Cultures and Religions | Course catalogue

SEMITICAL PHILOLOGY

Course objectives

The course - provides students with knowledge and understanding of the methodological, critical-problematic, and practical aspects of the discipline; it offers regional and thematic perspectives in which research projects relevant to the discipline are active or may be developed; it highlights the diversity of fields in which disciplinary skills can be applied (descriptor 1); - develops the student’s independent ability to relate what has been learned to other academic fields (SSDs): historical, literary, artistic, cultural heritage, economic, political, historical-religious, etc. (descriptor 2); - enables students to apply the acquired knowledge and specific terminology in the context of so-called “transferable skills” (independent judgment, communication skills, descriptors 3–5).

Channel 1

ALESSIO AGOSTINI Lecturers' profile

Program - Frequency - Exams

Course program

Scripts and Languages of the Western Semitic world. Part 1: Introduction to the study of Semitic languages and their linguistic classification. Formation and diffusion of Semitic linear scripts. Comparative Semitic linguistics and its development. Analysis of the main phonological and morphological traits of the Semitic languages, and reconstruction of their reciprocal relationships, with particular attention to Western Semitic. Part 2: Reading, analysis, and philological commentary of a selection of texts, the paleographic, phonological, and morphological problems of which will be examined from a comparative perspective. The language of these documents may be Aramaic, Canaanite, or the languages of the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula. A different linguistic field will be chosen each year in rotation, which will be announced before the course begins.

Prerequisites

none

Books

The general bibliography and the additional references for the study of texts will be provided during the classes.

Frequency

highly recommended

Exam mode

Examination on the general part and on the texts analyzed during the classes.