The Semitic Languages. Routledge Language Family Descriptions.

AuthorHUEHNERGARD, JOHN
PositionReview

The Semitic Languages. Routledge Language Family Descriptions. Edited by ROBERT HETZRON. New York: ROUTLEDGE, 1997. Pp. xx + 572, maps. $200.

Robert Hetzron was the most influential Semitist of the last three or four decades. The editor and driving force behind the fine volume under review here, he sadly never saw the final product, having died, at the age of 65, just weeks before its publication.

The volume is divided into three parts. Part I, "Generalities," contains four chapters: a clear and thorough overview of the "Genetic Subgrouping of the Semitic Languages" (Alice Faber), an excellent survey of "Scripts of Semitic Languages" (Peter T. Daniels), and brief but very informative chapters on the Arabic and Hebrew grammatical traditions (Jonathan Owens and Arie Schippers, respectively). Inclusion of the latter, while welcome, is somewhat unexpected (the companion Routledge volume The Indo-European Languages, edited by Anna Giacalone Ramat and Paolo Ramat [1997], does not, e.g., have a chapter on the Sanskrit grammatical tradition), and it is not clear why Arabic and Hebrew were singled out, while the Mesopotamian (Sumero-Akkadian), Ethiopian, and Syriac grammatical traditions were not covered. More significant omissions are an introductory chapter or chapters covering the Semitic family in general, its essential characteristics, and its Afro-Asiatic relatives, and a discussion of Proto-Semitic (com pare the three introductory chapters in the just-mentioned Indo-European volume: "The Indo-Europeans: Origins and Culture"; "Proto-Indo-European: Comparison and Reconstruction"; "The Indo-European Linguistic Family: Genetic and Typological Perspectives").

Parts II and III cover all the major ancient and modem Semitic languages in chapters written for the most part by recognized experts. Part II, "Old Semitic," contains eight chapters. Akkadian (Giorgio Buccellati), Amorite and Eblaite (Cyrus H. Gordon), Aramaic (Stephen A. Kaufman), Ugaritic (Dennis Pardee), Ancient Hebrew (Richard C. Steiner), Phoenician and the Eastern Canaanite Languages (Stanislav Segert), Classical Arabic (Wolfdietrich Fischer), Sayhadic (Epigraphic South Arabian) (Leonid E. Kogan and Andrey V. Korotayev), and [Ge.sup.subset]ez (Ethiopic) (Gene Gragg). Part III, "Modern Semitic," contains eleven chapters: Arabic Dialects and Maltese (Alan S. Kaye and Judith Rosenhouse), Modern Hebrew (Ruth A. Berman), The Neo-Aramaic Languages (Otto Jastrow), The Modern South Arabian...

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