A Bibliography of Semitic Linguistics (1940-2012)

"It seems obligatory at the beginning of this bibliography to set out its limits and justify its objectives. The aim of the bibliography is to collect and arrange systematically only those studies directly or mainly related to subjects of Semitic linguistics, namely, those centred on the study of languages and their phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic constituents, from both the comparative perspective (close and distant relationship) and the immanent perspective (grammar and lexicon). Consequently, all other studies dealing with the history of the societies which use or used those languages and with everything that is built on them (socio-political history, literature, religion and ‘culture’ in general), remain excluded. This limitation may seem impossible or at the very least without justification and minimalist, in some way resorting to ‘formalism’, giving up the basic element, whose development a language has to perform, namely, the shaping of a universe of social representations, which generates a particular way of communication and creativity. One could say that it means abandoning the ‘context’ in which every linguistic formulation has its meaning, being at the same time its outcome. But we cannot forget, in answer to such an objection, that our purpose has a fixed point of support: it is constructed exclusively on ‘texts’ as the products of language, which are the reference point for testing and validating results. And if it is true that ‘the proposition is the world’ (Wittgenstein), then linguistic analysis is the basis for the understanding of any representation. Our intention is to provide specialist information that arranges and classifies as much as possible the vast amount of data constantly presented by the general bibliography on Semitic languages and cultures. In this way, access to such information will be made easier, with better focus on the more important issues of research. At the same time we intend to collect the information and classify it in a uniform manner, in this way making it possible to compare across languages the research being carried out within the various languages, since such research often ignores other languages. This first instalment is devoted to general topics in respect of the Semitic family as a whole. In this connexion, studies dealing with its relationship to other linguistic groups and families (Nostratic, Hamitic or Afro-Asiatic) will be taken into account in as much as they bear on the study of Semitics proper. Here, Nostratic is taken in its wider meaning, as used today among Indo-European scholars. In order to avoid any prejudgements, in successive instalments we will offer linguistic bibliographies for each Semitic language as well as for each Semitic language family according to its name, without attempting to decide on its suitability or incorporate it within a particular preferred classification..."