The International Syriac Language Project (ISLP)
P.J.
Williams
Aberdeen University
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
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Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2004
Vol. 7, No. 1
For this publication, a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
license has been granted by the author(s), who retain full
copyright.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv7n1prwilliams
P.J. Williams
The International Syriac Language Project (ISLP)
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol7/HV7N1PRWilliams.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute,
vol 7
issue 1
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal dedicated to the study
of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in January and July) by Beth
Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. Published since 1998, Hugoye seeks to offer the
best scholarship available in the field of Syriac studies.
Syriac Studies
Lexicography
File created by XSLT transformation of original HTML encoded article.
CONFERENCE REPORT
[1] On 22-23
July 2003, at the latest International Meeting of the Society
of Biblical Literature (in Cambridge, England) a number of
scholars from around the world met to discuss Syriac
lexicography and to present papers to each other on various
germane subjects. This group had been brought together by Terry
C. Falla of Whitley College of the University of Melbourne, and
will continue to convene annually during the International
Meetings of the SBL.
[2] The
group is purposely constituted of scholars with a range of
interests and specialities: computing, theoretical linguistics,
syntax, translation technique, ecclesiastical literature,
biblical versions, pedagogy, publishing, etc., and as well as
being committed to producing tools to aid the study of Syriac
also seeks to be a forum for the scholarly cross-fertilization
of ideas. The group has the following mission statement:
The aim of the International Syriac Language Project
(ISLP) is to further the knowledge of Syriac by laying the
foundations for Syriac lexicography and Syriac-English lexica
by
exploring pertinent theoretical and applied issues in
research papers;
presenting papers for discussion at annual SBL
International Meetings;
Gorgias Press publishing the annual proceedings and
other papers as part of a series;
creating a multifunctional modular database for the
project; and
maintaining a collaborative and interdisciplinary
approach.
[3]
Intimately connected with the conception of this project is
Terry Falla’s A Key to the Peshitta Gospels, Volume
One: ’Ālaph–Dālath (New Testament
Tools and Studies, 14; E.J. Brill: Leiden, New York,
København, Köln, 1991), Volume Two:
Hē–Yōdh (New Testament Tools and Studies,
29; Brill: Leiden, Boston, Köln, 2000). Two further
volumes of the Key will appear soon and its method
will then be extended to include the rest of the Syriac New
Testament. All this information will be incorporated into a
database, which can be expanded to include other corpora such
as the works of Ephrem. At the same time as the possibilities
of a versatile database are explored the ISLP will seek to be
at the cutting edge of lexicography from a linguistic
perspective. As can be seen from the summaries of some of the
papers, issues that are raised often also have considerable
relevance to languages other than Syriac.
[4] The
papers presented in July will shortly appear in a volume edited
collaboratively by members of the ISLP and published by Gorgias
Press. Below are brief abstracts of the papers.
Abstracts
David Taylor, University of
Birmingham (now, University of Oxford)
A History
of Syriac Lexicography: From Early Roots to Future
Growth
[5] In order
to provide a background to the papers presented at this
conference David Taylor in his opening paper surveyed the
development of Syriac lexicography from the fourth-century
Syriac-Coptic glossary found in the Dakhleh Oasis of Egypt to
the most recent dictionaries published by scholars of the
Syrian/Assyrian churches in Kerala, Iraq, and Germany. (An
annotated handlist of the printed lexica will be included as an
appendix to the proceedings of the conference.) Particular
attention was paid to the large Syriac-Arabic dictionaries
produced in the 'first renaissance' environment of Abbasid
Baghdad, to the revived interest in Syriac lexicography in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to the great standard
reference works published in the late nineteenth century in
Europe (Payne Smith and Brockelmann) and the Middle East
(Qardahi, Brun, Audo, and Manna).
[6] The
strengths and weaknesses of these various works were outlined,
and Taylor especially emphasized the important contribution
made by the middle-eastern lexica, which are too often
overlooked by European and North American scholars. Arguing
that the time had not yet come for a new comprehensive
'Thesaurus Syriacus', the speaker then sought to identify a
number of practical and useful tasks that could be undertaken
by Syriac lexicographers, present and future, such as: lists of
lexemes supplementing the present lexica; concordances to key
Syriac authors; and article and monograph size studies of the
development of Syriac word formation, the use of Greek and
other loan words, and of terminology specific to certain
subject areas, such as philosophy, Christology, and
medicine.
Terry C. Falla, Whitley
College, University of Melbourne
A
Conceptual Framework for a New Comprehensive Syriac-English
Lexicon
[7] For many
reasons the time has come to reassess the theory and practice
of classical Syriac lexicography and discuss what kind of
Syriac-English lexicon would best serve the needs of the
twenty-first century. The paper begins with how the scholars
who contributed to this volume came together. It then outlines
the need for a new Syriac-English lexicon and proposes a
conceptual framework for a comprehensive lexicon to the Syriac
New Testament with the aim of that framework providing a basis
for the lexicalizing of other Syriac literature.
[8] Five
basic questions are addressed: for whom is the work intended
(audience), what sort of information should be included
(content), how much should be included (scope), how is that
information to be ascertained (methodology), and how can it be
organized in a user-friendly manner that is methodologically
compatible with its contents and is aesthetically pleasing
(arrangement and presentation)? A concluding section considers
issues of implementation and comments on the need for a
collaborative approach that draws on the insights of various
specialist disciplines to complement the expertise of the
lexicographer. The essay ends with a tribute marking the
centenary of Jessie Payne Smith's A Compendious Syriac
Dictionary founded upon the Thesaurus of R. Payne
Smith.
