A Journal for Hebrew descriptive, computational and applied linguistics
Grammar and the Body: A Multimodal Study of the Grammaticization of Hebrew 'ani lo mevin/a ‘I don’t understand’
Based on audio- and video-recordings of over 19 hours of casual conversation, this study explores the ways Hebrew speakers deploy linguistic and embodied means when producing the mental verb construction 'ani lo mevin/a ‘I don’t understand (M/F)’. We study the emergence of this construction and its grammaticization path, shedding light on a correlation between the types of gesture accompanying its production and its discourse functions. We found that deployment of the construction is fixed and formulaic and seldom refers to lack of understanding. More often, it expresses puzzled stance or conveys criticism. Furthermore, we found correlation between prosodic, morphophonological, syntactic, and embodied features of the construction and its discourse functions: if the construction was accompanied by a gesture in our corpus, the literal function was accompanied by a substantive gesture referring to the extralingual world; the puzzled stance was accompanied by a pragmatic-modal gesture expressing the speaker’s stance towards the utterance; and the function conveying criticism was accompanied by a pragmatic-modal gesture instructing the interlocutor on how to interpret the upcoming utterance. Correlation between the types of gesture accompanying production of a construction and its discourse functions has not yet been described in the literature. Our study thus contributes a significant expansion in the field of grammaticization studies.
On the Meaning of "adain" ‘still’ and its Use as a Discourse Marker
This paper contributes to the study of "adain" ‘still’ in Modern Hebrew by highlighting its use as a discourse marker in naturalistic exchanges. Syntactic-semantic annotations of the occurrences of "adain" in a spoken corpus reveal uses that serve to structure a concessive discourse, including anaphoric reference to propositions under negotiation by the interlocutors. This discursive use is related to better known uses of "adain" as an aspectual-temporal adverb, on the one hand, and as a concessive adverb on the other hand. The novel discursive use presented in this paper allows for a comparison to Hebrew "od" 'another, more, moreover', arguing against its assumed synonymy with "adain" 'still' and raising challenges for a theory of semantic change that is based on the semanticization of pragmatic inferences.
A Time Capsule: Change and Preservation in a Hebrew Speaker’s Language over Fifty Years
This article presents a panel study examining the language of a single speaker over a span of 51 years. The speaker, born in Palestine in the early 20th century, represents a linguistic model of an Ashkenazi native speaker from the first generation of Modern Hebrew. He was recorded twice: once in 1960 and again in 2011, speaking freely about his life for approximately two hours at each point in time. The study compares these recordings, analyzing morphological and syntactic features common to both periods, and identifies trends of change and preservation across a fifty-year lifespan.
Mishnaic Hebrew and Its Status in Ramban’s Commentary on the Torah and Its Relationship to Biblical Hebrew
This article deals with the status of Mishnaic Hebrew in Ramban’s commentary on the Torah and its relationship to Biblical Hebrew within this commentary. It begins with a survey of the status of Mishnaic Hebrew in parts of the Hebrew literature preceding Ramban, as well as a presentation of the main characteristics of his commentary on the Torah.The main body of the article classifies the various occurrences of Mishnaic Hebrew in Ramban’s commentary according to the type of relationship between Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew reflected in each case: occurrences indicating that Ramban views the two layers as a single linguistic entity; occurrences indicating that he distinguishes between them; and cases in which he draws on Talmudic Aramaic to interpret Biblical Hebrew. The article concludes that Ramban regards Mishnaic Hebrew as a direct continuation of Biblical Hebrew, while remaining aware of the differences between them. The unification of the two in his commentary is thus דווקא (implicitly) grounded in the recognition that they constitute two distinct and separate linguistic layers. It also appears that Ramban treats Mishnaic Hebrew as a unified and cohesive entity. This is evident in the wide range of sources from the Mishnah and the Talmud that he cites as linguistic evidence for his interpretations, as well as in his use of generalizing expressions in presenting and analyzing them.
Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Modern Hebrew: Empirical Findings
This paper investigates Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Modern Hebrew. The consensus in the theoretical literature has been that the Modern Hebrew object marker et is licensed only with definite direct objects. Our study examines whether this distribution extends to partitive nominals, and whether additional factors – such as quantifier type and object position – affect the acceptability of et in partitive contexts. In a preliminary web search, we observed numerous naturally occurring examples of et-marked partitive DPs, most frequently involving proportional quantifiers and appearing in sentence-initial position. To test whether these naturally occurring tokens represent current patterns of Modern Hebrew grammar, we asked 41 native Hebrew speakers to evaluate the acceptability of sentences containing et-marked object DPs using a 5-point scale. The experiment included three independent variables: partitivity (partitive vs. non-partitive), quantifier type (proportional vs. cardinal), and object position (base vs. sentence-initial). Our results show that speakers assign considerably high acceptability scores for sentences with indefinite partitive DPs (M = 3.6/5), especially when the DP is headed by a proportional quantifier (M = 3.72/5) and appears in sentence-initial position (M = 3.71/5). These data challenge the widely held view that et is only licensed with definite direct objects. This paper expands and deepens the empirical and theoretical discussion of DOM in Modern Hebrew and contextualizes the experimental findings within crosslinguistic DOM literature.
Vocabulary Assessment in Hebrew as a Second Language to Arab Learners using the Lexical Diversity Measure
This article tests the progress of Arabic speakers in the acquisition of written Hebrew vocabulary as a second language (L2), focusing on the lexical diversity measure. This measure is used to assess vocabulary range by testing the proportion of different words in a spoken or written text. This index is an important indicator of the learner’s language range and linguistic repertoire. It was originally developed in English and applied to Hebrew in previous studies using similar methodology, despite English being a more analytical language than Hebrew. The purpose of the paper is to present three methods (applications) of this index that are adapted to varying degrees to the semantic, morphological and orthographic characteristics of Hebrew, as well as to point out the advantages and limitations of each approach. In addition, it will also explore the effects of differences between each approach on the assessment of vocabulary acquisition. Furthermore, it will examine lexical diversity in relation to the increase in time spent acquiring L2. This index was tested in Hebrew essays of Bedouin high school students at the beginning of the 11th grade and a year later according to three methods of assessing lexical diversity: classical, total, and automatic. Differences between the methods are based on the fact that it is not trivial to define a word, therefore, a division of the orthographic unit into its lexical and functional components is proposed for the total lexical diversity method. The two main advantages of this method: an adequate representation of the role of a word, and the frequency of a word in the text. Although these three methods found no significant increase in lexical diversity with the increase in the acquisition time of Hebrew as L2 to Arabic, statistically significant differences between the three methods of lexical diversity were identified. Furthermore, a negative correlation was observed between the values ​​obtained in the results, and the level of adaptation of the methods in accordance with the characteristics of Hebrew.
'The Feminism Police Won't Tell Me': Fictional Quotations as a Means for Confrontational Ideological Positioning
This paper examines the pragmatic function of fictional quotations as a means for ideological positioning in a controversial 2018 interview between journalist Sharon Shpurer and Knesset member Merav Michaeli. The core conflict revolves around negotiating the definition of “who is a feminist,” with each participant attempting to position herself as more consistent. Adopting a functional-discursive approach to quotation analysis, I demonstrate how participants use fictional quotations not to report prior speech events but to challenge each other’s feminist credentials and establish second-order positioning. The analysis reveals various strategies: quoting ideological authorities, creating potential utterances that establish feminist ideals the other fails to meet, using double-voiced quotations echoing extreme views, and constructing dialogues where one reformulates the other’s statements. Notably, these quotations rarely serve for initial challenging but primarily function to reject initial positioning and establish counter-positioning. Despite the confrontational nature of the exchange, the quotations simultaneously reveal deep ideological alignment about feminist principles. This study contributes to pragmatic-linguistic research by illuminating how quotations encode ideology and examining linguistic patterns characteristic of feminist discourse during the Me Too era.
The Nominal Sentence in Rabbi Judah Ibn-Tibbon’s translation of Duties of the Hearts
Many scholars have focused on the nominal sentence in Hebrew, examining its various manifestations across different periods. These scholars have investigated word order, the place and function of the separate personal pronoun, the conjugation of the verb “to be” (היה), the various types of third members in extended models, nominal sentence models (including modal and existential sentences, in the context of a broader definition of the nominal sentence where the predicate is not a verb), the development of the nominal sentence through the different strata of the Hebrew language, etc. This article will present the nominal sentence as it is reflected in Rabbi Judah Ibn-Tibbon’s translation of Rabbi Bahya Ibn-Paquda’s Duties of the Hearts. The analysis will be approached from three perspectives: (a) a diachronic study—comparing patterns of the nominal sentence in the Bible and in the Mishnah to those found in Duties of the Hearts; (b) an examination of Arabized Hebrew in medieval texts, comparing the nominal sentence structures in the research literature with those in Duties of the Hearts; and (c) a comparative study—contrasting occurrences of the nominal sentence in Ibn-Tibbon’s translation with their counterparts in the original Arabic text. This research marks the first stage in a broader effort to provide a new comprehensive syntactic description of Arabized Hebrew.
