L’hébreu en Provence. Quelques remarques à propos d’un article récent

REVIEWS MyCgwm Mydwhyh twnwClbw tymrab ,tyrboh NwClb Myrqjm :NwCl yroC rCa-rb hCml (Sha‘arei Lashon: Studies in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Jewish Languages Presented to Moshe Bar-Asher). Volume 1: Biblical Hebrew, Masorah, and Medieval Hebrew. Edited by A. Maman, S. E. Fassberg, and Y. Breuer. Pp. wn + 344 + vii + *184. Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 2007. Cloth, $37.83. Sha‘arei Lashon is a remarkable collection of articles in all areas of the Hebrew language, in all its periods and traditions, as well as in Aramaic and Jewish Languages. The studies in these three volumes contribute a wealth of knowledge to the study of the Hebrew language. The authors of the articles are colleagues, students, and friends of an outstanding scholar and teacher, Professor Moshe Bar-Asher to whom this book is presented in honor of his retirement from the Hebrew University after forty-four years of research and teaching. The wide scope of the studies in Sha‘arei Lashon is a fitting tribute to Moshe Bar-Asher, who is acknowledged as one of the foremost authorities on the Hebrew language, Aramaic, and Jewish languages. The first volume of Sha‘arei Lashon deals with Biblical Hebrew, Masorah, and Medieval Hebrew, the second with Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic, and the third with Modern Hebrew and the Jewish languages. The first volume of Sha‘arei Lashon begins with speeches in appreciation of Moshe Bar-Asher expressed by his colleagues Zeev Ben Hayyim and Mordechai Breuer, who talk about their personal friendship with Moshe Bar-Asher and discuss his scholarly contribution, his multifarious interests, and his personal attributes. Also included is a survey of Professor BarAsher ’s impressive publications. There are twenty-nine articles in this volume: nineteen in Hebrew, six in English, and four in French. Space does not permit this reviewer to thoroughly examine every article. Therefore, only several studies will be briefly discussed. This volume is divided into three parts. The first part is entitled, “Biblical Hebrew and the Language of the Dead Sea Scrolls.” Articles in this part deal with Biblical Hebrew morphology, phonology, semantics, and lexicography, as well as the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Joshua Blau (“Some Morphological Problems Concerning the Infinitive in Biblical Hebrew,” pp. 3–9) discusses the two forms of the infinitive in Biblical Hebrew: absolute and construct. Blau claims that these two forms of the infinitive were used originally in similar syntactic functions and only later developed in different directions. However, Blau also shows that, although their functions were similar, they are two distinct forms with dif- Hebrew Studies 50 (2009) 390 Reviews ferent origins. In a very methodological manner, Blau provides convincing evidence that the infinitive construct is not a transformation of the infinitive absolute as argued by some scholars. Two studies on the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls analyze phenomena in that language and shed light on its origins. Scholars have debated whether the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls developed directly from Biblical Hebrew or was one of a few dialects that existed side-by-side. These two articles are: “The System of Independent Pronouns at Qumran and the History of Hebrew in the Second Temple Period,” by Matthew Morgenstern (pp. 44–63), and “Nominal Clause Patterns in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” by Tamar Zewi (pp. 64–80). Morgenstern collected and studied all independent pronouns in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in good manuscripts of Rabbinic Hebrew. Based on the study of the different forms and their occurrences in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in Biblical Hebrew, in the Samaritan version of the Torah, and in Rabbinic Hebrew, Morgenstern concludes that the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls may not be described as a direct development from classical Biblical Hebrew. He does not accept the approach of Kutscher, who had argued that the language reflected in the Tiberian tradition is the standard, whereas other traditions represent the sub-standard language of the Second Temple period influenced by Aramaic and other languages (p. 45). Morgenstern’s data is summarized in a table on page 56. He found that the distribution of the first person singular forms, yˆnSa and yIkOnDa, is the only one that can be said to reflect...

