Zukunftsphilologie
2012/ 2013
Ya'ar Hever
The Discourse of the 'Semitic': Language, Nation and Race
Ya'ar Hever received his BA (2005), MA (2007) and PhD (2012) in Linguistics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He studied structural linguistics and all branches of the Semitic languages, focusing on the Ethiopian Semitic languages. His MA thesis and PhD dissertation analyze various aspects of the syntax of Chaha, an Ethiopian Semitic language that belongs to the Gurage language cluster, using as a corpus the first texts printed in this language (dating from 1933 onward), which include translations of Christian texts as well as original literary works (most notably by Gäbrä-Iyäsus Hailä-Mariam).
The Discourse of the 'Semitic': Language, Nation and Race
As a fellow of Zukunftsphilologie in Berlin, he will pursue a metadiscursive analysis and evaluation of the philological construct of the “Semitic” and the “Semite” from its origin in linguistics, as it is used for the classification of languages into families, to its development in other fields of knowledge as a politically loaded term. The linguistic debate over the Semitic character of Modern Hebrew will serve as a case study of the elusive and intricate meaning of this term in philological practice and outside of it.
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