The HUJI Corpus of Spoken Hebrew (HUJICorpus): A New Database of Hebrew Conversations
The paper reports on the creation of the HUJI Corpus of Spoken Hebrew (HUJICorpus). This new resource is designed to fill a widely acknowledged need for a publicly accessible and updated corpus of spoken Modern Hebrew. The HUJICorpus documents everyday conversations held over the telephone or in co-present interactions between students and their relatives and friends. The first part of the corpus, which has been uploaded to the HUJICorpus website, includes the audio files and transcripts of the telephone conversations. The focus on telephone conversations in the first stage enabled a reduction of the semiotic complexity and a concentration on the linguistic (verbal and vocal) features of the interaction. Drawing on the principles of Interactional Linguistics, the recordings were transcribed using a highly granular system of formal annotation which accurately captures the temporal, sequential and prosodic aspects of talk-in-interaction. The second part of the corpus, which is currently under development, will include video files and transcripts of face-to-face conversations.
Concession Constructions as a Dialogic Strategy in the Rap Lyrics of Jimbo Jay
This study focuses on the pragmatic-rhetoric functions of concession constructions in the lyrics of Jimbo Jay – an acclaimed rapper on the Israeli Hip-Hop scene, whose songs address a variety of issues (personal relationships, fears, music, the Hip Hop community, Israeli society and more), that richly resonate international Hip-Hop music as well as Israeli culture. For this study, all the lyrics from his two albums released in 2016 and 2019 were reviewed. In these songs, 72 concession constructions were found, most of which perform a dialogic function, with some also performing an argumentative function. The dialogic function is an explicit or implicit confrontation between two voices (as expressions of positions, outlooks, agendas), while the argumentative function is an attempt to convince the addressees that a particular argument is correct, by challenging the contrary argument. The study focuses on the dialog that emerges in the lyrics between the speaker and Israeli society and examines how he uses concession constructions to this end. A significant gap between the explicit and implicit dialog was found in the lyrics: On the explicit level, the speaker goes with the flow and adopts Israeli norms almost without question, positioning himself as a "genuine" Israeli in doing so. On the implicit level, he uses the concession constructions as polyphonic arenas illustrative of his real point of view and values, allowing him to use his authentic critical voice with regard to Israeli conventions. In terms of the argumentative aspect, the concession constructions signal to the addressees that the implicit stand is superior (more correct, moral, etc.) to the explicit one. In that light, the concession constructions in the corpus under review may be seen as a positive politeness strategy – one aimed at mitigating the speaker’s criticism of Israeli norms – and as a dual positioning of the speaker, as an integral part of Israeli society who embraces its cultural codes, while critically observing it from without.
The Syntax-Prosody Interface: Data from a Double PP Construction
It is a standard finding that speakers reliably produce prosodic cues (pitch excursion, change in speech rate and pauses) to clause boundaries and listeners use these cues in parsing sentences. However, considerable uncertainty remains regarding whether the same applies to syntactic phrase boundaries. A long series of studies in the parsing literature on ambiguous PP attachment constructions, such as Susan hit the man with the umbrella, has yielded mixed results. This study investigates the prosody-syntax interface in the processing of a double PP construction in Hebrew. Selection restrictions force the first prepositional phrase (PP1) to attach to the immediately preceding NP on the syntactic tree, but attachment of the second one (PP2) is ambiguous: it can attach maximally high to VP (as an argument of described) or maximally low to the NP inside PP1 (modifying marriage). PP2 was either short or long (with a modifier added to the short version, as indicated in parentheses). Dana VP[ te’ara ‘et NP[ ha-kšayim PP1[ be-nisu’e-ha PP2[ la-šadran (hamefursam) Dana described ACC the-difficulties in-marriage-her to the-broadcaster (famous) This double PP construction exhibits a sharper structural contrast (a greater number of syntactic edges) between the two potential attachment sites than the long-studied single-PP construction: there is a greater discontinuity in the syntactic tree for the high attachment analysis, which could encourage a stronger prosodic break before the ambiguous PP, yielding more reliable results than for the single-PP construction. A combined production-comprehension experiment was conducted to examine the relationship between preferred interpretation and preferred prosodic phrasing in reading aloud. The production results indicated more prosodic boundaries before long PP2s than before short PP2s. The comprehension data showed a preference for high PP2-attachment in the case of a prosodic boundary before PP2, regardless of PP2 length. These findings suggest that attachee-length affects prosodic phrasing, and prosodic phrasing affects attachment preference. This study provides performance data supporting the interplay of phrase lengths with structure-sensitivity as posited in the linguistics literature on the syntax–prosody interface, and supports the claim that readers are sensitive to the structural implications of the prosody they project onto sentences.
