Abstracts
Eugene Barsky and Sergey Loesov examine the history of the Semitic nominal pattern *qaṭṭīl (*C1aC2C2īC3) in terms of its evolving grammatical semantics. The *qaṭṭīl form is a Central Semitic innovation, which became fully productive in old Aramaic as a adjective denoting properties (e.g. ʿammīq ‘deep’, ḥakkīm ‘wise’), marginalising the inherited property adjective patterns *qaṭil (*C1aC2iC3) and to some extent also *qaṭīl (*C1aC2īC3). It eventually became the past tense stem of intransitive verbs in Ṭuroyo. The paper traces in detail the history of the verbalisation of *qaṭṭīl, drawing on a corpus-based study of Classical Syriac.
Paul M. Noorlander presents a study of subject-like possessors and experiencers in Neo-Aramaic. These are expressed through person affixes on verbs and verboids that historically go back to a dative preposition—the marker of recipients. Based on a cross-dialectal study of their clause structure, the paper argues that these arguments are non-canonical subjects whose morphosyntax is still reminiscent of their original recipient-like function. The identical marking of the agent of past perfective verbs and these non-canonical subjects are likely to be ultimately historically related and part of the overall typology of the language area, since some of these constructions have close parallels in Iranian languages.
Dorota Molin presents two folktales from the hitherto unstudied NENA dialect of the Jews of Dohok (north-western Iraq) accompanied by linguistic glosses, translation and comments on a few grammatical features. There is a link to an audio recording of the texts. These folktales are followed by a survey of selected TAM features in this dialect. The asymmetric distribution of the realis habitual preverb (k-) between past and non-past is likely to be due to an incomplete grammaticalisation of this preverb. The resultative construction is lexically restricted, indicating that it is not a full perfect in this dialect. The use of the progressive/continuous is also very restricted compared to other dialects.
Geoffrey Khan examines various verbal forms in NENA dialects that are used to express discourse dependency. The common feature of all these forms is that they express some kind of cognitive continuity from what precedes without there being syntactic subordination. There is a discussion of the various contexts in which the forms are used and of the possible pathways of their historical development. The forms expressing discourse dependency include bət-qaṭəl, qam-qaṭəl and narrative subjunctive qaṭəl. It is argued that bət-qaṭəl with this function developed from a future form in apodoses to conditional constructions. Evidence is presented from dialects in the Cudi region to support the hypothesis that the qam-qaṭəl form originally expressed an immediate future. The origin of the narrative subjunctive is identified in the subjunctive of dependent purpose clauses.
Eran Cohen presents a description and discussion of the various conditional phenomena in the Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Zakho. He explains and exemplifies the different conditional types—ordinary, speech-act, inferential, and concessive-conditionals. The paper identifies two patterns expressing ordinary conditionals, with and without a conditional particle, and examines the strutures of counterfactual conditionals. Narrative conditionals are compared with counterfactuals and their function is explained vis à vis other clause types. Finally, the co-occurrence of conditionals with other epistemic expressions is analysed.
Michael Waltisberg develops an earlier paper (Waltisberg 2013) on the circumstantial clause of Ṭuroyo, where it was argued that the circumstantial clause both formally and semantically is a direct replication of the corresponding Arabic construction. The present article resumes this discussion by adducing more data from neighbouring Arabic dialects as well as from other Middle Aramaic and Neo-Aramaic varieties. This results in a slightly different and less clearcut conclusion concerning the impact of language contact. The paper demonstrates the methodological issues that must be taken into account when attempts are made to identify syntactic replication across closely related languages.
Ivri Bunis examines aspects of language contact between Western Neo-Aramaic and Syrian Arabic. The genetic relationship between Western Neo-Aramaic and Syrian Arabic and the retention of the older Aramaic suffix and prefix conjugations in Western Neo-Aramaic have left the latter with a verbal morphology very similar to Syrian Arabic. Both languages, however, diverge in how their cognate verbal forms express TAM. The divergences between the languages were originally due to independent development, most likely before the intensive contact between them. The paper argues that given the close and prolonged contact of Western Neo-Aramaic with Arabic, the divergences between the two languages also reflect significant conservatism in Western Neo-Aramaic.
Steven E. Fassberg draws attention to a noteworthy feature of the morphology of Maʿlula Western Neo-Aramaic whereby some Afel verbs correspond to Peal intransitive verbs in older Aramaic. 1st form intransitive Arabic loans also show up in Maʿlula in Afel. The shift may have begun in Late Western Aramaic, when there was a retraction of stress followed by the creation of prosthetic vowels resolving word-initial consonantal clusters. Speakers possibly reinterpreted Peal Vqtel (< *qatila) forms as Afel verbs. Such a reanalysis would have been reinforced by the overlap between the two stems in expressing state and condition.
