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45-458: There were a number of other Old South Arabian languages (e.g. Awsānian), of which very little evidence has survived, however. A pair of possible surviving Sayhadic languages is attested in the Razihi language and Faifi language spoken in far north-west of Yemen , though these varieties of speech have both Arabic and Sayhadic features, and it is difficult to classify them as either Arabic dialects with

90-416: A Sayhadic substratum , or Sayhadic languages that have been restructured under pressure of Arabic. It was originally thought that all four members of this group were dialects of one Old South Arabian language, but in the mid-twentieth century, linguist A.F.L. Beeston finally proved that they did in fact constitute independent languages. The Old South Arabian languages were originally classified (partly on

135-667: A confidence in his researches and opinions on topics connected with Hebrew philology, such as has been bestowed on few scholars. Gesenius also contributed extensively to Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopädie , and enriched the German translation of Johann Ludwig Burckhardt 's Travels in Syria and the Holy Land with valuable geographical notes. For many years he also edited the Halle Allgemeine Litteraturzeitung . A sketch of his life

180-692: A number of English translations, including the Gesenius's Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures , a 1853 edition revised by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles and the Brown–Driver–Briggs , a 1907 edition revised by Francis Brown , Samuel Rolles Driver and Charles A. Briggs . As indicated by the title pages, the German editions of these works were carried forward by several revised editions, after Gesenius's death, by other scholars, most conspicuously Emil Rödiger . The newest edition

225-477: A number of participles through the grammaticalization of a number of classes of content words, such as /rd͡ʒaʕ/ 'then' which was the result of the semantic bleaching of the imperative /ʔird͡ʒaʕ/ 'return (m.s.)!': The particle /d͡ʒoː/ is a likely result of the semantic bleaching of the reflex of /d͡ʒaː/ and it primarily functions to convey permanent existence or habitude: Razihi similar to neighboring Arabic speech varieties and Sabaic, but dissimilar to Faifi, retains

270-569: A number of prepositions that are reminiscent of Sabaic such as /buː/ 'in' (Sabaic *b- 'in' ), /ʔaθar/ 'after' (Sabaic *ʔθr 'after'), /baʕd/ 'after' (Sabaic *bʕd 'after') and /ʕaleː/ 'on' (Sabaic *ʕl 'on, upon') alongside other grammatical features reminiscent of Sabaic such as the usage of /joːm/ as 'when (suborinator)'. This usage of /joːm/ as 'when' can also be found in some Arabic speech varieties such as Tihami Qahtani and various Bedouin varieties in Northeastern Arabia. Razihi has developed

315-556: A primary split setting it apart from the other Sayhadic languages on the basis of the h/s isogloss in the formation of the personal pronouns and the causative stem further positing a closer relationship between Minaic and Hadramitic with the Ethiopian Semitic and Modern South Arabian branches. The four main Sayhadic languages were: Sabaean , Minaeic (or Madhabic), Qatabanic , and Hadramitic . Sayhadic had its own writing system,

360-529: A selection of texts in 1893 along with an attempt at a grammar. Later on the Sabaean expert Nikolaus Rhodokanakis made especially important steps towards understanding Old South Arabian. A completely new field of Old South Arabian script and texts has opened up since the 1970s with the discovery of wooden cylinders on which Sabaean has been written with a pen. The unknown script and numerous incomprehensible words present Sabaean studies with new problems, and to this day

405-548: A translation of the German edition, this too was a reworked revisions). His large lexicon of Biblical Hebrew and Chaldee (Aramaic) was first published in 1829, and its revision and expansion, under the editorship of Rödiger, continued after Gesenius's death until 1858. His textbook on Hebrew grammar first appeared, as a small book of a mere 202 pages, in 1813, and went through 13 editions in Gesenius's lifetime and as many afterward. He also published some smaller works, in German, on

450-429: Is absent or not. In the proximal demonstratives agreement is restricted to the referent but the distal demonstratives may agree with the addressee. The plural demonstratives have a two-way distinction between human male and non-human male: Razihi is unique amongst Semitic languages for having near identical dependent and independent second person pronouns. The independent pronouns of Razihi are as follows: Razihi uses

495-457: Is expressed through the /faː/, /fa/, /haː/ +active participle : A similar construction is found in Sabaic in the form of subject + *f- + predicate . Wilhelm Gesenius Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius (3 February 1786 – 23 October 1842) was a German orientalist , lexicographer , Christian Hebraist , Lutheran theologian , Biblical scholar and critic . Gesenius