This chapter argues for the close relationship between language and culture. It discusses the proper linguistic approach for studying an ancient, now dead, language. It introduces the concept of the linguistics of writing systems to the study of ancient Hebrew and outlines the book’s sociolinguistic approach to the study of Classical Hebrew. The chapter highlights the role that social phenomena and language ideologies can play in language change.

Hebrew Studies 37 (1996) 131 Reviews English-Hebrew dictionary, but that to my mind is an advantage; they're better off not making heavy use of an English-Hebrew dictionary. The Multi Dictionary further provides many pages of topical lists of words and expressions which are extremely useful. It is more expensive, but it has many more uses. While the Zilkha dictionary reinforces a bad habit: memorizing a one-word equivalent for each vocabulary item, the Multi Dictionary instills good habits: examining context and looking to Hebrew for information. I now require my intermediate and advanced classes to purchase the Multi Dictionary, and we use some of the appendices actively in class. It is a very useful and interesting educational tool. Robert D. Hoberman State University ofNew York at Stony Brook Stony Brook, N.Y. //794-3355 A HISTORY OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE. By Angel SaenzBadillos . John Elwolde, trans. Pp. xii + 371. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Cloth, $39.95. Angel Saenz-Badillos' A History of the Hebrew Language is a translation from the original Spanish HislOria de la lengua hebrea. Shelomo Morag has written a foreword to the English translation, which best summarizes my feelings. He writes that this book is the most comprehensive history of Hebrew to date. Like Morag, I feel that there has been a need for such a book for students as well as scholars, teachers, and Hebraists as well as historians. Although he does not articulate his intentions, the author attempts to provide a useful handbook for Hebraists. It is evident that he has achieved the goals of presenting an overview of the Hebrew language in a concise and portable book, at the same time providing helpful detailed discussions. Saenz-Badillos provides a full survey of the history of the Hebrew language , tracing its origins in the Canaanite period, through a span of 3,000 years, including its modem use in Israel. He manages to cover all the periods of the language, without compromising the clarity and the important details. The survey he provides is not a mere overview; it discusses the phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics relevant to each period. Furthermore, if the subject in question happens to be controversial, he discusses different approaches. For instance. the verbal system in biblical Hebrew Studies 37 (1996) 132 Reviews Hebrew is often controversial: whether it indicates tenses or aspects, whether it should be analyzed synchronically or within the framework of the historical comparative approach, and so forth. The author discusses this problematic topic in light of the approach he follows (the aspectual approach ), but he also provides a brief summary of the other views. In this and other topics, disagreements and arguments are all given exact detailed references by which the interested reader can find more details. As an overview of all Hebrew periods accompanied by discussions and comprehensive lists of bibliography, this survey provides a handy book for Hebraists, especially teachers. For example, a teacher who wants to teach mishnaic Hebrew would find a necessary and comprehensive discussion on rabbinic Hebrew in general and mishnaic Hebrew in particular, including the controversy over whether it is a development of biblical Hebrew or a different dialect. This discussion provides a framework as well as details of the period the teacher is interested in. However, for the scholar who wants to investigate a subject concerning the Hebrew language in more depth, the discussions in this book are insufficient. Yet these scholars, too, might find the book helpful when searching for bibliography or trying to access general ideas of related subjects. The fact that the author exhaustively discusses all periods of the Hebrew language yet does not exhaust the reader is very impressive. The organization , editing, and language are smooth, and the points he makes are easily followed. At this point I want to comment on the good work of the translator , John Elwolde. A good text could be ruined by its translation, and this is certainly not the case with this book; the English text is clear and smooth. I could not find many flaws in this book. I can recall only one or two minor problems. One is the author's treatment of the Hebrew language...

