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Richard C. Steiner

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Richard C. Steiner is a Semitist and a scholar of Near Eastern texts. His work has focused on texts from as early as the Egyptian Pyramid texts to as late as medieval biblical interpretation. He is a professor of Semitics at Yeshiva University in New York City.

Steiner received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Bible, Semitics, and Jewish Studies (under Moshe Greenberg, later of the Hebrew University) and linguistics (under William Labov). He collaborated with Labov on an important study of sound changes in spoken languages.[1]

Steiner's early work focused on the phonology of Semitic languages, especially Hebrew. In one book he argued that the letter known as Hebrew sin was pronounced as a fricative-lateral[2] and in another he argued that the letter tsade was originally (or at least for a very long time) an affricate, /ts/, against others who had doubted this.[3] These books have convinced most specialists.[4]

In 2007 Steiner lectured at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he announced that he had deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphic texts from the mid-third millennium BC.[5] This discovery was reported on by National Geographic[6], Science Daily[7], and others[8].

References

  1. ^ William Labov, Malcah Yaeger and Richard Steiner, A quantitative study of sound change in progress (Philadelphia: U. S. Regional Survey, 1972).
  2. ^ The Case for Fricative-Laterals in Proto-Semitic, (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1977.
  3. ^ Affricated Sade in the Semitic Languages (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1982).
  4. ^ For example: John Huehnergard, "Proto-Semitic and Proto-Akkadian," in The Akkadian Language in its Semitic Context: Studies in the Akkadian of the Third and Second Millennium BC (ed. Deutscher and Kouwenberg; Leiden: NINO), 1–18.
  5. ^ The lecture is available, unfortunately, only in Hebrew (http://hebrew-academy.huji.ac.il/PDF/steiner.pdf).
  6. ^ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070205-snake-spells.html
  7. ^ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070129100250.htm
  8. ^ http://spider.mc.yu.edu/news/articles/article.cfm?id=101302


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