The universality of Arabic and the pedagogies of Arab countries: عالمية العربية وبيداغوجيات الدول العربية

The research “The Arab world and its pedagogies” dealt with two tracks, the first track: Arabic between Semitic and the components of global languages, and the second track: pedagogies specific to strengthening the status of the Arabic language, using the descriptive method, and it stemmed from several questions raised by the virtual reader about the reasons for including the Arabic language within International and Semitic languages, and the relationship between the terms (global- international- official), and the most important components of the Arabic language that made it among the international languages. Language and international policies that serve the Arabic language.

From Phrase to Clause: The Active Participle in Ugaritic

This paper suggests a morphological, syntactic, and semantic analysis of the active participle in Ugaritic. The formally ambiguous cases are interpreted by taking into account the syntactic and semantic properties of explicit cases. The syntactic usages of the participle are the attributive phrase, the substantivized attributive phrase, the agent-noun, and the circumstantial participial phrase. The semantic analysis points at explicit verbal properties of some participial phrases in Ugaritic: they can denote a stage-level predicative core acquiring episodic interpretations and attaching temporal arguments. I hypothesize that the prototypical context for the development of the predicative participle (sporadically attested in the language of Ugaritic prose and consistently in later Northwest Semitic languages) is a participial phrase that suggests stage-level episodic interpretation and assigns subject that is co-referential with the main-clause subject.

Numeral Classifiers in Udi: A Unique Contact-Induced Development among Nakh-Daghestanian?

Following Stilo’s (2018) study of small-inventory classifier systems in a number of Indo-European, Turkic, Kartvelian and Semitic languages of the Araxes-Iran Linguistic Area, the paper presents an account of numeral classifiers in Udi, a Nakh-Daghestanian (Lezgic) language spoken in northern Azerbaijan. Being a peripheral member of the linguistic area in question, Udi possesses an even more reduced version of a small-classifier system, comprising one optional classifier dänä (Iranian borrowing, most likely via Azerbaijani) used with both human and inanimate nouns. A dedicated classifier for humans is lacking, although there is a word tan (also of Iranian origin) only used after numerals or quantifiers, but predominantly as a noun phrase head. The behaviour of dänä and tan is scrutinized, according to a set of parameters, in both spoken and written textual corpora of the Nizh dialect of Udi. Drawing in the data from the related Nakh-Daghestanian languages, the paper shows that among the languages of the family Udi may be unique in possessing classifiers (albeit as a result of contact), Khinalug possibly being the only other exception.

Louis Cheikho and the Christianization of Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Ascetic Poetry

Using the Jesuit scholar Louis Cheikho’s (1859–1927) work on pre-Islamic and early Islamic ascetic poetry as a focal point, this article examines two strategies which contemporary and later scholars accused Cheikho of using to falsify the Arabic literary heritage. Cheikho de-Islamized Arabic language texts through editorial interventions, as evinced by his edition of the Dīwān of the Abbasid ascetic poet Abū al-ʿAtāhiya. Furthermore, he overtly laid claim to the past by Christianizing pre-Islamic poetry. In his work al-Naṣrāniyya wa-ādābuhā bayna ʿarab al-jāhiliyya, Cheikho tried to establish the “origins” of Arabic cultural and literary production in Christianity. He did so in response to Arab and European intellectuals who challenged the Christian contribution to Arabic. Above all, he rejected racist ideas embedded in nineteenth-century European philology, notably the denigration of Semitic languages and their speakers based on the “Aryan”/“Semite” binary in Ernest Renan’s (1823–1892) work.

Foundations of the Age-Area Hypothesis

A useful tool in understanding the roots of the world geography of culture is the Age-Area-Hypothesis. The Age-Area Hypothesis (AAH) asserts that the point of geographical origin of a group of related cultures is most likely where the culture speaking the most divergent language is located. In spite of its widespread, multidisciplinary application, the hypothesis remains imprecisely stated, and has no theoretical underpinnings. This paper describes a model of the AAH based on an economic theory of mass migrations. The theory leads to a family of measures of cultural divergence, which can be referred to as Dyen divergence measures. One measure is used to develop an Age-Area Theorem, which links linguistic divergence and likelihood of geographical origin. The theory allows for computation of the likelihood different locations are origin points for a group of related cultures, and can be applied recursively to yield probabilities of different historical migratory paths. The theory yields an Occam’s-razor-like result: migratory paths that are the simplest are also the most likely; a key principle of the AAH. The paper concludes with an application to the geographical origins of the peoples speaking Semitic languages.

Graduate Education in the Time of COVID-19

“The Buzz” examines scholarly topics in light of present-day concerns and challenges. This edition centers on the unique challenges of graduate education as a result of the restrictions of COVID-19. Those contributing to this discussion include Sarah E. Fredericks (associate professor of environmental ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School), Steven Weitzman (Abraham M. Ellis professor of Hebrew and Semitic languages and literatures at the University of Pennsylvania), and Matthew Goff (professor of religion at Florida State University).

Syriac

During late antiquity, Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, belonging to the northwest group of Semitic languages, and originally the language of the Kingdom of Edessa and the Oshroene in Upper Mesopotamia, became the literary language of Aramaic-speaking Christians and developed under the mutual influences of both Greek and Iranian. This section surveys Syriac translations of Byzantine Greek texts, from the Bible and homiletics, to theological and ascetic literature, as well as historiographical, hagiographical, and other narrative texts. It thus highlights Greek authors with important corpora in Syriac (e.g. Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, and the Areopagitic corpus), as well as authors and texts no longer extant in Greek (often because of their deviation from Constantinopolitan orthodoxy).