Forty-five years after James Barr’s Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament appeared, it is time to reiterate his call for a balanced approach to philology and textual criticism. Though the essential issues are the same as when Barr wrote, the amount of textual data from the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as methodological challenges to the standard view of the linguistic history of ancient Hebrew have produced a significantly more complex situation. As scholars move forward in both subdisciplines of Hebrew studies—textual criticism and historical linguistics—it is more critical than ever to keep in mind that the history of the text and the history of the language are inextricably bound to each other. Using two variants in Leviticus, I will illustrate what a reasonably balanced approach looks like from the perspective of a Hebrew linguist, with the hope that textual critics and Hebrew linguists will see the need to work more closely with each other.

It is common knowledge in oral literature that every oral form is naturally performed. The components of the oral performance are, namely, the text, the oral artist, the audience, music, and histrionics. Though these components apply to the performance of all oral forms, whether narrative or poetic, they are employed in diverse manners in consonance with the nature of the oral form being actualized. This is called the context of performance. The aim of this article is to do an inquiry into the contextual varying of the use of the components of the oral performance among oral traditional forms with emphasis on Yoruba oral traditional chants. My objectives are to verify how the nature of each chant dictates the degree to which the components can be applied to it in context. In other words, the prominence or unimportance of any component of the oral performance in each poetic form is determined by the rules surrounding the actualization of the subgenre. This survey is delimited to the Yoruba oral poetic forms classified as chants. The first is the context-restricted group that limits the use of the components of the oral performance by its own rules, thus making any deviation a taboo. The second group comprises forms that were originally context-bound but have begun to acquire secular features thus deemphasizing their invocatory worth and metamorphosing into entertainment subgenres. The third is the class of poetic forms that were originally secular. They have not only remained so, but have also absorbed the many influences of modernity. The data for analysis constitutes 13 oral forms which have been transcribed and translated from Yoruba to English. (Yoruba is one of the indigenous languages or mother tongues of Nigeria.) The oral performance theory which enumerates the variables listed above and functionalism which reveals the essence of the contextual applications of those components are handy for the theoretical framework and grounding of this article. Further, the oral-formulaic theory will be applied to chants in the first group above because their potency is tied to their formulaic structure.

Therapeutic SOULSPEAK is an oral, communal form of poetry adapted from the forms of our preliterate past that can be used by anyone of any age regardless of educational, cultural, intellectual or emotional limitations. Despite the depth of the poems possible under SOULSPEAK, experience has shown it to be a nontraumatic, healing experience. Evaluations by teachers and therapists over an eight-year period support these observations. Of equal importance, it is a form of poetry that can be directed to critical unconscious areas. It also a form of poetry that is so human it can be mastered by anyone in a matter of minutes. And finally, once learned, it can be used for a lifetime.

Indigenous peoples throughout the globe are custodians of a unique, priceless, and increasingly imperiled legacy of oral lore. Among them the Ainu, a people native to northeastern Asia, stand out for the exceptional scope and richness of their oral performance traditions. This book provides a study and English translation of Chiri Yukie's Ainu Shin'yoshu, the first written transcription of Ainu oral narratives by an ethnic Ainu. The thirteen narratives in Chiri's collection belong to the genre known as kamuiyukar, said to be the most ancient performance form in the vast Ainu repertoire. In it, animals (and sometimes plants or other natural phenomena) assume the role of narrator and tell stories about themselves. Along with critical contextual information about traditional Ainu society and its cultural assumptions, the book brings forward pertinent information on the geography and natural history of the coastal southwestern Hokkaido region where the stories were originally performed. It also offers the first extended biography of Chiri Yukie (1903–1922) in English. The story of her life, and her untimely death at age nineteen, makes clear the harsh consequences for Chiri and her fellow Ainu of the Japanese colonization of Hokkaido and the Meiji and Taisho governments' policies of assimilation. Chiri's receipt of the narratives in the Horobetsu dialect from her grandmother and aunt (both traditional performers) and the fact that no native speakers of that dialect survive today make her work all the more significant. The book concludes with a full, integral translation of the text.

