Gideon Goldenberg, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

Contact Information:

Research Interests

• Semitic linguistics
• Ethiopian languages
• Syriac, Hebrew, Neo-Aramaic
• History of Linguistics (European, Arabic, Hebrew, Ethiopic)

Research Projects

1. “On the Amharic Tense-System”, Journal of Semitic Studies 9 (1964) 47–49.
2. “Studies in Amharic Syntax”, Journal of Ethiopian Studies (Addis Ababa) III,1 (1965) 6–22.
3. מערכת הזמנים האמהרית  [The Amharic Tense-System]. Doctoral Dissertation (Jerusalem 1966)
4. "על טקסטים חדשים בלשון הרר" [On New Texts in Harari], Le˘∆onénu 32 (1968) 247–263.
5. "ביקורת טכסטים אתיופיים" [Review of Ethiopian Texts: On Wolf Leslau, Ethiopians Speak: Studies in Cultural Background I. Harari, II. Chaha (Near Eastern Studies 7 & 9, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1965, 1966)], Hamizrah Hehadash (The New East) 18,1–2 (69–70) (1968) 182–186.
6. “K∞stan∞n£n£a: Studies in a Northern Gurage Language of Christians”, Orientalia Suecana 17 (1968) 61–102.
7. Review of Edward Ullendorff, Ethiopia and the Bible, in: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) 32 (1969) 604–607.
8. “Tautological Infinitive”, Israel Oriental Studies 1 (1971) 36–85.
9. “L’étude du gouragué et la comparaison chamito-sémitique”, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Roma) – Problemi attuali di Scienza e di Cultura, Quaderno N. 191,II (1974) 235–249.
10. "רוח השפה" ומדיניות לשונית לאור התפתחויות בשפות שֵמיות חדשות [The “Spirit of Language” and Language Policy in the Light of Developments in Neo-Semitic Languages] (Lecture delivered at the Academy of the Hebrew Language on the 3rd of March, 1974), זיכרונות האקדמיה ללשון העברית [Proceedings of the Academy of the Hebrew Language] 21–24 (1974–1977 תשל"ד-תשל"ז) 36–39.
11. סורית, לשון   [Syriac Language], Encyclopaedia Hebraica XXV (1974) 622–623.
12. "פיעל לריבוי" [Pi··eˉl of Plurality], Le˘∆onénu 38 (1974) 156.
13. “A Copula U in Old Amharic”, Israel Oriental Studies 6 (1976) 131–137.
14. “The Semitic Languages of Ethiopia and Their Classification”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) 40 (1977) 461–507.
15. “Imperfectly-Transformed Cleft Sentences”, Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem 1977) I 127–133.
16. “Congruence and Comitative and a Problem of Linguistic Typology”, Atti del Secondo Congresso Internazionale di Linguistica Camito-Semitica 1974 = Quaderni di Semitistica 5 (Firenze 1978) 133–147.
17. “The Modern South Arabian Prefix-Conjugation” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) 42 (1979) 541–545.
18. Review of Edward Ullendorff, The Ethiopians, in: Journal of Semitic Studies 24 (1979) 321–325.
19. Review of Wolf Leslau, English–Amharic Context Dictionary, in: Journal of Semitic Studies 25 (1980) 159–163.
20. "על השוכן החלק והשורש העברי" [On the Weak Quiescent and the Hebrew Root], Le˘∆onénu 44 (1980) 281–292.
21. “Les mémoires d’Aläqa Lämma et l’étude de l’amharique parlé”, Rassegna di Studi Etiopici 28 (1981) 184–200.
22. "אנלוגיה בין תחיית העברית לבין תחיית הערבית הספרותית" [Review of Joshua Blau, תחיית העברית ותחיית הערבית הספרותית  [The Renaissance of Hebrew in the Light of the Renaissance of Standard Arabic]], Hamizrah Hehadash (The New East) 30 (1981) 288–292.
