Semitic Languages

Semitic languages are spoken across western Asia and North Africa by nearly half a billion people. The cultural and historical significance of these languages is immense, not least because of the enduring influence they have exerted through the Christian, Jewish and Islamic religions. The best known representative of the language family is perhaps Arabic, while other members, ancient and modern, include Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian, Phoenician, Ugaritic, Amharic, Tigrinya and Mehri.

The research in Semitic Languages at the department has recently been concentrated in the following areas:

• Linguistics of spoken Arabic and Neo-Aramaic varieties, especially in the regions of of Iraq, Anatolia and the Levant: There is a particular focus on the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects (Eleanor Coghill) and Ṣūrayt/Ṭūrōyo (Sina Tezel), which comprise severely endangered modern varieties of Aramaic. Some specific themes here are language documentation, morphosyntax, language contact, diachronic change in Aramaic, etymology, loanwords and phonological correspondences, development of the begadkefat (fricativization) phenomenon, neologisms in Ṣūrayt/Ṭūrōyo and the development of Ṣūrayt/Ṭūrōyo in the diaspora. In the field of Arabic dialectology, a recent dissertation is Mahmut Agbaht’s The Arabic Dialect of Šɛ̄xṭɔ̄ba/Shaykh Taba (northern Lebanon) in its Regional context.
• Modern literature of both Arabic and Hebrew, current interests including Hebrew Haskala-literature, translations into Hebrew, and Israeli and Palestinian literature (Anette Månsson).
• Linguistics of the ancient languages, especially Biblical Hebrew, a recent publication being Johan Ljungberg’s PhD dissertation Biblical Hebrew Verbs, Poetry and Clause Combining: Exploring the Dynamics of Gram-Switching in the Psalms.
• A developing area of interest is in didactics, in particular online education in Semitic languages.