Indigenous peoples throughout the globe are custodians of a unique, priceless, and increasingly imperiled legacy of oral lore. Among them the Ainu, a people native to northeastern Asia, stand out for the exceptional scope and richness of their oral performance traditions. Yet despite this cultural wealth, nothing has appeared in English on the subject in over thirty years. Sarah Strong's Ainu Spirits Singing breaks this decades-long silence with a nuanced study and English translation of Chiri Yukie's Ainu Shin'yoshu, the first written transcription of Ainu oral narratives by an ethnic Ainu. The thirteen narratives in Chiri's collection belong to the genre known as kamui yukar, said to be the most ancient performance form in the vast Ainu repertoire. In it, animals (and sometimes plants or other natural phenomena)--all regarded as spiritual beings (kamui) within the animate Ainu world--assume the role of narrator and tell stories about themselves. The first-person speakers include imposing animals such as the revered orca, the Hokkaido wolf, and Blakiston's fish owl, as well as the more humble Hokkaido brown frog, snowshoe hare, and pearl mussel. Each has its own story and own signature refrain. Strong provides readers with an intimate and perceptive view of this extraordinary text. Along with critical contextual information about traditional Ainu society and its cultural assumptions, she brings forward pertinent information on the geography and natural history of the coastal southwestern Hokkaido region where the stories were originally performed. The result is a rich fusion of knowledge that allows the reader to feel at home within the animistic frame of reference of the narratives. Strong's study also offers the first extended biography of Chiri Yukie (1903-1922) in English. The story of her life, and her untimely death at age nineteen, makes clear the harsh consequences for Chiri and her fellow Ainu of the Japanese colonization of Hokkaido and the Meiji and Taisho governments' policies of assimilation. Chiri's receipt of the narratives in the Horobetsu dialect from her grandmother and aunt (both traditional performers) and the fact that no native speakers of that dialect survive today make her work all the more significant. The book concludes with a full, integral translation of the text.

Sound Effects traces the history of the relationship between oral conditions and aural effect in English literature from its beginnings in the Anglo-Saxon period through to the twentyfirst century. Few collections nowadays, other than textbook histories, would attempt a survey of their field from the early middle ages to the present day, and it is not our intention here to offer a continuous narrative. But despite the many centuries covered by this collection, the reader will find that certain themes recur in different contexts and that the individual essays speak to each other, often over long distances of time. It ends where it might have begun, with Homer, though in modern English form. The effect of this pattern is to create an “envelope” structure in which the ancient oral forms of Greek and Anglo-Saxon verse reappear as contexts for understanding how these forms survive and how sound works in the poetry of the modern world. The scope of the volume is also determined by its subject, since we are concerned with tradition as well as with the oral and aural. In particular, we are concerned with how literary production and reception respond to the different waves of media evolution from oral to written, manuscript to print (and the theater), and the later development of machine technology. We are not specifically concerned with the computer and the Internet, though they are an unstated presence behind the project as a whole. A subsidiary theme is the way in which sound, understood in both oral and aural terms, provides the agency through which high and low, elite and popular cultures are brought into conjunction throughout English literature. This collection derives from a conference held at the University of St. Andrews in 2006, one of an occasional series on the media in history as a context for literary interpretation.1 The aim of the conference was to extend our discussion of the literary media from printed text and script back to the most basic medium of all: speech. But we also wanted to explore points of Oral Tradition, 24/2 (2009): 281-292