23. Review of Michael A. Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, in: Israel Exploration Journal 32 (1982) 176–178.
24. “Northern Gurage-Land about 1880 according to Gurage Oral Traditions”, Studi Africani sull’Africa ai tempi del Comboni (Roma 1983) 281–284.
25. “On Syriac Sentence-Structure”, in: Arameans, Aramaic and the Aramaic Literary Tradition, ed. Michael Sokoloff (Ramat Gan 1983) 97–140.
26. “Nominalization in Amharic and Harari: Adjectivization”, Ethiopian Studies Dedicated to Wolf Leslau on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, ed. S. Segert & A. J. E. Bodrogligeti (Wiesbaden 1983) 170–193.
27. "על תורת הפועַל והפועַל העברי" [On Verbal Structure and the Hebrew Verb], in: מחקרים בלשון  Language Studies I (Jerusalem 1985) xl–xlii, 295–348.
28. "יחסים תחביריים וטיפולוגיה בלשונות שמיות" [Syntactical Relations and Typology in Semitic Languages], in: עיונים בעקבות מפעלו של פולוצקי — דברים שנאמרו בערב לכבוד יעקב פולוצקי בהגיעו לגבורות [Following Polotsky’s Teachings: Papers delivered at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in the meeting held on the 21st of January 1986 in honour of H. J. Polotsky on the occasion of his gvurot (eightieth birthday)] (Jerusalem 1987) 7–18.
29. “Linguistic Interest in Gurage and the Gurage Etymological Dictionary [by Wolf Leslau]”, in: Annali, Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 47 (1987) 75–98.
30. "על מדרשים בארמית יהודי כורדיסתאן" [Review Article of Yona Sabar,  Homilies in the Neo-Aramaic of the Kurdistani Jews], Pe‘amim (Studies in the Cultural Heritage of Oriental Jewry) 36 (1988) 141–156.
31. “The Contribution of Semitic Languages to Linguistic Thinking”, Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap Ex Oriente Lux (Leiden) 30 (1987–1988) 107–115.
32. “Subject and Predicate in Arab Grammatical Tradition”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 138 (1988) 39–73.
33. “The Book of Ruth in Neo-Aramaic”, [by] Gideon Goldenberg and Mordekhay Zaken, in: Studies in Neo-Aramaic, ed. Wolfhart Heinrichs (Harvard Semitic Studies 36) (Atlanta GA 1990) 151–157.
34. “On Some Niceties of Syriac Syntax”, V Symposium Syriacum 1988 = Orientalia Christiana Analecta 236 (1990) 335–344.
35. "על מערכת הפועַל בארמית חדשה"  [Review of Robert D. Hoberman, The Syntax and Semantics of Verb Morphology in Modern Aramaic], Le˘∆onénu 55 (1990) 165–177.
36. “«Oneself», «One’s Own» and «One Another» in Amharic”, Semitic Studies in Honor of Wolf Leslau, ed. Alan S. Kaye (Wiesbaden 1991) I 531–549.
37. “On Predicative Adjectives and Syriac Syntax”, Bibliotheca Orientalis 48 (1991) 716–726).
38. “On Direct Speech and the Hebrew Bible”, in: Studies in Hebrew and Aramaic Syntax Presented to Professor J. Hoftijzer on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, ed. K. Jongeling, H. L. Murre–van den Berg and L. Van Rompay (Leiden 1991) 79–96.
39. “Comparative Dictionary of the Ethiopic Language” [Review Article of Wolf Leslau, Comparative Dictionary of Ge·ez], Journal of the American Oriental Society 112 (1992) 78–87.
40. “Aramaic Perfects”, Israel Oriental Studies 12 (1992) 113–137.
