Dr David Appleyard

David Appleyard's research interests cover a range of languages of the Djibouti-Eritrea-Ethiopia-Somalia region and focus primarily on the Semitic and Cushitic languages of the area. In thematic terms his research can be categorised as descriptive or historical linguistics, latterly with particular emphasis on contact features between these two major Horn of Africa language families. From the Semitic languages of the region, he has worked on Amharic, but also on minor languages such as Argobba and Harari, which are facing extinction. A large part of his research, however, both in "hands-on" fieldwork and in studies carried out in the UK, is on the Cushitic languages and especially on Agaw (Central Cushitic), most of the latter of which are in an endangered state. He has worked and published on all Agaw languages, but especially on Kemant, Khamtanga, and most recently on the severely endangered dialect (sometimes called "Quarenya") of the Ethiopian Jews, most of whom are now in Israel. In the wider perspective, he also has research concerns in the whole Afroasiatic phylum, particularly in the entire Semitic family, in the long-extinct Egyptian branch, in Cushitic and, to a smaller degree, in Berber. Several modern Semitic languages, inside and outside Ethiopia (e.g. Modern Aramaic, Modern South Arabian, and the so-called "Gurage" languages of Ethiopia) are both in the short and the long term under threat, as are some of minor Cushitic and Berber languages.

Recent publications:

Appleyard, David 1999 "Afroasiatic and the Nostratic Hypothesis". In Nostratic: Examining a Linguistic Macrofamily. Ed. by Colin Renfrew & Daniel Nettle. Pp. 289-314. Cambridge, The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

Appleyard, David 2001 "The verb 'to say' as a means of verb recycling in the Agaw languages." In New Data and New Methods in Afroasiatic Linguistics. Robert Hetzron in memoriam. Ed. by Andrzej Zaborski. Pp. 1-11. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

Appleyard, David 2002 "New Finds in the 20th Century: the South Semitic Languages" Israel Oriental Studies, 20 (Semitic Linguistics: The State of the Art at the Turn of the Twenty First Century). 401-430.