Before Ihimaera published his first novel in 1973, there was no Maori literary tradition. Mana Magazine (November/December 2014) Members of the New Zealand Women Writers’ Federation meeting on two successive nights at Wakefield House in Wellington seemed at first interested, then surprised, astonished and delighted at the revelation of the quality of Maori literature, both in its ancient and traditional oral forms, and in the more modern work of today's poets and story-tellers. Te Ao Hou 71 (1973) A recent profile of iconic Māori writer Witi Ihimaera, a national Māori magazine with an estimated readership of one hundred thousand, enthused that prior to Ihimaera's first novel ‘there was no Māori literary tradition’. Certainly, Tangi was the first novel in English published by a Māori writer, but in 1972 Ihimaera had published his now classic collection of short fiction, Pounamu Pounamu , and Hone Tuwhare his third collection of poetry. Indeed, Māori people had been writing and publishing since the early nineteenth century and the Māori literary tradition, when not limited to written literature, is centuries old; when not limited to Aotearoa, it stretches back across the Pacific for millennia. Te Ao Hou , a magazine published by the Maori Purposes Fund Board of the Department of Maori Affairs between 1952 and 1975, is full of Māori writing. This chapter traces key aspects of Te Ao Hou by exploring four metaphors by which it has been – or might be – understood. Firstly, the magazine proclaims its own historical and cultural context through its name Te Ao Hou , usually translated as ‘The New World’; this metaphor heralded the entry of Māori people into a particular kind of modernity. Secondly, Te Ao Hou was introduced by its first editor as a ‘marae on paper’, a cultural and social space for diverse Māori discussion, self-expression, and participation. Another metaphor draws on the proverb ‘ka pū te ruha, ka hao te rangatahi’ (when the old net is worn out, the new net goes fishing); this emphasises that while things are necessarily remade, a new product need not signal departure from an established practice. Finally, I will propose the metaphor of the pataka (storehouse) as a way to think about reading Te Ao Hou 's mid-twentieth-century Māori writing in the first decades of the twenty-first century.

Taking inspiration from James Clifford's remarks about the profession of anthropologist, the article critically analyzes the collections of Albanian customary norms known as Kanun, with particular reference to the work of Father Francisca Shtjefen Kostantin Gjecovi: Kanuni i Leke Dukagjinit. After a brief overview of the contents of the collection, it reconstructs the work of textualization carried out by the Franciscan father. Subsequently, it analyzes the transcription of such norms from the ancient oral form, by using Walter J. Ong's studies.

In many ancient communities, particularly tribal communities, there exists a system of dialogue and conversation with and between supernatural beings and the supernatural world they inhabit, as well as their transmigration into a human’s body. The supernatural world is considered to be the realm of the gods, or of the spirits of ancestors, or of satanic evil spirits. A Shaman is suggested to summon, and communicate with, tribal or cult gods, while controling spirits, ancestors, animals and birds with afforded powers. Shamanic rituals have patent linguistic significance. In communities with a strong shamanic tradition, the shamans generally use traditional language, without altering their unique features. The songs used in these rituals are also in traditional tribal dialect. This study focuses on Gaddika, the shamanic ritual of the Rawla tribe, a tribal community in Kerala, and about songs contributing to the ritual. The study examines to what extent the Rawla dialect has been retained in its ‘original’ form, and the tribal myths that are woven into ritual language. The Rawla language belongs to the Dravidian family, and has been passed on in oral form only. In the Gaddika ritual, the original language is widely used and is central to the survival of the language. This study was conducted among the Rawla community, through observations during several Gaddika rituals, thus documenting the songs and ritual dialogues. As such, the study documented the language in its orginal form and structure, along with prominent myths passed on through generations. The study analyses this shamanic ritual and its verbal patterns. The study concludes with that shamanic discourses and magico-religious rituals have a vital role in the continuity and in the survival of the historical dialect,

Much of Nigerian oral poetry, especially the musical genre, has been increasingly reduced to digital formats through the instrumentality of new media technologies. This transformation has, however, not been sufficiently acknowledged in oral literary researches and discourses. This alternative existence acquired by the oral forms manifests itself in digital technological modes like CDs, VCDs, DVDs, digital radio and television and the internet which assure them of longevity. This paper, therefore, engages Nigerian oral poetry and its inscription in digital processes using new media technologies. In particular, it negotiates the trajectory of transforming primary orality to secondary and tertiary orality through which oral performances like songs have acquired new modes of existence and meanings by way of recordings and digitalization using the new media. Many of these poetic forms have travelled through historical time to the postmodern moment as migrant metaphors and have become stored in digital forms thus making them new wine though preserved in the old wineskins of the poets and new media processes. Using an emergent generation of Nigerian popular poets and musical artistes, the paper problematizes the episteme of authorship. It interrogates the very idea of authorship in the contested and interstitial space of communal and individual authorship in the digital age where the term has undergone radical destabilisation. Who owns the oral forms, for instance? Is it the so-called anonymous composer in traditional society, the collector or recorder who mediates the creative process and becomes a surrogate agent, or the contemporary artist who is heir to this timeless tradition of oral intellection through performances that are digitalized and stored in retrieval systems, or is it a virtual community of authors, or a hybrid of all of these? The paper concludes that digital technologies are a means of preserving these oral forms and endowing them with vitality and enduring relevance to meet the immediacy and urgency of postmodern societal needs in Nigeria.

