Giovanni Semerano (filologo)
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Giovanni Semerano (21 February 1913 – 20 July 2005) was an Italian philologist and linguist who studied the languages of Ancient Mesopotamia. He obtained his degree in Florence, where among his teachers were the Hellenist
Ettore Bignone Ettore Bignone (17 December 1879 – 11 August 1953) was an Italian classical philologist and man of letters. Early life and career Ettore Bignone was born to Carlo and Anita Matteucci. He graduated in Classical Literature in Turin, with a diss ...
, the philologist Giorgio Pasquali, the semitist
Giuseppe Furlani Giuseppe Furlani (10 November 188517 December 1962) was an Italians, Italian archaeologist, Orientalism, orientalist, philologist, and History of religion, historian of religions, and the founder of Italian Assyriology and Hittites, Hittite studies ...
and the linguists Giacomo Devoto and
Bruno Migliorini Bruno Migliorini (; 19 November 1896 – 18 June 1975) was an Italian linguist and philologist. He was the author of one of the first scientific histories of Italian language and was president of the Accademia della Crusca. Biography Migliorin ...
. At the beginning of his career, he taught Greek and Latin in a high school. In 1950 he was appointed Supervisor of Bibliography for Veneto and in 1955 for Tuscany. He taught some lessons of Medieval Latin at the University of Florence in a School of Latin palaeography. Afterwards, he was director of the
Biblioteca Laurenziana The Laurentian Library (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana or BML) is a historic library in Florence, Italy, containing more than 11,000 manuscripts and 4,500 early printed books. Built in a cloister of the Medicean Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze ...
and then of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale of Florence. In 1967 he was honoured with the gold medal for cultural merits. He was an honorary member of the Accademia Etrusca. He was also a member of the Oriental Institute of Chicago.


Theory

Semerano rejected the Indoeuropean theory - taken for granted by mainstream historical linguistics. He highlighted the fact that Indoeuropean is only a constructed language, with no written records. Through comparison of a huge amount of words without convincing etymology in European languages, he supposes that these originated in Mesopotamia, from the Akkadian and
Sumerian Sumerian or Sumerians may refer to: *Sumer, an ancient civilization **Sumerian language **Sumerian art **Sumerian architecture **Sumerian literature **Cuneiform script, used in Sumerian writing *Sumerian Records, an American record label based in ...
languages. According to his supporters, Semerano's works have helped better understand the story of all European languages, not only the ancient and classic ones like Greek, Latin and Etruscan, but also all other languages and dialects, both modern and ancient, in Italy and Europe. He is extensively quoted by Jacques R. Pauwels in his 2009 book, ''Beneath the Dust of Time'' - also a non-linguist.


Works


''The Origins of European Culture''

''The origins of the European culture'' (not yet translated into English) has as subtitle ''Rivelazioni della linguistica storica'' (''Revelations of historic linguistics'' - Leo Olschki, Florence 1984-1994). It is divided into 4 volumes, two of which are etymological dictionaries of Greek and Latin and modern entries. They treat thousands of ancient and modern words of European languages, that should be related to the age-old Semitic languages. The book starts by assuming an old cultural protohistoric unity of Europe and the Middle East, on the basis of a Mesopotamic derivation of many geographic and ethnic terms. The original meaning of the name of many cities, people, rivers, characters, belongings, typical verbs of thought and hand activities are also usually included in a generic ''Mediterranean'' substrate that gathers all that cannot be categorized in the Indoeuropean linguistic framework (Continental). The author suggests that the Akkadian language, the language with the oldest and widest written records, should be rather used as an alternative reference framework since it also belongs to the family of Semitic languages and has the oldest evidence of
Sumerian Sumerian or Sumerians may refer to: *Sumer, an ancient civilization **Sumerian language **Sumerian art **Sumerian architecture **Sumerian literature **Cuneiform script, used in Sumerian writing *Sumerian Records, an American record label based in ...
substrate, like the tens of thousands of tablets written in cuneiform, discovered in the archives of the old city of Ebla in
Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
( Assyria) and dug out by the archaeologists during an Italian mission in 1968. According to the author, this linguistic framework proves the influence that Mesopotamia had on European civilizations, radiated along the Continental path of the Danube and along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, from Africa to Ireland. along the old trade roads of amber, tin and iron.


