Studies in Semitic Grammaticalization.

• Author: Kaye, Alan S.
• Position: Book review

Studies in Semitic Grammaticalization. By AARON D. RUBIN. Harvard Semitic Series, vol. 57. Winona Lake, Ind.: EISENBRAUNS, 2005. Pp. xvii + 177. $32.95.

This book is a most welcome addition to the literature on grammaticalization, which may, following Paul Hopper and Elizabeth Close Traugott, Grammaticalization (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), 2, and quoted by the author, be defined as the "process whereby lexical items and constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions ..." Based on the author's Harvard doctoral dissertation completed under the supervision of John Huehnergard, it takes up a number of thorny issues within comparative Semitic linguistics.

Chapter one, "Introduction," explains the process of grammaticalization by citing well-known examples, such as French pas, "step," developing into the "negative" via analogy from constructions such as Je ne vais pas, "I don't go a step" (p. 3). From the coining of the term by Antoine Meillet in 1912, one comes to appreciate that Semitists were cognizant of the process without knowing it had a specific label, nor were they aware down through the decades of the twentieth century of the general linguistic literature in this field.

Chapter two, "Classification of Semitic," follows Huehnergard's classification of Afroasiatic (using the older hyphenated spelling "Afro-Asiatic") in Roger Woodard's Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004, 138-59). In his discussion of Arabic dialects, the author is correct in his affirmation that they "are more accurately described as languages, if we use mutual intelligibility as a distinguishing criterion" (p. 14).

Chapter three, "Grammaticalization in Semitic," discusses some examples of grammaticalization in the various Semitic languages. Let us begin with the reflexive pronoun. Many Semitic tongues use the word "soul" or a body part ("bone," "head," etc.) to mark reflexivity: Classical Arabic and Ge'ez nafs-, "soul" = Syriac and Biblical Hebrew naps-, Ge'ez r[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]'s and Moroccan Arabic ras, "head," and so on. Rubin is right to remark that due to the different lexemes used, "Proto-Semitic had (sic) no (reconstructable) reflexive pronouns" (p. 19).

An interesting development which offers many parallels in the languages of the world is the use of the lexeme "go" to mark the future (cf. English I'm gonna write). Thus the root rwh, "go," in the various Arabic...