Deciphering Irony by Means of a Semantic-Pragmatic Tool of Interpretation
This article analyses a use of irony in a journalistic text; the analysis exemplifies a semantic-pragmatic tool of interpretation based on relevance theory. The implementation of this tool requires quite a bit of work that a typical reader of the press does not need in order to recognize the text as ironic or to decipher its indirect message. The tool is not meant, indeed, for the typical reader of the press but it will be of great help to a researcher that is determined to understand thoroughly the utterance meaning of the text and to decipher the speaker’s indirect meaning. In general, the application of the tool to a specific text will be very useful to scholars that are working, for example, on the intellectual biography of the text’s author, the issue of the public discourse in which the text participates, identifying the intended addressees of the text, and so on. This article elucidates the implementation of the tool to a text that makes ironic use of language; the analysis is based, accordingly, on Deirdre Wilson’s conception of irony. According to this conception (Wilson 2006), verbal irony echoes a specific utterance or thought in order to express a range of dissociative attitudes to them. The tool of interpretation enables the investigator to identify the detail of the speaker’s dissociative position: the echoic content and the dissociative position can be identified by using the tool.
a semantic-pragmatic tool of interpretation
Big Data and Linguistic Research: A New Look at Grammatical Gender in the Number System
The ability to collect, store and process huge amounts of data has brought with it a new concept - Big Data - and with it a new field that specializes in extracting knowledge and insights from a huge database using statistical tools. This field touches all areas of our lives, and some argue that it not only replaces traditional research methods but also obviates the familiar scientific method and the need for domain knowledge, models, and theories. This paper discusses the relationship between Big Data and linguistic research, and in particular the way in which big data can be harnessed to advance knowledge about linguistic phenomena. As a test case, the question of the grammatical gender in the number system in Hebrew is discussed: What have previous studies revealed about the phenomena, what were the strengths and weaknesses of their more traditional methodologies, and what can be gained by Big Data-based research. The paper describes two main contributions. First, the corpus data were used to re-examine the results of previous studies. The findings raise doubts about the extent of the phenomenon and even largely refute the hypotheses raised in the literature. Second, a data-driven process made use of computational analysis tools to track phenomena reflected from the data. As a result, models and relationships that were not apparent from the handful of data collected so far are exposed, previous hypotheses are reformulated, and new insights are offered. The approach presented in this article does not see Big Data as a paradigm shift and a potential replacement for the scientific method, but rather the opposite. The combination of Big Data-based research methods in linguistic research will contribute to enriching our knowledge and understanding of linguistic phenomena.
How New Idioms are Coined in Modern Hebrew
An idiom is a coherent multi-base lexeme, originating in a fossilized/frozen phrase, and whose meaning differs from the sum of the meanings of its semantic components. While Modern Hebrew inherited many lexemes, and particularly many idioms, from its ancient stratum (Biblical and post biblical), the modern reality of current Hebrew speakers forming their conceptualisation constantly requires the enrichment of the lexicon. The paper focuses on coinage of new idioms. We ask how are new Hebrew idioms generated? Do these means differ from linguistic means serving non-idiomatic lexical enrichment? And how does the transition from syntax to lexicon operate? This study consists of an inventory of 125 new Hebrew lexemic idioms, that is, new idioms integrated into the current Hebrew lexicon. To categorise, explain and illustrate the linguistic (morphologic and semantic) means for the creation of these new idioms we adopted Mugden’s (1994) model reducing the morphological operations to the five operations doable with matter. While the paper and its examples focuse on Hebrew, it is our hope that it will nonetheless have a pioneering contribution to the study of the creation of new idioms in general.
