Ghil'ad Zuckermann

Traditional languages are a key element of Indigenous peoples’ identity, cultural expression, autonomy, spiritual and intellectual sovereignty, and wellbeing. While the links between Indigenous language loss and poor mental health have been demonstrated in several settings, little research has sought to identify the potential psychological benefits that may derive from language reclamation. The revival of the Barngarla language on the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, offers a unique opportunity to examine whether improvements in mental health and social and emotional wellbeing can occur during and following the language reclamation process. This paper presents findings from 16 semi-structured interviews conducted with Barngarla community members describing their own experienced or observed mental health and wellbeing impacts of language reclamation activities. Aligning with a social and emotional wellbeing framework from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective, key them...

This chapter introduces the fascinating and multifaceted reclamation of the Barngarla Aboriginal language of Eyre Peninsula, South Australia. In 2012, the Barngarla community and I launched the reclamation of this sleeping beauty. The presence of three Barngarla populations, several hours drive apart, presents the revival linguist with a need for a sophisticated reclamation involving talknological innovations such as online chatting, newsgroups, as well as photo and resource sharing. The chapter provides a brief description of our activities so far and describes the Barngarla Dictionary App. The Barngarla reclamation demonstrates two examples of righting the wrong of the past: (1) A book written in 1844 in order to assist a German Lutheran missionary to introduce the Christian light to Aboriginal people (and thus to weaken their own spirituality), is used 170 years later (by a secular Jew) to assist the Barngarla Aboriginal people, who have been linguicided by Anglo-Australians, to ...

This chapter analyses salient phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical features in the fully fledged Israeli language. It illustrates the difficulty in determining a single source for the grammar of Israeli. The European impact in these features is apparent inter alia in structure, semantics, or productivity. The chapter demonstrates the ubiquitous multiple causation in Israeli and that the revival of a no-longer spoken language is unlikely without cross-fertilization from the revivalists’ mother tongue(s). Thus, one should expect revival efforts to result in a language with a hybridic genetic and typological character.

This chapter introduces an original analysis of the Hebrew reclamation, resulting in ‘Israeli’, a term first used by Zuckermann (1999). A language is a col-lect-ion, an abstract ensemble of lects (idiolects, sociolects, dialects, and other lects) rather than an entity per se. It is more like a species than an organism. Still, the genetic classification of Israeli as a consistent entity has preoccupied linguists since the language emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. As a consequence, Israeli affords insights into the politics and evolution not only of language, but also of linguistics and revivalistics. The chapter proposes that the languages spoken in Israel today is a semi-engineered, Semito-European hybrid language. Its complexity should be acknowledged and celebrated, regardless of what one chooses to call it. The chapter also introduces two useful principles to the analysis of revival languages: The Founder Principle and the Congruence Principle. In revivalistics, the ...

Hunhe haishi fusu. yiselieyu de qiyuan duolaiyuan xingshi he moshi) (On the hybridic genesis of Israeli Hebrew)提要本文旨在提出由于多起源的广泛存在, 如果没有复苏者母语的影响, 一种不再使用的语言的复苏是不可能的。因此, 可以设想复苏的努力会导致产生一种无论从起源还是类型上都带混合特征的语言。多来源反映在重合原则(Congruence Principle) 上。虽然以色列语大多数的形式是闪米特语言的, 但它的模式很多是欧洲语言的。以色列语的多来源本质及其产生时重合原则的作用对历史语言学语言计划和语言、文化及个性的研究都有启示作用 = The aim of this article is to suggest that due to the ubiquitous multiple causation, the revival of a no-longer spoken language is unlikely without cross-fertilization from the revivalists’ mother tongue(s). Thus, one should expect revival efforts to result in a language with a hybridic genetic and typological character. Multiple causation is manifested in the Congruence Principle. Whereas most forms of Israeli are Semitic, many of its patterns are European. The multi-sourced nature of Israeli and the role of the Congruence Principle in its genesis have implications for historical linguistics, language planning and the study of language, culture and identity.Ghil...

Australian Aboriginal sports health monitoiing system based on a wearable device and data center technology is designed and implemented in this paper. In our designed system, the following inspirations are considered. (1) The postequalization method does not require additional operations on the transmitter side and can optimize the tap weights of the digital post filter according to the severity of the system bandwidth limitation. This framework is used as the core of the data center. (2) Clothing is a must-have item for people’s daily life, and it is naturally soft and deformable. Therefore, combining clothing with smart wearable devices becomes a natural choice, and smart clothing comes into being. This media is used to construct the designed framework. Lastly, the proposed model is applied to the Australian Aboriginal sports health monitoiing system. The experiment results prove satisfactory performance.

Our paper is an attempt to locate the ‘Spoken Sanskrit’ revival within the complex socio- political, religious, linguistic ecological context of a contemporary, globalized South Asia, and world (see Bordia 2015, Brass 2005). One of the key points of discussion in this paper surrounds the nomenclature used to define the varieties of Sanskrit spoken today. Simply put, for many reasons, a lot of the Sanskrit spoken today is not really the same as the archaic Vedic and Classical predecessors. Therefore, through a revivalistic lens, we explore some of the different registers of vernacular Sanskrit spoken today, and propose that they ought to, instead, be called Hybridic Reclaimed Sanskrit (henceforth, HRS). McCartney, P. and G. Zuckermann. 2019. "Unsanitizable Yoga: Revivalistics and Hybridic Reclaimed Sanskrit." Mentalities Journal, 33(1): 1-48. DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/4GFN5. http://www.mentalitiesjournal.com/ ISSN- 0111-8854

MSN demonstrates that the most important contributor languages for Israeli are: (i) Indo-European — mostly Germanic and Slavonic: Yiddish, Polish, Russian, English and German; (ii) Western Semitic: Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic (on Aramaic, see Eliezer Meir Lipschutz in ZV 4, 1914: 20). Until the first half of the twentieth century, Yiddish was the most influential among these Indo-European languages, overtaking Russian and Polish. Currently, however, English, which became dominant during the British Mandate in Eretz Yisrael is the main SL owing to its globalization. For classification by source language (percentage), see Graph 1 in §7.2.1.

Naturally, FEN is widespread in those terminological areas that suffer most from lexical voids within the autochthonous lexical inventory. In the early history of Israeli such areas have been zoology, medicine, music, gastronomy and computers. In some cases, the extent to which FEN infiltrates a specific terminological area is determined simply by whether or not a prominent coiner in this area has favoured FEN as a means of neologization. For example, Abramowitsch (also known as Mendele) relied heavily on FEN in his (often failed) neologisms for zoological terminology, as described below.

MSN, a source of lexical enrichment distinct from guestwords, foreignisms, loanwords (§1.2.1) and calquing (1.3) has had a vast impact across many languages. MSN, which usually goes unnoticed by speakers (especially those of generations following the original coinage), has introduced a substantial number of new sememes and lexemes in Israeli, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, pidgins and creoles, and other languages. In the case of Israeli, MSN reinforces the view that Israeli lexis has been covertly influenced by Germanic and Slavonic languages such as Yiddish, Russian, Polish, German and English. The hundreds of (polychronically analysed) examples presented in this book prove that PSM is significantly widespread, the extent being remarkable both in absolute terms (200 PSMs out of several thousand neologisms in Israeli) and in relative terms, i.e. taking into account the fact that the majority of SL words do not have a parallel TL (in the case of FEN) or co-SL (in the case of LC) element which may coincide on phonetic and on semantic levels. Such a constraint does not usually apply to calquing, morpho-phonemic adaptation and mere neologization. Therefore, 200 PSMs in Israeli (not allowing for their dozens of secondary derivatives, as well as for toponyms and anthroponyms) is a significant number.

This chapter proposes the enactment of an ex gratia compensation scheme for the loss of Indigenous languages in Australia. Although some Australian states have enacted ex gratia compensation schemes for the victims of the Stolen Generation policies, the victims of linguicide are largely overlooked by the Australian Government. Existing competitive grant schemes to support Aboriginal languages should be complemented with compensation schemes, which are based on a claim of right. The chapter first outlines the history of linguicide during colonization in Australia. It then puts a case for reviving lost Aboriginal languages by highlighting the deontological, aesthetic and utilitarian benefits of language revival. After evaluating the limits of existing Australian law in supporting language revival efforts, I propose ‘Native Tongue Title’, compensation for language loss—modelled upon Native Title, compensation for land loss.

The Ram Bible (Tanakh Ram) is a recently-published Bible edition printed in two columns: the right-hand column features the original biblical Hebrew text and the lefthand column features the translation of the Bible into a high-register literary Israeli (Reclaimed Hebrew). The Ram Bible edition has gained impressive academic and popular attention. This paper looks at differences between academics, teachers, students, media personalities and senior officials in the education system, regarding their attitude to the Ram Bible. Our study reveals that Bible teachers and students who make frequent use of this edition understand its contribution to comprehending the biblical language, stories, and ideas. Opponents of Ram Bible are typically administrators and theoretician scholars who advocate the importance of teaching the Bible but do not actually teach it themselves. We argue that the fundamental difference between biblical Hebrew and Israeli makes the Hebrew Bible incomprehensible to n...

We propose to demo LARA (Learning and Reading Assistant), a set of tools currently being developed in the context of a col-laborative open project for building and using online computer-assisted language learning (CALL) content. LARA offers a range of options for semi-automatically transforming text into a hypertext version designed to give support to non-native readers. The demo is intended to accompany our full paper about LARA; here we focus on describing some of the content we will present.

Summary This article introduces a new field of enquiry called revivalistics, and explores its trans-disciplinarity and various ethical, aesthetic and utilitarian benefits. Revivalistics is an emerging global, trans-disciplinary field of enquiry studying comparatively and systematically the universal constraints and global mechanisms on the one hand (Zuckermann, 2003; 2009; 2020), and particularistic peculiarities and cultural relativist idiosyncrasies on the other, apparent in linguistic reclamation, revitalization and reinvigoration across various sociological backgrounds, all over the globe (Zuckermann, 2020; Zuckermann & Walsh, 2011; 2014). The article focuses on the crucial differences between revivalistics and documentary linguistics. It provides examples from the field that demonstrate the complexity of the revivalist’s work and how the revivalist’s work is distinct from that of the documentary linguist. Too many documentary linguists mislead themselves to believe that they ca...

This seminal book introduces revivalistics, a new trans-disciplinary field of enquiry surrounding language reclamation, revitalization and reinvigoration. The book is divided into two main parts that represent Zuckermann’s fascinating and multifaceted journey into language revival, from the ‘Promised Land’ (Israel) to the ‘Lucky Country’ (Australia) and beyond: PART 1: LANGUAGE REVIVAL AND CROSS-FERTILIZATION The aim of this part is to suggest that due to the ubiquitous multiple causation, the reclamation of a no-longer spoken language is unlikely without cross-fertilization from the revivalists’ mother tongue(s). Thus, one should expect revival efforts to result in a language with a hybridic genetic and typological character. The book highlights salient morphological, phonological, phonetic, syntactic, semantic and lexical features, illustrating the difficulty in determining a single source for the grammar of ‘Israeli’, the language resulting from the Hebrew revival. The European i...

This chapter introduces revivalistics, a new trans-disciplinary field of enquiry, and explores lessons from Israeli that are applicable to the reclamation and empowerment of Aboriginal languages in Australia and elsewhere. Any language reawakening should involve a long period of thoroughly observing, carefully listening to the language custodians, and learning, mapping and characterizing the specific Indigenous community. Only then can one inspire and assist. That said, this chapter proposes that there are linguistic constraints (as seen in the Hebrew reclamation) applicable to all revival attempts. Mastering them would be useful to endangered languages, particularly to Indigenous linguistic revival. The chapter introduces a practical tool: the quadrilateral Language Revival Diamond (LARD), featuring language owners, linguistics, education, and the public sphere. Each of these four core quadrants is necessary in reviving any language.

In this study, we sift through the Hebrew animal names neologised by Abramowitsch (1866) in his natural history of birds. We identify and discuss a few such coinages of his which exhibit folk-etymological nativisation, by phono-semantic matching. Moreover, we trace occurrences of application of devices of lexical conflation by covert borrowing also in Hebrew zoonyms coined more recently than in Abramowitsch’s Natural History. Studying the latter’s neologised animal names is important because it illustrates a phenomenon (lexical conflation as a way to nativise loanwords) which has occurred in several modernised languages, and because Abramowitsch’s work was at a time when there arose modernisers also for other languages.

INTRODUCTION There are lots of possible choices for the source of the greatest evil and misery, but many have singled out religion. The late Milton Himmelfarb, however, thought that this was but ‘a feeble joke’. He cited ethnonational affiliations, racial and class differences, and linguistic and ideological compartmentalisation for persecution, hatred and conflict. Or, indeed, ‘simple bloody-mindedness’ (see Berger, 2007). The last seems rather weak in the company of those other, more powerful motivations, but if we consider the historical propensity that human beings have shown for letting small matters spiral into large ones, or the dynamic potential of Freud's ‘narcissism of minor differences’, or the dubious contributions made over the centuries by conceptions of ‘honour’, then perhaps we should acknowledge Himmelfarb's point. Still, ethnocentrism and relativism have always had religious counterparts. The holy books of most religions emphasise love, tolerance, justice, truth, and just about every other positive human characteristic. It is disappointing, then, that the history of religion contains so many dark and unpleasant chapters – disappointing but not very surprising, perhaps, given the strain of outfitting other-worldly ideals in mundane clothing. This is in fact the argument usually made when religious practices are criticised and seen to fall short of divine writ: the ideas are pure and good but, alas, they are interpreted on earth by misguided, or narrow, or evil, or corrupt officers.

What is language revival? In the narrow sense, which is used in this entry, it means the attempt to reclaim a language that is no longer spoken as a mother tongue, for example, Hebrew and Kaurna, the latter being an Aboriginal language in Adelaide, South Australia. Keywords: culture; educational linguistics; language revitalization; language variation and change; sociolinguistics; contact

The aim of this article is to suggest that due to the ubiquitous multiple causation, the revival of a no-longer spoken language is unlikely without cross-fertilization from the revivalists' mother tongue(s). Thus, one should expect revival efforts to result in a language with a hybridic genetic and typological character. The article highlights salient morphological constructions and categories, illustrating the difficulty in determining a single source for the grammar of Israeli, somewhat misleadingly a.k.a. 'Modern Hebrew'. The European impact in these features is apparent inter alia in structure, semantics or productivity. Multiple causation is manifested in the Congruence Principle, according to which if a feature exists in more than one contributing language, it is more likely to persist in the emerging language. Consequently, the reality of linguistic genesis is far more complex than a simple family tree system allows. 'Revived' languages are unlikely to hav...

Similes emphasise affinities between different objects, and they occur in many cultures. Vietnamese similes can be classified into two types: Meaning Similes and Rhyming Similes. This paper analyses and compares their structure and their semantic and phonetic requirements. It also draws innovative parallels between Vietnamese rhyming similes and Cockney Rhyming Slang, Multisourced Neologization of the Phonetic Matching type, and English, Italian and Israeli euphemisms.Thuy Nga Nguyen and Ghil'ad Zuckermannhttp://www.ijls.net/latestissue.htm

... Toponymy and monopoly. One toponym, two parents; ideological hebraization of Arabic place-names in the Israeli language. Autores: Ghil'ad Zuckermann; Localización: Onoma: Journal of the International Council of Onomastic Sciences, ISSN 0078-463X, Nº. ...

... 'haim targum efshari?' = Is Translation Possible? Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2010) 'haim targum efshari?' = Is Translation Possible?. Hed HaUlpan HaKhadash, 96 : 60-66. ... Title, 'haim targum efshari?' = Is Translation Possible? Formatted title, מחקר לשון האם תרגום אפשרי? ...

Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2002. ‘El original es infiel a la traducción: La manipulación etimológica como instrumento de rechazo hacia otras culturas’ in L. Ruiz Miyares, C. E. Álvarez Moreno and M. R. Álvarez Silva (eds), ACTAS II, VIII Simposio Internacional de Comunicacion Social, Centro de Lingüística Aplicada, Santiago de Cuba. (in Spanish)

I use ‘borrowing’ in its wider sense — in contrast to ‘loanword’ (§1.2.1).1 Haugen (1950) presented a complex typology of lexical borrowing (cf. Appel and Muysken 1987: 164) and imposed order on earlier confusing terminology. However, his treatment has two main shortcomings with regard to PSM: omission and inappropriate categorization.

... Issue Date: 2010. ISSN: 1083-5415. School/Discipline: School of Humanities : Linguistics. Statement of Responsibility: Ghil'ad Zuckermann and Gadi Benmark. Rights: Copyright status unknown. RMID: 0020111033. Description (link): http://www.giftedspeech.com/about-us-2/press ...

This chapter explores the correlation between language revival and wellbeing. It suggests that there is an urgent need to systematically assess quantitatively the mental health impact of language reclamation on indigenous communities. The primary hypothesis is that there will be significant improvements in mental health during the language revival process, reduced suicide ideation (i.e. people would be less likely to come up with the idea of suicide as a possibility), reduced self-harm, and reduced instances of suicide. Language is postulated as core to a people’s wellbeing and mental health. The link between poor mental health and suicide has been clearly demonstrated. But it is one thing to have a statement about the importance of language and mental health; it is another to have the statistical evidence that governments often require to implement policies that will affect personal, community and social wellbeing. Hallett, Chandler, and Lalonde (2007) report a clear correlation be...

This chapter explores the widespread phenomenon of semantic secularization. An example of an ideologically-neutral semantic secularization is visible in the transition of the meaning for the English word cell from ‘monk’s living place’ to become instead ‘autonomous self-replicating unit from which tissues of the body are formed’. The main focus of this chapter, however, is on secularizations involving ideological what I call ‘lexical engineering’, as exemplified by deliberate, subversive processes of extreme semantic shifting, pejoration, amelioration, trivialization, and allusion. An example of such transvaluation, the transition of semantic value, is [bəloˈri:t]. In Mishnaic Hebrew this term means ‘Mohawk, an upright strip of hair that runs across the crown of the head from the forehead to the nape of the neck’, a distinctive of the abominable pagan and not to be touched by the Jewish barber. But, defying religious values as well as negating the Diaspora (where Jews by and large h...

PaRDeS, die Zeitschrift der Vereinigung fur Judische Studien e. V., erforscht die fruchtbare kulturelle Vielfalt des Judentums sowie ihre Beruhrungspunkte zur nichtjudischen Umwelt in unterschiedlichen Bereichen. Daneben dient die Zeitschrift als Forum zur Positionierung der Facher Judische Studien und ­Judaistik innerhalb des wissenschaftlichen Diskurses sowie zur Diskussion ihrer historischen und gesellschaftlichen Verantwortung.

'Hebrew' is one of the official languages – with Arabic and English – of the State of Israel, established in 1948 on 20,770 km2 in the 'Middle' East. Israeli emerged at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Its symbolic first native speaker, Itamar Ben-Yehuda, ...

The fo llowing is constrained literature, a logological piece, in which the Israeli part sounds identical to the Italian. From the English translations provided below, one can see that the poem(s) make sense, although it has a surreal, evocative flavour, and modernist style. Poetic license is fu lly employed. As Thomas Paine once said, "The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficu lt to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridicu lous; and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again" [The Age of Reason, Part 2: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology, London: Daniel Isaac Eaton, 1796, p.20].

To what extent does knowledge and use of language affect spirituality and wellbeing? Hallett et al. discovered a clear correlation in British Columbia (Canada) between Aboriginal language loss and youth suicide. However, so far there has been no study of a correlation in the other direction, i.e. the impact of language revival on improved mental health and reduction in suicide. There is some evidence that just as language loss increases suicidal ideation and depression, language gain reduces mental ill-health, and improves spirituality and wellbeing. In this chapter I make these links, and argue that language revival reconnects people who have ‘lost’ their ‘soul’ with their cultural autonomy, intellectual sovereignty and spirituality.

We argue that LARA, a new web platform that supports easy conversion of text into an online multimedia form designed to support non-native readers, is a good match to the task of creating high-quality resources useful for languages in the revivalistics spectrum. We illustrate with initial case studies in three widely different endangered/revival languages: Irish (Gaelic); Icelandic Sign Language (ITM); and Barngarla, a reclaimed Australian Aboriginal language. The exposition is presented from a language community perspective. Links are given to examples of LARA resources constructed for each language.

How to protect language diversity in the world is a hotly discussed topic in linguistic research. This study investigates the relationship between Tibetan language vitality and language users’ identity in Maketang and Huazangsi Tibetan Autonomy County. On the basis of empirical data, the study suggests that there are no strong, positive correlations between Tibetan language vitality and the speakers’ language identity (or with their language activities and inclinations). However, pragmatic matters constitute an important factor that influences speakers’ activities and inclinations. These findings can be explained by conflicting functions performed by language: language as a communication tool on the one hand, and language as a receptacle of culture on the other. Bilingual (or multilingual) education can fulfill a useful role in balancing these two language functions. As a result of the evidence in this study, we argue that language protection cannot preserve both language vitality a...

Abstract: This article analyses toponyms that simultaneously have more than one etymon (etymological source), championing hybridity and multiple causation. Special attention is given to toponymic neologisms proposed by the Geographical Names Committee for the ...

... Issue Date: 2006. ISSN: 1320-0941. School/Discipline: School of Humanities : Linguistics. Statement of Responsibility: Ghil'ad Zuckermann. Rights: Copyright status unknown. RMID: 0020106933. Appears in Collections: Linguistics Publications. ...

Where documents are made available* through records in La Trobe University Research Online they may be regarded as" open access" documents; interested readers may read, download or print them, but they remain protected by copyright, and many are subject to ...

La Trobe University Research Online, a digital repository holding works produced by La Trobe University staff and students La Trobe University Research Online, a digital repository holding works produced by La Trobe University staff and students

Abstract Hebrew was comatose, one might even say clinically dead, for more than 1,700 years, going unspoken from the second century AD to the beginning of the twentieth century. The result was a relative paucity of texts in various genres, causing, in turn, extensive ...

This article analyses a fascinating and multifaceted mechanism of lexical expansion. It introduces the term" phono-semantic matching" to refer to the phenomenon in which a foreign lexical item is reproduced in the host language, using pre-existent native elements ...

... Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10068/535478. Title: Camouflaged borrowing 'folk-etymological nativization' in the service of puristic language engineering. Authors: Zuckerman, G. Oxford Univ. (United Kingdom). ...

Icelandic is one of the most puristically oriented among living languages. This chapter analyses an important but hitherto neglected method of Icelandic word-formation. It introduces the term 'phono-semantic matching' (henceforth PSM) to describe the technique whereby ...

La Trobe University Research Online, a digital repository holding works produced by La Trobe University staff and students La Trobe University Research Online, a digital repository holding works produced by La Trobe University staff and students

... Author(s), Zuckermann, Ghil'ad. Title, Ibridazione Culturale: Neologizzazione a Fonte Multipla in Linguaggi "Reinventati" e in Linguaggi a Scrittura "Fono-Logografica". ... Zuckermann‟s term Revival Linguistics is modelled upon „Contact Linguistics‟ (. Q-Index Code, C1. ...

How to protect language diversity in the world is a hotly discussed topic in linguistic research. This study investigates the relationship between Tibetan language vitality and language users' identity in Maketang and Huazangsi Tibetan Autonomy County. On the basis of empirical data, the study suggests that there are no strong, positive correlations between Tibetan language vitality and the speakers' language identity (or with their language activities and inclinations). However, pragmatic matters constitute an important factor that influences speakers' activities and inclinations. These findings can be explained by conflicting functions performed by language: language as a communication tool on the one hand, and language as a receptacle of culture on the other. Bilingual (or multilingual) education can fulfill a useful role in balancing these two language functions. As a result of the evidence in this study, we argue that language protection cannot preserve both language vitality and language identity, and that, therefore, language protection should pay more attention to issues of language identity rather than to issues of language vitality.

This paper proposes the enactment of an ex gratia compensation scheme for loss of Indigenous languages in Australia. Although some Australian states have enacted ex gratia compensation schemes for the victims of the Stolen Generation policies, the victims of ‘linguicide’ (language killing) are largely overlooked by the Australian Government. Existing grant schemes to support Aboriginal languages are inadequate, and they should be complemented with compensation schemes, which are based on a claim of right. The proposed compensation scheme for the loss of Aboriginal languages should support the effort to reclaim and revive the lost languages. We first outline the history of linguicide during colonisation in Australia. We then put a case for reviving lost Aboriginal languages by highlighting the benefits of language revival. After evaluating the limits of existing Australian law in supporting the language revival efforts, this paper proposes a statute-based ex gratia compensation scheme, which can be colloquially called ‘Native Tongue Title’.

Zuckermann, Ghil'ad and Walsh, Michael 2011. ‘Stop, Revive, Survive!: Lessons from the Hebrew Revival Applicable to the Reclamation, Maintenance and Empowerment of Aboriginal Languages and Cultures’, Australian Journal of Linguistics 31.1: 111-127.

LINK TO THE ARTICLE: http://www.zuckermann.org/pdf/Revival_Linguistics.pdf

Final version:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a932426202~frm=titlelink

DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2011.532859

Australian Journal of Linguistics (AJL)
Volume 31, Issue 1, January 2011, pages 111 - 127

Stop, Revive, Survive: Lessons from the Hebrew Revival Applicable to the Reclamation, Maintenance and Empowerment of Aboriginal Languages and Cultures

GHIL‘AD ZUCKERMANN and MICHAEL WALSH

University of Adelaide and University of Sydney


ABSTRACT

The revival of Hebrew is so far the most successful known reclamation of a sleeping tongue and is a language movement that has been in progress for more than 120 years. By comparison, language revival movements in Australia are in their infancy. This article provides comparative insights and makes information about the Hebrew revival accessible to Australian linguists and Aboriginal revival activists.

Needless to say, the first stage of any desire by professional linguists to assist in language reawakening must involve a long period of thoroughly observing, carefully listening to the people, learning, mapping and characterizing the specific indigenous community. Only then can one inspire and assist. That said, this article proposes that there are linguistic constraints applicable to all revival attempts. Mastering them would be useful to endangered languages in general and to Aboriginal linguistic revival in particular.

This article contributes towards the establishment of Revival Linguistics, a new linguistic discipline and paradigm. Zuckermann`s term Revival Linguistics is modelled upon 'Contact Linguistics' (<language contact). Revival linguistics inter alia explores the universal constraints and mechanisms involved in language reclamation, renewal and revitalization. It draws perspicacious comparative insights from one revival attempt to another, thus acting as an epistemological bridge between parallel discourses in various local attempts to revive sleeping tongues all over the globe.


Keywords: Revival Linguistics, Language Revival, Aboriginal Studies, Hebrew, Social Empowerment, Hybridity and Multiple Causation, Purism versus Compromise, Language and Identity, Contact Linguistics, Yiddish, Aboriginal English, Anthropological Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Language Endangerment, Resilience Linguistics, Revitalization, Renewal.


Dedicated to Professor Michael Clyne z"l



ARTICLE

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

(John Adams, 1735–1826, second president of the United States)


The main aim of this article is to suggest that there are perspicacious lessons applicable from the relatively successful Hebrew revival to the reclamation, maintenance and empowerment of Aboriginal languages and cultures. 'Language is power; let us have ours', wrote Aboriginal politician Aden Ridgeway on 26 November 2009 in the Sydney Morning Herald. Previous revival efforts have largely failed (for obvious reasons, we are not going to single out specific failures here). While there have been some good results from several projects since 1992 (e.g. Kaurna, see below), Aboriginal people overall do not see as many positive outcomes from revival programmes as they would like. In large part this is the result of shortage of sufficient (continuity of) funding, lack of technical expertise, and lack of integration of school-based programmes with community language programmes. However, there are purely linguistic reasons too: Many revival efforts were not supported by a sound theoretical understanding of how successful language revival works. As pointed out by Thieberger (2002), decisions about the appropriate target for language maintenance programmes are too often driven by structural linguistics, where the supposed ideal is intergenerational transmission of the language with all its original structural complexity retained, thus creating unrealistic expectations among the Aboriginal community.

This article is the first of its kind as it will innovatively draw crucial insights from 'Modern Hebrew' (henceforth, Israeli – see Zuckermann 1999), so far the most successful known reclamation attempt of a sleeping tongue. Zuckermann's (2008a, 2009, 2010, 2011) research on Israeli demonstrates which language components are more revivable than others. Words and conjugations, for example, are easier to revitalize than intonation, discourse, associations and connotations. We should encourage revivalists and Aboriginal leaders to be realistic rather than puristic, and not to chastise English loanwords and pronunciation, for example, within the emergent language. Applying such precious conclusions from Hebrew will closely assist Australian revivalists in being more efficient, urging them not to waste time and resources on Sisyphean efforts to resuscitate linguistic components that are unlikely to be revivable.

While the results the endeavors we are proposing here have considerable value as a research enterprise, one can also consider them in terms of a cost-benefit analysis (Mühlhäusler and Damania 2004, Walsh 2008): Language revitalization contributes to social reconciliation, cultural tourism (Clark and Kostanski 2005), capacity building, and improved community health for Indigenous peoples (Walsh forthcoming B). In the process of language revival, some Aboriginal people will go from being dysfunctional (cf. Sutton 2009) to well-balanced, positive people. The benefits to the wider community and to Australian society are immense.

Reversing language shift (RLS) (Fishman 1991, 2001, Hagège 2009, Evans 2010, Walsh 2005a, Zuckermann 2011) is thus of great social benefit. Language revival does not only do historical justice and address inequality but can also result in the empowerment of people who have lost their heritage and purpose in life.

Some Aboriginal people distinguish between usership and ownership. There are even those who claim that they own a language although they only know one single word of it: its name. Consequently, some Indigenous Australians do not find it important to revive their comatose tongue. We, on the other hand, have always believed in Australia’s very own roadside dictum: ‘Stop, revive, survive!'


Background: The Hebrew Revival

I suppose the process of acceptance will pass through the usual four stages: 1. This is worthless nonsense. 2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view. 3. This is true, but quite unimportant. 4. I always said so. (Haldane 1963: 464)

'Hebrew' is the most quoted example of a successful language revival. On the other hand, if we are to be brutally truthful with ourselves, the modern-day vernacular spoken in downtown Tel Aviv is a very different language – both typologically and genetically – to that of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) or of the Mishnah, the first major redaction of Jewish oral traditions.

Hebrew was spoken since approximately the 14th century BC. It belonged to the Canaanite division of the northwestern branch of the Semitic languages, which constitute a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Following a gradual decline, it ceased to be spoken by the second century AD. The failed Bar-Kokhba Revolt against the Romans in Judea in 132-5 AD marks the symbolic end of the period of spoken Hebrew. We believe that the Mishnah was codified around 200 AD because Hebrew was then dying as a mother tongue. Rabbi Judah haNasi and his collaborators might have realized that if they did not act then to redact the oral tradition, it would soon have been too late because Jews were already speaking languages other than Hebrew. (In fact, the Gemara, the other component of the Babylonian Talmud, which was codified around 500 AD, was written in Aramaic rather than in Hebrew.)

For approximately 1,750 years thereafter, Hebrew was ‘clinically dead’. A most important liturgical and literary language, it occasionally served as a lingua franca – a means of communication between people who do not share a mother tongue – for Jews of the Diaspora, but not as a native language.

Fascinating and multifaceted Israeli, which emerged in Palestine (Eretz Israel) at the end of the nineteenth century, possesses distinctive socio-historical characteristics such as the lack of a continuous chain of native speakers from spoken Hebrew to Israeli, the non-Semitic mother tongues spoken by the Hebrew revivalists, and the European impact on literary Hebrew. Consequently, it presents the linguist with a unique laboratory in which to examine a wider set of theoretical problems concerning language genesis, social issues like language, identity and politics, and important practical matters, such as whether it is possible to revive a no-longer spoken language.

