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Document Details :

Title: Problems in Syriac Taxonomy and Parts of Speech from the Nineteenth Century to the present
Author(s): FALLA, Terry C.
Journal: Journal of Eastern Christian Studies
Volume: 56    Issue: 1-4   Date: 2004   
Pages: 225-243
DOI: 10.2143/JECS.56.1.578704

Abstract :
Many specialist disciplines meet in the making of a modern lexicon. For languages such as classical Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and Septuagint and New Testament Greek, these disciplines range from etymology to semantics, the definition of lexemes to lexicographical methodology. The aim of this paper is to address the problematic issue of grammatical classification (i.e. of taxonomy and parts of speech) and difficulties that this aspect of dictionary making has always posed for the Syriac lexicographer.
The first part of the paper seeks to identify the nature and extent of the problem that this discipline presents and how it affects virtually every Syriac lexical work, be it a dictionary, concordance, glossary, or parsing guide, produced during the past one hundred and twenty-three years. The second part of the paper examines the cause of the problem, and the third proposes a resolution that I adopted for the second and subsequent volumes of my Syriac lexical work A Key to the Peshitta Gospels (KPG). In principle, this resolution is applicable to Hebrew and Aramaic lexicography as well as Syriac, but that is a matter that will be addressed in another context at another time.