/ And thunder and lightning in me / – Slashes in "The Book of Indictment and Faith" by Uri Zvi Grinberg
Uri Zvi Grinberg employed a variety of unconventional forms of punctuation in his poetic work. These act to instill graphic and visual intensity and evoke the strong forceful style characteristic of Grinberg's poetics. This study examines the diverse poetic functions of slashes in "The Book of Indictment and Faith" (1937). Although slashes were a contemporary addition to the Hebrew punctuation system and tend to be used mostly in technical contexts, Grinberg utilized them in his poems as of his first book in Hebrew published in 1924, and with increasing frequency in his subsequent works. Slashes are exploited to the maximum in "The Book of Indictment and Faith", where they take on a range of rhetorical and syntactic functions: they interrupt the reading sequence, act as iconic symbols, and function as rhetorical markers of emphasis. Grinberg's unique use of slashes are one of the linguistic hallmarks of his innovative poetic and linguistic style.
Addressing the Reader as an Expression to the Dialogism Theory in Ramban's Commentary on Genesis
This paper deals with part of Ramban's commentary on Genesis from the point of view of dialogism theory, examining its linguistic expressions in the commentary with a focus on appealing to the reader. The article begins with a presentation of the dialogism theory and the research literature on dialogism in Hebrew texts, as well as a review of Ramban's language in his commentary on the Torah. As an expression of dialogism in Ramban's language, three verb forms were examined that may include an addressing to the reader: plural first-person, second person singular, and third person singular. It was found that Ramban employs these verb forms to involve the reader in the interpretation process, to predict his thoughts and reactions, differentiate his own opinions from those of previous commentators, and more. These functions align with the argumentative nature of Ramban's commentary, and it seems that through them he aims to persuade the reader of his interpretative insights. The article concludes with proposed ideas for further research.
Josef ben Abba Mari ibn Kaspi is one of the radical philosophers that were Maimonides' disciples and followers, active in Provence in the 13th century. Kaspi composed two commentaries on Maimonides' The Guide for the Perplexed, one esoteric and one exoteric. Three of Kaspi's biblical commentaries deal with linguistics in general and Hebrew linguistics in particular: Tzeror ha-Kesef, a summary of the Aristotelian Organon, which deals with general linguistic concepts as well; Retuqot Kesef, a logical-linguistic treatise in which Kaspi applies the laws of logic on the Hebrew language; Sharshot Kesef, a Hebrew-Hebrew dictionary based on Retuqot, whose purpose is to explain the Hebrew roots by the laws of logic, unlike the classical dictionaries prevalent at the time. The most original of the three, and the least researched so far, is Retuqot Kesef. This article points out the unique structure of Retuqot, as suggested by Kaspi's introduction, and aims to describe how logical concepts are applied on Hebrew linguistics and biblical philology. This article focuses on the theory of motion. In the article I investigate how Aristotle perceives motion and survey the views of Al-Farabi and other Arab philosophers that wrote on this notion, as well as Maimonides'. Finally, I focus on Josef Kaspi and demonstrate how Kaspi employed the theory of motion in order to change the grammatical and philological perceptions common in his time.
Is the Banking Contract a Legal Contract? Linguistic-Pragmatic Study
As is well known, banking contracts are essential for regulating the financial affairs of most individuals in modern society. This article discusses the unique linguistic and contextual characters of the text of the standard banking contract. I will show that its characteristics differ from those of "legal text" and the text of "legal contract". The theoretical basis for this work is based on the results of research that emphasize the involvement of the contextual and functional factors (communicative, cognitive, and referential) in designing a linguistic genre. The discussion will also be based on the conclusions of legal scholars as to the conceptual essence of "(legal) contract" and "(banking) contract", and the functions that "contract" come to fulfill as a social-legal instrument. The description of the linguistic and contextual characters is based on an analysis of test cases concerning issues that have a great impact on individuals and the property of the entire public. It is suggested that from the point of view of genre analysis, the anomalies observed in the texts of the banking contracts, the goals that the banks intend to achieve through them and the set of discourse participants built through them may change the boundaries of the "legal contract", and redefine its function as a social instrument in Israeli law.
The Significance of Multi-lingualism and of the Canaanite Melting Pot on Shaping Late Biblical Hebrew
This paper centers on the multilingual situation in the southern and central parts of Palestine during the Persian period, which significantly contributes to our understanding of Late Biblical Hebrew. It utilizes a variety of sources and lines of inquiry, including linguistic evidence from epigraphy concerning various morpho-syntactic constructions, to emphasize the influence of colloquial Canaanite dialects, particularly the Phoenician, on LBH. The primary aim of this paper is to demonstrate that a comprehensive understanding of the historical characterization of the Hebrew language during the Persian period necessitates an interdisciplinary approach.