The genetic classification of Israeli has preoccupied scholars since its genesis. The still regnant traditional thesis suggests that Israeli is Semitic: Hebrew revived. The revisionist antithesis defines Israeli as Indo-European: Yiddish relexified; that is, Yiddish, the revivalists’ mother tongue, is the 'substratum', whilst Hebrew is the 'superstratum' providing the vocabulary (cf. Horvath and Wexler 1997). According to Zuckermann's mosaic (rather than Mosaic) synthesis, Israeli is not only multi-layered but also multi-parental. A Semito-European, or Eurasian, hybrid, Israeli is both Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) and (Indo-) European. It is based simultaneously on 'sleeping beauty' / 'walking dead' Hebrew and 'máme lóshn' (mother tongue) Yiddish, which are both primary contributors to Israeli, and a plethora of other tongues spoken by Jewish pioneers in Palestine in the 1880s–1930s, e.g. Russian, Polish, Arabic, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), Turkish, German, French and English.


The Success Rate of the Hebrew Revival

The vernacularization of Hebrew was partially a success and partially a failure. It is hard to provide an exact quantification for such a multi-variable enterprise, but we would roughly estimate that on a 1-10 scale, 10 being a complete success and one being a complete failure, the Hebrew revival is at seven. More specifically, we propose the following continuum approximations for the extent to which Israeli can be considered Hebrew: mindset/spirit: 1 (i.e. European); discourse (communicative tools, speech acts): 1; sounds (phonetics and phonology): 2; semantics (meaning, associations, connotations, semantic networkings): 3; constituent/word order (syntax): 4; general vocabulary: 5; word formation: 7; verbal conjugations: 9; and basic vocabulary: 10 (i.e. Hebrew).

The factors leading to the partial failure of the Hebrew revival have little to do with a lack of motivation or zealousness, or with economic or political variables – not even with the fact that the revivalists, such as the symbolic father of Israeli, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (born Perelman, 1858-1922), were not as linguistically sophisticated as contemporary linguists. It is simply the case that one cannot negate one’s most recent roots, be they cultural or linguistic, even if one is keen to deny one’s parents’ and grandparents’ heritage (diasporic Yiddish) in search of cultural antiquity (Biblical Hebrew). It is therefore most unlikely to revive a clinically-dead language without cross-fertilization from the revivalists’ mother tongue(s). Thus, when most native Israeli-speakers speak Israeli, their intonation is much more similar to that of Yiddish, the mother tongue of most revivalists, than to that of Arabic or any other Semitic language. It is high time to acknowledge that Israeli is very different from ancient Hebrew. We should embrace – rather than chastise – the multisourcedness of Israeli.

That said, the Hebrew revival cannot be considered a failure because without the zealous, obsessive, enthusiastic efforts of Ben-Yehuda and of teachers, writers, poets, journalists, intellectuals, social activists, political figures, linguists and others, Israelis would have spoken a language (such as English, German, Arabic or Yiddish) that could hardly be considered Hebrew. To call such a hypothetical language 'Hebrew' would have not only been misleading but also wrong. To call today’s Israeli 'Hebrew' may be puristic but not wrong: Hybridic Israeli is based on Hebrew as much as it is based on Yiddish. So, although the revivalists could not avoid the subconscious influence of their mother tongue(s), they did indeed manage at the same time to consciously revive important components of Hebrew.


Hybridity, Camouflage and the Congruence Principle

Israeli is a new hybrid language rather than an evolutionary phase of Hebrew. Yiddish is not a 'foreign language' vis-à-vis Israeli, and the word intuítsya 'intuition' – to give but one example out of thousands of alleged loan words – is not a loan word (from Yiddish intuítsye, Russian intuítsiya, Polish intuicja etc., all meaning 'intuition') but rather an integral part of Israeli from its very beginning.

According to the Congruence Principle, the more revivalists speak contributing languages with a specific linguistic feature, the more likely this feature is to prevail in the emergent language. Based on feature pool statistics, this principle weakens August Schleicher’s famous Family Tree theory in historical linguistics, which may give the wrong impression that every language has only one parent. For example, most revivalists spoke languages, mainly Yiddish, that lacked that Semitic pharyngeal gulp ‘ayin (represented, for instance, by the apostrophe in Zuckermann's Christian – actually Jewish – name Ghil‘ad). Naturally, their children – the ones who, in fact, shaped the real character of Israeli – could not buy the argument 'do as I say, don’t do as I do!' The result is that most Israelis do not have this sound in their speech.

Similarly, má nishmà, the common Israeli 'what’s up?' greeting, looks like a calque – loan translation – of the Yiddish phrase vos hért zikh, usually pronounced vsértsekh and literally meaning 'what’s heard?' but functioning as a common greeting. However, a Romanian-speaking immigrant to Israel might have used má nishmà because of Romanian ce se aude, a Polish-speaker Jew because of Polish co słychać, and a Russian-speaker Что слышно chto slyshno, all meaning the same and functioning in the same way.

The distinction between forms and patterns is crucial here as it demonstrates multiple causation. In the 1920s and 1930s, gdud meginéy hasafá, 'the language defendants regiment' (cf. Shur 2000), whose motto was ivrí, dabér ivrít 'Hebrew [i.e. Jew], speak Hebrew,' used to tear down signs written in 'foreign' languages and disturb Yiddish theatre gatherings. However, the members of this group only looked for Yiddish forms, rather than patterns in the speech of the Israelis who did choose to speak 'Hebrew.' The language defendants would thus not attack an Israeli speaker saying má nishmà. Ironically, even the language defendants regiment's anthem included calques from Yiddish.

Zuckermann (2011, forthcoming) analyzes the hitherto-overlooked camouflaged semantic networking transferred from one language to another. Whereas mechanisms as calques (loan translations such as superman, from German Übermensch), phono-semantic matches (e.g. crayfish, from Old French crevice, a cognate of crab that has little to do with fish) (Zuckermann 2003) and portmanteau blends (e.g. motel, from motor+hotel, or sprummer, from spring+summer) have been studied, there is a need to uncover concealed semantic links between words in the Target Language which reflect – often subconsciously – semantic networking in the Source Language. Consider the Israeli word gakhlilít 'firefly, glow-worm' – coined by poet laureate Hayyim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934). This word is semantically and etymologically linked to the Biblical Hebrew word gaħelet 'burning coal, glowing ember.' Morphologically, Israeli gakhlilít derives from Hebrew gaħelet plus the reduplication of its third radical [l]. However, no Israeli dictionary reveals the crucial semantic networking aspect, namely that the Israeli concoction, gakhlilít, in using an element associated with 'glow,' in fact replicates a European mindset, apparent for example in the Yiddish word glivórem, literally 'glow' (cf. gaħelet) + 'worm', or in German Glühwürmchen.


Native Israeli Speech and the Academy of the Hebrew Language

Since its conception, Israeli has been the subject of purism (the dislike of foreign words – as in Icelandic: Sapir and Zuckermann 2008) and the enforcement of 'correct' pronunciation. Brought into being by legislation in 1953 as the supreme institute for 'Hebrew', the Academy of the Hebrew Language (known in Israeli as haakademya lalashón haivrít) is funded by Israel's Ministry of Education. It superseded the (Hebrew) Language Council (váad halashón (haivrít)), which was established in 1889 – as a branch of Safá Brurá (Clear Language) – by Ben-Yehuda and colleagues. As defined in its constitution, the Academy's functions are: (1) To investigate and compile the Hebrew lexicon according to its historical strata and layers; (2) To study the structure, history, and offshoots of the Hebrew language; and (3) To direct the development of Hebrew in light of its nature, requirements, and potential, its daily and academic needs, by setting its lexicon, grammar, characters, orthography and transliteration [in fact, transcription].

The first goal is most useful, as Israeli is indeed a multi-layered language. For example, one could say both (a) khashkhú enáv, literally 'His eyes became dark,' meaning 'He saw black' (‘black’ in this context meaning ‘bad news’), and (b) niyá/naasá lo khóshekh baenáim, meaning the same, albeit structurally different. While khashkhú enáv is Hebrew, niyá lo khóshekh baenáim is a calque of the Yiddish phrase siz im gevórn fíntster in di óygn, which might in turn be an adaptation of the very Hebrew khashkhú enáv (transcribed here in its Israeli form, which would have been unintelligible for an ancient Hebrew-speaker).

Israeli has many other minimal pairs, such as asá din leatsmó and lakákh et hakhók layadáim, both referring to a person violating the law, with the latter being more colloquial; as well as lelót kayamím, literally 'nights as days' (also yamím kelelót, literally 'days as nights'), and misavív lashaón, literally 'round the clock,' both often referring to hard work.

Somewhat resembling the 'catastrophic success' of the 1928-1936 Turkish Language Revolution (see Lewis 1999), many referents have several Israeli signifiers, one of which is puristically Hebrew and the other, often more commonly used, 'foreign' (in fact, Israeli ab initio). These include many internationalisms such as opozítsya 'Opposition' (according to the Academy, the word should be negdá – cf. Hebrew néged 'against') and koalítsya 'Coalition' (according to the Academy: yakhdá – cf. Hebrew yaħad 'together').

However, goal (3), to direct the development of Hebrew in light of its nature, is oxymoronic (cf. Zuckermann 2008b: 139). If the nature of a language is to evolve in a specific direction (cf. Sapir's 'drift,' the pattern of change in which the structure of a language shifts in a determinate direction), why direct its evolution by language policing?


From the Promised Land to the ‘Lucky’ Country

The three principles of linguistic revival and survival:
(1) If your language is endangered --> Do not allow it to
die!
(2) If your language died --> Stop, revive, survive!
(3) If you revive your language --> Embrace the
hybridity of the emergent language!

Questions of this kind, albeit in an implicit and sometimes confused fashion, are being raised within the context of Australian Aboriginal languages. Current language revival activities are worthy but often under-theorized. The tendency has been to attempt to revive the language en masse despite what has been indicated about the Hebrew rate of success for take up of particular components of language. There is a need to examine a range of existing language revitalization programmes with a view to assessing the rate of success for take up of particular components of language and at the same time adduce the preferences (and sometimes the prejudices) of the group in question (cf. Couzens and Eira forthcoming).

Indigenous Australians have been living in Australia for more than 40,000 years. Today Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders make up 2.6% of Australia's population. Unfortunately, one of the main findings of the most recent National Indigenous Languages Survey Report (2005) was that the situation of Australia’s languages is grave (in both senses). Of an original number of over 250 known Australian Indigenous languages, only about 145 Indigenous languages are still spoken and the vast majority of these, about 110, are critically endangered: they are spoken only by small groups of people, mostly over 40 years old. Eighteen languages are strong in the sense of being spoken by all age groups, but three or four of these are showing some disturbing signs of moving into endangerment. So of an original number of over 250 known Australian Indigenous languages, only 6% (i.e. 15) are in a healthy condition.

Aboriginal language revival began recently – from the late 1970s (Amery and Gale 2007) – and has therefore much to learn from other revival efforts, especially that of Hebrew, which began in the late nineteenth century. There has been little coordination among the geographically-scattered language revival efforts in Australia. Most recently, language revitalization practitioners have begun to share experiences at various conferences and workshops (Hobson et al. forthcoming). There is thus an urgent need for an on-the-ground, ongoing input, creating intellectual and practical synergy and complementing the mission of the regional Aboriginal language centres and the recently-established mobile language team based at the University of Adelaide – by adding significant advice based on scholarly and universal perspectives. Practical outcomes will include a useful handbook of the best practices for language revival in Australia (Christina Eira, pers. comm.), and an improved sense of well being in the local Aboriginal community.

There is community support in some parts of the country for revival and heritage learning programmes: either in reclamation proper (e.g. extensive courses similar to Israel’s ulpaním) or only in symbolic, postvernacular maintenance (teaching Aboriginal people some words and concepts related to the dead language – cf. postvernacular Yiddish among secular Jews in the United States – see Shandler 2005). At its broadest level language revival refers to the range of strategies for increasing knowledge and use of a language which is no longer spoken fully across all generations. In practice, however, this can range from largely symbolic uses of ancestral languages like naming buildings or places through to more constant involvement with the language through school-based language instruction (Walsh 2005a).


Comparative Analysis of Hebrew and Aboriginal Language Revival

Although they too were at the beginning very few in number, and encountered great hostility and animosity (e.g. by those who saw the revival as the desecration of a holy tongue), the Hebrew revivalists had several advantages compared with Australian revivalists. Consider the following:

(1) Documentation: extensive – consider, for example, the Hebrew Bible and the Mishnah.

(2) Accessibility: Jews have been exposed to literary Hebrew throughout the generations, e.g. when praying in the synagogue or when saying the blessing over the meal. It would be hard to find a Jew who did not have access to Hebrew (unless in totalitarian regimes such as the Soviet Union).

(3) Prestige: Hebrew was considered a prestigious language (as opposed to Yiddish, for instance, whose Australian sociolinguistic parallel might be Aboriginal English). It is true that some Aboriginal languages are held in high regard by their owners/custodians but unfortunately usually not by the wider Australian society.

(4) Uniqueness: Jews from all over the globe only had Hebrew in common (Aramaic was not as prominent), whereas there are dozens of 'sleeping' Aboriginal languages and it would be hard to choose only one unifying tongue, unless one resorts to Aboriginal English. The revival of a single language is much more manageable than that of numerous tongues in varying states of disrepair.

(5) National self-determination: revived Hebrew was aimed to be the language of an envisioned state, where speakers of Revived Hebrew would eventually have the political power (cf. Yadin and Zuckermann 2010).

(6) Lack of ownership: Unlike in the case of Aboriginal languages (cf. Walsh 2002), anybody has the right to speak Hebrew, without getting permission from the Jews.

(7) Easy borrowing: Loanwords and foreign words are not considered theft. In fact, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda loved borrowing from Arabic, Aramaic and other Semitic languages.

(8) Lack of place restriction: Hebrew could be and was revived all over the globe – consider Haim Leib Hazan’s coinage mishkafáim ‘glasses’ in 1890 in Grodno (see Zuckermann 2003: 1-4).

(9) Multilingualism: Jews arriving in Eretz Israel in the time of the revival were used to multilingualism and did not have a ‘monolingual mindset’. For example, back in Europe many of them spoke Yiddish at home and Polish in the market, and prayed in Hebrew (and Aramaic) in the synagogue.

(10) Number: There are many more Jews than Aboriginal people in Australia.


But, as it happens, Aboriginal revivalists actually have some advantages vis-à-vis Hebrew revivalists. Consider the following:

(1) Deontological reason for the revival: As we see it, Aboriginal tongues deserve to be revived for historical, humanistic and social justice, inter alia addressing inequality (cf. Thieberger 1990). This can provide strength to the revival attempts. We hear again and again 'native title' but where is the 'native tongue title'? Is land more important than langue and (cultural) lens? And if land, langue and heritage are bound together as a trinity, then why ask for reparation only for land?

(2) Numerous utilitarian reasons for the revival: The revival of sleeping Aboriginal languages can result in personal, educational and economic empowerment, sense of pride and higher self-esteem of people who have lost their heritage and purpose in life (see concluding remarks). The Hebrew revival had many less utilitarian purposes, the main one being simply the constitution of a unifying tongue to Jews from all over the world. It would have been unfair, for example, for Ladino-speaking Sephardim if German were selected.

(3) Governmental support: Although it could obviously be greater, the Australian government does support the reclamation and maintenance of Aboriginal languages, or at least there is an obvious address to apply for money from. This has not been the case in fin-de-siècle Palestine.

