Bausi, Alessandro

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???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????? ???????????????????????? ??????????? ?? ?????? ?????????????? ???????? ?????????????????? ???? ???????? ????????? ???????? ??? ??????? ??? ????? ??????????? ?	?????	?	?? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????? ???????????????? ????????? ???????????????? ??????????????????????????????????? ?????????????Reviews Aethiopica 13 (2010) 254GIDEON GOLDENBERG – ARIEL SHISHA-HALEVY (eds.), ?????????????????????????????????????. ??????????? ????????? ???????????? /  	     	 	    = Publica-tions of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Section of Humanities, Studies in the Humanities. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2009. Pp. xix + 501. Price: US $ 75.00. ISBN: 978–965–208–177–3. The volume is one more witness to the long-lasting, gratefully and universally acknowledged decisive influence Hans Jakob Polotsky (1905-1991) has ex-erted on the development (mainly, but not only) of Egyptian, Semitic and general linguistics studies especially within the frame of his activities at the University of Jerusalem since the ’30s of the past century, where he founded a real school (also comprising scholars not included among the contributors to the present volume, such as, e.g., Olga Kapeliuk, and several others). Polotsky established there a prestigious and innovative tradition of linguistic studies and approached fundamental questions with original ideas as well as with an extremely rigorous method of first-hand examination of the sources1. The present book comprises 25 studies presented by Egyptologists and Semitists – either pupils, friends or colleagues of Polotsky – at a workshop held in 2001, on the tenth anniversary of Polotsky’s death, at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, finally edited and published, with a considerable delay, yet still welcome, by two among the most outstanding of Polotsky’s pupils: Gideon Goldenberg and Ariel Shisha-Halevy, at  1 Among the previous tributes to Polotksy and reprints of his contributions, the follow-ing can be here mentioned: HAIIM BARUCH ROSÉN (ed.), ???????? ?????????????????????????????: ??? ??????? ??? ????? ????????, Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1964; HANS JAKOB POLOTSKY, ????????????????, Jerusalem: At The Magnes Press, The He-brew University, 1971; HANNAH ROSÉN – HAIIM ROSÉN, ?????????????????????????????????????: ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????, München: Finck, 1980; DWIGHT W. YOUNG (ed.), ???????? ?????????? ??????????????????????, Beacon Hill, MS: Pirtle Polson, 1981; JOHN D. RAY (ed.), ?????????????????????: ????????????? ????????? ????????????? ???????????????????????????????????? ?????????? ???? ???? ???????? ??? ????????? ???????? ??? ????? ??????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????, Cambridge: Cambridge University, Fac-ulty of Oriental Studies, 1987; VERENA LEPPER in cooperation with PETER NAGEL (eds.), “??????????????”: ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????, Göttingen: Seminar für Ägyptologie und Koptologie, 2006 = Lingua Aegyptia 14 (2006); VERENA LEPPER – LEO DEPUYDT (eds.), ????? ????????: ???????? ??????????? ??? ????????? ???? ?????? = Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica 7, Göttingen: Seminar für Ägyptologie und Koptologie, 2007. Reviews Aethiopica 13 (2010) 255present among the world-wide most estimated scholars in Semitic and Cop-tic linguistics respectively. Subjects discussed include Polotsky’s life and work, by Edward Ullenforff (“The Young (and Not So Young) Polotsky: Scholar and Teacher”, pp. 1–15), who was himself a pupil as well as a friend of Polotsky’s, and a devout cultivator of his memory for long (cp. Id., ????? ???????? ?????? ????????? ??? ????? ????????. ??? ?????????? ???? ???????? ?????????? = Aethiopistische Forschungen 42, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1995; Hans Jakob Polotsky, ???????????? ??????. ???????????? ???????? ???? ?????????? ??? ??????? ?????????? = Äthiopistische Forschungen 34, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1992): also on this occa-sion Ullendorff gives due place to very personal impressions and memories; a more specific evaluation of Polotsky’s contribution is presented by Shisha-Halevy and Nicacci (s. below); studies in Egyptian (Orly Goldwasser, “A Comparison between Classifier Languages and Classifier Script: The Case of Ancient Egyptian”, pp. 16–39; Wolfgang Schenkel, “Prädikatives und abstrakt-relativisches ?????? Beobachtungen an den Ver-ben II. gem. und ult.? ? im Korpus der Sargtexte”, pp. 40–60; Helmut Satzinger, “On Some Aspects of ???in Middle Egyptian”, pp. 61–69; cp. also Alviero Niccacci, “Polotsky’s Contribution to the Egyptian Verb-System, with a Comparison to Biblical Hebrew”, pp. 401–65) and Coptic linguistics (Wolf-Peter Funk, “Methodological Issues in the (Morpho)Phonological Description of Coptic”, pp. 70–91; Ariel Shisha-Halevy, “On