Palestine archaeology of the Persian period
Excessive Concern or Well-founded Fear: Students' Writing on WhatsApp and in Essays
The language of text messages has a unique style that is a hybrid of both oral and written language, characterized by frequent deviations from standard language. With the increasing use of mobile phones, particularly among adolescents, there is serious concern about the effect of the non-standard register used in text messaging on pupils’ literacy skills, and particularly on their writing skills. The current study investigates the frequency of deviations from normative Hebrew grammar rules, comparing between pupils’ writing in two different genres: informal written language used in WhatsApp messages vs. formal written language used in essays written as part of the school curriculum. The deviations studied include initial placement of the definite article in construct-state phrases, use of an initial consonant y preceding the vowel in verbs in the first-person-singular future form, and others. Findings indicate that grammatical deviations that are frequent in WhatsApp messages rarely occur in pupils’ formal writing. The study thus serves as an “all-clear signal” for those concerned about the negative influences of WhatsApp messaging on the writing skills of Israeli youngsters.
Everyday Hebrew, Standards, and Language Variation
This paper tries to reevaluate the notion of linguistic error in the light of modern research on standard language, linguistic variation and the history of contemporary Hebrew since its emergence as a vernacular at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. I ask why Israelis perceive their Hebrew speech as faulty or bad and whether this perception is appropriate. I then discuss linguistic variation—synchronic and diachronic—and how acknowledging it as an inherent characteristic of language should affect our view of language and language education. Finally, I try to see how we can overcome preconceptions and do research not only on written Hebrew but also on its spoken varieties, so that they receive their proper place in our life and culture.
Onomatopoeias in the Poetry of Uri Zvi Greenberg as a Linguistic-Interpretive Junction
This study examines onomatopoeic elements in the book Streets of the River: The Book of Dirges and Power (1951) by Uri Zvi Grinberg. The book contains many onomatopoeic components in which language mimics and recreates the sounds of the Jewish European world that was destroyed in the Second World War. This paper aims to analyze the multitude of ways in which these onomatopoeic elements were created and how they are deciphered in the poetic context. At the heart of the discussion are two types of onomatopoeias: acoustic onomatopoeias and onomatopoeic VPC’s (void pragmatic connectives), as defined by Itamar Even-Zohar. These elements allow the poet to represent human voices and various sounds through morphological means, thus overcoming the difficulty to present the quality, duration, and frequency of a sound in writing. The discussion is based on morphologic, semantic, and pragmatic terms, highlighting the onomatopoeic components as a type of linguistic style in Grinberg's poetry, while examining the way they are formed.
Streets of the River: The Book of Dirges and Power
DEGEL KAHOL-LAVAN BE'ERETS YESHANA-HADASHA (A blue and white flag in an old new land): Study of "combining juxtaposition"
This paper discusses a special type of Hebrew Juxtaposition which is expressed in phrases such as: glidat shoko-vanil (chocolate vanilla ice cream), mahaze tragi-komi (tragicomic play), rotev hamuts-matok (sweet and sour sauce), kursa-mita (armchair bed) and nifkadim-nokhehim (present absentee). Such phrases have been classified by some researchers as a type of Apposition, while others include them within the discussion of coordination. An examination of the lexical, morphological, syntactical, semantic and pragmatic features of these phrases in various genres of written Hebrew underscores the importance of defining these phrases as a unique and independent category of coordination. These phrases combine two or more cohyponyms which have the same grammatical status and creates one lexical and syntactic unit through the process of combination. The Hebrew term chosen to be used to define the category in this article is Tsmidut Meshalevet (Combining Juxtaposition).
