--- title: "Geoffrey Khan (ed.) — paper by Weninger (2012) · Aethiopica 10" description: "For NLP the review offers no data or models, only methodological lessons about morphology, terminology and argumentation." authors: ["Stefan Weninger"] year: 2012 venue: "Aethiopica 10" source: "https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/aethiopica/article/view/212" doi: "10.15460/aethiopica.10.1.212" 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/weninger-2012-geoffrey-khan-ed-semitic-studies/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/weninger-2012-geoffrey-khan-ed-semitic-studies/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2012](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2012/page/3/) / Geoffrey Khan (ed.): Semitic Studies in Honour of Edward Ullendorff # Geoffrey Khan (ed.): Semitic Studies in Honour of Edward Ullendorff **Authors:** [Stefan Weninger](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/stefan-weninger/) · **Year:** 2012 · **Venue:** [Aethiopica 10](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/aethiopica/) ([Aethiopica 2012](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/aethiopica/2012/)) · **Publisher:** [Hamburg University Press](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/hamburg-university-press/) · **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.10.1.212) · [PDF](https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/aethiopica/article/download/212/210) · [DOI 10.15460/aethiopica.10.1.212](https://doi.org/10.15460/aethiopica.10.1.212) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W1510347047) **Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) ## Summary This is not a research article but a short German-language book review (Aethiopica 10, pp. 243–246; the journal header gives 2007 rather than 2012). Stefan Weninger assesses the Festschrift edited by Geoffrey Khan for Edward Ullendorff's 85th birthday. He concentrates on the Ethiopian-studies contributions and only briefly lists the rest, which cover Ancient and comparative Semitics, Hebrew and Judaica, Syriac and Neo-Aramaic, Arabic and Islamic studies, and Graeco-Semitica. He welcomes several pieces. One is Huehnergard's explanation of why Geʿez diphthongs sometimes contract and sometimes do not. He also notes Knib's classification of an Ezekiel manuscript. He criticizes others: - Zaborski cites Voigt's counterarguments but does not engage with them. - Goldenberg spends too long on the ambiguity of the term "root". - Hopkins blends genealogical and typological questions. - Pankhurst's article had already appeared in Aethiopica. Overall, the reviewer judges the volume a fitting tribute. For NLP the review offers no data or models, only methodological lessons about morphology, terminology and argumentation. ## Key points - Published by Brill in 2005 (vi + 367 pp.) as volume 47 of the series Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, the reviewed book bears the title *Semitic Studies in Honour of Edward Ullendorff*. It opens with an addendum to Ullendorff's bibliography and contains 26 contributions. - Huehnergard traces irregular contraction of *aw/ay* to *o/e* in Geʿez *qatl* nouns to the nature of the adjacent consonants. - Zaborski argues that Geʿez stems 0₂ (qättälä) and 0₃ (qatälä) are independent bases rather than derivatives of the basic stem. He also rejects labels like "intensive" or "conative". - Pankhurst's paper on Emperor Yohannes IV (1872–1889) duplicates one already printed in Aethiopica 8 (2005), 48–71. - For a fuller discussion, the reviewer points readers to Ewald Wagner's review in Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 101 (2006). ## Interesting ideas - Apparent irregularity can sometimes be explained by a conditioning environment, as Huehnergard did by looking at the neighbouring consonants instead of listing exceptions. - Treating derived-looking stems as independent bases, without fixed semantic labels, avoids forcing one meaning onto a morphological pattern; Voigt's objection warns against going to the opposite extreme of full lexicalization. - The term "root" covers two notions: a historical etymon and an abstract lexical core that becomes a word only when slotted into a pattern. Separating such senses prevents confusion. - Genealogical relatedness and typological similarity are independent axes, and mixing them produces pseudo-questions. - Citing a rival position without testing its examples leaves an impression of selective reading; real engagement means running the counterexamples. ## For Mova How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests: - **I1** (tokens): When the lemmatizer meets irregular forms, first test whether surrounding phonological or orthographic context predicts them, and only then add exception lists. - **I2** (frames): Do not hard-wire a single semantic role shift to a derivational affix; keep a learned per-lemma mapping with a pattern-level default. - **I3** (world): Store distinct ontology nodes for homonymous technical concepts instead of merging them under one label. - **I4** (tree): When converting UD dialects or choosing auxiliary treebanks, record language family and structural similarity as separate features rather than one "closeness" score. - **I5** (learn): Every new repair rule should be evaluated on the counterexamples a competing rule was built for, as an explicit negative control. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* 📚 Shelves (3): [🎭 Arts and Humanities](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · 17,450 works · [🗣️ Language and Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) · 17,296 works · [📜 Religious studies](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/religious-studies/) · 227 works 🧭 Topics (1): [Semitic languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/semitic-languages/) · 3,066 works ## Cite Cite as: Stefan Weninger. 2012. Geoffrey Khan (ed.): Semitic Studies in Honour of Edward Ullendorff. Aethiopica 10. The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @inproceedings{weninger2012geoffrey, title = {{Geoffrey Khan (ed.): Semitic Studies in Honour of Edward Ullendorff}}, author = {Stefan Weninger}, booktitle = {Aethiopica 10}, year = {2012}, doi = {10.15460/aethiopica.10.1.212}, url = {https://doi.org/10.15460/aethiopica.10.1.212} } ``` - [← previous Gender and Irony in The Early Modern English Romance](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/dana-2012-gender-irony-early-modern-english/) - [next → Girma Y. Getahun: Advanced Amharic Lexicon: a Supplement to Concise Amharic–English Dictionaries](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/teferra-2012-girma-y-getahun-advanced-amharic/) - [↑ back to papers of 2012](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2012/page/3/) *Updated 29 October 2026*