Research on Semitic Languages in Uppsala

Semitic studies in Uppsala

Current scholars

Main research fields

Current external projects

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The discipline of Semitic languages covers linguistic and literary studies on all historically attested stages of Arabic, Hebrew, Akkadian, Aramaic, South Arabian and Ethiopic. The discipline of Assyriology covers the east Semitic Akkadian but also other languages of Mesopotamia with a cuneiform script, like the non-Semitic Sumerian.

Semitic languages in Uppsala is currently the foremost research milieu in Sweden for the study of Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic and comparative Semitic linguistics, and Assyriology.

Current research on Semitic languages in Uppsala concentrates on Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic and Akkadian (the latter within Assyriology).

Current scholars of Semitic Languages

Bo Isaksson, professor of Semitic Languages
Eran Cohen, PhD in Assyriology (in the CCC-project)
Tal Davidovich, PhD in Semitic Languages, post-doc research
Mats Eskhult, docent of Semitic Languages
Jordi Ferrer i Serra, PhD in Semitic Languages, post-doc research
Heléne Kammensjö, PhD of Arabic (in the CCC-project)
Anette Månsson, PhD of Semitic Languages, senior lecturer
Olof Pedersén, PhD of Semitic Languages, professor of Assyriology (see Assyriology)
Maria Persson, PhD of Semitic languages, lecturer of Arabic (also scholar in the CCC-project)
Gail Ramsay, professor of Arabic
Jan Retsö, professor of Arabic (in the CCC-project)
Witold Witakowski, docent of Semitic Languages

Main research fields

The semantics and grammar of non-main clause linking in Semitic languages (Isaksson).
Classical Hebrew textlinguistics (Eskhult, Isaksson)
The diachronic perspective of Biblical Hebrew (Eskhult)
The spoken varieties of the modern Arab world: Arabic dialectology with emphasis on Gulf Arabic dialects, Syrian dialects, Egyptian dialects and the qeltu-dialects of eastern Turkey (Isaksson, Kammensjö, Persson).
Post-colonial theory applied to the analysis of Arabic mass media like the TV program al-Jazira (Ramsay).
Globalisation and Cross-Cultural Writing in the United Arab Emirates and Oman. A study included in the interdisciplinary project Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective, financed by the Swedish Research Council and carried out 1996 to 2006 (Ramsay).
Modern Prose Fiction in the Persian Gulf. A Swedish Research Council project from 1998 to 2006 (Ramsay).
Arabic Satellite-TV: A Discourse Analysis of a Debate Program on Al-Jazeera. Research funded by the Swedish Defence Research Agency, 2003-2004 (Ramsay).
The Arabic Blogosphere and Society – The Nature and Impact of the Arabic Blogosphere: What Kind of publics? A Swedish Research council project 2010-2012 (Riegert and Ramsay).
Verb syntax in Gulf Arabic Dialects (VEGA: a project placed at Lund University). Syntax and semantics in modern Arabic literary prose (Persson).
Circumstantial Qualifiers in Gulf Arabic dialects (Persson).
Early Arabic poetry (Ferrer i Serra)
Syriac and Ethiopic literature with emphasis on extra-canonical apocryphal texts and historiography (Witakowski).
Assyriology (Pedersén).

Current externally funded research projects

Circumstantial Clause Combining in Semitic (‘CCC-project’). Swedish Research Council 2010-2012. Project members: Bo Isaksson (project leader), Eran Cohen (Jerusalem), Ya'ar Hever (Jerusalem), Helene Kammensjö, Maria Persson, Jan Retsö (Göteborg), Michal Schwartzbart (Jerusalem).
The Nature and Impact of the Arabic Blogosphere: What kind of publics? Swedish Research Council 2010-2012. Project members: Kristina Riegert (Stockholm) and Gail Ramsay.
The pre-Islamic Arabic threnody in new perspective. Swedish Research Council 2009-2011. Project member: Jordi Ferrer i Serra.
Surviving between Judaism and Antisemitism: the story of Queen Esther. Swedish Research Council 2010-2012. Project member: Tal Davidovich.

PhD candidates of Semitic languages (also Assyriology)

Jakob Andersson: Early Mesopotamian connections between personal names and royal authority, ca. 2800-2200 BCE (Assyriology).
Sami Aydin, The Commentary of Sergius of Resh´ayna to Philotheos on Aristotle's Categories.
Mirjam Lindgren: A Survey in Arabic Bible Translations: An Edition of Daniel Chapter Three.
Jonathan Morén: Musannifak: Hall ar-rumuz wa-kashf. 2: Sharh risalat al-abra. Critical edition.
Lina Petersson: Syntax of the Verb in the Priestly Narrative in the Pentateuch: A Linguistic Analysis from a Diachronic Perspective.
Ambjörn Sjörs: Negation in the Semitic languages.