Constraints of Evidentiality Shaping the Verb Introducing Constructed Dialogue in Spoken Hebrew Discourse
The study focuses on verbs introducing constructed dialogue (Tannen 1989) (‘direct speech’) (excluding the verb 'amar [‘say’]) in a corpus of over 11 hours of everyday Hebrew conversation (Maschler et al. 2017). Taking an Interactional Linguistics approach (Selting and Couper-Kuhlen 2001), and following the assumption that different forms must also be different in function, the study investigates the functional difference resulting in employing these various verbs. Analysis shows that the choices speakers make in selecting one group of verbs over another are not random but rather strongly shaped by the way the storyworld interaction had come to the speaker’s knowledge, that is, by evidentiality – a category which is not morphologically encoded in Hebrew and thus believed to have little impact in the language. Thus, when introducing hearsay interactions, a tendency to employ “vivid” verbs – verbs presenting an acoustic or visual image of the interaction (mainly verbs denoting the manner of the act of speaking) – was found. A tendency to employ “vivid” verbs (mainly verbs presenting the agent doing the speaking) was found also when introducing eyewitness interactions. On the other hand, “laconic” verbs, those lacking a visual or acoustic image of the interaction, were largely employed to introduce hypothetical interactions or interactions in which the speaker participated as one of the interlocutors in the storyworld. The study thus finds that the closer the presented interaction is to the speaker’s inner world (e.g., a hypothetical interaction or an interaction in which the speaker had acted as one of the storyworld interlocutors), the higher the tendency to employ verbs which manifest basic semantics (i.e., presenting limited information concerning the interaction and the act of speaking). On the other hand, when presenting hearsay or eyewitness interactions, verbs characterized by unique semantics which ‘revive’ the storyworld interaction tend to be employed. There is iconicity, then, between semantics on the one hand, and the way the speaker experiences the storyworld interaction, on the other.
The Hebrew maCCuC Pattern: Morphological and Semantic Examination
This study examines formation in the maCCuC pattern. Some Hebrew adjectives have maCCuC doublets. The adjectives maxrid and maxrud both denote 'awful', share the stem consonants x-r-d, but are formed in different patterns. Both words in each pair share the same meaning and are used in similar contexts Not all speakers accept maCCuC forms like the ones in (1b) and (2b) (Bolozky 1999,2010), yet web searches reveal that they are productive. In contrast, there are adjectives that do not have maCCuC counterparts, e.g. metunaf – *matnuf 'filthy'. I show that maCCuC formation (and lack thereof) can be predicted based on the interaction of semantic and morpho-phonological criteria. The article will focus on the morph-phonological aspect. I argue that cases of maCCuC formation can be better explained under word-based approaches without separate reference to the consonantal root. Such gaps are better explained under word-based approaches (Aronoff 1976, 2007). It provides support to the theory of stem modification (Steriade 1988, McCarthy & Prince 1990, Bat-El 1994,2017, Ussishkin 1999,2005) rather than the extraction of a consonantal root. Root extraction could be performed on any base, regardless of its structure. While most studies on language contact examine borrowed words and borrowed grammatical elements like affixes, there are less studies that examine borrowed prosodic patterns. This case study sheds further light on the nature of non-concatenative morphology and the status of the consonantal root, in addition to the conditions of the usage of this borrowed pattern.
The Case of the Responsa Language of Medieval Provence
In the following article I will discuss aspects of the Hebrew used by Rabbi Abraham ben Isaac (also known as RABad II) of Narbonne in his responsa. RABad II was one of the most illustrious Jewish scholars in Provence in the High Medieval Period. The origin of Jewish settlement in southern France is surrounded by myth. Not much is known about it, nor about the first few hundred years of Jewish life in southern Gallia. It is likely that the beginning of Jewish life in Provence goes back to the fateful years after the destruction of Jerusalem and the second Temple (70 CE). Yet, concrete evidence can be traced only from the 4th century onward. Moreover, the first extant rabbinic literature texts from Provence are dated to the late 11th century – a long period after the Jewish community settled down in the region. The flowering of Jewish life in Provence occurred later, in the 12th and the 13th centuries. RABad II of Narbonne (1080/5-1158) belongs to the beginning of this period. R. Abraham was Av-Bet-Din (head of the rabbinic court) of Narbonne, as well as the head of a rabbinic academy (yeshiva) there. Several of his students became prominent halakhic figures in other congregations all over the region. RABad II also authored a book of halakhic rulings – Sefer HaEshkol. The corpus for the following research is a collection of responsa found in two manuscripts copied around the 15th and 16th centuries. For the purpose of this work, the principal witness is a MS Guenzburg 566, which was described by Prof. S. Emanuel in his book Teshubot HaGeonim HaH̱adashot. The second witness is MS Qapah 85, Teshubot HaRaavi and HaRaabad (RABad II and RABad III responsa), which was emended by Rabbi Y. Qapah in his book. The corpus incorporates a unique phenomenon: identical, parallel responsa located in different places in the manuscripts. The results of this study are based on around 5,000 words of these parallel answers. The following work focuses on the verbal system, presenting perspectives on the tense-mode-aspect system and morphological insights.