Conversion, Clause Ordination and Related Notions. Some Reflections on General and Polotskyan Models”, pp. 92–105); Semitic verbal morphology (Shlomo Izre’el, “Con-structive Constructions. Semitic Verbal Morphology and Beyond”, pp. 106–31); ques-tions of Akkadian linguistics (Eran Cohen, “Nexus and Nexus Focusing”, pp. 131–48; Nathan Wasserman, “The Modal Particle ???? in Old Babylonian”, pp. 149–68); Ethio-semitic linguistics (s. below); Arabic grammatical tradition, historical linguistics, and dialectology (Rafael Talmon, “Two Studies in Arabic Tamyz”, pp. 197–219; Joshua Blau, “Reconstruction of Neo-Arabic Dialectal Features from Middle Arabic Texts”, pp. 220–29; Otto Jastrow, “The Arabic Dialects of the Carmel Coast”, pp. 230–38; Roni Henkin, “How Interdialectal Is Peripheral Oral Bedouin Poetry?”, pp. 239–69; Rami Saari, “Some Remarks on Maltese Prepositions of Italian Origin”, pp. 270-76); Biblical and Modern Hebrew linguistics (Ora [Rodrigue] Schwarzwald, “Three Related Analyses in Modern Hebrew Morphology”, pp. 277–301; Tamar Zewi, “Content Expressions in Biblical Hebrew”, pp. 302–16; Dana Taube, “The Passive Participle in Modern He-brew”, pp. 317–36; Tali Bar, “On Cleft Sentences in Contemporary Hebrew”, pp. 337–55); questions of syntax (Marta Rauret Domènech, “‘Kopula’: Ein ‘zur rechten Zeit gestelltes Wort’?”, pp. 356–62; Simon Hopkins, “‘That Monster of a Man’ and the Emo-tive Genitive”, pp. 363–89; Marcel Erdal, “First and Second Person Nominal Subjects”, pp. 390–400); and a contribution on general linguistics (Pablo I. Kirtchuk-Halevi, “Lan-guage: A Typological, Functional, Cognitive, Biological and Evolutionary Approach”, pp. 466–501), also controversial in the editors’ own words (“Kirtchuk tends to underes-timate the more important arbitrariness of the linguistic sign … his style may regrettably hide from the reader not a few significant observations”, s. p. xix). The two contributions dedicated to Ethiosemitic linguistics deserve here a closer examination. Reviews Aethiopica 13 (2010) 256Rainer Voigt’s “Südtigrinische Dialekte. Phonologie und Personalpro-nomina im Dialekt von May-’äw (Tgray)”, pp. 169–83 – once definitely assessed (notwithstanding the famous Ullendorff’s assumption, cp. p. 171) that Tigrinya dialectal variations exist – sketches a short but useful history of the research and proposes a main distinction between Northern dialects (from Aksum and Adwa to Asmara, on which the literary language is also based) and Southern dialects (Southeastern Tgray, “spirantisierende Dialekte”). He focuses then on two specific features of the latter: a) the spirantization of the velars and corresponding labiovelars (?/, ??/?, ??/?, ???/??) and its morphonologic consequences; b) the question of the origin of the personal pronoun ???? versus Amh. ??? etc. Voigt – besides several interesting observations, e.g., the hypothesis that Amharic is grown up from a Southern Tigrinya dialect (p. 179) – proposes a derivation from the noun attested in Gz as ???, Semitic *???? (“belly”), yet within the hypothe-sis of a multiple derivation from Ethiosemitic nouns (?????, ???????, and ??????). Gideon Goldenberg’s “From Speech to Writing in Gurage-Land. First Attempts to Write in the Vernacular”, pp. 184–96, provides a very fascinat-ing piece which defines the essential coordinates for a study of the early attempts at writing Gurage languages (started in the 1990s), and Kstanñña (also known as Aymälläl or Soddo) in particular. Specific subject of analysis are the Kstanñña texts collected in the Amharic book by Wärqu Täsfa, ?????????? ???? ??? ????????? ????????? ??????????? ??? ??? ??????????????????? ???? ??? ????????? ?????? ??????????? ????????? ?????????????????????? ???????? ????????? ??????? ????, Addis Abäba: Bängd Mattämiya Drt, bäGnbot 1987 a.m. [1995 A.D.]. Goldenberg points out to the number of phenomena which occur in the process of writing down the texts, such as the phonological and morphological analysis, and elaborates on the fundamental topics of writing and its influence on the structure of language (“what the introduction of writing, while just provid-ing symbols substituting for speaking, can do to a language”), as usual, within a solid theoretical frame and in a comparative and extremely stimu-lating perspective. Alessandro Bausi, Universität Hamburg 

Gideon Goldenberg - Ariel Shisha-Halevy (eds.): Egyptian, Semitic and General Grammar

Review of Gideon Goldenberg and Ariel Shisha-Halevy, eds, Egyptian, Semitic and General Grammar. Studies in Memory of H.J. Polotsky / הלשון המצרית לשונות שמיות ומדע הדקדוק מחקרים לזכר יעקב פולוצקי, Publications of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Section of Humanities, Studies in the humanities (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2009)

BAUSI, Alessandro

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Aethiopica

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Gideon Goldenberg - Ariel Shisha-Halevy (eds.): Egyptian, Semitic and General Grammar

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