Sem Cam Iafet: Atti della 7(super a) giornata di studi Camito-Semitici e Indoeuropei (Milano, 1(super o) giugno 1993).

• Author: Kaye, Alan S.

The alphabetically arranged contributions in this most welcome volume represent the published proceedings of a 1993 Hamito-Semitic-Indo-European conference held in Milan.

Francesco Aspesi presents speculative connections on Greek melo- "solemn speech" and Hebrew db(r) "prophetic word," "honey," and "bee." Even an attempt to relate Hebrew debas "honey" and dcbcr "prophetic word" is unscientific comparative linguistics, although the Arabic cognate dibr zz dabr "swarm of bees" (= Hebrew deborah "bee") is, quite possibly, related to dibs "honey" ([less than] Proto-Afroasiatic *db "have honey"; cf. *-dab-/*-dib- in Christopher Ehret, Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian), [Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1995], 126).

Sergio Baldi compares the perfect in Hausa with Semitic and Chadic (Mokilko and Kwami). The Hausa prefixes yaa- 3 m. s., taa- 3 f. s., kaa- 2 m. s., naa- 1 c. pl. are cognate with the Semitic imperfect prefixes (except for kaa-, which in some languages can correspond to 2 m. pronominal suffixes or 1 and 2 s. and pl. perfect endings: -k).

Paolo Branca discusses some Islamic themes (such as sunna). A stimulating section on the Arab grammarians' views on the origin of language is included.

The editor compares Indo-European -r/-n alternations with parallels in Aramaic and Modern South Arabian, arguing on this basis for the genetic relationship between Indo-European and Semitic. This is not convincing because Brugnatelli has confused genetic criteria with typological properties based on the phonetic similarity of liquids.

Guido Cifoletti comments on Padre Otto Huber's 1898 manuscript, Elementi di grammatica bisciarina. Bishari is a dialect of Beja (North Cushitic), which was also studied in the late nineteenth century by Herman Almkvist and Leo Reinisch.

Valentina Colombo studies the considerable lexical influence of Arabic on Nabatean, updating Michael O'Connor's "The Arabic Loanwords in N abatean Aramaic," JNES (1986): 213-29.

Ricardo Contini argues against David Testen's theory linking the Yemenite Arabic k- dialects and Modern South Arabian languages (in Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics, vol. 4, ed. Ellen Broselow, Mushira Eid, and John McCarthy [Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1992], 77-89). It is difficult to prove, however, that the aforementioned k-perfect is an old retention rather than a development due to contact. A theory of multiple causation seems the most likely...