Old Aramaic and Neo-Aramaic : some reflections on language history

Aramaic is not among the oldest Semitic languages in a strictly chronological sense, but among those languages which are still spoken today, it has the longest continuous written tradition. The existing written documents span a period of three millennia and thus enable us to study language history in a long-term perspective. It is very important, in this respect, that the latest stage of development of Aramaic, Neo-Aramaic, still exists in a multitude of spoken varieties which can be studied in vivo. We can thus describe the phonetics and phonology of the modern varieties with more precision than is possible for the older language stages, which in turn enables us to draw conclusions on diachronic sound change. Likewise, we can study morphology and syntax not only from recorded texts, but we also have recourse to native speakers in order to clarify doubtful points. Thus the latest stage of Aramaic casts a strong light back into the past. It is therefore most unfortunate that many Aramaicists and Syrologists show so little interest in this living heritage

Arabic dialects in Turkey — towards a comparative typology

In a workshop devoted to Turkish dialects it is my pleasure to present a short survey of the dialectology of a language which is also spoken on the territory of Turkey and offers considerable dialect variation, namely Arabic

Discoveries from space exploration

Space science contributions in astrophysics, geodesy, geology, meteorology, and astronom

Lunar science prior to Apollo 11

Evolutional aspects and geological interpretations in lunar scienc

The atmospheres of mars, venus and jupiter

Planetary atmosphere composition, temperature, and pressure of Mars, Venus, and Jupite

The Gutzwiller wave function as a disentanglement prescription

The Gutzwiller variational wave function is shown to correspond to a particular disentanglement of the thermal evolution operator, and to be physically consistent only in the temperature range U<<kT<<E_F, the Fermi energy of the non-interacting system. The correspondence is established without using the Gutzwiller approximation. It provides a systematic procedure for extending the ansatz to the strong-coupling regime. This is carried out to infinite order in a dominant class of commutators. The calculation shows that the classical idea of suppressing double occupation is replaced at low temperatures by a quantum RVB-like condition, which involves phases at neighboring sites. Low-energy phenomenologies are discussed in the light of this result.Comment: Final version as accepted in EPJ B, 10 pages, no figure

Das Spannungsfeld von Hochsprache und Dialekt im arabischen Raum

In der arabischen Welt herrscht eine sehr alte und stabile Situation der Diglossie, d.h. des funktional geregelten Nebeneinanders von zwei historischen Entwicklungsstufen der gleichen Sprache. Das Moderne Hocharabisch ist eine konservierte Form des Klassischen Arabisch. Es genießt hohes Ansehen und dient als Schriftsprache, wird aber nicht muttersprachlich erworben, sondern durch Unterricht erlernt. Im mündlichen und informellen Bereich werden die jeweiligen Dialekte verwendet; sie sind die natürliche Muttersprache der Bevölkerung, genießen jedoch keinerlei Ansehen. Da die Hochsprache in ihrer äußeren Form nicht verändert werden darf, aber auch die Dialekte sich nicht zu modernen geschriebenen Volkssprachen entwickeln dürfen, scheint die Diglossiesituation für alle Zeit festgeschrieben. Dadurch ist das Überleben der Dialekte gesichert, obgleich sie sich untereinander stärker annähern. Die Geringschätzung der Dialekte in der arabischen Welt bedingt auch eine Ablehnung der Dialektologie. Deshalb war die arabische Dialektologie immer eine Domäne westlicher Forscher, doch nun deutet sich auch im Westen ihr Niedergang an

From Quarks to Nuclei: Challenges of Lattice QCD

I discuss challenge of lattice QCD, from quarks to nuclei, which connects QCD with nuclear physics.Comment: 7 pages, 10 figures, A talk given in the panel discussion "Fundamental challenge of QCD", at 47. Internationale Universit\"atswochen f\"ur Theoretical Physik Schladming, Stria, Austria, 28 February - 7 March, 200

Test of a Jastrow-type wavefunction for a trapped few-body system in one dimension

For a system with interacting quantum mechanical particles in a one-dimensional harmonic oscillator, a trial wavefunction with simple structure based on the solution of the corresponding two-particle system is suggested and tested numerically. With the inclusion of a scaling parameter for the distance between particles, at least for the very small systems tested here the ansatz gives a very good estimate of the ground state energy, with the error being of the order of ~1% of the gap to the first excited state