Ariel Gutman draws attention to a case of cyclic morphological change in Neo-Aramaic. In its earliest attested stages, Aramaic had already lost the Proto-Semitic case system, as only vestiges of an oblique case are found in an ancient inscription. Yet starting in the 17th century CE, one can observe a process which leads to the re-emergence of genitive and oblique case markers in certain Neo-Aramaic dialects, facilitated by Kurmanji language contact. This cycle is accompanied by another cyclic change, namely the decline and re-creation of an apocopate construct state marking of nouns.
Lidia Napiorkowska uses Articulatory Phonology (ArtP) to model phonological variation in the NENA dialect of Azran. ArtP construes speech production as composed of gestures that may shift in time and magnitude. This approach explains palatalisation and fronting of pronunciation encountered in Azran as a result of gestural overlap, thus identifying an internal motivation for variation in addition to possible language contact influence. Moreover, employing a dynamic model provides insights into the phonology–phonetics interface and has implications for establishing conventions of transcription
Aziz Tezel presents material from his ongoing research of plant names in Ṭuroyo (Ṣurayt) and their background. The discussion here focuses on some plants whose names are either of obscure origin or have undergone changes. Taking the corresponding names in Syriac and other earlier languages of the region into consideration, proposals are made for the origin of the names of the plants concerned, with a brief description of their uses in the local culture. Comparisons to corresponding names in NENA are made. An account of dialectal differences is given. Some borrowings from neighbouring languages are identified.
Eugene Barsky and Yulia Furman study selected concepts from the 208-Swadesh list in Ṭuroyo: bird, head, husband, man (male), man (human being), sun, wife and woman. This is based on fieldwork conducted in Germany in 2016 among the Ṭuroyo-speaking community and a published field corpus gathered in the 1960s. Each concept and its possible exponents are presented together with a discussion of their distribution in the corpus and in the modern language. The results of the study reveal diachronic change and dialectal diversity in the usage of the exponents in question.
Hezy Mutzafi examines animal names in various Neo-Aramaic dialects, from Western Neo-Aramaic in south-eastern Syria to Neo-Mandaic in south-western Iran. A large number of modern Aramaic animal names—mostly of inherited Aramaic origin and hitherto unattested—are discussed. Among these are lexical innovations that were moulded by processes of word-formation. Some other animal names, supposed to be related to the Christian Urmi dialect, are shown to have nothing to do with genuine Neo-Aramaic speech, but are rather Syriac classicisms interpolated into Bible translations and dictionaries.
Alexey Lyavdansky presents a basic word list for literary Christian Urmi Neo-Aramaic together with etymologies and a discussion of problematic issues. This study, which uses a variant of the Swadesh list of 110 basic words, is the first research outcome of a project that has created an electronic corpus of literary Christian Urmi based on the texts published in the Soviet Union between 1929 and 1938 (Novij Alfavit). With some exponents being uncertain (having two possible variants), the statistical results demonstrate that more than 90 percent of the exponents have reliable Aramaic etymologies. Four meanings have exponents that originate from Persian. The exponents of two meanings have Kurdish etymologies. Six exponents have no clear etymology.
Aziz Emmanuel Eliya Al-Zebari presents lexical material relating to material culture from the NENA dialects of the Aqra region. These dialects can be classified broadly into those of the villages lying to the North of the Aqra mountain and those of the inhabitants of the region to the South of the mountain. Those lying to the North are situated in an area known as Nexla and include the villages of Dinarta, Upper Gerbish and Sanaye. The dialect area lying to the South of the Aqra mountain includes the town of Aqra and the villages of Kherpa, Kharjawa, Nuhawa, Barrake, Sharmen and Malaberwan. The lexical items that are presented are classified into the follow semantic fields: (§1.) Buildings and Structures, (§2.) Containers, (§3.) Instruments and Tools, (§4.) Agriculture, (§5.) Sewing, Weaving and Spinning, (§6.) Hunting, (§7.) Fires, (§8.) Clothes and Fabrics.
Salam Hakeem identifies and classifies the types of Arabic loanwords that currently occur in the spoken Neo-Aramaic dialect of Ankawa. He examines the reasons for the extensive use of such loanwords by the younger generation. It is shown that although the main contact language in Ankawa is now Kurdish, Arabic continues to have a greater impact on the Neo-Aramaic dialect than Kurdish. The reasons for this are identified as the influence of education, which was entirely in Arabic until the last decade, social media, in which Arabic is still the dominant means of communication, and the recent displacement of many Arabic-speaking Christians from Mosul to Ankawa.
Sina Tezel discusses language loss in communities speaking Ṭuroyo (Ṣurayt) in the diaspora in Sweden. She examines the challenges of new social and cultural terminology. There is a loss of the regional dialectal diversity of Ṭuroyo with consequent dialect mixing. Many lexemes are falling from use and the semantic range of lexemes is contracting. Also under threat is culturally-specific idiomatic phraseology. Such incipient loss of the language is, moreover, reflected by codeswitching in the speech of the younger generations.