Foreign Language Study

The Hittite Etymological Dictionary is a comprehensive compendium of the vocabulary of Hittite, one of the great languages of the Ancient Near East, and of paramount importance for comparative Indo-European studies. Since the start of publication, as evidenced by frequency of reference and quotation, this work has become an important tool for study and research in Hittite, Ancient Anatolian, and Indo-European linguistics.

Volume 9 of the dictionary deals with words beginning with PE, PI, PU.

This volume assembles scholars working on cuneiform texts from different periods, genres, and areas to examine the range of social, cultural, and historical contexts in which specific types of texts circulated. Using different methodologies and sources of evidence, these articles reconstruct the contexts in which various cuneiform texts circulated, providing a critical framework to determine how they functioned.

The Global Latin II Conference has highlighted the role of the Latin language as cultural medium between West and East. Adopting a diachronic perspective which spans from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age, the conference and its proceedings have paid special attention to texts related to Africa and Asia. The richness of literary genres as well as the dialogue between the Humanities and hard sciences characterize this volume.

Students of Classics will find reflections on the role of Latin in the humanistic and missionary traditions, whereas historians of ideas and historians of religions will be able to pinpoint key moments in the use of Latin language and culture in Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Ethiopian contexts. This volume can also be of interest to people working on Digital Humanities and computational linguistics in Latin language, and it represents a novelty on the world scene, along the lines of the previous Global Latin I Conference, which was yet again held in Siena in 2019.

The volume is a collection of papers which apply Role & Reference Grammar (RRG) to African languages. RRG is a functional theory of syntax which has been developed on the basis of two leading questions: First, how would a syntactic theory look like which starts from ‘exotic’ languages rather than English? Second, how can the interaction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics in different grammatical systems best modelled and explained? Although RRG took linguistic diversity serious from its very beginning, African languages have been underrepresented in the development of the theory. Given the sheer number African languages deserve a wider coverage in a syntactic theory which takes linguistic diversity seriously. The volume is intended to fill this gap and comprises a selection of papers which investigate different aspects related to the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface of different African languages. This includes: argument doubling and dislocation in iziZulu, complex referential phrases in Gĩkũyũ, serial verb constructions in Igbo, locative complements in Hausa and Zarma Chiine and focus constructions in Emai. The papers will extent the current RRG approach to new languages and phenomena.

This is a print on demand publication. Demonstrates that the Dravidian language family of South Asia is related to Elamite, a major language of ancient West Asia. Also, it follows up on some of the implications of this relationship. To do this, summaries are provided of comparative Dravidian & of Elamite grammar. The methodology employed is traditional, philologically based, comparative linguistics. While this work contains a fairly detailed & thorough discussion of comparative Dravidian & of Elamite grammar, it is not a comparative grammar or even the beginnings of one. Background introductions in archaeology & history are provided for those who are unfamiliar with the ancient Near East. This work has one goal: to prove beyond doubt that Elamite & Dravidian are cognate. Illustrations.

This special issue of the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library is devoted to the Aldine edition of the Ancient Greek epistolographers. Published in Venice in 1499 by Aldus Manutius, the Aldine edition was the first printed edition of most of the thirty-six Greek letter collections that it contains. As such, it embodies the intersection between the medieval epistolary anthologies that predated it and the printed editions of Greek epistolographic collections that followed, which were primarily based on its text. In recent decades, the Aldien edition has been the subject of important works, which have sought to analyse its contents and sources. This issue explores the Aldine edition from three perspectives: its relationship to the epistolary collections found in medieval manuscripts, its relationship to the printed editions that followed it and its legacy and value for the modern scholar studying Ancient Greek epistolography.

A new coursebook in modern standard Arabic from the authors of kullu tamam!

This sequel to the well-known kullu tamam!, on Egyptian Arabic, by the same authors, focuses on the modern written language used in real life by providing short texts taken from Egyptian newspapers, official statements, and the internet, and introduces personal and business letters, some of them in handwritten form (ruq‘a). For those who have studied kullu tamam!, the first lessons give contrastive word lists and exercises to make the link with Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. Extensive pattern drills, translation exercises in both directions, and writing exercises aid understanding and encourage active use of the language. The key to the exercises, the Arabic –English / English –Arabic glossary, and the audio material containing the texts allow for classroom use as well as for self-study.

While most courses in Egyptian Arabic teach the essentials of syntax, morphology, and vocabulary, this resource book takes the student a step beyond. Intended for the advanced learner of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic who has mastered the basics, this third in a series of three books (following Volume 1, Adjectives and Descriptions, and Volume 2, Proverbs) focuses on colorful expressions used by native speakers. The learner will advance from knowing how to form a good sentence to being able to express his or her thoughts about the ups and downs of daily life using culturally appropriate expressions. Definitions (including connotation) and explanations are given in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, and expressions taught in the book are used in many of the definitions, thus providing further reinforcement. Organized as a reference work, the book can also be used as a textbook, as it contains exercises.

Publication entitled The Contemporary Arab World. Literary and Linguistic Issues was designed and written by the members of staff of the Department of Arabic Studies of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. It shows results of the research linked to their scholarly and didactic interests. It is a collection of six papers dealing with selected issues in the field of Arabic language and literature, focused on phenomena and processes taking place in contemporary Arab world.

Teaching Arabic as a foreign language faces many methodological challenges connected with the specificity and complexity of the sociolinguistic situation in the Arabic world. They mostly concern the necessity for considering different types (registers) of the language, distinguishing, understanding and using which makes it possible for learners to achieve full communication skills.

The end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century brought above all a new look at the didactic process, forcing revision of the traditional grammar–translation method in teaching foreign languages. Higher education schools must cope with new problems connected with their functioning on the broad market of formal and informal education, which is determined by the term “success on the job market”. Needs and expectations of learners change. Which direction will development of Arabic Studies take then? How to bring together the mission of higher education institutions and pragmatic needs of the market, or current needs of “consumers” and guidelines of central curricula. Is such compromise possible?