(4) Similarities between Aboriginal English and Aboriginal Languages: Aboriginal English (e.g. Nunga English in Adelaide), spoken by some revivalists, contain various linguistic features – such as connotations, associations, sounds and morphological characteristics like the dual – of the reclaimed Aboriginal languages at stake. One might perspicaciously argue that Israeli semantics, which is deeply modelled on Yiddish semantics, also maintains the original Hebrew semantics after all because Yiddish, a Germanic language with Romance substratum, was deeply impacted by Hebrew and Aramaic. However, the Yiddish dialects that have been the most influential ones in Israel, e.g. Polish Yiddish, are, in fact, the ones that underwent Slavonization from the thirteenth century onwards, when Jews moved from Germany to Slavonic-speaking areas in Eastern Europe. Aboriginal English is much younger and therefore is much more likely to retain features of Aboriginal languages, than Yiddish is to retain features of Hebrew.


Universal Constraints of Language Revival

And yet, although obviously language revival attempts should be tailored to the specific contexts, needs and desires of each community, there are some universal constraints that should be recognized. As we have already seen, Hebrew revivalists, who wished to speak pure Hebrew, failed in their imprisoning purism prism, the result being a multifaceted and fascinating fin-de-siècle Israeli language, both multi-layered and multi-sourced. Most relevantly, some Australian interest groups (cf. Tiwi in Dorian 1994: 481-4) get hung up on misled views akin to the slogan ‘Give me authenticity or give me death!’ (cf. ‘Give me Liberty, or give me Death!’, the famous quotation attributed to Patrick Henry from a speech he made to the Virginia Convention in America on 23 March 1775), where the death, of course, ends up being the Indigenous language they wish to save from ‘contamination’! (On authenticity and language revival, see also Wong 1999 and Hinton and Ahlers 1999.)

Why should we encourage revivalists and Aboriginal leaders to be realistic rather than puristic? Purism creates unrealistic expectations that may discourage learners from acquiring the emerging language. A revived language should not be viewed negatively if it is seen to be influenced by a neighbouring language or by English. The use of words from a neighbouring language should not discredit the revived language. There might be some rare occasions when it is more appropriate for revivalists to favour purism – see Harlow (1993) on Maori. However, in the case of reclamation proper (i.e. the revival of a language that has no native speakers such as Hebrew), one must learn to embrace, celebrate and champion – rather than chastise – the inevitable hybridity of the emerging language.

One might argue that the difference between the conditions that surround Aboriginal languages and Israeli are so large that it is impossible to learn across these contexts. But denying universal traits or constraints in human language in general, and in reversing language shift in particular, is counter-productive. Linguistic reality lies between relativism and universalism. No progress will be made by turning a blind eye to any of these extremes. Based on a critical analysis of Israeli, one can predict accurately the situation in various reclaimed Aboriginal languages such as Kaurna [ga:na], a resurrected language spoken around Adelaide, which is the result of one of the most successful revival attempts in Australia – cf. Gumbaynggirr (Ash et. al. forthcoming), Ngarrindjeri, Walmajarri and Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay.

There are scholars, e.g. Dalby (2003: 250), who scoff at some attempts at reviving the use of an endangered language: 'this is no longer a language, any more than musicians are speaking Italian when they say andante and fortissimo. These are simply loanwords used in a special context'. A more balanced view is manifested in Crystal's (2000: 162) comments on Kaurna:

The revived language is not the same as the original language, of course; most obviously, it lacks the breadth of functions which it originally had, and large amounts of old vocabulary are missing. But, as it continues in present-day use, it will develop new functions and new vocabulary, just as any other living language would, and as long as people value it as a true marker of their identity, and are prepared to keep using it, there is no reason to think of it as anything other than a valid system of communication.

The impact of English (Aboriginal or Australian English) on reclaimed Kaurna is far-reaching. Consider the following:

* At the level of phonology, there are often spelling pronunciations, especially for sequences of er (as in yerlo ‘sea’ and yerta for instance), ur (as in purle or purlaitye). In classical Kaurna, the r in these words belonged with the consonant (it was be retroflex) but many times we hear an er vowel as in English slur or sir. The original vowel was /a/ in yerlo and yerta, and /u/ in purle and purlaitye. Stress is often placed on the second syllable rather than on the first (Amery 2000: 121-122; Amery and Rigney 2004: 2-3).

* At the level of vocabulary, there are many calques – see Amery 2000: 124, as well as Chapter 12 Wodlingga 'In the Home' (pp. 63-70), Chapter 15 Tidnaparndo 'Football' (pp. 81-84) and Chapter 16 Kuya Pirri-wirkindi 'Fishing' (pp. 85-88) in Amery (2007), where a range of calques have been developed – especially evident in the names of AFL football teams such as Kuinyunda Meyunna (lit. 'sacred men') for the St Kilda Saints. Knowingly – and jocularly – cricket (the sport game) was replicated as yertabiritti (the term for the insect with the same name in English) (Amery 2003: 86). It should be noted, however, that in reclaimed Kaurna there are relatively few loanwords/foreignisms from English per se, far less than we see in any ‘strong’ language such as Pitjantjatjara or Yolngu Matha.

* Constituent/word order is free in classical Kaurna as in other Aboriginal languages, though it tended to be SOV (Subject-Object-Verb). Naturally, there are contemporary users of Kaurna who tend to produce more SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) sentences, replicating English (Amery and Rigney 2004: 5).

* English semantics tends to carry through to Kaurna words (Amery and Rigney 2004: 5-7).

* The most pervasive influence from English is at the level of discourse. Almost everything said or written is translated from English. Thus, the turn of phrase and the idiom are from English (Amery 2001a: 190-194; Amery 2001b; see also Amery and Rigney 2006).

And still, the impact of English on Kaurna is less than in many other revived languages in Australia – cf. the neighbouring Ngarrindjeri, where published texts are practically English calques: an isomorphic 1 to 1 translation of English, including the use of interrogative ‘where’ for ‘were’ and ‘thus’ for ‘the’. Case suffixes are used as prepositions – see p. iii of Reviving Languages: warranna purruttiappendi: tumbelin tungarar: renewal and reclamation programs for indigenous languages in schools (1999), as well as Rhonda Agius in Proctor and Gale (1997: 4-6).

We predict that any attempt to revive an Aboriginal language will result in a hybrid, combining components from Australian English, Aboriginal English, Kriol, other Aboriginal languages and the target Aboriginal tongue. But we are going to assist Aboriginal revivalists to make their efforts more efficient and to embrace hybridity.


Concluding Remarks

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. (Nelson Mandela)

This article contributes towards the establishment of Revival Linguistics, a new linguistic discipline and paradigm. Zuckermann`s term Revival Linguistics is modelled upon 'Contact Linguistics' (<language contact). Revival linguistics inter alia explores the universal constraints and mechanisms involved in language reclamation, renewal and revitalization. It draws perspicacious comparative insights from one revival attempt to another, thus acting as an epistemological bridge between parallel discourses in various local attempts to revive sleeping tongues all over the globe.

There is a need to map the revival attempts throughout Aboriginal Australia by (1) assessing the success of the revival so far; and (2) categorizing the specific need on a continuum of revival efforts, e.g. reclamation (e.g. Kaurna), renewal (e.g. Ngarrindjeri) and revitalization (e.g. Walmajarri) – cf. other RE-terms to be defined such as restoration, resurrection, resuscitation, reinvigoration, reintroduction, regenesis, revernacularization, reawakening, rebirth and renaissance.

Needless to say, even if there is eventually a sound understanding and awareness of the linguistic/sociolinguistic issues involved and even if the endeavour is well-theorised, language revival efforts may well still fail. Internal factional politics are likely to be far more influential in deciding the fate of a language revival movement that any linguistic theory or lack of one. There is no doubt that the first stage of any desire by professional linguists to assist in language revival involves a long initial period of carefully observing, listening, learning and characterizing each indigenous community specifically. Only then can we inspire and assist. That said, this article proposes that there are linguistic constraints applicable to all revival attempts. Mastering them would be most useful to endangered languages in general and to Aboriginal linguistic revival in particular.

While we know that language revitalization can have numerous beneficial effects, we also know that some revival efforts are more successful than others (see Walsh forthcoming A). A better understanding of success in this arena by surveying numerous language reinvigoration efforts in Australia, and by drawing on lessons from the Hebrew revival, will enable less waste of resources and better outcomes. Besides significant scholarly impact and intellectual benefits, the results of such endeavours will also improve substantially the future of Australia's Indigenous communities, promoting and maintaining their physical, spiritual and cultural good health through:

(1) Transformation of disturbed individuals;

(2) Capacity building: Some Aboriginal people will undertake training only because they are interested in language(s). However, what they will learn in the process are useful generic skills such as literacy, computer literacy, conducting research and giving speeches in public;

(3) Improved sense of well being in the local Aboriginal community;

(4) Reconciliation and potential decrease in racism towards Aboriginal people in some country centres;

(5) Promoting cultural tourism to Aboriginal areas in order to learn about their cultures and languages.

Regaining language is a life-changing experience for many Aboriginal people. One Aboriginal person has told us that he used to be angry, often drunk and in trouble with police and his home life was a mess. Two years later, when he had regained his language, his situation had turned around and his family life had greatly improved.

Through this and other experiences we became convinced that a small investment in language revitalization could yield very significant dividends. Language revival can result in the saving of vast amounts of money and resources going into housing, social services and health intervention to little effect. A small investment into language revitalization can make an enormous difference to society. Public health can benefit from language intervention.

To date such money as has been devoted to Aboriginal language revival and maintenance has not been well targeted. This is partly because Australian Indigenous language policies have been piecemeal and un-coordinated at best or otherwise non-existent or implicit (Liddicoat 2008, McKay 2007, 2009, Truscott and Malcolm forthcoming; see also http://www.anu.edu.au/linguistics/nash/ aust/policy.html – accessed 6 July 2010). We aim at a better informed Indigenous language policy at the national level, as well as in particular institutional contexts. For instance, in considering Indigenous policies of Australian universities, Gunstone (2008: 107) complains: ‘it is apparent that universities are still largely failing to adequately address the educational needs of Indigenous staff, students and communities.’

As cellist Yo Yo Ma said on 28 November 2000 at the White House Conference on Culture and Diplomacy:

A Senegalese poet said 'In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.' We must learn about other cultures in order to understand, in order to love, and in order to preserve our common world heritage.


References

Amery, Rob 2000. Warrabarna Kaurna: Reclaiming an Australian Language. Swets and Zeitlinger, Lisse, The Netherlands.
Amery, Rob 2001a. 'Language Planning and Language Revival', Current Issues in Language Planning 2: 141-221.
Amery, Rob 2001b. 'Regenerating a Kaurna Literature'. Paper presented at the AULLA Conference, Uni of Adelaide, February 2001.
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Brief Bios:

Prof. Ghil'ad Zuckermann is Professor of Linguistics of Endangered Languages and Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellow at the University of Adelaide, and 211 Professor at Shanghai International Studies University. He is the author of Language Revival and Multiple Causation (Oxford Univ Press, forthcoming), Israelit Safa Yafa (Israeli - A Beautiful Language) (Am Oved, 2008) and Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). He has been Gulbenkian Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, has taught e.g. at the Univ of Queensland, Univ of Cambridge and National Univ of Singapore, and has been research fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation's Study and Conference Center (Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, Italy), Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (UT Austin) and Japan's National Language Research Institute. www.zuckermann.org
Ghil'ad Zuckermann's EMAIL: [email protected].

Since 1972 Dr Michael Walsh has conducted fieldwork in the Top End of the Northern Territory, mainly in the Darwin-Daly region. This has been a mixture of academic endeavours as well as consultancies since 1979 mainly relating to Aboriginal land issues. From 1999 he has participated in the revitalization of Aboriginal languages in NSW. From 1982 until 2005 he was part of the teaching staff of the Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney. Since then, he has continued his research interests especially through a large ARC grant involving a team of linguists and musicologists running from 2004 to 2010. http://azoulay.arts.usyd.edu.au/mpsong/
Michael Walsh's EMAIL: [email protected]

Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2009. 'Hybridity versus Revivability: Multiple Causation, Forms and Patterns. Journal of Language Contact, Varia 2: 40-67.

LINK TO THE ARTICLE:
http://www.zuckermann.org/pdf/Hybridity_versus_Revivability.pdf


The aim of this article is to suggest that due to the ubiquitous multiple causation, the revival of a no-longer spoken language is unlikely without cross-fertilization from the revivalists’ mother tongue(s). Thus, one should expect revival efforts to result in a language with a hybridic genetic and typological character. The article highlights salient morphological constructions and categories, illustrating the difficulty in determining a single source for Israeli grammar. The European impact in these features is apparent inter alia in structure, semantics or productivity. Being an article rather than a long book, this paper does not attempt to be grammatically exhaustive but rather to cast new light on the partial success of language revival in general and on the genetics of Israeli in particular.

Multiple causation is manifested in the Congruence Principle, according to which if a feature exists in more than one contributing language, it is more likely to persist in the emerging language. This article discusses multiple causation in (1) constituent order, (2) tense system, (3) copula enhancement, (4) calquing, and (5) phono-semantic matching in ‘Israeli’ (Zuckermann 1999, somewhat misleadingly a.k.a. ‘Revived Hebrew’ / ‘Modern Hebrew’). It suggests that the reality of linguistic genesis is far more complex than a simple family tree system allows. ‘Revived’ languages are unlikely to have a single parent.

Generally speaking, whereas most forms of Israeli are Semitic, many of its patterns are European. It is proposed that (1) Whereas Hebrew was synthetic, Israeli – following Yiddish etc. – is much more analytic; (2) Israeli is a habere language (cf. Latin habere ‘to have’, taking the direct object), in stark contrast to Hebrew; (3) European languages sometimes dictate the gender of Israeli coinages; (4) The (hidden) productivity and semantics of the allegedly completely Hebrew system of Israeli verb-templates are, in fact, often European; (5) In Hebrew there was a polarity-of-gender agreement between nouns and numerals, e.g. ‘éser banót ‘ten girls’ versus ‘asar-á baním ‘ten (feminine) boys’. In Israeli there is a simpler – European – system, e.g. éser banót ‘ten girls’, éser baním ‘ten boys’; (6) Yiddish has shaped the semantics of the Israeli verbal system in the case of inchoativity; (7) Following ‘Standard Average European’, the Israeli proclitics be- ‘in’, le- ‘to’ and mi-/me ‘from’, as well as the coordinating conjunction ve- ‘and’, are phonologically less dependent than in Hebrew; (8) Word-formation in Israeli abounds with European mechanisms such as portmanteau blending.

Israeli possesses distinctive socio-historical characteristics such as the lack of a continuous chain of native speakers from spoken Hebrew to Israeli, the non-Semitic mother tongues spoken by the revivalists, and the European impact on literary Hebrew. Consequently, it presents the linguist with a fascinating and multifaceted laboratory in which to examine a wider set of theoretical problems concerning language genesis and hybridity, social issues like language vis-à-vis politics, and practical matters, e.g. whether it is possible to revive a no-longer spoken language. The multisourced nature of Israeli and the role of the Congruence Principle in its genesis have implications for historical linguistics, language planning and the study of language, culture and identity.


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Linguicide: How dying languages kill multiculturalism

19 MAR 2013, 4:32 PM  -  SOURCE: ANDY PARK, SBS

Half of the world’s 7000 languages will disappear in the next 100 years. But one professor of endangered languages says it’s a community’s many tongues that make it strong.

Australia has set a record for ‘linguicide’, with 92 per cent of Indigenous languages fading or dead, according to one linguist who has used Harmony Day to emphasise the role language plays in community and culture.

Professor Ghil'ad Zuckermann says that language plays a lead role in people's identity, cultural autonomy, and even their wellbeing and mental health, and should be seen as something that brings Australians together.

"While it's very easy for people to believe we should all be speaking English in the 21st century, the reality is there are dozens of languages spoken in Australia today by people from fascinating and multifaceted backgrounds," Professor Zuckermann says.

More than half of the world’s approximate 7,000 languages are at risk of disappearing in the next 100 years.

