http://www.aulaorientalis.org/semiticbibliography/index.html
For all you Semitic philologists, this is from one of the world's foremost:
It seems obligatory at the beginning of this bibliography to set out its
limits and justify its objectives. The aim of the bibliography is to
collect and arrange systematically only those studies directly or mainly
related to subjects of Semitic linguistics, namely, those centered on
the study of languages and their phonological, morphological, syntactic
and semantic constituents, from both the comparative perspective(close
and distant relationship) and the immanent perspective (grammar and
lexicon). Consequently, all other studies dealing with the history of
the societies which use or used those languages and with everything that
is built on them (socio-political history, literature, religion and
‘culture’ in general), remain excluded.
This limitation may seem impossible or at the very least without
justification and minimalist, in some way resorting to ‘formalism’,
giving up the basic element, whose development a language has to
perform, namely, the shaping of a universe of socialrepresentations,
which generates a particular way of communication and creativity. One
could say that it means abandoning the ‘context’ in which every
linguistic formulation has its meaning, being at the same time its
outcome. But we cannot forget, in answer to such an objection, that our
purpose has a fixed point of support: it is constructed exclusively on
‘texts’ as the products of language, which are the reference point for
testing and validating results. And if it is true that ‘the proposition
is the world’ (Wittgenstein), then linguistic analysis is the basis for
the understanding of any representation.
Our intention is to provide specialist information that arranges and
classifies as much as possible the vast amount of data constantly
presented by the general bibliography on Semitic languages and cultures.
In this way, access to such information will be made easier, with
better focus on the more important issues of research. At the same time
we intend to collect the information and classify it in a uniform
manner, in this way making it possible to compare across languages the
research being carried out within the various languages, since such
research often ignores other languages.
The first installment is devoted to general topics in respect of the
Semitic family as a whole. In this connexion, studies dealing with its
relationship to other linguistic groups and families (Nostratic, Hamitic
or Afro-Asiatic) will be taken into account in as much as they bear on
the study of Semitics proper. Here, Nostratic is taken in its wider
meaning, as used today amongIndo-European scholars. In order to avoid
any prejudgements, in successive installments we will offer linguistic
bibliographies for each Semitic language as well as for each Semitic
language family according to its name, without attempting to decide on
its suitability or incorporate it within a particular preferred
classification. This is precisely one of the problems the present
bibliographical tool aims to address. The series will include the
following headings: [East and North Semitic], Akkadian, Eblaite,
Amorite, Ugaritic, [Northwest Semitic/Canaanite],Phoenician, Hebrew,
Aramaic/Syriac, South Semitic, Old (Epigraphic) North and South Arabian,
Modern South-Arabian, Arabic and Ethiopic,both classic and modern, the
pertinent dialectal variations being included under the appropriate
heading.The steady general bibliographical references are ordered, to
easy their use, according to titles instead of authors, which may vary
along the years. Otherwise, the alphabetic order according to author’s
name is followed.
The cross-references to the individual bibliographies of each of these
languages and groups of languages are essential for extracting full
information on a specific linguistic issue at either a general or a
comparative level. In the first installment, any comparison of (at least
two) languages is noted. When the title specifies the language
compared, the item will be repeated in the corresponding bibliography
(“Comparative Level”). Unlike the other topics, where the aim is to be
exhaustive, the Bibliography on Semitic lexicography has been kept
within less strict limits, otherwise the task would have been endless.
Studies or references to particular lexemes have not been recorded in
the installment devoted to Common Semitics, unless they bear on
comparative issues. In principle, only treatments of ‘roots’ or
‘semantic fields’ have been taken into account. Nevertheless, the
criterion has not always been applied stringently, since often it is
difficult to draw the line between particular and comparative
treatments. In the other installments, devoted to particular languages,
concrete lexemes also have been recorded, although in a non exhaustive
way. In any case, this section of the bibliography has to be taken as
merely indicative and perfunctory, and reference to up-to-date
lexicographic records is unavoidable. A thorough lexicographical entry
should even include reference to the main studies on editions and
commentaries on the texts, where the particular lexeme appears, but such
textual studies have not been included. As for book reviews, only the
most significant that appeared in the last years have been listed.