''L'infinito: un equivoco millenario''

The work (The endlessness: a millenary misunderstanding), with the subtitle ''Le antiche civiltà del Vicino Oriente e le origini del pensiero greco'' (The oldest civilizations of the Middle East and the origins of the Greek thought), (edited by Bruno Mondadori, 2001, collana "Sintesi" ), aims to revise all languages as entities originating from a common Akkadic and
Sumerian Sumerian or Sumerians may refer to: *Sumer, an ancient civilization **Sumerian language **Sumerian art **Sumerian architecture **Sumerian literature **Cuneiform script, used in Sumerian writing *Sumerian Records, an American record label based in ...
matrix. This allows the author to reinterpret radically the entire environment of Archaic and Classic Greece, no longer regarded as a miraculous island of rationality, but as a part of a unique community including Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Egypt. The theory of the volume is based on a new interpretation of the term '' Ápeiron'', central in
Anaximander Anaximander (; grc-gre, Ἀναξίμανδρος ''Anaximandros''; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus,"Anaximander" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 403. a city of Ionia (in moder ...
's philosophy. Anaximander defines the element from which all things originate with the Greek term ''ápeiron'', commonly held to be formed from ''a'' ( alpha privative, "without") and ''péras'' ("determination", "limit"), and thus translated as "endless", "unlimited". According to Semerano, though, since the word ''péras'' has a short ''e'', whereas ''ápeiron'' has a
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
''ei'' that reads as a long-closed "e", the diphthong cannot be produced by the short ''e'' of ''péras''. Semerano derives it from a collision of the
Semitic Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta. Semitic may also refer to: Religions * Abrahamic religions ** ...
term '''apar'', the
biblical The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
'''afar'' and with the Akkadic ''eperu'', all meaning "earth". The notorious fragment of Anaximander, in which we read that all things originate and come back to the All'''ápeiron'' would not be referred to a philosophical conception of endlessness, but to a concept of "belonging to the earth" that we can find in a previous sapiential tradition of Asian origin exemplified in the Bible: "dust you are and to dust you will return". On the basis of this interpretation, Semerano reviews the whole development of previous sophistic philosophy with an anti-idealistic and anti-metaphysic principle, reconsidering the differences and similarities between ancient thinkers and ascribing most of them to corpuscular physics, that brings together
Anaximander Anaximander (; grc-gre, Ἀναξίμανδρος ''Anaximandros''; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus,"Anaximander" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 403. a city of Ionia (in moder ...
, Thales and Democritus.


Other works

*''The People that Defeated Death: The Etruscans and their Language''- (Bruno Mondadori, 2003) *''The Myth of the Indo-European Language''- (Bruno Mondadori, 2005)


Criticisms

Semerano's theories are strongly rejected by most linguists.


Indoeuropean language theory

Semerano's objections to the Indoeuropean language theory are essentially objections to the theory as propounded by early nineteenth-century German linguists. He does not consider subsequent modifications (for instance, the so-called wave model, in German ''Wellentheorie''), that could correct and refine the first hypotheses. Such refining, it has to be said, is progressively approaching the area where Indoeuropean should have been created (today's Anatolia) in the Mesopotamic area. Moreover, Semerano's assertions, according to which the existence of Indoeuropean would be implausible, have no evidence in archaeological finds which confirm the theory. For example, the decipherment (successfully completed and enriched through the introduction of new historical data) of Hittite tablets started from the point that it was an Indoeuropean language written in the
cuneiform script Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sha ...
. Semerano's whole theory is based on a wide series of approaches of heterogeneous theories with no proposal of an alternative and consistent model to traditional linguistics and with no explanation and definition of linguistic laws that headed the derivation of the various languages examined by the ancient Mesopotamic languages.


Derivation of ''Ápeiron''

In his reconstruction of the derivation of ''Ápeiron'', Semerano appears not to know an essential element: in the Ionic dialect, unlike the Attic dialect and many other Greek dialects, the alternation between "e" (short vowel) and "ei" (diphthong), is quite common and originates from well-known linguistic dynamics. There are also synonyms of Anaximander's term in Homerbr>
where we read of ''póntos apéiritos'': on Semerano's thesis, this should not be translated as "endless sea" but "earthen sea", which seems unlikely.


More examples of Semerano's paretymological approach

Another example of Semerano's paretymology, paretymological approach is his suggestion for the origin of the Latin word ''res'' "thing": he ascribes it to the Akkadic ''rēš'' "head" (phrase ''rēšu''), neglecting the fact that the final Latin -s is the ending of the nominative (therefore the root of the Latin word being ''re-'' -''*reh''- and not ''rēš''). If he had started from the accusative ''rem'' he would instead have been led to the Akkadic word ''rēmu'' "belly". Semerano seems to have simply used dictionaries of various languages with little methodological scruple, often deliberately ignoring grammatical structure.


See also

*'' Black Athena''


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Semerano, Giovanni Italian philologists Italian Assyriologists Academic staff of the University of Florence 1913 births 2005 deaths 20th-century philologists Assyriologists