Dr. Wiktor Gebski is a linguist specialising in the Jewish dialects of North African Arabic, as well as Modern and Biblical Hebrew. He completed his BA and MA in Hebrew and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Warsaw and obtained his PhD in Arabic dialectology from the University of Cambridge. His doctoral dissertation, The Jewish Dialect of Gabes (Southern Tunisia): Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, was written under the supervision of Professor Geoffrey Khan and involved the documentation of this endangered North African Arabic dialect. As part of his Rothschild postdoctoral project, he continued his research on Judeo-Arabic, working on the Algerian dialects of Ghardaïa and Wad-Souf, as well as the Tunisian dialect of Djerba. In 2024, he joined the Cambridge Grammar of Biblical Hebrew project, where he worked on modern pronunciation traditions of Hebrew. His Humboldt project focuses on describing the phonology and morphology of the pronunciation traditions of Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew among the Jewish communities of Kurdistan.

Research interests:

- Arabic dialectology
- Judeo-Arabic
- Hebrew
- Historical linguistics
- Phonetics and phonology

For a research summary, see under zur Person.

Monograph:1

• Gębski, Wiktor. (2024). A Grammar of the Jewish Arabic Dialect of Gabes. Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures. Open Book Publishers. https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0394

Papers in peer-reviewed journals:

• Gębski, Wiktor. (2022). “Expressions of Tense and Aspect in the Tunisian Varieties of Arabic. A Comparative Study of Jewish and Muslim Dialects.” In: Journal of Jewish Languages 10(1): 54-86. https://brill.com/view/journals/jjl/10/1/article-p54_3.xml?language=en
• Gębski, Wiktor. (2023) “The Phonology of the Judaeo-Arabic dialect of Gabes.” In: Journal of Semitic Studies 68(1): 165-197. https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/fgac024
• Gębski, Wiktor. (2023) “The Development of Sibilant Harmony in Maghrebi Arabic from the Perspective of Language Contact in Pre-Islamic Africa.” In: Mediterranean Language Review 30: 155-181. https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/Mediterranean_Language_Review_30_(2023)/title_7393.ahtml

• Gębski, Wiktor. (2023) “Between Analogy and Language Contact: A Case Study of Grammatical Change in Maghrebi Judaeo-Arabic Dialects.” In: Folia Orientalia 60: 277-309. https://journals.pan.pl/dlibra/publication/148426/edition/130060/content
• Gębski, Wiktor. (2024). “Three Tales in Tunisian, Algerian, and Libyan Spoken Judeo-Arabic with a Linguistic Commentary.’’ In: Carmilim: for the Study of Hebrew and Related Languages 15:11-34.
• Gębski, Wiktor. (2024). “The Arabic Dialect of the Jews of Wad-Souf (Saharan Algeria): Phonology and Morphology.” In: Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 78(1): 49-84.
• Gębski, Wiktor. (2024). “The Syntax of the Jewish Arabic dialect of Wad-Souf.” In: Journal of Semitic Studies 69(2): 879-946. https://academic.oup.com/jss/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jss/fgae006/7632170?searchresult=1
• Gębski, Wiktor. (2024). “Preliminary Description of the Jewish Arabic Dialect of Ghardaïa (Central Algeria) with Elements of Phonology, Socio-Phonetics, and Morphology.” In: Journal of Semitic Studies.
• https://academic.oup.com/jss/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jss/fgae033/7902027?searchresult=1
• Gębski, Wiktor. (2024). “The Arabic Substrate in Israeli Hebrew as Spoken by the First Generation of Migrants from Wad-Souf (Algeria).” In: Israel Oriental Studies 17.
• Gębski, Wiktor. (2025). “Comparative Notes on the Jewish Arabic Dialects of Gabes and Djerba.” In: J.C.E. Watson et al. (eds.), Interconnected Traditions: Semitic languages, literatures, cultures. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers.

Forthcoming
Co-authored book:

• Khan, Geoffrey, Wiktor Gębski, et al. The Cambridge Reference Grammar of Biblical Hebrew. Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures. Open Book Publishers. (forthcoming 2026)

Papers:

• Gębski, Wiktor. Pausal Forms in the Modern Pronunciation Traditions of Biblical Hebrew. In: Journal of Semitic Studies (forthcoming 2026).