Recently, the geographical origins of Ashkenazic Jews (AJs) and their native language Yiddish were investigated by applying the Geographic Population Structure (GPS) to a cohort of exclusively ...Yiddish-speaking and multilingual AJs. GPS localized most AJs along major ancient trade routes in northeastern Turkey adjacent to primeval villages with names that resemble the word "Ashkenaz." These findings were compatible with the hypothesis of an Irano-Turko-Slavic origin for AJs and a Slavic origin for Yiddish and at odds with the Rhineland hypothesis advocating a Levantine origin for AJs and German origins for Yiddish. We discuss how these findings advance three ongoing debates concerning (1) the historical meaning of the term "Ashkenaz;" (2) the genetic structure of AJs and their geographical origins as inferred from multiple studies employing both modern and ancient DNA and original ancient DNA analyses; and (3) the development of Yiddish. We provide additional validation to the non-Levantine origin of AJs using ancient DNA from the Near East and the Levant. Due to the rising popularity of geo-localization tools to address questions of origin, we briefly discuss the advantages and limitations of popular tools with focus on the GPS approach. Our results reinforce the non-Levantine origins of AJs.
The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as ...neuroscience and cognitive science. The series considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language.
Conceptually, the volume focuses on the relationship of the three key notions that essentially triggered the inception and subsequent realization of this project, to wit, language contact, ...grammaticalization, and areal grouping. Fully concentrated on the areal-typological and historical dimensions of Slavic, the volume offers new insights into a number of theoretical issues, including language contact, grammaticalization, mechanisms of borrowing, the relationship between areal, genetic, and typological sampling, conservative features versus innovation, and socio-linguistic aspects of linguistic alliances conceived of both synchronically and diachronically. The volume integrates new approaches towards the areal-typological profiling of Slavic as a member of several linguistic areas within Europe, including SAE, the Balkan Sprachbund and Central European groupings(s) like the Danubian or Carpathian areas, as well as the Carpathian-Balkan linguistic macroarea. Some of the chapters focus on structural affinities between Slavic and other European languages that arose as a result of either grammatical replication or borrowing. A special emphasis is placed on contact-induced grammaticalization in Slavic micro-languages
Wexler reflects on the advantages and disadvantages of the term "Mediterranean" in the journal and monograph titles which they selected. After almost a decade as a co-editor, and having contributed a ...number of articles, reviews and monographs to the two series, his understanding of the term "Mediterranean" has expanded dramatically. He now appreciates that the second type of "Mediterranean" language included such a wealth of subtypes, that their naively unspecified term "Mediterranean" of 1983 inadequately defined the purview of both the journal and the monograph series. It might have been preferable in 1983 to call the new journal Mediterranean and Mediterraneanoid (or Mediterraneanized), de-and re-Mediterraneanized language review. The present title has the decided advantage of brevity and universal recognition, while the enlarged title is a truer reflection of our intentions, but woefully cumbersome.
The Yiddish language is over 1,000 years old and incorporates German, Slavic, and Hebrew elements. The prevalent view claims Yiddish has a German origin, whereas the opposing view posits a Slavic ...origin with strong Iranian and weak Turkic substrata. One of the major difficulties in deciding between these hypotheses is the unknown geographical origin of Yiddish speaking Ashkenazic Jews (AJs). An analysis of 393 Ashkenazic, Iranian, and mountain Jews and over 600 non-Jewish genomes demonstrated that Greeks, Romans, Iranians, and Turks exhibit the highest genetic similarity with AJs. The Geographic Population Structure analysis localized most AJs along major primeval trade routes in northeastern Turkey adjacent to primeval villages with names that may be derived from "Ashkenaz." Iranian and mountain Jews were localized along trade routes on the Turkey's eastern border. Loss of maternal haplogroups was evident in non-Yiddish speaking AJs. Our results suggest that AJs originated from a Slavo-Iranian confederation, which the Jews call "Ashkenazic" (i.e., "Scythian"), though these Jews probably spoke Persian and/or Ossete. This is compatible with linguistic evidence suggesting that Yiddish is a Slavic language created by Irano-Turko-Slavic Jewish merchants along the Silk Roads as a cryptic trade language, spoken only by its originators to gain an advantage in trade. Later, in the 9th century, Yiddish underwent relexification by adopting a new vocabulary that consists of a minority of German and Hebrew and a majority of newly coined Germanoid and Hebroid elements that replaced most of the original Eastern Slavic and Sorbian vocabularies, while keeping the original grammars intact.
