Neo-Aramaic Dialects Research Articles

Reexamination of the Bare Preterite Base in the Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Zakho

AbstractIn Neo-Aramaic dialects the historic passive participle is used as the base form for the preterite tense. Nonetheless, the scholarly tradition saw it as a passive form, especially when it appears alone as a 'bare form'. A wide corpus study of Jewish Zakho Neo-Aramaic shows, however, that in some cases it is justified to see this form as bearing an active function. This is established through the examination of the information-structure associated with the form. A comparison to an older stratum of Neo-Aramaic, namely the Nerwa texts from the 17th century, provides a possible diachronic explanation of this change.

The North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic Dialects

Aramaic still survives as a spoken language among some Christian and Jewish communities in the Middle East. The dialects can be divided into various groups. The most diverse group is that known as North Eastern Neo-Aramaic. Dialects of this group are spoken by Christian and Jewish communities. Many of these communities, however, have now been displaced and the younger generations no longer speak the dialects. The description of these dialects is of immense importance for Semitic philology. The dialects exhibit linguistic developments that are not only interesting in their own right but also present illuminating parallels to developments in earlier Semitic.

Features of the Verbal System in the Christian Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Koy Sanjaq and Their Areal Parallels

Koy Sanjaq, an Iraqi Kurdish town located fifty-five kilometers southeast of Arbil, once had two small minority communities of Neo-Aramaic speakers, one Jewish and one Christian, each speaking its own variety of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA). In 1951 the Jews of Koy Sanjaq all left for Israel, and since then only the town's Christian Neo-Aramaic variety has lingered on in loco, now spoken by approximately 140 adherents of the Chaldean Catholic Church.' Whereas the grammatical and lexical profiles of the Jewish dialect of Koy Sanjaq are now largely known through the works of R. D. Hoberman and the present writer,2 the Christian dialect of the same town (henceforth CKS) has remained to date completely outside the scope of Neo-Aramaic dialectology. In section 2 salient features of the verbal derivation and verbal inflection of CKS will be presented. The description of these features is based on data obtained from two Koy Sanjaq-born Christians living in Detroit during fieldwork there in 2001, as well as from short recordings of the dialect, including one made in Koy Sanjaq itself, which I had received from my informants a few years earlier. Both informants (a man and a woman unrelated to each other) have been exposed to other Neo-Aramaic dialects since they left their hometown, especially to the dialects of Alqosh and Telkepe, prevalent among Neo-Aramaic speakers in Detroit, and can no longer speak their native dialect in its pristine form. Nonetheless, the dialectal interference detectable in my informants' native speech is by no means heavy, and they could readily furnish genuine CKS grammatical and lexical traits that are absent in the Neo-Aramaic varieties to which they were exposed. In section 3 I shall focus on two selected innovative features of the verbal system of CKS-the loss of Neo-paccel and the constructions of present progressive and present

Some Remarks on Linguistic and Lexical Change in the North Eastern Neo-Aramaic Dialects

Abstract The great diversity of the North Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialect group has only partially been studied. This is now an urgent task, since many of the dialects are now in danger of extinction. These dialects exhibit many fascinating linguistic features, which makes their investigation very rewarding. Investigation of these dialects also casts important light on some issues in the historical development of Aramaic and of North-West Semitic languages in general. Some of these issues are discussed in the paper. Particular attention is directed to the relationship of the lexicon of North-East Neo-Aramaic to that of earlier forms of literary Aramaic.

REVIEWS

Journal Article REVIEWS Get access YONA SABAR, The Book of Deuteronomy in Neo-Aramaic in the Dialect of the Jewish Community of Zakho, Including Selected Texts in Other Neo-Aramaic Dialects and a Glossary (The Hebrew Univerisity Lanuguage Traditions Project 18). Magnes Press, Jerusalem 1994. Pp. x1i + 159 (Modern Hebrew). ISBN: 965-350-004-0 paperback. STRVEN E. FASSBERG STRVEN E. FASSBERG HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Semitic Studies, Volume XLII, Issue 1, Spring 1997, Pages 169–171, https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/XLII.1.169 Published: 01 January 1997

The Relationships of the Eastern Neo-Aramaic Dialects

Northeast Neo-Aramaic (NENA) is made up of many dialects spoken over a wide range of territory. The differences between these dialects are so considerable that one may question whether they form a coherent unit. This paper compares a sample of eleven NENA dialects representing all the main groupings. It examines them with regard to twenty-four phonological, morphological, and lexical features. It is shown that they form a cohesive group and differ decisively from their closest living relatives. At the same time, it is possible to demonstrate bundles of isoglosses which divide the whole into several major subgroups and provide a basis for genetic classification.1

REVIEWS

REVIEWS Get access YONA SABAR, Sefer Vayyiqra be'aramit hadashah/The Book of Leviticus in Neo-Aramaic in the Dialect of the Jewish Community of Zakho including selected texts in other Neo-Aramaic dialects and a glossary, The Hebrew University Languages Traditions Project, vol. XV, Magnes Press, Jerusalem 1990. S. E. FOX S. E. FOX CHICAGO Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Semitic Studies, Volume XXXVII, Issue 2, AUTUMN 1992, Pages 330–331, https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/XXXVII.2.330 Published: 01 October 1992

Recent studies in Neo-Aramaic dialects

Since the beginnings of Neo-Aramaic studies in the second half of the last century, with the work of pioneers such as Stoddard (1855), Sachau (1865) and Noldeke (1868) in East-Neo-Syriac, Prym and Socin (1883) in West-Neo-Syriac (Tur ‘Abdln) and Parisot (1898–9) in West-Aramaic of Ma'lūla and related dialects, research in the field of Neo-Aramaic dialectology has never known such an intensive upsurge as there has been in the second half of this century. Although harsh religious persecution by the Muslims and other unendurable hardships, particularly in this century, exterminated a large proportion of the speakers of these dialects or drove them from their original sites to Russia, America, various European countries and even Australia, where their idioms are likely to die within the next few generations, the interest in their more or less modest remnants is increasing. It is as if Aramaists had finally responded to an earnest last-moment appeal and understood the need to save this linguistic heritage before it disappears totally. However, it is symptomatic that researchers trying to record a dying dialectin situ(Krotkoff, Aradhin in Iraqi Kurdistan 1959, published 1982; Jastrow, Hertevin in East Turkey 1970, published 1988) were unable to find more than a single reliable informant on the dialects of the villages of their respective research

The Book of Genesis in Neo-Aramaic in the Dialect of the Jewish Community of Zakho, including Selected Texts in Other Neo-Aramaic Dialects and a Glossary

The Book of Genesis in Neo-Aramaic in the Dialect of the Jewish Community of Zakho, including Selected Texts in Other Neo-Aramaic Dialects and a Glossary

The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialects of Persian Azerbaijan

The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialects of Persian Azerbaijan