Vera Tsukanova

Born in 1978 in Moscow, Russia.

In the years 1985-1995 studied at a Moscow school specialized in the French language.

Graduated in 2001 from the Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow) with the specialization in Theoretical Linguistics and the Arabic language. In years 1999-2000 obtained a scholarship from the University of Kuwait to study Arabic as a foreign language at the Language center. Her final paper was dedicated to the phonology and morphology of the Arabic dialect of Kuwait.

Before coming to Marburg Vera Tsukanova was employed as interpreter at the Embassy of Kuwait in Moscow, computer linguist and lecturer at several Universities in Moscow. There she taught the Arabic Language, Arabic Dialectology, Syrian Arabic, Theoretical Grammar and History of the Arabic Language, as well as Readings in Arabic Literature. In addition to teaching, she was a part of the research group, whose work culminated in the monograph "Dream narratives: Corpus Study of Russian Oral Discourse", and conducted research on the discourse functions of the verb forms in the Kuwaiti dialect of Arabic.

Employed as a research associate at the Department of Semitic Studies of the Marburg University since October 2016. Member of the editorial team of the open-access journal “Middle East – Topics and Arguments” in 2017–2020, editor of Issue 13 entitled “Contacts”. Member of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft since 2018 and founding member of the project Halqa arabiyya.

In June 2023, Vera Tsukanova defended a doctoral dissertation "The evolution of the derivational verbal system in Arabic" under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Weninger. Her current project is devoted to the diminutives in the Semitic languages of the Arabian peninsula.

Selected papers

1.      German pioneers of studying the languages of Oman. Journal of Oman Studies 23, 2022, pp. 1-13.

2.      Arabic as a scholarly language? Pitfalls of multilingualism in scholarship. (Co-authored with Michael Waltisberg). Middle East – Topics and Arguments, Volume 13, “Contacts”: pp. 30–36 (https://archiv.ub.uni-marburg.de/ep/0003/article/view/8094).

3.      Contacts in the MENA region: a brief introduction. (Co-authored with Evgeniya Prusskaya). Middle East – Topics and Arguments, Volume 13, “Contacts”: pp. 5–11. (https://doi.org/10.17192/meta.2019.13.8245).

4.      First author of the chapters “Fragmentation of Coordinated NPs”, “Serialization”, “Reduplication” in the collective monograph “Rasskazy o snovidenijakh. Korpusnoe issledovanie ustnogo russkogo diskursa (= Night Dream Stories: A corpus study of spoken Russian discourse)” A.A. Kibrik, V.I. Podlesskaya (eds.). Moscow, 2009.

5.      Discourse functions of the verb in the dialect of sedentary Kuwaitis. In Prochazka S., V. Ritt-Benmimoun (eds.) Between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Studies on Contemporary Arabic Dialects. Proceedings of the 7th AIDA Conference, held in Vienna from 5-9 September 2006, pp.  447–455. Wien 2008. Institut für Orientalistik der Universität Wein.

Book Reviews

1.      Holes, Clive (ed.). Arabic Historical Dialectology. Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Approaches. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018. Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 2023; 118(2): 106–109.

2.      Bruweleit, Stefan: Aspect, Tense and Action in the Arabic Dialect of Beirut. Leiden/Boston: Brill 2015. Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 2018; 113(6): 473–476.

3.      Aldoukhi, Rima / Procházka, Stephan / Telič, Anna: Lehrbuch des Syrisch-Arabischen 1. Praxisnaher Einstieg in den Dialekt von Damaskus. 2. Auflage. Unter Mitarbeit von Narine Grigoryan. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2016. & Aldoukhi, Rima / Procházka, Stephan / Telič, Anna: Lehrbuch des Syrisch-Arabischen 2. Damaszenisch für Fortgeschrittene. Unter Mitarbeit von Narine Grigoryan. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2014. Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 2018; 113(4–5): 357–358.

Conference Talks

1.      “Spread of the niktib – niktibu paradigm in African Arabic dialects: A framework for the analysis”. 34. Deutscher Orientalistentag. 12.-17.09.2022. Freie Universität Berlin.

2.      “Non-trivial meanings of derived verbal stems in the dialects of Arabic: a typological survey”. 14th International Conference of the “Association Internationale de la Dialectologie Arabe”. Granada, Spain. 28.06.–01.07.2022.

3.      “A typological approach to derived verb stems in Arabic”. Workshop “Semantics of Grammatical Markers in Semitic Languages and Approaches to Its Description”. Freie Universität Berlin, 13–14.02.2020.

4.      “Verbal stem formation in Arabic dialects and Modern Standard Arabic, based on the lexical statistics”. 13th International Conference of the “Association Internationale de la Dialectologie Arabe”. Kutaisi, Georgia. 10–13.06.2019.

5.      “Four-consonantal verbs in Arabic dialects: At the frontier between lexicology and derivation”. 7. Arbeitstagung der Sektion Semitistik innerhalb der DMG. Universität Wien. 27.02–01.03.2019.

6.      “Partial restructuring in West-Sudanic Arabic”. The 9th World Congress of African Linguistics. Faculty of letters and Human Sciences, Rabat, Morocco. 25–28.08.2018.

7.      „Verbalstämme in den arabischen Dialekten“. CNMS-Kolloquium der Philipps-Universität Marburg, 21.02.2018.

8.      “The Origins of the Causative S-Stem in Hassaniya Arabic”. 33. Deutscher Orientalistentag „Asien, Afrika und Europa“. Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, 18.–22. September 2017.

9.      “Discourse Functions of the Verb in the Dialect of Sedentary Kuwaitis”. 7th international conference of the “Association Internationale de la Dialectologie Arabe”, Vienna, Austria, 2006.

Readings in Classical Arabic
Arabic Dialectology
Syriac language
Phoenician-Punic language

Why do I work and study at the Department of the Semitic Studies in Marburg? (In German)