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This is the first study which brings together the references to ancient Greek myths (154 episodes) in medieval Armenian literature by including the original Armenian and Greek (if extant) text and translation. With appendices listing the occurrences of Greek gods, their Armenian equivalents, images, altars, temples, and rites, the Aesopian fables and the Trojan war.
This is the first study which brings together the references to ancient Greek myths (154 episodes) in medieval Armenian literature by including the original Armenian and Greek (if extant) text and translation. With appendices listing the occurrences of Greek gods, their Armenian equivalents, images, altars, temples, and rites, the Aesopian fables and the Trojan war.
The focused theme of Volume 6 is Essays in Honour of Professor Shaheen Sardar Ali.
The focused theme of Volume 6 is Essays in Honour of Professor Shaheen Sardar Ali.
Abstract
This study attempts to offer a single unified account for the syntactic features of the pronominal copula in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), traditionally known as ḍamīr al-faṣl ‘Separation Pronoun/SP’ within the Cardiff Grammar (CG) model of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). Such a pronoun is typically used in nominal verbless clauses to separate Subject from its Predicate (Complement) when both are definite. This study argues against the two traditional accounts that analyze it either as a redundant pronoun that has no significant syntactical function or as the second Subject in the nominal embedded clausal Complement of the first Subject. The study also proposes that the modern generative account that considers it a pronominal copula is problematic as the function of this pronoun is not linking, but rather separating, emphasizing, and disambiguating. Therefore, the study proposes to analyze this SP as an Extension of the Subject (SEx) in a tripartite structure.
Abstract
The spectrum of Neo-Aramaic languages and dialects, spoken in an arch of language-islets that stretch from south-western Syria to south-western Iran, exhibits rich lexical repositories inherited from early layers of the Aramaic language. Within this wealthy lexical legacy, some genuine Aramaic lexical items are not attested in any of the literary Aramaic sources, hence it is only by virtue of these modern lexical manifestations that the existence of the ancient Aramaic antecedents of these words can be inferred or reconstructed. Such historical lacunae concern also meanings that must be of considerable antiquity, yet these meanings, pertaining to well-known Aramaic words, have no evidence in literary Aramaic, having surfaced only in the modern era. This article discusses ten selected cases of pre-modern Aramaic words and meanings that were discovered by etymological and comparative examination of their modern reflexes in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA), Western Neo-Aramaic and Ṭuroyo.
Abstract
The reconstruction of the Proto-Chadic (PC) vowel system has hitherto been considered impossible. Proposals covered one (*a), two (*a, *ə), three (*a, *i, *u) and four (*a, *ə, *i, *u) vowels. The one-vowel solution gains support by evidence from mainly the languages of the Central Chadic branch, together with the notion of palatalisation and labialisation prosodies, which create particular ‘colourings’ for vowels and consonants in phonetic surface realisations and have been discovered to operate in all branches of the family, but to very different extent. Based on new insights into the phonological history of Central Chadic (Wolff 2022, forthcoming), at variance with Gravina (2014), and referring back to a typology of Chadic vowel systems suggested by Schuh (2017), we can now tentatively delineate the development from a minimal vowel inventory */a/, *[ə] in PC to vowel systems of between one and 15 (short and long) phonemic vowels in modern Chadic languages. Diachronic vowel-system typology in Chadic allows a critical review of received wisdom concerning vowel systems elsewhere in Afroasiatic, potentially touching on issues pertaining to the internal sub-classification of the phylum. At least the vowel system of Tashelhiyt (Berber) corresponds in essential details to the PC minimal vowel system, a non-trivial observation that raises questions concerning genetic heritage, language contact, and/or areal innovation.