Alison Salvesen, Oxford
Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies
The User
versus the Lexicographer: Practical and Scientific Issues in
Creating Entries
[9] In any
discussion of the shape of a new Syriac lexicon, the temptation
is to focus on methodological issues from the point of view of
the lexicographer and researcher. However, the needs of the
majority of users, namely new learners of Syriac, should not be
forgotten. Commercial considerations will also have a bearing
on the project.
[10] A
new lexicon would have to be built up layer by layer, like a
snowball, starting with the Gospels and then the New Testament,
followed by other widely read texts such as the Peshitta Old
Testament, Aphrahat and Ephrem. Other issues that would need to
be discussed are the font and vocalization used; the inclusion
of comparative philological data; the use of an intuitive
abbreviation system; whether lemmata should be cited in
alphabetical or root order, and in the emphatic or absolute
form; the likely background of the lexicon's users and their
aims in learning Syriac; and finally how to achieve
typographical clarity for the work. The aim of the lexicon
would be to be fully scientific while remaining as
'user-friendly' as possible.
George Kiraz, Beth
Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
Computing
the Syriac Lexicon
[11] The
purpose of this paper is to sketch out general guidelines that
can be taken into consideration for implementing a
computational Syriac lexicon. The paper begins with an overview
of previous lexical projects, starting from the encoding of
Brockelmann's Lexicon Syriacum at UCLA in the 1960s. The schema
of SEDRA III database model was presented to as an
illustration.
[12] A
proposal for developing an open-source Internet-based lexical
system to model Syriac lexicography was sketched out. The model
calls for capturing lexical and grammatical data, including
phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics.
A. Dean Forbes,
Pennsylvania State University (now, University of California at
Berkeley)
Squishes,
Clines, and Fuzzy Signs: Mixed and Gradient Categories in the
Biblical Hebrew Lexicon
[13] The
Problem: Traditional views of part-of-speech classes see them
as hard, 'either/or' categories. Several analysts have shown
that (morphologically-defined) parts of speech may overlap (are
'mixed') and may be heterogeneous (are 'gradient'). How are we
to detect and deal with such mixed and gradient classes so that
a coherent taxonomy can be devised?
[14] Our
Solution: Dealing with non-discrete syntactic classes is a
four-stage process. 1. We first use contextual information
about the classes to compute their distances apart. 2. We then
use this set of distances to produce a hierarchical clustering
of the classes, on the basis of which we define a set of
super-classes. 3. Next, we use the distances among these
super-classes to infer a one-dimensional continuum (Ross's
class squish) along which the super-classes are ordered. 4.
Based on the class squish ordering, we plot each text token in
a context space in which mixed and gradient classes are
discernable. (The paper concludes by outlining directions for
future work.)
Janet W. Dyk,
Computer-Assisted Linguistic Analysis of the Peshitta, Vrije
Universiteit, Amsterdam
Desiderata
for the Lexicon from a Syntactic Point of View
[15] The
single question addressed by this paper is that of whether
syntactic information should be included in the Syriac lexicon,
and, if so, what type of syntactic information this should be,
and how it should be presented. The lexicon is the domain of
words, of lexemes. Do these in themselves have a lexical part
of speech isolatable from all environmental questions, or are
they merely a product of the interaction of the pattern of
elements in which they appear? Is there a basic value from
which the various syntactic functions of an item can be deduced
on the basis of generally applicable linguistic rules?
[16] From
a formal point of view, words display distinct contrastive and
combinatorial functions. It is the lexicon where these unique
properties can be stored. The fact that an element may function
as different parts of speech in a specific environment is the
systematic product of the interaction of the basic qualities of
the element itself with the context in which it occurs. Though
the various functions which an element may have could be
entered into the lexicon as separate items, reference should be
made to the basic form from which the other functions are
derivable on the basis of consistently applied syntactic rules.
Traced within an extensive text corpus, an element manifests a
limited number of shifts in part of speech and the possible
shifts within the language can be represented in a single
unidirectional chain of parts of speech.
[17]
Three separate elements of the Syriac language are considered:
the particle dalath, the participle, and verbal
valency. Though these three are diverse in nature, the approach
advocated as to which information should be presented in the
lexicon is uniform. Language data can be viewed as a limited
number of simple elements which can be combined in accordance
with a finite set of syntactic rules. This results in
structures which can be described hierarchically as building
blocks and their combinatory patterns. The lexicon should
present the basic attributes of the entry, and may then go
further to list other possibilities dependent on the particular
environment, but it should not lose the link to the basic
property from which the others are systematically
derivable.
P.J. Williams, University
of Cambridge (now, University of Aberdeen)
On
Matching Syriac Words with Their Greek Vorlage
[18] The
question that lexicographers of the Septuagint ask is whether
the Hebrew supposed to underlie the Greek can legitimately be
used as an indicator of the meaning of the Greek. Likewise
Syriac lexicographers approaching the New Testament must ask to
what extent the Greek should guide their understanding of the
Syriac. This paper dwells on some of the difficulties involved
in matching Syriac words with Greek ones and also on some of
the counter-intuitive or surprising results that comparison of
the Syriac and Greek leads us to. Examples are taken from the
Old Syriac and Peshitta Gospels.
Syriac can equate a 'gender-neutral' term in Greek with a
'gendered' term in Syriac.
The Syriac Gospels frequently reverse the order of a pair
of items in the Greek (as occurs sometimes in the Old
Testament Peshitta), so that in examples like John 10:1 the
Syriac word corresponding to the Greek is not the one that a
superficial reading would lead us to believe.
Syriac prefers the unmarked verb 'mr to
introduce speech, whereas Greek uses more varied vocabulary.
Consequently 'mr can be fulfilling functions that we
might not expect.
Greek plurals may correspond to Syriac singulars and vice
versa. This sometimes gives us insight into the
correspondence between the number of entities denoted and
grammatical number.