The Jewish neo-Aramaic dialect of Koy Sanjaq (Iraqi Kurdistan)

This book describes the dialect of the Jewish community of the town of Koy Sanjaq in eastern Iraqi Kurdistan which is now spoken only by approximately 200 elderly people in Israel and is heading towards extinction. The dialect, which until now has remained virtually univestigated, displays the typical features of the Jewish NeoAramaic dialects east of the Greater Zab river, e. g. the shift of the Old Aramaic interdentals to l and the merger of the third person masculine and feminine singular independent pronouns into a common form o. The phonological analysis, though synchronic in principal, deals also with major diachronic processes which have shaped the phonological profile of the dialect. In morphology, the complicated verbal system of the dialect is described in great detail. The book contains a selection of texts which represents the different genres of oral literature (historical narrative, fable, Jewish legend, oral translation of the Bible). The comprehensive glossary is extensively etymological and offers new insights based on comparative data from numerous Aramaic dialects, most of them as yet undescribed.