Kees VersteeghKees Versteegh (1947) is Professor of Arabic and Islam at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He graduated in Classical and Semitic languages and specializes in historical linguistics and the history of linguistics, focusing on processes of anguage change and language contact. His books include Pidginization and Creolization: The Case of Arabic (Amsterdam, 1984), The Arabic Linguistic Tradition (London, 1997) and Arabic Grammar and Qur'anic Exegesis in Early Islam (Leiden, 1993). He co-edited the Handbuch für die Geschichte der Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft (Berlin, 2000-2005) and the Arabic-Dutch/Dutch-Arabic Dictionary (Muiderberg, 2003), and was the editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics (Leiden, 2006-2009). Read More Read Less