UNESCO LANGUAGE ENDANGERMENT SCALE

Vulnerable: Most children speak the language, but it may be restricted to certain domains (e.g., home).

Definitely endangered: Children no longer learn the language as mother tongue in their home.

Severely endangered: Language is spoken by grandparents and older generations; while the parent generation may understand it, they do not speak it to children or among themselves.

Critically endangered: The youngest speakers are grandparents and older people, and they speak the language partially and infrequently.

Professor Zuckermann says that cultural harmony happens because of language diversity, not in spite of it.

"Harmony and reconciliation can be achieved as a result of reclamation of language," he said.

"This is especially true for Aboriginal people who are working to resurrect their ‘sleeping beauty’ languages, which were often subject to linguicide, language killing.  Language revival empowers them, reinforces their sense of purpose in life and is liberating."

"We certainly do not want people to lose their cultural independence and, in many cases, their spirituality, all of which go hand in hand with language.  The death of language is the death of the soul."

TOP SPOKEN LANGUAGES (With percentage of speaking people as world population)

1.    Mandarin - 14.1 per cent
2.    Spanish - 5.85 per cent
3.    English - 5.52 per cent
4.    Hindi - 4.46 per cent
5.    Arabic 4.23 per cent
6.    Portuguese - 3.08 per cent
7.    Bengali - 3.05 per cent
8.    Russian - 2.42 per cent
9.    Japanese - 1.92 per cent
10.  Punjabi - 1.44 per cent

Source:http://www.sil.org/

MOST ENGANGERED LANGUAGES

UNESCO figures as of 2010 show that there are about 19 languages that have only one speaker, many of which originate from South America: Apiaká, Biky, Bishuo, Chaná, Dampelas, Diahói, Kaixána, Lae, Laua, Patwin, Pazeh, Pémono, Taushiro, Tinigua, Tolowa, Volow, Wintu-Nomlaki and Yahgan and Yarawi.

Sleeping Beauty: why indigenous languages need to be saved from the brink

BY: GEORGINA FLAHERTY
From: The Australian, March 21, 2013

ONCE upon a time in a land not so far away, there were 250 indigenous languages. This was before British colonisation.

An alarming 93 per cent of indigenous languages are dying or have already died. As indigenous language expert Professor Ghil’ad Zuckermann, from the University of Adelaide says, these languages are  ‘sleeping beauties.’

Ethically, we have a duty to reclaim indigenous languages after the British invasion and the Stolen Generation resulted in mass linguicide.

By revitalising indigenous languages not only will we help mend faults of the past but we will be facilitating social progress by creating a greater collective understanding between non-indigenous and indigenous Australians.

The revitalisation of indigenous languages will contribute to Australia’s diversity by exhibiting their unique beauty.

Some of these languages are critically endangered and some have already undergone extinction. Every Australian deserves to express themselves through their culture and language, to be empowered and proud. Therefore, we must prioritise this issue, for the happily ever after Australia deserves.

Georgina Flaherty, 12, is a Year 12 student in Adelaide. She recently did a research project about critically endangered indigenous languages and bilingual education. She was also visited the Tiwi Islands with my school last year. She would like to give special thanks to Professor Ghil’ad Zuckermann.

דרווין פינת בן יהודה

הבלשן גלעד צוקרמן והגנטיקאי יצחק פלפל טוענים שיש קשר הדוק בין התפתחות השפה לאבולוציה של המינים. כמו לשפה, לדנ”א יש תחביר וסימני פיסוק; כמו בביולוגיה, יש בשפה ברירה טבעית והכלאה. האם הדמיון ביניהן הוא רק מטאפורי, או שמא השפה היא ביטוי אבולוציוני של הגנום האנושי?

הארץ
דעות
אקדמיה ליפהפיות נרדמות
גלעד צוקרמן
02.12.2012

לפני ימים מספר החליטה הממשלה על הקמת "בית לאומי ללשון העברית" בירושלים. המוסד החדש צפוי לכלול מוזיאון לתולדות העברית ובית חדש לתרביץ לשפה הישראלית, הידוע בכינויו "האקדמיה ללשון העברית". את המיזם החדש ירכז משרד ראש/ת הממשלה בהשתתפות עיריית ירושלים וההסתדרות הציונית. מדובר ביוזמה ברוכה ונהדרת. אליבא דידי, השפה חשובה מאדמה אף כי לא ניתן לגעת בה פיסית. לפיכך, החייאת העברית היא ההישג הגדול ביותר של הציונות. ומתוך עשרות החייאות של יפהפיות נרדמות ברחבי העולם - החייאתנו היא המצליחה ביותר עד כה.

לבית הלאומי ללשון העברית יש פוטנציאל להפוך למוזיאון הלשוני החשוב בתבל, שימשוך מיליוני אנשים לירושלים. אך כיצד? על ידי זה שנראה לעולם כיצד לשוננו העכשווית היא עוד שלב בהתפתחות האורגנית של העברית? על ידי כך שנטען שכל זאטוט ישראלי מבין את התנ"ך בלי שום בעיה? או אולי על ידי כך שנוכיח שלו ירמיהו היה קם לתחייה, הוא היה מתבדח עם נתניהו בנקל? אז זהו, שלא! מדובר בהזדמנות פז מהסוג של "אור לגויים", אבל כדי לא להחמיץ אותה דרושים חזון, מעוף, יושרה אינטלקטואלית ומאמץ כביר להשתחרר ממיתוסים מטעים ומוליכים שולל, ולהתגבר על צדקנות והתחסדות.

הישראלים לא מבינים את התנ"ך והישראלית איננה שלב אבולוציוני בהתפתחות העברית, אלא שפת-כלאיים יפהפייה חדשה, כיאה לכל לשון אחרת שהחייאתה צלחה. הישראלית יונקת בו בזמן הן מן העברית, הן מן היידיש והן משפות אחרות שאותן דיברו מחיי השפה. יתר על כן, אין שום טעם לכפות אמירת שלושה שקלים על מי שדובר ישראלית כשפת אם, מכיוון שהוא כבר מדבר אותה באופן מושלם, על פי חוקי דקדוק המצויים במוחו. בניגוד לשפת הכתיבה והספרות, שהיא האביטוס או מוסכמה חברתית, שפת האם המדוברת איננה נלמדת אלא נרכשת באופן אוטומטי. הילדים הם הקובעים את טבע הלשון.

אז מה אם כן אמור להיות בבית הלאומי? מוזיאון עולמי להחייאת שפות יפהפיות נרדמות, אשר יפיק לקחים כנים ושימושיים מהחייאת העברית הידועה והמוצלחת יחסית לטובת ההחזרה לחיים של לשונות אחרות בכל רחבי העולם. דוגמה של תובנה שעל המוזיאון להעלות על נס: החייאה איננה אפשרית ללא הפריה הדדית עם שפות-האם של מחיי השפה. לפיכך, על מחיי הלשונות האבוריג'יניות באוסטרליה, למשל, להיות מציאותיים ולא טהרניים.

דוגמה נוספת: קיימים יסודות לשוניים הניתנים להחייאה יותר מאחרים. על כן, מחיי המאורית בניו זילנד, ההוואית בהוואי, הגאנה בדרום אוסטרליה, הסנסקריט בהודו או הוומפנואג במסצ'וסטס, צריכים למקד את מאמציהם במקומות שבהם מפעלם יכול לנחול הצלחה, למשל בהחייאת אוצר המלים הבסיסי או בנטיית פעלים. אל להם להשחית את זמנם בניסיון לשחזר הגייה או גוני משמעות עתיקים.

החייאות לשוניות במאה ה-21 מגלות את אותם המאפיינים הבולטים בהחייאת העברית. למשל, המבטא של דוברי המאורית החדשה בניו זילנד משקף את המבטא האנגלי הניו זילנדי, בדיוק כפי שהמבטא הישראלי משקף את היידיש, שפת האם של רוב מחיי השפה; תחביר הסנסקריט המוחיית משקף את הלשון ההינדית יותר מאשר את הסנסקריט העתיקה, בדיוק כפי שסדר המלים במשפט הישראלי שונה מזה המקראי; האבוריג'ינים בפורט לינקולן, וויאלה ופורט אוגוסטה, שעימם אני שוקד על החייאת שפת הבאנגלה, לא מסוגלים להתכחש לשפת אמם, אנגלית אוסטרלית אבוריג'ינית, בדיוק כפי שאליעזר בן יהודה לא הצליח להתנתק מן היידיש המרתקת, שדוד בן גוריון החשיב כגלותית וצורמת.

מובן שאין כל רע בהפריה הדדית ובהצלבה. אדרבה. עדיף פרפר חי, גם אם היברידי, פצוע או מלוכלך, על פרפר טהור ומושלם התלוי על הקיר.

מוזיאון שיתאר באומץ, בחדות עין, במקוריות ובאופן משווה את גבולות ההחייאה הלשונית יהפוך למוקד עלייה לרגל למיליוני אנשים, שינסו בעתיד להפיח חיים חדשים בשפת המורשת הנשכחת שלהם. אני צופה כי יותר ויותר עמים יחליטו להחיות לשונות מסיבות אתיות, אסתטיות ותועלתניות. החייאת שפות טומנת בחובה עשיית צדק היסטורי וחברתי, שימור יופיו של המגוון הלשוני, והעצמה של ריבונות אינטלקטואלית, אוטונומיה תרבותית ואיכות החיים. בואו נעזור גם לעמים אחרים.

פרופ' צוקרמן הוא ראש הקתדרה לבלשנות ושפות בסיכון באוניברסיטת אדלייד שבאוסטרליה, ופרופסור אורח במכון ויצמן ובמכון ללימודים מתקדמים באוניברסיטה העברית

复兴语言学——澳大利亚原住民语言复兴实践
作者: 诸葛漫 (Ghil'ad Zuckermann)

  复兴语言学的发展在澳大利亚特别突出，伴随着全球化、同质化的到来，越来越多的群体不幸沦为“丧失传统的俱乐部”的成员。正因为人们力图恢复他们的文化自治，提升精神上和智力上的自主，提升自己的文化意识，语言复兴在道德的、美学的以及实用主义的各种好处变得更为重要。例如，人们对历史公正性、多样性以及文化适用性的迫切需求，都为语言复兴的相关问题提供了极具洞察力的视野。
复兴语言学是一门新的学科，主要研究全球范围内跨社会背景下，语言复兴过程中存在的相对地、系统地普遍性机制和制约条件，以及当地的特色和显著的偏好。作为语言学和应用语言学的分支，复兴语言学将本土语言习得的科学研究和外语学习结合在一起。毕竟，语言的再生是第二语言学习中的一个极端案例。
复兴语言学是对文档语言学已有领域的补充，试图在语言濒危失落前将其记录下来，这意味着人们对书写的语法和书面词汇的回顾是相当有必要的。为了语言的复苏，语法和词典应当以一种更易于使用者接受的方式被记录下来，不仅仅是为了语言学的需要，更是为了良好的交流。
    同时，我们还应该为语言的交流者们提供一种友好的拼读方式。例如，路德会传教士Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann（人名）在1844年澳大利亚原住民族群“班戈拉”（Barngarla/Parnkalla）的记录中，就将意为‘恢复（recovery）’的词以一种非友好于用户的拼读记为‘nunyara’。忽视英语的环境，这种拼写就导致在发音上，这个词变成了nanYAra而不是NOONyara.同时，'nunyara' 是适合文档语言学的一种做法，而 'NOONyara'则更多是复兴语言学视角下的首选方式。
对语言学家而言，任何一个语言复兴的初始阶段一定包括长时期的观察和仔细的倾听，与此同时，还包括学习、地图化和描绘每个土著社群的既定特征、特殊需求及潜在的原住民、少数民族或者文化濒危社区，唯有如此，专业语言学家方能激发和协助语言复兴。精通于这些方法将有助于复兴者们以及原著民族领导者们更高效地工作。例如，这将使得基础词汇和动词词性变化的复苏比声音和词序变得更容易。复兴者们应该是现实的、放弃沮丧的，适得其反的口号，例如“给我们真实性或给我们死亡！”
与接触语言学非常接近的是，复兴语言学改变了历史语言学的领域，比如，削弱家庭树状模型就意味着一种语言只有一个源头。总有一天我们也许会发明一种能将一种语言稼接到我们头脑中的设备，但到那时为止，对于复苏一种沉睡的语言的任何尝试都将导致一种混合，一种将复兴者的部分和文档记录者们的母语发音，当然还有沉睡的目标语言连接在一起的混合。借用Jerry Seinfeld（人名）的不朽名言：“没有什么不对之处！”。
语言的权益应该得以提升。例如，澳大利亚政府应该规定将原住民和托雷斯海峡岛民的语言作为澳大利亚的官方语言。我们必须改变语言的景观：澳大利亚的符号应该既包括英语也包括当地土著语言，我们应该承认原住民的知识产权，这包括语言，音乐和舞蹈。此外，复兴语言学在不久的将来将提供独到的见解，使它们变成原住民的自主知识产权，当斯洛文尼亚或爱沙尼亚请求新兴世界的原住民去帮助他们自己的欧洲语言复活。
最后的妙语是什么呢？首先，如果您的语言已经濒危，请不要允许它沉睡。其次，如果你的语言正在沉睡，请记住：停下来，复兴它，使其存活！再次，如果你复兴一门语言，请接受新兴的语言的混合。最后，如果您的语言形势良好，请帮助那些有语言学需要的人。



----------------
作者简介：
诸葛漫教授（Ghil‘ad Zuckermann），博士（牛津大学），博士（剑桥大学），澳大利亚阿德莱德大学语言学和濒危语言主席。希伯来语复兴的母语使用者，同时精通其它10种语言，他最近发起了南澳大利亚艾尔半岛（Eyre Peninsula）的班戈拉（Barngarla）语言的复兴项目，包括怀阿拉，林肯港和奥古斯塔港等地的班戈拉社区（Whyalla, Port Lincoln， Port Augusta）。
他被聘为中国上海外国语大学211工程岗位杰出教授和东方学者，以色列Weizmann 科学研究院的教授。诸葛漫教授同时担任语言接触杂志的编委和牛津英语词典的顾问。他是备受争议的畅销书《以色列语，一个美丽的语言：希伯来语如神话》（Am Oved, 2008）的作者，其作品还包括，《论亚非语系语言学的紧迫问题》（付梓印刷中）、《犹太人的语言接触》（即将出版）、《复兴语言学》（牛津大学出版社，即将出版）。他用多种文字发表文章与书籍-英语、以色列语、意大利语、意第绪语、西班牙语、德语和俄语、世界语和中文。
详情参见：http://www.adelaide.edu.au/directory/ghiladzuckermann

"Nguyen, Thuy Nga & Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad 2012: ‘Stupid as a Coin: Meaning and Rhyming Similes in Vietnamese’, International Journal of Language Studies 6.4.



Stupid as a Coin: Meaning and rhyming similes in Vietnamese

Thuy Nga Nguyen, The University of Queensland, Australia
Ghil'ad Zuckermann, University of Adelaide, Australia


ABSTRACT

Similes emphasise affinities between different objects, and they occur in many cultures. Vietnamese similes can be classified into two types: Meaning Similes and Rhyming Similes. This paper analyses and compares their structure and their semantic and phonetic requirements. It also draws innovative parallels between Vietnamese rhyming similes and Cockney Rhyming Slang, Multisourced Neologization of the Phonetic Matching type, and English, Italian and Israeli euphemisms.


Keywords: Meaning Similes; Rhyming Similes; Vietnamese; Multisourced Neologization; Euphemism; Phonetic Matching



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‘LANGUAGE’ IS A MANY SPLENDOURED THING

Susette McLachlan

NZFOI, Vol 4, No 7, October 2012


The modern Israeli language is distinct from Biblical Hebrew
Reviving dead or dormant languages is a complex and multi-faceted discipline that few of us know very much about, which is why our speaker last Sunday, 16th of September proved to be of such interest.