41. "השפות השמיות ומדע הלשון"   [The Semitic Languages and the Science of Language], inהרצאות ע"ש משה סטרוסטה  [Moises Starosta Memorial Lectures], First Series, ed. Joseph Geiger (Jerusalem 1993) 99–126.
42. Review article: “Jastrow’s Der neuaramäische Dialekt von Hertevin”, Journal of Semitic Studies 38 (1993) 295–308.
43. “Principles of Semitic Word-Structure”, Semitic and Cushitic Studies, ed. Gideon Goldenberg & Shlomo Raz (Wiesbaden 1994) 29–64.
44. “Allad¥ al-Maßdariyyah in Arab Grammatical Tradition”, Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 28 (1994) 7–35.
45. " על שורשים, בניינים ו'שפעל' " [Root-Augmentation, Stem-derivation, and Σiph·eˉl], Le˘∆onénu 58 (1993–1995) 267–272, V–VI.
46. “Attribution in Semitic Languages”, Langues Orientales Anciennes: Philologie et Linguistique 7 (1995) 1–20.
47. “Bible Translations and Syriac Idiom”, The Second Peshitta Symposium 1993 (Leiden 1995) 25–39.
48. "העברית כלשון שמית חיה" [Hebrew as a Living Semitic Language],הלשון העברית בהתפתחותה ובהתחדשותה: הרצאות לרגל מלאות מאה שנה לתחיית הלשון  (Jerusalem 1996) 149-190.
49. “Two Points of K∞stane Grammar”, Essays on Gurage Language and Culture Dedicated to Wolf Leslau on the Occasion of his 90th Birthday November 14th, 1996, Edited by Grover Hudson (Wiesbaden 1996) 93–99
50. “Conservative and Innovative Features in Semitic Languages”, Afroasiatica Neapolitana [Istituto Universitario Orientale: Studi Africanistici, Serie Etiopica 6]: Papers from the 8th Italian Meeting of  Afroasiatic (Hamito-Semitic) Linguistics, Napoli 1997, ed. Alessandro Bausi & Mauro Tosco, 3–21.
51. Review article: “Otto Jastrow, Der neuaramäische Dialekt von Mla˙sô”, Journal of Semitic Studies 43 (1998) 63–70.
52. Studies in Semitic Linguistics: Selected Writings by Gideon Goldenberg (Jerusalem, Magnes Press, 1998).
53. “Early Neo-Aramaic and Present-Day Dialectal Diversity”, Journal of Semitic Studies 45 (2000) 69–89.
54. “On phrases, Complexes and Verb-Formation in Gurage”, Afroasiatica Tergestina : Papers from the 9th Italian Meeting of Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) Linguistics / Contributi presentati al 9^o Incontro di Linguistica Afroasiatica (Camito-Semitica) Trieste 23–24 Aprile 1998, ed. Marcello Lamberti & Livia Tonelli (Padova 1999) 213–221.
55. “Semitic Linguistics and the General Study of Language”, Israel Oriental Studies 20 (2000) 101–121.
56. "מבנה זמני–הפועַל המורכבים" [The structure of Compound Tenses], "איגרת" האקדמיה הלאומית הישראלית למדעים [“Iggeret”, Bulletin of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities] No. 18 (May 2000) 15–17.
57. “Two Types of Phrase Adjectivization”, in: „Sprich doch mit deinen Knechten aramäisch, wir verstehen es!“ – 60 Beiträge zur Semitistik : Festschrift für Otto Jastrow zum 60. Geburtstag. Herausgegeben von Werner Arnold und Hartmut Bobzin (Wiesbaden 2002) 193–208.
58. “Word-Structure, Morphological Analysis, the Semitic Languages and Beyond”, in the Proceedings of the 10th Meeting of Hamito-Semitic Linguistics Firenze 17–21 April 2001 (Firenze, in press).
59. “From Speech to Writing in Gurageland: First Attempts to Write the Language” [Lecture delivered at the Workshop in Memory of H. J. Polotsky “Ancient Egyptian, Neo-Semitic, Methods in Linguistics”, The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem 8–12 July 2001].