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540-496: Is however some discrepancy as to how many of Gesenius's children died before their father. Gesenius died at Halle and is buried near the university. According to tradition, theology students in Halle put stones on his grave as a token of respect every year before their examinations. Gesenius takes much of the credit for having freed Semitic philology from the trammels of theological and religious prepossession, and for inaugurating

585-645: Is later mentioned again in Behnstedt (2017:17) not as being slightly retroflex but instead being described as such because the tip of the tongue lies just behind the ridge of the teeth when the sound is pronounced. Before mentioning this phonetic quality the discussion begins by questioning how in previous efforts to document the speech variety of Jabal Razih the author was unable to attest the supposed lateral quality of this sound as suggested by Watson, Glover-Stalls, Al-Razih, & Weir (2006), but that it may have been an older realization at some point. Weir (2007:21) notes that

630-513: Is marked with a final /-ah/; and in other non-adjective participles by final /-iːt/ in all three states. The future particle /meːd/ in Razihit functions similarly to that of the speech variety of Rijāl Almaʿ and various Modern South Arabian languages, but unlike either it takes the definitive article /ʔan-/ and is followed by either a verb, noun, or adjective: The continuous aspect is expressed in Razihi

675-625: Is reported by Ethnologue to have been 62,900 in 2004. A comprehensive study of the speakers, including their written tradition, was the topic of the book " A Tribal Order: Politics and Law in the Mountains of Yemen " (2007) by Shelagh Weir. This work includes a number of interesting realities of life in Jabal Razih including the mention that the tribes of the area typically have the term 'Ilt (IPA: /ʔilt/) in their tribe name (e.g. Ilt al-Qayyāl , Ilt ʿIzzan ) and that aside from external governing bodies

720-430: Is the 18th which was published in 2013. Edward Robinson , an acquaintance of Gesenius, and his principal English translator and biographer, said of him, So clear were his own conception, that he never uttered a sentence, no scarcely ever wrote one, which even the dullest intellect did not at once comprehend. In this respect, he may be said to stand out almost alone among modern German scholars. ... In all that fell within

765-533: The Evangelische Kirchenzeitung , on account of his rationalism and his lecture comments treating lightly the Biblical accounts of miracles. He was thereafter troubled with personal stresses; in 1833 he nearly died of lung disease, in 1835 three of his children died, and subsequently he was tormented by various physical complaints. His death in 1842 came after prolonged misery from gall stones. There

810-600: The Septuagint and the Vulgate ) had in the same verses, his own contribution to that field was the inclusion of insights obtained from the study of other languages, ancient and non-semitic. From his extensive body of work, the products most familiar to modern English-speaking readers are his Hebrew Grammar, best represented by an English translation of the 28th German edition, published by Oxford University Press in 1910, and his dictionary of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, known through

855-446: The 18th century, it was Wilhelm Gesenius (1786–1842) and his student Emil Rödiger who finally undertook the deciphering of the script, actually independently of each other, in the years 1841/42. Then in the second half of the 19th century Joseph Halévy and Eduard Glaser brought hundreds of Old South Arabian inscriptions, possible tracings and copies back to Europe. On the basis of this large amount of material Fritz Hommel prepared

900-617: The Ancient South Arabian Monumental Script , or Msnd , consisting of 29 graphemes concurrently used for proto-Geʿez in the Kingdom of Dʿmt , ultimately sharing a common origin with the other Semitic abjads , the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet . Inscriptions in another minuscule cursive script written on wooden sticks have also been discovered. The last inscription of these languages has been dated to 554 CE, 60 years before

945-455: The ancient world, Palestine for instance, the number of surviving inscriptions is very high. Something in the region of 10,000 inscriptions exist. The Sabaean lexicon contains about 2,500 words. The inscriptions on stone display a very formal and precise wording and expression, whereas the style of the wooden inscriptions written in the cursive script is much more informal. Although the inscriptions from ancient South Arabia were already known by

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990-550: The appearance of Islam. Old South Arabian comprised a number of languages; the following are those that have been preserved in writing (the dates follow the so-called long chronology). Besides these, at least Razihi may be a surviving Old South Arabian language. Old South Arabian was written in the Old South Arabian script, a consonantal abjad deriving from the Phoenician alphabet. Compared with other parts of

1035-498: The basis of geography) as South Semitic, along with Modern South Arabian and Ethiopian Semitic ; more recently however, a new classification has come in use which places Old South Arabian, along with Arabic, Ugaritic, Aramaic and Canaanite / Hebrew in a Central Semitic group; leaving Modern South Arabian and Ethiopic in a separate group. This new classification is based on Arabic, Old South Arabian and Northwest Semitic ( Ugaritic , Aramaic and Canaanite ) sharing an innovation in