NZ Friends of Israel were privileged to host and hear Professor Ghil’ad Zucker-mann, currently chair of ‘Linguistics and Endangered Languages’ at the University of Adelaide, speak in an afternoon session on how Modern Hebrew (Israeli) has affected Torah Study (Biblical Hebrew).

He began by contrasting the modern day Israeli understanding of the very first verse of Genesis, ‘In the beginning the sky and the earth from a mess or chaos, the abyss . .’ with its true Hebrew translation ’In the beginning of everything from nothingness or void, the water . . ‘

Contrary to popular opinion, that the O. T. Prophet Isaiah could easily have understood modern day Hebrew (Israeli), Ghil’ad noted in the Handout material he supplied, that most Israelis do not understand the Hebrew Bible, but much worse; they misunderstand it without even realising it.
‘I love both Hebrew and Israeli and in the last 20 years I have argued that the Hebrew Bible ought to be translated into the contemporary language of Israel. Against this background I was de-lighted to hear of the recent publication of Tanakh RAM – the first translation of the Hebrew Bible into Israeli. Each page in Tanakh RAM has two columns: on the right side appears the Hebrew text and on the left side the translation into Israeli.

In 2008, 14 booklets of the specific chapters according to the national syllabus were published for Primary pupils and High School students but the endeavor was met with harsh opposition. Zvi Zameret, head of Israel Education Ministry’s pedagogical Council until July, 2011, defined Tanakh RAM as a ‘disaster of Biblical proportions’ despite ad-mitting that ‘the biblical teaching situation is deteriorating alarmingly.’ Disturbingly, Zameret cited former Education Minis-try Director, General Shimshon Shoshani as saying, ‘Bring me Principals [whose schools use Tanakh RAM]and we’ll hang them in the city square!’ (sic)

Unlike the Hebrew myth, that Zameret obviously adheres to, that Israeli is simply an organic evolution of Hebrew and that the Bible is written in the very same language, Israeli is, in fact, a fasci-nating and multifaceted Semitic-European hybrid language, a mosaic not only of Yiddish but a plethora of other languages spoken by the founders of Is-raeli, e.g. Polish, Russian, Ladino and Ara-bic, as well.’

Secularization of the language

One example is the Hebrew word ‘Blor’it’, traditionally identified with a ‘pagan’ mo-hawk hairstyle but which in Israeli has be-come a symbol of an Israeli patriot, hero, or ‘Sabra’. Ghil’ad asserts that Zionism wanting to appear a secular movement adopted the symbolic ‘Blor’it’ (fringe or forelock of hair) implying by association that they were non-religious. Ghi’lad gave as another example, the word ‘Mishkan’ translated from the Bible as ‘temple’. How-ever, today, the Israeli Parliament building is called the ‘Mishkan haKnesset,’ effectively identifying the ‘State’ as God. Resulting, he said, in a form of deification of the State. Noted Jewish philosopher and historian Gershom Scholem believes this practice of stripping words of their spiritual context, is something of a smoking volcano that could back-fire one day, when the dormant Hebrew meaning is revived.


Language reclamation

One impression gained from attending Prof. Zuckermann’s lecture at Canterbury University, the following day, was of a man whose interest in language is not a purely intellectual exercise but a humanitarian pursuit. I saw in him a genuine love for the people groups he works with and a real concern to raise their self-esteem and standing in society by restoring pride in their identity through language. The run on effects and utilitarian benefits to a people group through the revival of their native language are myriad. He is presently involved in the revival and reclamation of three of the 250 Aboriginal languages, only 18 of which are still alive (with children being native speakers). I learned with interest that there originally existed in Australia some 250 Aboriginal languages. ‘With Globalisation,’ he points out, ’there will be an increasing number of lost heritage peoples, and that language reclamation will become increasingly relevant as people seek to recover their cultural autonomy, em-power their spiritual and intellectual sovereignty, and improve wellbeing.’

Ghil’ad also expressed his support for New Zealand’s policy to protect and rejuvenate the Maori language Te Reo. He is impressed, that ‘Maori’ has been retained as an official language of New Zealand, and also by the efforts and strides being made to restore the place of Maori in our society and schools. In the Trinity of ‘Land, Language and People’, Ghil’ad said the loss of language, which encapsulates a society’s culture, history, and religion, is greater than the loss of land, as the history of the Jewish people would tend to bear out. Since they survived the loss of their land but their language, if only in written form, was retained to live again another day.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Susette McLachlan is a Christchurch based educator and writer. She is also a committee member of NZFOI.

'Sleeping' languages may be lost forever

Otago Daily Times, Dunedin, New Zealand, Tuesday, 18 September 2012, Opinion


Prof Ghil'ad Zuckermann argues that the loss of language is more severe than the loss of land.

Of the 7000 languages in the world today, it is predicted that up to 90% will become extinct within 100 years.

In Australia, where I live, out of 250 Indigenous languages, only 15 - just 6% - are alive and kicking, by which I mean their children are native speakers.

The rest are what I like to call "sleeping beauties" - and if we do not take action they could be lost forever. With globalisation, homogenisation and Coca-colonisation there will be more and more groups all over the world added to the forlorn club of the lost-heritage peoples.

Does it matter?

I think it does.

Most people understand the importance of saving the Tasmanian devil or Sumatran tiger, so surely it is equally important to reclaim the languages of the indigenous people of these same areas. The benefits include social justice, diversity, wellbeing and employability among others.

There are precedents for reviving languages. The Hebrew revival movement turned a historical sacred language into the national language of Israel with millions of native speakers, including myself.

Language reclamation will become increasingly relevant as people seek to recover their cultural autonomy, empower their spiritual and intellectual sovereignty, and improve their mental health.

In fact, I would argue that the loss of language is more severe than the loss of land. While the land remains, when a language is lost so too is cultural autonomy.

Governments are likely to come under increasing pressure to compensate indigenous peoples for this loss.

Take Australia, for example.

Linguistically, Australia has been turned into the "unlucky country" through the historical processes of linguicide (language killing) and glottophagy (language eating), starting from the early colonial period.

In 1843, South Australian colonist Anthony Forster said: "The natives would be sooner civilised if their language was extinct."

South Australian governor George Grey noted in 1841: "The ruder languages disappear successively, and the tongue of England alone is heard around."

Australia can learn a lot from Aotearoa New Zealand when it comes to what I call "Native Tongue Title", and linguistic human rights.

Te reo Maori has the advantage that it never died, despite linguicide efforts of the colonial government. Today, te reo, a repository of endangered outlooks, is a relative success story. It is one of the country's two official languages alongside the New Zealand Sign Language (English is only a de facto language). Te reo is supported by the Maori Language Commission and the Wai 262 claim, which lays out explicit steps to protect the language.

But we cannot be complacent.

The percentage of native Maori speakers is extremely low, particularly among children, and Maori remains a seriously endangered language.

For these reasons, it would be rectifying historical justice to turn Oceania into the world's centre for language revitalisation and for the new field that I am at present establishing at the University of Adelaide: Revival Linguistics.

There is an urgent need to produce linguistic and socio-linguistic insights relevant to language reclamation. An awareness of the universal linguistic constraints applicable to all revival attempts, regardless of social circumstances, would help revivalists and indigenous community leaders to work more efficiently; for example, to focus more on basic vocabulary and verbal conjugations than on sounds and word order.

Revival linguistics would assist language revivalists in understanding that the process is as important as the end goal from the point of view of indigenous empowerment and wellbeing.

All languages evolve, and it is a myth to assume there is a pure and authentic tongue.

Experience shows that any successful attempt to reclaim a hibernating language will result in a hybrid that combines components from the revivalists' and documenters' mother tongues as well as the target language.

Some communities might want only to change the "linguistic landscape" of their town (for example, erecting bilingual signs); others may want to conduct cultural rituals in their language; yet others may want to aim for an all-encompassing native-speaking community that converses in the revived language in all semantic domains. In all cases it is for the indigenous people, not for the linguist, to decide.

These are among the basic principles that the revival linguist encourages in indigenous communities:

1. If your language is endangered: do not allow it to fall asleep.

2. If your language falls asleep: stop, revive, survive.

3. If you revive a language, embrace the hybridity of the emerging tongue;

4. If your language is healthy, assist others in linguistic need.

Better a dirty, injured butterfly that is alive than a perfectly beautiful butterfly stuck on the wall!

• Prof Ghil'ad Zuckermann is the chair of linguistics and endangered languages at the University of Adelaide and the founder of Revival Linguistics. He will deliver a free public lecture at the University of Otago tomorrow at 2pm.

Academic Reference:

Zuckermann, Ghil'ad & Monaghan, Paul (2012). "Revival linguistics and the new media: Talknology in the service of the Barngarla language reclamation", pp. 119-126 of Foundation for Endangered Languages XVI Conference: Language Endangerment in the 21st Century:Globalisation, Technology & New Media. Auckland, New Zealand.

------------------------------


Revival Linguistics and the New Media:
Talknology in the service of the Barngarla Language Reclamation


Ghil‘ad Zuckermann

Chair of Linguistics and Endangered Languages
School of Humanities, University of Adelaide, SA Adelaide 5005, Australia
[[email protected]]


Paul Monaghan

Mobile Language Team
School of Humanities, University of Adelaide, SA Adelaide 5005, Australia
[[email protected]]


Abstract

Revival Linguistics is a new branch of linguistics, currently being established at Adelaide. It analyses comparatively and systematically the universal constraints and global mechanisms on the one hand (see Zuckermann 2009), and local peculiarities on the other hand, apparent in revival attempts across various sociological backgrounds, all over the world (see Zuckermann & Walsh 2011). A branch of both linguistics and applied linguistics, it combines scientific studies of native language acquisition and foreign language learning (language reclamation is the most extreme case of Second Language Learning).

The study: The Barngarla language (spelled Parnkalla by Schürmann 1844) is a no-longer spoken Thura-Yura Pama-Nyungan Aboriginal language of the Lakes Cultural Region of South Australia. Most recently Zuckermann, Monaghan and the Barngarla community have launched a reclamation of this sleeping beauty in three major rural/urban centres on the Eyre Peninsula, namely Port Lincoln, Whyalla, and Port Augusta. The presence of three Barngarla populations several hours drive apart presents the revival linguist with a need for a sophisticated reclamation involving ‘talknological’ innovations, such as online chatting, newsgroups, photo and resource sharing through a Barngarla wiki. This paper also examines the tensions accompanying the creation of a Barngarla ‘community of practice’ (cf. Wenger 1998) in a post-traditional Aboriginal context. In important ways, the new talknology poses a direct challenge to existing authority structures relating to the everyday management of knowledge, collaboration and participation. We predict that how the broader Barngarla community negotiates these issues will have an important bearing on the ultimate results of the reclamation project.




Revival Linguistics

Revival Linguistics is a new branch of linguistics, currently being established at Adelaide. It analyses comparatively and systematically the universal constraints and global mechanisms on the one hand (see Zuckermann 2009), and local peculiarities and idiosyncrasies on the other hand, apparent in revival attempts across various sociological backgrounds, all over the world (Zuckermann & Walsh 2011). A branch of both linguistics and applied linguistics, it combines scientific studies of native language acquisition and foreign language learning (language reclamation is the most extreme case of Second Language Learning).

Revival Linguistics complements the established field of documentary linguistics, which records endangered languages before they fall asleep. Revival Linguistics ought to revise the fields of grammaticography (writing grammars) and lexicography (writing dictionaries): Grammars and dictionaries ought to be written for language reclamation, i.e. in a user-friendly way, for communities, not only for linguists. For example, juxtapose Lutheran missionary Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann’s 1844 spelling of the Barngarla word nunyara ‘recovery’, which ignores the English environment, thus resulting in the pronunciation nanYAra rather than NOONyara.

Closely related to contact linguistics, Revival Linguistics changes the field of historical linguistics, e.g. by weakening the Family Tree model, which implies that a language ought to have only one parent. Assisting Aboriginal communities in a realistic, non-purisitic way, without selling them myths, Revival Linguistics promotes efficiency and efficacy in language reclamation.

Certainly Australia has been made the ‘Unlucky Country’ through the historical processes of linguicide (language killing) and glottophagy (language eating). These twin forces were in operation from the early colonial period. In her detailed study of the role missionary language practices in the early years of the South Australian colony, Scrimgeour quotes the following colonial language ideology: ‘Mr Forster afterwards adverted to the present mode of teaching the children in their own language. He, with all respect to the Missionaries, would say, on several grounds, that this was wrong. The natives would be sooner civilized if their language was extinct. The children taught would afterwards mix only with whites, where their own language would be of no use – the use of their language would preserve their prejudices and debasement, and their language was not sufficient to express the ideas of civilized life.  He gave the Missionaries full credit for their talents and zeal, but he thought it would be better to teach the children in English’ (from Report on a public meeting of the South Australian Missionary Society in aid of the German Mission to the Aborigines, Southern Australian, 8 September 1843; Scrimgeour, 2007: 116, italics added).

In the case of glottophagy, Governor George Grey noted: ‘The merchant in London who lays on a vessel for a certain port, regards the affair as a mere mercantile speculation, but could he trace out the results he effects in their remotest ramifications, he would stand astonished at the changes he produces.  With the wizard wand of commerce, he touches a lone and trackless forest, and at his bidding, cities arise, and the hum and dust of trade collect – away are swept ancient races; antique laws and customs moulder into oblivion.  The strong-holds of murder and superstition are cleansed, and the Gospel is preached amongst ignorant and savage men. The ruder languages disappear successively, and the tongue of England alone is heard around’ (Grey 1841: 200-201, italics added). Grey was a strong supporter of Aboriginal languages, encouraging Schürmann’s work documenting the Adelaide language (Kaurna) and Barngarla at Port Lincoln (see below).

With globalization, homogenization and Coca-colonization there will be more and more groups all over the world added to the forlorn club of the lost-heritage peoples. Language reclamation will become increasingly relevant as people seek to recover their cultural autonomy, empower their spiritual and intellectual sovereignty, and improve their wellbeing. There are various ethical, aesthetic and utilitarian benefits of language revival: for example, social justice, diversity and employability, respectively.

Zuckermann (2012) has enthusiastically called for Native Tongue Title and linguistic human rights, suggesting that the Australian government ought to compensate Indigenous people not only for the loss of land but equally importantly for the loss of language. Zuckermann has suggested to the Australian government to define Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander vernaculars as official languages.

Furthermore, it is predicted that in the future the very insights offered by Revival Linguistics will themselves become part of Indigenous Intellectual Property, when Slovenes and Estonians come to Australia and New Zealand to ask Aboriginal Australians and Maori to assist them in their own European language resurrection.

There is an urgent need to produce perspicacious LINGUISTIC and socio-linguistic insights relevant to language reclamation. Otherwise, linguists or language workers would not be able to offer, if asked by Indigenous people, efficient and efficacious advice. There are linguistic constraints applicable to all revival attempts. Mastering them would help revivalists and First Nations leaders to work more efficiently; for example, to focus more on basic vocabulary and verbal conjugations than on sounds and word order – see Zuckermann (2009: http://www.zuckermann.org/pdf/Hybridity_versus_Revivability.pdf.

Revival linguistics would assist revivalists to be more realistic and to abandon discouraging slogans such as "Give us authenticity or give us death!" The following are among the basic principles that the revival linguist encourages in Aboriginal communities:

i. If your language falls asleep: stop, revive, survive!
ii. If you revive a language, embrace the hybridity of the emerging tongue; and
iii. If your language is healthy, assist others in linguistic need.

One day we may invent devices to “inject” a language into our brains. But until then, any attempt to reclaim a hibernating language will result in a hybrid that combines components from the revivalists' and documenters' mother tongues and, of course, the target language. In the immortal words of Jerry Seinfeld: "Not that there's anything wrong with that!"