Identification of the biopharmaceutical risks of excipients and excipient variability on oral drug performance can be beneficial for the development of robust oral drug formulations. The current study investigated the impact of Hypromellose (HPMC) presence and varying viscosity type, when used as a binder in immediate release formulations, on the apparent solubility of drugs with wide range of physicochemical properties (drug ionization, drug lipophilicity, drug aqueous solubility). The role of physiological conditions on the impact of excipients on drug apparent solubility was assessed with the use of pharmacopoeia (compendial) and biorelevant media. Presence of HPMC affected drug solubility according to the physicochemical properties of studied compounds. The possible combined effects of polymer adsorption (drug shielding effect) or the formation of a polymeric viscous layer around drug particles may have retarded drug dissolution leading to reduced apparent solubility of highly soluble and/or highly ionized compounds and were pronounced mainly at early time points. Increase in the apparent solubility of poorly soluble low ionized drugs containing a neutral amine group was observed which may relate to enhanced drug solubilization or reduced drug precipitation. The use of multivariate data analysis confirmed the importance of drug physicochemical properties on the impact of excipients on drug apparent solubility and revealed that changes in HPMC material properties or amount may not be critical for oral drug performance when HPMC is used as a binder. The construction of a roadmap combining drug, excipient, and medium characteristics allowed the identification of the cases where HPMC presence may present risks in oral drug performance and bioavailability.

literacy-orality problematic, which has been debated from Plato to Postman, has focused on how the visuality of the literary medium affects the aurality of the oral medium. Recent research by John Miles Foley has addressed the particular advantages in using the most modern technology of the Internet to simulate and explore the oldest technology of orality, thereby calling into question our continued reliance on textually based media in orality research when electronic media provide a more effective vehicle for scholarly investigations into oral forms. 1 But how does this discussion relate specifically to the act of music-making? Is there an interface between a musical orality and a musical literacy? Musicologists have treated the question of the musical dimension of orality in such works as Yoshiko Tokumaru and Osamu Yamaguti’s The Oral and the Literate in Music (1986), Stephen Erdely’s research on the musical dimension of Bosnian epics (1995), Bruno Nettl’s collection of cross cultural research on the topic of improvisation (1998), Karl Reichl’s compilation of music research in a wide-ranging number of oral epic traditions (2000), and Paul Austerlitz’s work on the “consciousness” of jazz (2005), but less attention has been given to the link between the visual technology of notation and its effect on the oral-aural processing of music. 2 Scholars of medieval music have been at the forefront in addressing the connection between oral performance and the emergence of notation. Leo Treitler’s work during the latter half of the twentieth century that considered the visual-aural link in medieval music was groundbreaking, culminating in the recent collection of seventeen of his foundational essays on medieval chant (Treitler 2003). Seminal works by Susan Boynton (2003), Kenneth Levy (1998), Peter Jeffery (1992), and other medievalists have also contributed considerably to the discussion of orality and literacy in the music of the Middle Ages. In addition, Anna Maria Busse Berger’s recent book, Medieval Music and the Art of Memory (2005), highlights the change in performance practice and composition with changes in medieval notation practices (250-51). Busse Berger asks why musicologists have been slow to address the role of memory and notation in music, and then follows with a thorough and thought-provoking analysis of the interaction