historical linguists, and students of language contact.