This volume contains articles published since the beginning of the 1970s on two peripheral Semitic branches: the Semitic languages of Ethiopia and the Neo-Aramaic written standard based on the dialect spoken in Iran and in the former Soviet Union. The papers deal mainly with synchronic problems of syntax and they tend to analyze specific questions of Neo-Semitic within a perspective oriented towards structural linguistics and typology. Special attention is attached to language contacts and to the impact of the substrates and adstrates - the Cushitic languages in Ethiopia and Kurdish and Persian in the case of Neo-Aramaic - in the formation of Sprachbünde.