The Study


Figure 1: Map of Traditional Aboriginal Country after Norman Tindale (adapted from Hercus 1999)

The Barngarla language reclamation project has arisen through partnerships between the University of Adelaide (Linguistics and the Mobile Language Team) and the Barngarla people. Although still in its infancy, consultations began in September 2011, a number of very significant steps have been made towards reclaiming this ‘sleeping beauty’. Without doubt, the key challenge has been to develop a strategy for the reclamation of the language simultaneously and without favour in three major regional centres. In ways that will be elaborated below, this multi-sited, regional or peripheral reclamation makes demands that are very different to those often found in metropolitan reclamation contexts (e.g. Kaurna, cf. Amery...

"Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2012. "Introduction to the Joshua A. Fishman comprehensive bibliography", International Journal of the Sociology of Language (Int’l. J. Soc. Lang.) 213 (2012), pp. 149 – 152.

0165–2516/12/0213–0149 Int’l. J. Soc. Lang. 213 (2012), pp. 149 – 152
© Walter de Gruyter DOI 10.1515/ijsl-2012-0014
Introduction to the Joshua A. Fishman
comprehensive bibliography
Ghil‘ad Zuckermann

If you talk to a man in a language he understands,
that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his
language, that goes to his heart.
(Nelson Mandela)

Seven Jews have changed the world. Moses said: “Everything is in the head!”
Jesus said: “Everything is in the heart!” Marx said: “Everything is in the stomach!”
Freud said: “Everything is in the groin!” Fishman said: “Everything is
in the tongue!” Zuckerberg said: “Everything is in the finger!” Einstein said:
“Everything is relative!”

Success is relative. But Joshua A. Fishman, hypocoristically a.k.a. Shikl, has
set an absolute standard. Only in the dictionary does “Success” come before “Work”. And Fishman’s more than 80 books and 1000 articles demonstrate his
Herculean commitment to scholarship since his first publications in the original
Yiddish journal Yugntruf in 1945, which he co-founded with contact linguist
Uriel Weinreich.
If William Labov is the founder of micro-sociolinguistics (cf. variationist
sociolinguistics), Fishman is the founder of macro-sociolinguistics (cf. sociology
of language), which consists inter alia of the analysis of language education,
language planning, bilingualism, multilingualism, minority languages
and language revival. Fishman is a sociologist who could be considered a
“
hyphenated linguist”, perspicaciously investigating fascinating and multifaceted
issues such as language and religion (theo-linguistics), language and
nationalism,
language and identity, and language and ethnicity. As Weinreich
et al. insightfully note, “linguistic and social factors are closely interrelated in
the development of language change. Explanations which are confined to one
or the other aspect, no matter how well constructed, will fail to account for the
rich body of regularities that can be observed in empirical studies of language
behavior” (1968: 188).


150 G. Zuckermann

The founder and general editor of the leading refereed publication International
Journal of the Sociology of Language, Fishman created an intellectual
platform that has greatly facilitated the introduction and dissemination of novel
models and revolutionary theories that have led to numerous academic debates,
syntheses and cross-fertilizations. He has often acted as an epistemological
bridge between, and antidote for, parallel discourses.
One ought to assess the breadth and depth of Fishman’s work through a
combined Jewish-sociolinguistic lens. Like Uriel Weinreich, Fishman’s research
embodies the integration of Jewish scholarship with general linguistics.
Fishman (1981, 1985) himself explores the sociology of Jewish languages
from a general sociolinguistic point of view. But I would also advocate a bilateral
impact: Jewish linguistics, the exploration of Jewish languages such as
Yiddish, has shaped general sociolinguistics. Throughout history Jews have
been multilingual immigrants, resulting in Jewish languages embodying intricate
and intriguing mechanisms of language contact and identity. These
languages
were thus fertile ground for the establishment and evolution of the
sociology of language in general. Given the importance in Judaism not only of
mentshlikhkayt (cf. humaneness) but also of education and “on the other hand”
dialectics, it is not surprising to find the self-propelled institute Fishman trailblazing
simultaneously both in Yiddish scholarship in particular and in the
sociology of language in general.
In the field of Yiddish studies proper, Fishman’s contribution has been
immense
and far-reaching. He was co-editor of For Max Weinreich on his seventieth
birthday (1965), co-translator of the English language publication
(1979–1980) of the first two volumes of Weinreich’s seminal Geshikhte fun der
Yidisher Shprakh [History of the Yiddish language], and editor of Studies on
Polish Jewry, 1919–1970: the interplay of social, economic and political
factors
in the struggle of a minority for its existence (1974). Closer to his
expertise
are the impressive and important Never say die! A thousand years of
Yiddish in Jewish life and letters (1981), and his outstanding sociolinguistic
biography of Nathan Birnbaum: Ideology, society and language: the odyssey of
Nathan Birnbaum (1987).
Fishman has lived up to Sapir’s verdict:
Language is a guide to “social reality”. Though language is not ordinarily thought of as
of essential interest to the students of social science, it powerfully conditions all our
thinking about social problems and processes. Human beings do not live in the objective
world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but
are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium
of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality
essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental
means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the
matter
is that the “real world” is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language

Introduction to the Joshua A. Fishman bibliography 151

habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered
as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live
are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached. (Sapir
1921: 162)
The impressive bibliography presented here, compiled by the indefatigable
and extraordinarily-dedicated Gella Fishman, describes Fishman’s plethora of
direct contributions. Their impact, however, on other scholars, on our sense of
the possibilities for further research, and on the generation of yet-unanswered
new questions, is exponentially greater. To take one example, Fishman’s work
on reversing language shift and on language revival and maintenance (e.g.
1991, 2001), is the basis for the emerging, crucially-important branch of what
I call “Revival Linguistics” (see Zuckermann and Walsh 2011). Complementing
documentary linguistics, Revival Linguistics analyses comparatively the
universal mechanisms and constraints involved in language reclamation, revitalization,
renewal and empowerment world-wide. Revival Linguistics is in its
infancy simply because the reclamation of sleeping beauty tongues is a relatively
young activity. I am currently involved with the resurrection of several
hibernating Aboriginal languages in the “Lucky Country” down under, Australia.
Israeli, the beautiful hybrid that emerged in the Promised Land, and which
has so far been relatively the most successful reclamation, is only 120 years
old.
Which brings to mind the Yiddish birthday greeting biz hundert un tsvantsik
ʻmay you live until 120 yearsʼ. One may wonder then: what does a Jew wish
somebody on his/her 120th birthday? Have a nice day! I thank Shikl wholeheartedly
for his gargantuan labor and look forward to wishing him Have a
nice day! in 35 years.
The University of Adelaide and Shanghai International Studies Univesity
Correspondence addresses: [email protected];
[email protected]
References
Fishman, Joshua A. 1981. The sociology of Jewish languages from the perspective of the general
sociology of language: a preliminary formulation. International Journal of the Sociology of
Language 30. 5–18.
Fishman, Joshua A. 1985. The sociology of Jewish languages from a general sociolinguistic point
of view. In Joshua A. Fishman (ed.), Readings in the sociology of Jewish languages, 3–21.
Leiden: E. J. Brill.


152 G. Zuckermann

Fishman, Joshua A. 1991. Reversing language shift: theoretical and empirical foundations of
assistance
to threatened languages. Clevedon (UK): Multilingual Matters.
Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.). 2001. Can threatened languages be saved? Reversing language shift,
revisited: a 21st century perspective. Clevedon (UK): Multilingual Matters.
Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language. An introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt &
Brace.
Weinreich, Uriel, William Labov & Marvin Herzog. 1968. Empirical foundations for a theory of
language change. In W. P. Lehmann & Yakov Malkiel (eds), 97–195. Directions for historical
linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Zuckermann, Ghil’ad & Michael Walsh. 2011. Stop, revive, survive!: Lessons from the Hebrew
revival applicable to the reclamation, maintenance and empowerment of Aboriginal languages
and cultures. Australian Journal of Linguistics 31(1). 111–127.

© 1994-2010 China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House. All rights reserved. http://www.cnki.net
2004 年1 月
第36 卷　第1 期
外语教学与研究(外国语文双月刊)
Foreign Language Teaching and Research (bimonthly)
Jan. 2004
Vol. 36 No. 1
语言接触与借词研究的新视角
———《语言接触与以色列希伯来语词汇扩充研究》介绍
首都师范大学　方欣欣
Ghilpad Zuckermann. 2003. L anguage Contact and Lexical Enrichment i n Is raeli
Hebrew . London/ New York : Macmillan.
一
　　Ghilpad Zuckermann ,英国剑桥大学语言学系博士,
丘吉尔学院研究员,曾用英语、以色列语、意大利语、依
地语、西班牙语、德语和俄语撰写并发表论文。2000
年, Zuckermann 提出了FEN ( Folk- Etymological Na2
tivization) 理论,我们暂且翻译成“本土化理据论”。
“Folk etymology”最早是德国语言学家F. Stern 阐
述的一种语言现象,即人们遇到发音陌生或难理解的
借词时,往往用某个自己熟悉的、发音或形态相似或意
义相关的词去取代。经过长期使用,这种取代词便逐
渐成为一个新词,一个更像本族语的词,这种语言现象
即叫做“理据”化,有的学者翻译成“民俗语源”。
FEN 理论最早见于Zuckermann 2000 年在牛津大
学写成的博士论文《隐性借词: 适用于简洁语言机制
的“本土化理据论”模式》。书中向研究语言接触的传
统方法提出挑战,认为词语间的借用常伴随着词义通
俗化变异的趋势,即逐渐具有一定的本土化理据性,使
很多借词从形式上已感觉不到“外来”(exotic) 的特征。
二
本书是语源学研究领域的一部重要著作,论述入
微,例证丰富。牛津大学教授Geoffrey Lewis 认为,该
书不仅对于从事此课题研究的学者和研究生有用,对
希伯来语学者也十分有帮助。而且,任何一位喜欢词
汇的非语言学者也都会对它感兴趣并从中获益。
Zuckermann 不仅对新生词语的造词机制、语义指
向以及源语言在其中扮演的角色作了系统的归类与分
析,还用社会语言学方法对各语言的母语者进行访谈。
对于由语言接触带来的各种变革,作者不仅对以色列
语进行分析,还对比分析了土耳其语、现代汉语、日语、
阿拉伯语、依地语以及克里奥尔语的大量例词。
全书共分八章。第一章引入词汇扩充研究的新视
角;第二章介绍以色列语现状: 多语源造词(Multi2
sourced Neologization (MSN) ) 成为词汇扩充的最理想
手段;第三章阐释义位( sememe) 扩充与词位(lexeme)
理论;第四章列举不同领域术语的多语源造词法;第五
章从社会语言学角度分析“复活语言”的多语源造词机
制;第六章介绍各源语言;第七章是数据统计与分析;
最后一章为结论和理论阐释。
三
Zuckermann 十分重视借词模式的研究。他的
FEN 理论对Haugen (1973) 、Cannon (1978) 等的理论做
了补充。他列举了英语、法语、德语、葡萄牙语、汉语、
日语、土耳其语、依地语等多种语言中的外来词,以充
实Haugen (1973) 提出的意译法/ 语义借用词( semantic
loan) 。另外,除去替换( substitution) 和引入(importa2
tion) 两大类别外,他又增加了一个替换与引入兼而有
之(substitution-importation) 的类型。
作者认为,目标语中产生的新词和源语言输出的
词语在语音上或多或少有一定的联系。换句话说,在
变化的形式中一定存在着不变的因素,包括语义和语
音。
他提出了下述分类标准:
11 利用源语言的语言材料创造新词( neologiza2
·71 ·
© 1994-2010 China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House. All rights reserved. http://www.cnki.net
tion)
a1 非同化借用(纯借用) (unassimilated borrow2
ing , pure borrowing)
b1 音素借用(同化借用) (phonetic adaptation ,
assimilated borrowing)
c1 词素借用(morphemic adaptation)
21 利用目标语中已有的词根、词缀及构词要素
(roots/ lexemes) 作为基本材料创造新词
a1 音素相配(phonetic matching) (PM)
b1 语义化音素相配( semanticized phonetic
matching) (SPM)
c1 音素语义相配(phono- semantic matching)
(PSM)
显而易见,第一类借词和本国语之间的语言相似
特征不多,第一种同化借用就是直接把源语言中的语
素拿来使用,例如“政府”,是汉语把日语中的词直接拿
来使用。而第二类借词与本国语之间的语言相似特征
就比较多。这B 类就是Zuckermann 提出的FEN 理
论。第一种PM 模式,即音素相配,指的是本国语中的
材料与源语言中的词项在语音上相同但没有意义联
系,不具理据性。第二种SPM 模式,即语义化音素相
配,本国语中的材料与源语言中的词项在语音上相同,
语义上有些许理据联系。第三种PSM 模式,即语素语
义相配,本国语中的材料与源语言中的词项在语音上
和语义上都相似,具有多语源的借词在产生时多采用
这种模式。
PSM 模式是Zuckermann 理论的重点,他的母语是
依地语,这种语言与希伯来语有着亲密的关系,具有悠
久的古代渊源,因此对于研究语源非常有利。19 世纪
末以色列的文字改革者们曾试图填补词汇系统的空缺
(lexical voids) ,但不是简单引入外来词,而是用换称法
或曰避免直称法,即选用本国语的语素,这个语素无论
在语义还是语音上都与外语中的表达(foreignism) 有某
种联系。这种在本国语中重新创造一个有理据的新词
的方法,即被Zuckermann 称为PSM 模式。
当然PSM 模式说在本国语系统中重新创造有理
据的新词,这并不意味着这个新词与外语中的表达有
渊源关系。事实上,它们各有各的理据特征。至于那
些音义相同的情况,只是偶然的巧合。
对PSM 模式最具有说服力的莫过于汉语了。因
为在汉语中,凡是引入外来词,一定要选择汉字来记
录,尽管语音上要尽量与源词保持一致,但总是要尽量
照顾到语义标准。例如,汉语中把“basketball”译成“篮
球”,这是一种翻译模式,即“ ×+ 球”。究其理据,即
“有篮子的球”,是“basket”和“ball”。于是,汉语把“ten2
nis”翻译成“网球”,字面的理据是“有网子的球”,是一
种有“net”的“ball”。这就产生了一个有趣的现象,即英
语中本来有一个“netball”,是一种类似篮球的球类,而
由于我们已经将“网球”配给了tennis ,就只能重新造一
个词,而且需要照顾理据性,把它译成“英式篮球”。在
新加坡则译成“女子篮球”。“英式篮球”和“女子篮球”
就是PSM 模式在汉语中的应用。
总之,Zuckermann 通过列举多种语言里的词汇借
用模式,阐述了PSM 理论在文化和社会相互影响中的
重要作用。这种模式反映了一种语言与文化在遇到另
一强势文化氛围(an overpowering alien environment ) 的
冲击下努力保存自己的形态特征的意识。
参考书目
Cannon , G. 1978. Statistical etymologies of new words
in American English [J ] . Journal of English L in2
guistics 12 :12-18.
Haugen , E. 1973. Bilingualism , language contact and
immigrant languages in the United States : A re2
search report 1956-70 [A] . In T. A. Sebeok (ed. ) .
Current Trends in L inguistics. V ol . X [ C] . The
Hague- Paris.
Zuckermann , G. 2000. Camouf laged Borrowing : Folk-
Etymological Nativiz ation in the Service of Puristic
L anguage Engineering [D] . PhD Thesis , Universi2
ty of Oxford.
收稿日期: 2003 —7 —20 ;
本刊修订稿,2003 —11 —6
通讯地址: 100037 北京首都师范大学国际文化学院
·72 ·
2004 年　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　外语教学与研究　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　第1 期

Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2011."Mnemonics in Second Language Acquisition", Word Ways, Volume 44, Issue 4, Article 21.

