Professor Gene B Gragg's unbounded intellectual curiosity and rigorous linguistic method have served as a bridge between the often disparate fields of Semitic philology and linguistics, between the various sub-disciplines that study the ancient Near East, between the study of ancient languages by means of scribal corpora and modern languages by means of language helpers, and between users and developers of computer programs for linguistic and text analysis. In so doing he has inspired a generation of students and colleagues to new vistas and greater horizons. All but one of the essays in this volume were originally presented at a symposium at the Oriental Institute on May 21-22, 2004, in honour of his retirement. The symposium was centered around Semitic and comparative Semitic linguistics, the areas of inquiry of most of Professor Gragg's students; two other papers at the symposium (those by Bender and Militarev) directed our attention to his comparative Afroasiatic interests. An additional paper by Rebecca Hasselbach, who was recently hired to teach Comparative Semitics at the Oriental Institute, rounds off the volume.

The handbook The Semitic Languages offers a comprehensive reference tool for Semitic Linguistics in its broad sense. It is not restricted to comparative Grammar, although it covers also comparative aspects, including classification. By comprising a chapter on typology and sections with sociolinguistic focus and language contact, the conception of the book aims at a rather complete, unbiased description of the state of the art in Semitics. Articles on individual languages and dialects give basic facts as location, numbers of speakers, scripts, numbers of extant texts and their nature, attestation where appropriate, and salient features of the grammar and lexicon of the respective variety. The handbook is the most comprehensive treatment of the Semitic language family since many decades.

Understanding Relations Between Scripts examines the writing systems of the ancient Aegean and Cyprus in the second and first millennia BC, principally Cretan ‘Hieroglyphic’, Linear A, Linear B, Cypro-Minoan and the Cypriot Syllabary. These scripts, of which some are deciphered and others are not, are known to be related to each other. However, the details of their relationships with each other have remained poorly understood and this will be the first volume dedicated solely to this issue. Nine papers aim to reach a better appreciation of relationships between writing systems than has been possible in previous research, through an interdisciplinary dialogue that takes account of both features of the writing systems and the contextual factors affecting the way in which writing was passed on. Each individual contribution furthers this aim by presenting the latest research on the Aegean scripts, demonstrating the great advances in our understanding of script relations that are possible through such detailed and innovative studies.

This volume honors Dennis G. Pardee, Henry Crown Professor of Hebrew Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago and one of the preeminent experts in Northwest Semitic languages and literatures, particularly Ugaritic studies. The thirty-seven essays by colleagues and former students reflect the wide range of Professor Pardee's research interests and include, among other topics, new readings of inscriptions, studies of poetic structure, and investigations of Late Bronze Age society.

This study uses modern linguistic theory to analyze a frequently recurring syntactic phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible that has thus far resisted explanation: כי אם. The combination of the two particles כי and אם produces a construction that is notoriously difficult to describe, analyze syntactically, and translate. Dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew offer a dizzying variety of translations for this construction, including “that if,” “except,” “unless,” “but,” “but only,” and “surely,” among other possibilities. In this book, Grace J. Park provides a new approach that strives for greater precision and consistency in translation. Park argues that כי אם is used in three patterns: the “full focus” pattern, the “reduced focus” pattern, and the less common “non-focus” pattern. Her syntactic analysis of all 156 occurrences of the כי אם construction in the Bible lends greater clarity to the contested passages. Drawing on recent linguistic research into the typology of clausal nominalization as well as previous work on contrastive focus, this innovative project provides important new insight into the syntax of Biblical Hebrew. It will be especially valuable for scholars seeking to translate כי אם more consistently and accurately.

By challenging assumptions regarding the proximity between Egyptian and Semitic Languages, Ancient Egyptian and Afroasiatic provides a fresh approach to the relationships and similarities between Ancient Egyptian, Semitic, and Afroasiatic languages. This in-depth analysis includes a re-examination of the methodologies deployed in historical linguistics and comparative grammar, a morphological study of Ancient Egyptian, and critical comparisons between Ancient Egyptian and Semitic, as well as careful considerations of environmental factors and archaeological evidence. These contributions offer a reassessment of the Afroasiatic phylum, which is based on the relations between Ancient Egyptian and the other Afroasiatic branches. This volume illustrates the advantages of viewing Ancient Egyptian in its African context. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this collection include Shiferaw Assefa, Michael Avina, Vit Bubenik, Leo Depuydt, Christopher Ehret, Zygmunt Frajzyngier, J. Lafayette Gaston, Tiffany Gleason, John Huehnergard, Andrew Kitchen, Elsa Oréal, Chelsea Sanker, Lameen Souag, Andréas Stauder, Deven N. Vyas, Aren Wilson-Wright, and Jean Winand.

In The Amorite Dynasty of Ugarit Mary Buck pursues a nuanced view of populations in the Bronze Age Levant, with the objective of understanding the ancient polity of Ugarit as a kin-based culture that shares close ties with neighbouring Amorite populations.