Bleaching of Verbs of Motion Introducing a Periphrastic Structure
The paper deals with the bleaching of the verbs of motion yatsa', ba' and halakh when they introduce a periphrastic structure and are complemented with a verbal noun, as in yatsa' la-milhama ("went to war"), hotsi' la-horeg ("executed"), ba' be-ta'not ("complained"), hevi' hibuk (”hugged"), halakh le-ibud ("got lost"). The research corpus includes examples from dictionaries of contemporary Hebrew and from everyday online spoken discourse. In the course of bleaching, the motion verb's meaning is eroded through the mediation of a metaphorical shift based on the metaphor of containment (Johnson, 1987). The motion verb loses specific semantic elements that express motion, and from a verb denoting a concrete locative-dynamic event it becomes a helping verb possessing an aspectual meaning of beginning or ending of an action. The paper also deals with the question of the difference between the meaning of a periphrastic structure that opens with a bleached verb of motion and the meaning of the corresponding lexical verb, for example tavi' hibuk vs. tehabek.
The Articulation of Two Groups of Medical Terms in Israeli Hebrew
When examining all words with the +ija suffix in Israeli Hebrew, one finds that most of them carry final stress; only some place names and a few borrowings are stressed penultimately, i.e., +íja. The placement of stress in borrowed words usually maintains its location in the source language; important roles were played by the major substratum languages of the “revivers” of spoken Modern Hebrew: Polish, Russian and Yiddish. Two of these, Polish and Yiddish, are typically stressed penultimately. Generally, when an Israeli Hebrew speaker articulates borrowed words ending with the +ja suffix without vowel marks (which is the normal way s/he encounters them), s/he follows the Polish stress pattern: demokrátja, geográfja, psixológja, etc. Nevertheless, the medical term ‘colonoscopy’ is articulated by most speakers not as kolonoskópja, but as kolonoskopíja, i.e., following the Greek original (possibly through the intermediacy of Russian). The same stress pattern can be found in other items ending with -skop(i)ja and with -tom(i)ja, but essentially only in the medical community or with people associated with this community, as well as with members of the public with whom they are in contact. The term for colonoscopy is commonly used today, and thus its articulation by doctors, nurses etc. has expanded fairly widely, but all other related items are normally articulated the Polish (and Yiddish) way, with the preceding i elided and stress falling on the preceding stem vowel, as in the well-known Polish conversion: maríya ‘Mary’ > márya… The likelihood of “Greek style” articulation is a function of how frequent the item is, and only ‘colonoscopy’ is sufficiently frequent. The test we conducted confirms that in spite of the influence of the medical community, the “Polish” stress style is still the default one, even for most of these medical terms.
The article reviews the use of the directive He, also known as He locale, from its full vivid use indicating primarily direction and also location in Classical Biblical Hebrew, through its decline in late Biblical Hebrew, in the Hebrew language of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and in Rabbinic and Medieval Hebrew, and up to its revival in Early Modern Hebrew and its relatively limited use in Contemporary Hebrew.
The High Prevalence of the Haqtala Pattern in Contemporary Hebrew
The paper presents the findings of research showing how the use of the haqtala/haf'ala pattern has spread in the four layers of Hebrew. The research examined all the haqtala forms in the Even Shoshan dictionary (1988; 2003) and in the Ariel Comprehensive Dictionary (2007). Also examined were all the neologisms of the Hebrew Language Academy since 1954. The haqtala/aqtala (haspaqa/'aspaqa) forms and forms that do not differ in meaning (hona'a/honaya) were counted only once, but all appearances of homonyms, such as hašxara from šaxor (black) and hašxara from šaxar (dawn), were counted. The examination revealed that in Modern Hebrew, the number of haqtala forms greatly exceeds their number throughout history. In all, 922 nouns in the haqtala pattern were found, divided as follows: Biblical Hebrew: 4; Sages: 145, Medieval Hebrew: 222, Modern literature to date: 551. The research shows that commencing with the literature of the Enlightenment and until today, some 60% of haqtala forms were created, indicating that the use of this form in the past 260 years has increased extensively. It is also prevalent in neologisms of the Hebrew Language Academy, seemingly owing to its transparency, which aids in understanding the neologism even at the cost of deviation from the rules of the language when no causative verb exists. The research also shows the creativity of living and revitalized Hebrew, and the notable contribution of the haqtala form in the neologisms of the language.