Mélanges David Cohen: Études sur le langage, les langues, les dialectes, les littératures, offertes par ses élèves, ses collègues, ses amis; présentés à l'occasion de son quatre-vingtième anniversaire (review)

The title echoes the volume edited by the honoree for his teacher in 1970, Mélanges Marcel Cohen (no relation), one of fourteen books written or edited by David Cohen on African varieties of Arabic and on Semitic linguistics generally, notably the Dictionnaire des racines sémitiques, which by 1999 in more than eight hundred pages had reached the letter Z (not the last, but the seventh letter in the North Semitic order). The lovingly detailed bibliography (xxiii–liii) also lists ninety-six articles (beginning in 1956), a variety of ephemeral publications, and well over three hundred book reviews, ranging into general linguistics and biblical studies as well as all areas of Semitic linguistics. The editors also include a memoir-appreciation (xiii–xix), and also topic indices of Cohen’s publications (liii) and of the contributions to the volume (763–64).

Those contributions number no fewer than sixty-five (four in English, two in Italian, one in Arabic) by seventy authors, with contributors from across Europe, North Africa, and Israel (plus Wolf Leslau, of the ‘Université de Californie’). In keeping with Cohen’s interests, they range over Semitic philology and dialectology, Berber, Cushitic, and linguistic theory. Readers of Language might like to be aware of: Françoise Bader, ‘Autour de quelques présents à nasale dans les langues indo-européennes’ (55–70); Fernand Bentolila, ‘Racines, classes syntaxiques et appartenance multiple’ (91–94); Dominique Caubet, ‘La reconnaissance de l’arabe “dialectal” en France: Un parcours sinueux’ (135–48); Salem Chaker, ‘Quelques observations sur la Charte européenne des langues régionales ou minoritaires: Un exercise pratique de glottopolitique’ (149–58); Antoine Culioli, ‘Sur un schéma de consécution’ (183–90); Jacques Faublée, ‘Y a-t-il une ou des voix passives en malagache?’ (215–21); René Gsell, ‘Sur le système aspecto-temporel du thaı¨ standard’ (287–303); Gilbert Lazard, ‘Aspect, temps, mode de procès’ (357–69); Alphonse Leguil, ‘La dynamique aspectuelle en germanique’ (371–77); André Lentin, ‘Mathématique et linguistique: Quelques réflexions’ [handwritten, even though it contains no mathematical notation at all!] (379–400); Jean Perrot, ‘Concepts et termes en linguistique: Des pesanteurs de la tradition aux risques de la modernisation’ (513–25); Maurice Sznycer, ‘À propos du passage de l’araméen au pehlevi’ (643–51); and Abderrahim Youssi, ‘Is a comprehensive linguistic theory possible?’ (711–22).

The topic index registers (not surprisingly) four contributions on roots and stems and fifteen on verbal systems, as well as others—mostly listed above—on matters of general linguistic interest (some focusing on Semitic languages). Each of the following languages or families is treated in at least one article: Hamito-Semitic (the misleading name persists among Francophone scholars of Afroasiatic); Semitic; Akkadian, Eblaite; Northwest Semitic; Aramaic, Hebrew; South Semitic; Ethiopic; Ge‘ez, Amharic, Tigrinya, Zway; Old South Arabian, and Modern South Arabian. General articles on Arabic number over a dozen, and there are nine on Arabic vernaculars. It is thus the Semitist who will most enjoy this volume, but neither Afroasiaticists nor general linguists will be disappointed.