Doctors of Semitic Languages since 2003

Aziz Tezel (Aramaic) 2003
Anette Månsson (Arabic) 2003
Torkel Lindquist (Arabic) 2003
Assad Sauma (Aramaic) 2003
Ablahad Lahdo (Arabic) 2003
Astrid Ottosson Bitar (Arabic) 2005
Tal Davidovich (Hebrew) 2007
Jordi Ferrer i Serra (Arabic) 2007
Sina Tezel (Arabic/Aramaic) 21 May 2011

Conferences in Uppsala

Workshop on Circumstantial Clause Combining in Semitic Languages, Uppsala May 17-18, 2011.
Cataloguing Projects of Oriental Manuscripts: evolution of descriptive criteria, Uppsala 22-23 September 2010. Second meeting of Team 4 of the project "Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies" (COMSt), funded by the European Science Foundation (ESF). Team Leader for COMSt Team 4: Witold Witakowski.
From New Values to New Aesthetics. Turning points in Arabic Literature since the 1960s 8th EURAMAL (European Association for Modern Arabic Literature) — Uppsala University, 9-12 May, 2007. Board: Gail Ramsay, Bo Isaksson, Anette Månsson and Astrid Ottosson Bitar.
Nordic-Arab Conference on Arabic language and literature, a conference held in cooperation with the Swedish Institute in Alexandria: April 2005. Uppsala board: Bo Isaksson and Gail Ramsay.
Jubileumssymposiet Professuren i semitiska språk i Uppsala 400 år , 21-23 september 2005 i Universitetshuset, Uppsala
Aramaic – The Language of Jesus, 27 September – 3 October 2004. Istanbul – Tur Abdin. Board: Witold Witakowski and Ablahad Lahdo.

Guest lectures

Professor Stephan Prochazka, Wien, guest lectures on several occasions 1998-2000
Professor Guram Chikovani, Tbilisi, Georgia, March 1999
Professor Sevir Chernetsov at Peter the First Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography at St. Petersburg, head of the African Department, September 2002
Professor Jan Retsö, Göteborg, October 2002
Professor Emanuel Tov, Jerusalem, 15/1 - 31/6 2003
Professor Finn Hvidberg-Hansen, Århus, 31/3 - 11/4 2003
Dr. Alanoud Alsharekh, Kuwait och London, April 2003
Professor Sason Somekh, Tel Aviv University, September 2003
Dr. Ibrahim Taha, Haifa university, September 2004
Professor Avi Hurvitz, Hebrew university, April 2005
Dr. Philippe Provençal, Köpenhamn, November 2005
Professor Stephan Procházka, Institut für Orientalistik, April 2006. (Socrates exchange)
Nasra Dahdal, Bethlehem university, June-July 2006
Ilan Rosenberg, Michigan University, Autumn 2006
Professor Jan Joosten, Strasbourg, May 2007
Prof. Igor V. Gerasimov (Faculty of Oriental Studies, St. Petersburg), Spring 2007
Professor Mark Geller (Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, London’s Global University) Spring 2007
Roger Allen, Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, April 2007
Professor Geert Van Gelder, September 2007
Professor Jan Retsö, Sept-Oct. 2007
PhD Aziz Tezel: “Four-radical formations in Tūrōyo in a comparative Semitic perspective”, Oct. 2008
Prof. Frank Polak, Tel Aviv, April 2009
Prof. Aharon Geva Kleinberger, Haifa, September 2009
Prof. Amira Agameya, Cairo University and American University in Cairo, November 2009
Prof. Eran Cohen, Dept. of Linguistics, Hebrew University, February 2010.
Prof. Lutz Edzard, Oslo University, November 2010.
Prof. Kerstin Eksell, University of Copenhagen, November 2010.
Prof. Meira Polliack, Tel Aviv University, August 2011. Topic: "The Hebrew Bible as divinely revealed law – medieval Karaite argumentation and its cross-cultural implications".

Seminar

The Semitic Seminar - held about twice a month.

Journals and Series

Studia Semitica Upsaliensia
Orientalia Suecana
RAAS (Reports on Asian and African Studies)