All Semitic languages use a relative marker as at least one strategy of relativization, and all branches show reflexes or relics of reflexes of an interdental relative marker. The wide consensus that the relative pronoun was originally identical to the proximal demonstrative is based on the formal identity between the bases of the two in West Semitic, and on the wide attestation of the process Demonstrative > Relative in world languages. In this paper, we will show that there are a number of significant problems with the reconstruction of the relative pronoun, which, when taken together, make tracing its origin to the demonstrative highly unlikely. Instead we will argue that the opposite is true: the demonstrative in West Semitic is a secondary formation on the basis of the relative marker.

This paper examines the evidence for the marginal feminine endings *-ay- and *-āy- in Proto-Semitic, and the feminine endings *-e and *-a in Proto-Berber. Their similar formation (*CV̆CC-ay/āy), semantics (verbal abstracts, underived concrete feminine nouns) and plural morphology (replacement of the feminine suffix by a plural suffix with -w-) suggest that this feminine formation should be reconstructed to a shared ancestor which may be called Proto-Berbero-Semitic.

The Iranian Empire emerged in the third century in the interstices of the Silk Road that increasingly linked the markets of the Mediterranean and the Near East with South, Central, and East Asia. The ensuing four centuries of Iranian rule corresponded with the heyday of trans-Eurasian trade, as the demand of moneyed imperial elites across the continent for one another's high-value commodities stimulated the development of long-distance networks. Despite its position at the nexus of trans-continental and trans-oceanic commerce, accounts of Iran in late antiquity relegate trade to a marginal role in its political economy. The present article seeks to foreground the contribution of trans-continental mercantile networks to the formation of Iran and to argue that its development depended as much on the political economies of its western and eastern neighbours as on internal Near Eastern factors.

The province of Khurāsān constituted the centre of political, cultural, and religious life in the Sunni Islamic world from the ninth until the mid-twelfth century, after which Khurāsān was completely eclipsed. The question of how this occurred has remained almost completely unstudied; and the one study that there is does not consult the key primary literary sources for the time. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to re-examine what the primary sources reveal about the catastrophic cultural and political eclipse of Khurāsān in the mid-twelfth century, in order to demonstrate that this catastrophe was not due to “climate, cotton and camels” – in fact, Khurāsān was doing very well until the 1150s – but to concrete human agency and action: namely, the province's destruction by the rampaging Oghuz Turkmens after Sultan Sanjar had been taken captive by them in 1153, thus leading directly to the downfall of the Great Seljuq Sultanate.

The literary form and rhetorical structure of ancient Chinese poems have not been sufficiently studied. The “Jiu zhang” 九章 (Nine Avowals) attributed to Qu Yuan 屈原 contain distinctive formal features which are highly suggestive for interpretations of Qu Yuan's life and works. At the level of rhetoric, the protagonist frequently describes his own mental state using metaphors of knots and entanglement. At the level of form, the internal structure of the poems, and “Chou si” 抽思 (Unravelled Yearnings) in particular, involves series of overlapping, cross-referencing units that recall the “strange loop” discussed by Douglas Hofstadter as a model of human consciousness. Reading these poems is not just a matter of reconstructing their historical contexts but also of understanding their intended effects on the reader, who is effectively transported into a simulation of Qu Yuan's mind.

This article consists mainly of an annotated transcription of a report on the wartime courses in Japanese at SOAS prepared by Frank Daniels in August 1945. An introduction is provided setting his report in context and providing some of the background relating to the attempts by SOAS, well before the outbreak of war with Japan, to persuade the government that training needed to begin without delay. These attempts were unsuccessful, but Frank Daniels and the teachers assembled to help him, including his Japanese wife and some Japanese released from internment in the UK, successfully developed a teaching programme that went on to train many individuals who were to become the first generation of university Japanologists in the UK.