1080-399: The beginning of the book that the " local dialect, or language, is extremely unusual, and was always a difficulty, but some male informants could switch to a register of Arabic that I could understand more easily " and this is part of why the plethora of Razihi documents she was able to photocopy required rather specialized knowledge for her to understand. The earliest of these documents date to

1125-729: The early 10th century AH ( 17th century AD ). Razihi speakers see their speech variety as distinct from those around them who they describe as speaking " Yamanīt " ( Yemeni ). An affricate sound [s͡t] is also present, as a realization of the Arabic [sˤ] from loan words. Razihi exhibits wide-scale assimilation of coronal consonants in words. Unlike in Arabic , this is not restricted to obstruents but includes sonorants , most significantly /n/ , as can be seen in words such as ssān , "man" and ssānah , "woman", which are cognate words of Arabic insān , "person". Nasal consonant assimilation

1170-666: The examination of rare oriental manuscripts, and in 1835 to England and the Netherlands in connection with his Phoenician studies. He became the most popular teacher of Hebrew and of Old Testament introduction and exegesis in Germany; during his later years his lectures were attended by nearly five hundred students. Among his pupils the most eminent were Peter von Bohlen , C. P. W. Gramberg , A. G. Hoffmann , Hermann Hupfeld , Emil Rödiger , J. C. F. Tuch , J. K. W. Vatke and Theodor Benfey . His first Hebrew lexicon (with German text)

1215-492: The far northwestern corner of Yemen . Along with Faifi , it is possibly the only surviving descendant of the Old South Arabian languages. Razihi is spoken on Jabal Razih, a mountain lying west of the town Sa'dah , whose highest summit, Jabal Hurum, is 2,790 m (9,150 ft) high. The population of Jabal Razih was approximately 25,000 in the 1970s and is estimated to be much more now. The number of Razihi speakers

1260-833: The grammatical anomalies found in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. He also wrote extensively on the Samaritans and their version of the Pentateuch, and on the Phoenicians and their language, most notably with the publication of Scripturae Linguaeque Phoeniciae . In 1827, after declining an invitation to take Eichhorn's place at Göttingen, Gesenius was made a Consistorialrat . In 1830 there were violent verbal attacks to which he, along with his friend and colleague Julius Wegscheider , were subjected by E. W. Hengstenberg and his party in

1305-434: The group. Students normally begin to learn the grammar of Old South Arabian and then they finally read a few of the longer texts. Short introductions and overviews Grammars Dictionaries Collections of texts Razihi language Razihi ( Rāziḥī ), originally known to linguists as " Naẓīri ", is a Central Semitic language spoken by at least 62,900 people in the vicinity of Mount Razih (Jabal Razih) in

1350-521: The latter sound is pronounced the same as the /t͡ʃ/ in the English word "chat". A similar realization of ḍ as /t͡ʃ/ can be found in the Faifi language. Behnstedt (2017:17) makes note of various words from Razihi with said sound, alongside their Classical Arabic cognates: Other noteworthy features to mention is the realization of ẓ in some words, which seems to have lost both voicing and pharyngealization such as in

1395-405: The monophthongization of *aj and *aw to /eː/ and /oː/ similar to neighboring speech varieties and similar to some suggestive evidence towards this same change in later varieties of Sabaic. Razihi is unique amongst speech varieties in the area, as far as is documented, for having a rather large inventory of demonstrative pronouns that account for the gender, distance, and whether or not the referent

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1440-435: The most important isoglosses retained in all four languages is the suffixed definite article -(h)n , another proposed common innovation being the formation of 1st and 2nd person perfect verbal forms with -k (which is also a feature of Yemeni Arabic attributable to a Sayhadic substrate). There are however significant differences between the languages, so much so that Stein proposes a relationship between Sabaic and Aramaic, with

1485-647: The political sphere of Jabal Razih was typically dominated by the Sayyid elite being that the majority of Razihi tribes have historically been adherents of the Zaydi form of Shi'a Islam. Attestation of the Razih region directly is known as early as al-Hamdani 's work al-Iklīl but the tribal federation that the speakers of Razihi belong to, Khawlan bin ʾAmir, were possibly known to the Sabaeans as Ḫwln Gdd(t)n . Weir makes mention in

1530-484: The proper sphere of his own researches, he never rested upon the authority of others, but investigated for himself, with all the minute accuracy and closeness of detail and unwearied industry for which German learning is celebrated. His one great object was philological truth. He had no preconceived theories, to the support of which he was at all hazards committed, and in connection with which only he sought for truth. These traits, combined with his extensive learning, inspired

