--- title: "Olga Kapeliuk: Selected Papers in Ethio-Semitic and Neo-Aramaic Linguistics — Bausi 2011" description: "He describes Kapeliuk's work as unified by an interest in the typology of \"peripheral\" Semitic morphology and syntax." authors: ["Alessandro Bausi"] year: 2011 venue: "Aethiopica 13" source: "https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/aethiopica/article/view/68" doi: "10.15460/aethiopica.13.1.68" licence: "CC BY-SA (journal licence per DOAJ; Aethiopica)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/bausi-2011-olga-kapeliuk-selected-papers-ethio/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/bausi-2011-olga-kapeliuk-selected-papers-ethio/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2011](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2011/page/2/) / Olga Kapeliuk: Selected Papers in Ethio-Semitic and Neo-Aramaic Linguistics # Olga Kapeliuk: Selected Papers in Ethio-Semitic and Neo-Aramaic Linguistics **Authors:** [Alessandro Bausi](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/alessandro-bausi/) · **Year:** 2011 · **Venue:** Aethiopica 13 · **Licence:** [CC BY-SA (journal licence per DOAJ; Aethiopica)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.15460/aethiopica.13.1.68) · [PDF](https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/aethiopica/article/download/68/46) · [DOI 10.15460/aethiopica.13.1.68](https://doi.org/10.15460/aethiopica.13.1.68) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W1545248652) **Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) ## Summary This is not an experimental article. It is a short book review by Alessandro Bausi of a 2009 Magnes Press volume that reprints the linguistic papers of Olga Kapeliuk, professor emeritus at the Hebrew University and a member of the Jerusalem school that formed around Hans Jakob Polotsky. The book's purpose is to make about forty years of scattered articles on Ethio-Semitic and Neo-Aramaic grammar available in one place. Bausi outlines the structure of the collection, which has 43 items in three chapters. He explains what was deliberately excluded and lists a few papers that could also have been included. He describes Kapeliuk's work as unified by an interest in the typology of "peripheral" Semitic morphology and syntax. In his view, nominalization and relativization form its strongest thread, and he praises her reliance on modern Amharic and Tigrinya literature as evidence. He criticizes the missing subject index and the weaker print quality. His verdict is that the book is an essential companion for rigorous study of Ethio-Semitic. No datasets, models or metrics are involved. ## Key points - The volume was published in Jerusalem by Magnes Press in 2009. It has xii + 579 pages and costs US $49.99. Its 43 contributions are mostly in English or French, with one in Hebrew. - The contributions are split into three chapters: - 4 on Peripheral Semitic (pp. 3–90), - 32 on Ethio-Semitic (pp. 91–481), - 7 on Neo-Aramaic (pp. 483–579). - Several works are left out: - the monographs *Nominalization in Amharic* (1988) and *Syntax of the Noun in Amharic* (1994), - the 1988 overview "Amharique", - all reviews except two, which cover Hartmann's *Amharische Grammatik* and Voigt's *Das tigrinische Verbalsystem*. - The reviewer proposes three additions. Two are 1994 papers on the pronouns ərswo / ərsaččäw as sociolinguistic variants. The third is a 2001 paper on suprasentential constructions in Amharic. - The volume's themes include: - typological convergence versus inherited features, - the Ge'ez gerund, auxiliaries and synthetic verb forms, - definiteness, focus and topicalization, - tense, evidentiality and factivity. The central theme is nominalization and relativization, which includes Ge'ez cleft sentences and the transformation of copula sentences. ## Interesting ideas - Kapeliuk treats relative pronouns, relative verbs, cleft sentences and copula transformations as a single continuum of nominalization rather than as separate topics. - Her work separates features shared through areal or typological convergence (for example, Amharic–Turkish parallels) from features inherited within the language family. - She draws her evidence from authentic modern literature rather than from constructed example sentences. - She analyzes the choice between pronoun forms as a sociolinguistic variant that signals register and politeness. - The reviewer argues that a large collection without a subject index loses much of its value to readers. ## For Mova How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests: - **I1** (tree): Build one linked test suite covering relative clauses, clefts and copular sentences, so the parser's acl:relcl, cop and cleft analyses are checked for consistency with one another. - **I2** (tree): When converting UD dialects or borrowing treebank data, tag which constructions are cross-linguistic patterns and which are language-specific, so conversion rules do not overgeneralize. - **I3** (learn): Draw silver data and evaluation sets from real narrative prose, such as the fables and tales Mova reads, so the system is measured on natural constructions instead of synthetic ones. - **I4** (frames): Add a register/politeness slot to speech-act frames, so that address forms and pronoun choice feed into implicature about social relations. - **I5** (world): Index every compiled knowledge rule and resource by linguistic phenomenon, so any explanation step can be traced back to the relevant entries. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* Fields: [Linguistics & languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/linguistics/) Topics: [🕎 Hebrew & Aramaic](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/hebrew-aramaic/) · [🐪 Semitic languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/semitic-languages/) ## Institutions - [Universität Hamburg](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/universitat-hamburg/) — University, Hamburg, Germany · 33 works · 4,538 citations ## Cite Cite as: Alessandro Bausi. 2011. Olga Kapeliuk: Selected Papers in Ethio-Semitic and Neo-Aramaic Linguistics. Aethiopica 13. The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @inproceedings{bausi2011olga, title = {{Olga Kapeliuk: Selected Papers in Ethio-Semitic and Neo-Aramaic Linguistics}}, author = {Alessandro Bausi}, booktitle = {Aethiopica 13}, year = {2011}, doi = {10.15460/aethiopica.13.1.68}, url = {https://doi.org/10.15460/aethiopica.13.1.68} } ``` - [← previous Automatic transcription of 17th century English text in Contemporary English with NooJ: Method and Evaluation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/piton-2011-automatic-transcription-17th-century-english/) - [next → Selected Operations, Algorithms, and Applications of n-Tape Weighted Finite-State Machines](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kempe-2011-selected-operations-algorithms-applications-n/) - [↑ back to papers of 2011](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2011/page/2/)