The book claims that Yiddish was created when Judaized Sorbs first relexified their language to High German between the 9th-12th centuries; by the 15th century, the descendants of the Judaized ...Khazars also relexified their Kiev- Polessian (northern Ukrainian and southern Belarusian) speech to Yiddish and German, Yiddish thus uses a mixed West-East Slavic grammar and suggests that converted Khazars were a major component in the Ashkenazic ethnogenesis.
Four recent publications, three on Judeo-Spanish & one on Judeo-Romance studies, are assessed: (1) Judenspanisch 1 (Judeo-Spanish 1, Busse, Winfried Ed, Berlin, Germany: Instit fur Romanische ...Philologie der Freien U Berlin, 1991); (2) Laura Minervini's Testi giudeospagnoli medievali. (Castiglia e Aragona.) 1-2 (Medieval Judeo-Spanish Texts. (Castile and Aragon) 1-2, Naples, Italy: Liguori Editore, 1992); (3) David M. Bunis's A Lexicon of the Hebrew and Aramaic Elements in Modern Judezmo (Jerusalem, Israel: The Magnes Press and Misgav Yerushalayim, 1993); & (4) Sabine Kowallik's & Johannes Kramer's Romanojudaica (Judeo-Romance, Gerbrunn bei Wurzburg, Germany: Wissenshaftlicher Verlag A. Lehmann, 1993 see listings in IRPL, this issue). Individual commentary on articles in (1) focuses on Bunis's contribution, "Una introduccion a la lengua de los sefardies a traves de refranes en judezmo" (An Introduction to the Language of the Sephardim through Refrains in Judeo-Spanish), & explores relationships of Ladino, characterized as a Sephardic calque language, to Judeo-Spanish & Hebrew. Critical commentary on (2) elucidates neglected points in this two-volume annotated chrestomathy, the first such treatment of pre-expulsion Judeo-Spanish texts. In a critique of (3), characterized as the first comprehensive treatment of its kind for any Jewish language, it is argued that until shortly before the expulsion, Jews in Spain spoke a relexified Judeo-Arabic. Disregard of relevant literature & simplistic cultural views are criticized in (4), & a distinction is made between Sephardic & Iberian Jews: the former group is held to have coalesced in North Africa before the invasion of Spain, where Iberian Jews had lived since Roman times. References. J. Hitchcock
This paper explores the possibility that one Jewish language might assist in reconstructing the prehistory of another, unrelated and geographically non-contiguous. Jewish language. The field of ...comparative Jewish interlinguistics derives its raison d'être in part from the fact that all Jewish languages are potentially receptive to a common Hebrew-Aramaic lexical stock. A Romance element in Yiddish, which is a calque of a Hebrew-Aramaic model, is examined for clues to the early history of Judeo-Romance dialects. Calques from several Judeo-Arabic dialects are also given.
This paper defines the field of Sino-Islamic linguistics-the study of the Arabic and Persian norms of the Chinese-speaking Muslims. Eight topics in Sino-Islamic linguistics are discussed here: (1) ...diffusion of Arabic and Persian to China; (2) differential impact of Arabic and Persian on Chinese and Uigur; (3) Chinese-Eastern Turkic linguistic contacts; (4) norms of Chinese Arabic and Persian; (5) dialectology of Chinese Arabic and Persian; (6) functional variations of Chinese Arabic and Persian; (7) transcription of Arabic and Persian in Chinese characters; (8) benefits for Chinese linguistics.
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