Syria, Mesopotamia, and the Comparative Study of Semitic Languages

This volume offers a wealth of perspectives on comparative Semitic linguistics emerging from the seventh and eighth meetings of the International Association for Comparative Semitics (IACS): the Madrid symposium (2016) was devoted to the role of Akkadian in the study of Comparative Semitics, and the Córdoba meeting (2019) focused on Syria at the historical crossroads of Semitic languages.

The essays in this volume examine a broad variety of issues concerning Akkadian, Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Ethiopic, Berber, Chadic, and other Semitic and Afroasiatic languages. The contributions to part 1, “Mesopotamia,” focus on Akkadian and its place within the Semitic language family. The chapters cover subjects such as verb tense and aspect, comparative Akkadian-Ugaritic philology, the nature of case marking in Akkadian and Arabic, and Aramaic cognates to Akkadian words. Part 2, “Syria,” consists of chapters that engage with comparative Semitics within the framework of the languages of Syria throughout history, including Aramaic, Punic, Syrian Arabic, Ugaritic, and Akkadian. Part 3, “From al-Andalus to Ethiopia,” features studies on the Semitic languages attested in medieval Spain (Andalusi Arabic), as well as Ethiopian Semitic and Afroasiatic languages in general, including Chadic and Berber. Written by leading linguists and philologists, this volume is bound to attract the attention of a diverse readership: Assyriologists, Arabists, Hebraists, Aramaicists, Semitists, and scholars of African languages (Chadic, Berber), as well as scholars interested in matters of syntax, language contact, and historical linguistics.

In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Maria Giulia Amadasi Guzzo, Ilya Arkhipov, Vit Bubenik, Maria Bulakh, Marielle Butters, Philippe Cassuto, Federico Corriente, Zygmunt Frajzyngier, Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee, Olga Kapeliuk, Sergey Loesov, José Martínez Delgado, Gregorio del Olmo Lete, Ahmed Salem Ould Mohamed Baba, Victor Porkhomovsky, Francisco del Río Sánchez, Gonzalo Rubio, Erin Shay, Olga Stolbova, and Wilfred G. E. Watson.

Tawny L. Holm is Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Jewish Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Among her publications on Aramaic language and literature are Of Courtiers and Kings: The Biblical Daniel Narratives and Ancient Story-Collections and Aramaic Literary Texts, the former also published by Eisenbrauns.

Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala is Professor of Arabic at the University of Córdoba. His publications include Redefining History on Pre-Islamic Accounts: The Arabic Recension of the Martyrs of Najrân, Eastern Crossroads: Essays on Medieval Christian Legacy, and The Arabic Bible from Late Antiquity: The Hexateuch from the Syro-Hexapla.