1575-456: The realization of the consonants š and ḍ, the suggested realizations in Watson, Glover-Stalls, Al-Razihi, & Weir (2006) are not universally attested and are indeed contested in Behnstedt (1987:94-96), Behnstedt (2017:17), and Weir (2007). The sound š is noted in Behnstedt (1987:94-96) as being " similar to that of Swedish [ʃ] " and that of ḍ being " a retroflexed [t͡ʃ] ". The status of the latter

1620-464: The so-called " k-perfect ". The following is the perfect and imperfect paradigms for the verb /reː/ 'see': Similar to Sabaic , Modern South Arabian , and Afrosemitic languages the feminine ending /-t/ is always attested in the definitive and construct states but also in the absolute state in many basic nouns. In adjectives the feminine gender is handled three ways: it is not explicitly marked on verbal participles; in some non-participle adjectives it

1665-542: The strictly scientific (and comparative) method which has since been so fruitful. As an exegete he exercised a powerful influence on theological investigation. He may also be considered as a founder of Phoenician studies. Gesenius was keenly aware of previous efforts at dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew (he provided an extensive survey of Hebrew lexicography in the 1823 edition of his Hebrew lexicon for schools ), and, compared to previous lexicons which had simply translated Hebrew expressions as whatever other versions (primarily

1710-411: The verbal system, an imperfect taking the form * yVqtVl-u (the other groups have *yVqattVl ); Nebes showed that Sabaean at least had the form yVqtVl in the imperfect. Even though it has been now accepted that the four main languages be considered independent, they are clearly closely related linguistically and derive from a common ancestor because they share certain morphological innovations. One of

1755-469: The wooden cylinders are not completely understood. In the German-speaking world, Old South Arabian is taught in the framework of Semitic Studies, and no independent university chair has been dedicated to Old South Arabian (or Sabaean) Studies. Learning Old South Arabian at least furthers the student’s knowledge of the characteristics of Semitic by introducing him or her to a less well-preserved example of

1800-470: The word ṯilām (IPA: /θilaːm/) ' darkness ', and that of ṣ which is noted in Watson, Glover-Stalls, Al-Razih, & Weir (2005) as being the consonant cluster /st/. The latter may reflect another similarity with Faifi where ṣ is pronounced as the cluster /st/ in loanwords from Arabic but as /sˤ/ in native vocabulary. The phoneme ġ can be realized as /ɣ/, /χ/, or /q/ while the reflex of *q is typically /g/ much like neighboring speech varieties. Razihi exhibits

1845-479: Was a feature of some Ancient North Arabian languages (primarily Safaitic ) and Old South Arabian but is not found in any Arabic dialect aside from perhaps the speech variety of Harūb, Saudi Arabia. In contrast to Yemeni Arabic dialects, Razihi does not ever allow word-final consonant clusters (-CC). Syncope , or the removal, of the high vowels /i/ and /u/ is a common phenomenon in Razihi: In regards to

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1890-533: Was born at Nordhausen . In 1803 he became a student of philosophy and theology at the University of Helmstedt , where Heinrich Henke was his most influential teacher; but the latter part of his university course was taken at Göttingen , where Johann Gottfried Eichhorn and Thomas Christian Tychsen were then at the height of their popularity. In 1806, shortly after graduation, he became Repetent and Privatdozent (or Magister legens ) at Göttingen; and, as he

1935-574: Was consistently filled; by 1810 his lectures were attended by more than 500 students – nearly half the student population of the university. The only interruptions occurred in 1813–1814, occasioned by the German War of Liberation ( War of the Sixth Coalition ), during which the university was closed, and those occasioned by two prolonged literary tours, first in 1820 to Paris , London and Oxford with his colleague Johann Karl Thilo (1794–1853) for

1980-518: Was later proud to say, had August Neander for his first pupil in Hebrew language . On 8 February 1810 he became professor extraordinarius in theology, and on 16 June 1811 was promoted to ordinarius , at the University of Halle , where, in spite of many offers of high preferment elsewhere, he spent the rest of his life. He taught with great regularity for over thirty years. He was a gifted lecturer whose lectures were so interesting that his lecture room

2025-523: Was worked up during the winter of 1806–1807, and published a few years later by F. C. W. Vogel, whose printing house in Leipzig thereafter published all the editions of his lexicons. This was followed by a somewhat abridged version (about half the bulk of the first lexicon but with significant improvements) in 1815, which went to four German editions (each substantially larger and improved than its previous editions) and one Latin edition (although intended merely as

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