The jewish neo-aramaic dialect of amadya.

• Author: Fox, Samuel Ethan
• Position: Book review

The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Amadya. By JARED GREENBLATT. Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, vol. 61. Leiden: BRILL, 2011. Pp. ix + 366. $266.

In the last thirty years a number of grammars of Neo-Aramaic have appeared, greatly expanding our knowledge of the astounding variety of dialects which were spoken in and around Kurdistan until the cataclysm of 1915 and succeeding events. One remaining gap in this picture has been the cluster of closely related dialects, sometimes known by their native name of lishana deni our language," which were spoken until 1951 by the Jews living in Zakho and neighboring towns. Jews from this area formed one of the largest groups of Neo-Aramaic-speaking immigrants to Israel, and their language attracted the attention of Hans Jacob Polotsky, who studied and taught it, and published a number of articles on specific topics. More recently, Yona Sabar, a native speaker of the Zakho dialect, has published many articles and books, including a fine dictionary (2002). However, until the recent appearance of Mutzafi 2008 and Fassberg 2010, no complete treatment of any dialect of the cluster existed.

The work under review is, then, only the third grammar of a dialect of this group. Amedia, situated 901cm from Zakho, was home to about 400 Jews in 1951, when the entire community moved to Israel. It was the subject of an important study by Hoberman (1989), but this focused mainly on specific characteristics of the verbal system, rather than providing a comprehensive look at the dialect, so this work breaks important new ground.

The book begins with an introduction to the history of the dialect, its physical setting, and earlier work dealing with it. The grammatical portion of the work follows the normal organization for grammars of Neo-Aramaic, beginning with a description of the sounds of the dialect, listing the phonemes and describing the phonetic realization of each. There are also brief discussions of stress and emphasis. Chapter two presents the nominal morphology. In introductory remarks the author proposes a division of nouns into those which conform to ANA (Amedia Neo-Aramaic) patterns (Type I) and those which do not (Type II). The canonical shapes of Type I nouns are then laid out with many examples, and then the various plural patterns of these nouns are given, along with a list of Pluralia Tantum. The Type H nouns are listed, divided into those ending in a consonant, and those ending in a vowel...