Mnemonics in Second Language Acquisition

Ghil‘ad Zuckermann

When my son Giulio Xingtian Yehuda Zuckermann, a.k.a. Giulio XYZ, was 2 years old he already knew the Israeli word for ‘fish’: DAG. Due to the general tendency towards final devoicing (see, for example, German Kind, pronounced kint, or a German immigrant to Israel pronouncing Negev as négef), Giulio often pronounced DAG as DAK. One day, when I picked him up from the Montessori childcare in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, Giulio was watching a fish in the aquarium and told everybody ‘DAK, DAK, DAK!’. An older Aussie girl rebuked him: ‘It's not a DUCK, it's a FISH!’

That was a moment of EUREKA! – or Havraká (Israeli for ‘brilliance’ or ‘flash’. I thought to myself that I should try to demonstrate that Israelis already sort-of-know English and that English-speakers already sort-of-know Israeli. The sentences below would thus be of interest to pupils and teachers alike, not only because its specific mnemonics could be used in language classes, but also – more generally – because (1) the bilingual homophonous mnemonic technique can be used to create new mnemonics either by pupils or by teachers, and also (2) the sentences champion the use of unconventional methods in teaching a foreign language, be it recreational linguistics, be it music….

One should consider a basic in lexical cognitive science: We tend to learn and remember weird things before non-weird things. This is why many of the following mnemonics work well.

Here is my list, consisting of 120 mnemonics.

1. Oh hell, the TENT is leaking again!
(The Israeli word meaning TENT is אוהל, pronounced just like Oh, hell)

2. There's a FORK in Ma’s leg.
(The Israeli word meaning FORK is מזלג, pronounced just like Ma’s leg.)

3. QUICKLY, my hair is burning!

4. She has said ENOUGH and must speak no more; if she doesn't STOP, I'll die!

5. This HOUSE is beautiful; I think I’ll buy it.

6. He gave her a kiss BECAUSE she put her key in his POCKET.

7. As she entered the filthy MARKET, she shook her head in disgust.

8. An OX is walking along the shore.

9. You must sue Sam over the HORSE!

10. Turn off the microwave, the CHICKEN is ready.

11. This BOOK is safer.

12. You must use a PITCHFORK in order to Kill Sean.

13. Every time I step out of a MOSQUE, I miss God.

14. Don't play the ROLE of the tough kid too much, it will exhaust you.

15. SEPARATE the apples by their colour: half red, half green.

16. Give all the flower, not just the STEM.

17. Amazingly, she dug out a FISH in her garden.

18. He didn't consider the crowd's boos to be CONTEMPT.

19. You ought to learn this LETTER!

20. A bull stepped on my STAMP collection.

21. Why pardon? asked the BULL.

22. "With this UNDERSHIRT I look guffy, ya?" said the German.

23. I DID a CT examination.

24. You POOR child’, said Miss Kenn.

25. Till the ROCKET takes off.
26. Get into the car, it's COLD outside.
27. Let's GIVE him something, said Knee Ten to Knee Five.
28. "Par-pardon," said the stammering BUTTERFLY.
29. The tip she gave me was STUPID.
30. It's not a he, it’s a SHE!
31. Laugh, laugh; he is a NERD!
32. Intriguingly, they found a key in his VOMIT.
33. In the living room you can meet Beethoven, but come in to my KITCHEN and meet Bach.
34. You should not be HIDING a must-tear, it's a very sad STORY that ends with Moyshele falling into the sea; poor child!
35. His lectures are one big dim yawn, beyond IMAGINATION.
36. She is WORRIED about the financial mood, egg at 10 dollar?
37. X is a must tool if you are ON SOMETHING.
38. It's a DECEIT: instead of tobacco, they put in my cigarette tar meat!
39. She taught me sexual METHODS.
40. You must tick the right box, so I'll give you a CHEWING GUM.
41. Do you ALSO like to chew gum?
42. Harry saw Tina in the RUINS.
43. I have to send you off, Noa. My MOTORBIKE is shaking.
44. Are you deaf, Poo, should I use an AMPLIFIER? Would you like the coffee in a mug, bear or in a cup?
45. Miss Garrett doesn't understand the FRAMEWORK.
46. Some POLITENESS please, otherwise I'll break you Knee, moose!
47. What a STRIPPING this guy with the ear tool performs.
48. Leaf, rock, all of nature seems TO LET LOOSE.
49. Is pa ill? I must be more ACTIVE.
50. The broken STRING may tarnish the violinist's hopes of getting the prize.
51. He HIT PA'S HAIR so it scattered around.
52. He is always EXPLAINING about Pa's wine and ma’s beer.
53. Mom’s hair-dresser is a BASTARD... (He charges her a fortune just to get some blonde lines...)
54. Beware of Osama’s rack and SYRINGE.
55. Beer-cut Amazon is saying the grace after the meal
56. Don't RACK your mind in void.
57. Every GENERATION opens a door to the next one.
58. Is it LIGHT or darkness, I can’t tell.
59. Comedian Jon Stewart critiqued the she Bush Sara Palin, what a DISTORTION!
60. In the MARGINS of my dream I saw a shoe lime.
61. He never IGNORED those who hit a lamb.
62. It’s a bad TIMING to tease Moon.   
63. Pa, gosh, you hit the car’s BUMBER again!
64. A sheer luck made him RICH.
65. He INVITED his uncle and his mean friend for dinner.
66. A coffee and a SWEETENER make mom tick.
67. Ma’s gear BETRAYS her origin: she is a country-girl.
68. May you tarnish the reputation of that REDUNDANT worker!
69. Leave not!, we need to BUILD!
70. Lit Rome should CONTRIBUTE to electricity reduction.
71. He hit a mate and DEBATED with the police thereafter.
72. We have to COUNT the losses and lease poor housing.
73. Boys, remember IT’S FORBIDDEN to play near a sewer!
74. Lease balls? I prefer TO SUFFER!
75. He looked at me with disgust and SALIVA as if I crawled out from under the rock.
76. At TWILIGHT, he took a dim doomsday view of the economy DECLINE.
77. When I hear DRUMS I want TO PEE Many times.
78. He HIT MA'S EGG so it merged with the mascarpone/tiramisu.
79. EH, MOVE NAvigator, A MOTHER AND HER SON are crossing the road!
80. That French REBEL must have attended a poor ecole.
81. “Israeli, a Beautiful Language” is a tough, neat TURN of events.
82. Is this TWO-FACED voodoo part Sufi and part Buddhist?
83. We should leash more dogs TO KEEP our children safe!
84. You should turn over a new leaf, roam the world and try not to UNSTITCH the old wounds!
85. TO DRINK in the Chateau!
86. I THINK I shall go to England today and to Italia DOMANI.
87. Hardeep Singh, sing hard and deep and STOP being a tough Sikh!
88. Ahmadinejad has an INDULGENCE of a tough nuke.
89. I don’t want to meet bugger ADOLESCENTs
90. Luciana Bozán Barroso: Matt's dick, albeit long, doesn't JUSTIFY his high self-esteem.
91. But he’s COOL when he gives me a chocolate mud lick!
92. And he doesn’t bare a shitty ass IN THE BEGINNING!
93. The bee’s booze is honey mixed with sugar – what a WASTE!
94. What a TIMING – the sun sets at the tee’s moon!
95. From the CORRIDOR I could see the masterpiece of the carpenter: it was a pro’s door.
96. The storyteller told us a TALL TALE about a cheese butt.
97. He wanted TO COLLAPSE in front of the Lee Cross.
98. To meet the right woman and to be TURNED ON, I need luck.
99. Cats run even faster than a STENOGRAPHER.
100. You should have a NOTATION of the sea, moon and sun!
101. TO KICK and leave otters helpless is immoral.
102. I saw a lush on the pavement, with his TONGUE sticking out of his mouth.
103. I can’t stand vegeterrible (vegetarian) Pushkar, I prefer meat Riyadh, and I also like its arid climate: there’s never a need for an UMBRELLA!
104. OR: You should eat Riyad’s fish rather than a NOODLE.
105. That RASCAL always wants to PUSH, TUCK up his sleeves and hit.
106. I love water. I want to go to a loch only ONE WAY.
107. TO STEAL is a first-league novelty for this hitherto-righteous priest.
108. Pig cries and ram calls have been heard in the LOUDSPEAKER.
109. We should leash boring nudniks; otherwise they will manage to BREAK our spirit.
110. Her BEATING husband was so violent that he unfortunately managed to mar bits of her face.
111. My comb is not in the PLACE I left it.
112. His coiffure demonstrates mass recklessness: it looks as if he has never used a COMB in his life!
113. Luckily we have achieved a big lull BECAUSE we compromised a lot when negotiating with their military leaders.
114. The women had a hen party. THEY enjoyed it a lot.
115. ‘All meats votive!’, said the Buddhist priest after he undertook to fulfil THE YOKE OF THE COMMANDMENTS.
116. It was a stupid pre-shot sigh that destroyed the military operation, resulting in a wave of RETIREMENTS.
117. The circumciser exposes his RECKLESSNESS when performing a strange pre-cut olfactory ritual. I couldn’t understand what he was trying to smell in the poor child’s little penis.
118. The key shooting failed because of the ORNAMENT blocking the sniper’s vision.
119. ‘NASA perilous!’, said insightful Ilan Ramon RIP when his effort still BORE FRUIT.
120. ‘The 4WD is for you and the SMALL OPEN TRUCK FOR ME’, said the car-dealer tenderly.

Stop, revive and survive
Ghil'ad Zuckermann
6 June 2012
The Australian
Higher Education

LINGUICIDE (language killing) and glottophagy (language eating) have made Australia the unlucky country. With globalisation, homogenisation and Coca-colonisation there will be more and more groups added to the forlorn club of the lost-heritage peoples.

Language reclamation will become increasingly relevant as people seek to recover their cultural autonomy, empower their spiritual and intellectual sovereignty, and improve wellbeing.

There are various ethical, aesthetic and utilitarian benefits of language revival - for example, historical justice, diversity and employability, respectively. There is an urgent need to offer perspicacious insights relevant to language reclamation.

Revival linguistics is a new discipline, being established at Adelaide, studying comparatively and systematically the universal constraints, global mechanisms and local peculiarities and idiosyncrasies apparent in revival attempts across various sociological backgrounds, all over the world. Revival linguistics combines scientific studies of native language acquisition and foreign language learning. After all, language reclamation is the most extreme case of second-language learning.

Revival linguistics complements the established area of documentary linguistics, which records endangered languages before they fall asleep.

There is a need to revise the fields of grammaticography (writing grammars) and lexicography (writing dictionaries): grammars and dictionaries ought to be written for language reclamation in a user-friendly way, for communities, not only for linguists. For example, we should avoid highfalutin, often Latin-based grammatical terminology.

We should also offer communities a user-friendly spelling. Juxtapose Lutheran missionary Clamor Wilhelm Schurmann's 1844 user-unfriendly spelling "nunyara" for the Barngarla (Parnkalla) word for "recovery". Ignoring the English environment, this spelling resulted in the pronunciation nanYAra rather than NOONyara. While nunyara suits documentary linguistics, NOONyara would be preferred from a revival linguistic perspective.

For linguists, the first stage of any language revival must involve a long period of observation and careful listening while learning, mapping and characterising the specific needs, desires and potentials of an indigenous or minority or culturally endangered community. Only then can one inspire and assist.

That said, there are linguistic constraints applicable to all revival attempts. Mastering them would help revivalists and first nations' leaders to work more efficiently. For example, it is easier to resurrect basic vocabulary and verbal conjugations than sounds and word order.
Revivalists should be realistic and abandon discouraging, counter-productive slogans such as "Give us authenticity or give us death!"

Closely related to contact linguistics, revival linguistics changes the field of historical linguistics by, for instance, weakening the family tree-model, which implies that a language has only one parent.

One day we may invent devices to "inject" a language into our brains. But until then, any attempt to reclaim a hibernating language will result in a hybrid that combines components from the revivalists' and documenters' mother tongues and, of course, the target sleeping language. In the immortal words of Jerry Seinfeld, "Not that there's anything wrong with that!"

Native tongue title and language rights should be promoted. The government ought to define Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander vernaculars as official languages of Australia. We must change the linguistic landscape of Whyalla and elsewhere. Signs should be in both English and the local indigenous language. We ought to acknowledge intellectual property of indigenous knowledge including language, music and dance.

Furthermore, in the future the very insights offered by revival linguistics will become part of Aboriginal intellectual property, when Slovenes or Estonians come to Australia to ask indigenous Australians to assist them in their own European language resurrection.

The punchline? One, if your language is endangered, do not allow it to fall asleep. Two, if your language falls asleep: stop, revive, survive! Three, if you revive a language, embrace the hybridity of the emerging tongue. Four, if your language is healthy, assist others in linguistic need.

Professor Ghil'ad Zuckermann is Chair of Linguistics and Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide.

Sleeping beauties awake
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9
19 January 2012
Linguists and revivalists worldwide have much to learn from Hebrew's remarkable, hybridic modern-day rebirth, says Ghil'ad Zuckermann




SLEEPING BEAUTIES AWAKE

GHIL'AD ZUCKERMANN

TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION

19 January 2012

====================
Linguists and revivalists worldwide have much to learn from Hebrew's remarkable, hybridic modern-day rebirth, says Ghil'ad Zuckermann
------------------------------------------

Revived Hebrew, or what I usually refer to as Israeli, is the most cited example of language revival. But to be truthful, the modern-day vernacular spoken in urban Tel Aviv is a very different language, typologically and genetically, from that of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) or of the Mishnah, the first major redaction of Jewish oral traditions.

Even so, Israeli is so far the most successful known reclamation of a sleeping beauty tongue. As a language movement it has been in progress for more than 120 years. By comparison, language revival movements elsewhere are in their infancy. With globalisation, homogenisation and coca-colonisation, there will be more and more groups added to the forlorn club of the lost-heritage peoples. Language revival will therefore become increasingly relevant as people seek to recover their heritage. There is an urgent need to offer comparative insights and provide information about the Hebrew revival to other linguists, language endangerment experts and revival activists.

I propose the establishment of revival linguistics, a new discipline studying the universal mechanisms and global constraints apparent in revival attempts across all sociological backgrounds. As a branch of both linguistics and applied linguistics, it is closely related to contact linguistics (when different languages interact) and complements the established field of documentary linguistics.

For linguists, the first stage must involve a long period of observation and careful listening while learning, mapping and characterising the specific indigenous or minority or culturally endangered community. Only then can one inspire and assist. That said, there are linguistic constraints applicable to all revival attempts. Mastering them would help revivalists to work more efficiently: for example, to focus more on basic vocabulary and verbal conjugations than on sounds and word order. Revival linguistics may also help revivalists to be more realistic and to abandon discouraging slogans such as "Give us authenticity or give us death!"

Take, for example, revived Kaurna, an Aboriginal language spoken in South Australia. The language was subject to linguicide by Anglo-Australians and the last native speaker died in the 1920s, but it is currently being reclaimed.

However, the impact of the revivalists' mother tongue (Aboriginal or Australian English) on reclaimed Kaurna is far-reaching. Consider sounds: a retroflex "l" (RL) in classical Kaurna is pronounced in neo-Kaurna as the English "r" + l (e.g. Wilto YeRLo "eagle+sea"). Consider vocabulary: there are numerous calques (loan translations): cricket (the sport) is replicated, albeit jocularly, as yertabiritti (the term for the insect with the same name in English). Consider word order: while in classical Kaurna it was free but tending to be subject-object-verb, in neo-Kaurna it is subject-verb-object, replicating the English.

Now let us look at Israeli. Consider sounds: the classical Hebrew "r" was pronounced like the Arabic "r". But the Israeli "r" is the one occurring in most dialects of the revivalists' mother tongue, Yiddish (as in German). Consider vocabulary: there are numerous calques such as ma nishma ("What's up?", literally "what's heard?") from the Yiddish vos hert zikh and parallel expressions in Polish, Russian and Romanian. Consider word order: in Biblical Hebrew it was verb-subject-object, but in Israeli it is subject-verb-object, replicating Yiddish and Standard Average European.

Unlike Hebrew and Kaurna, where there are no native speakers of the sleeping, original tongue, in Hawaii one can observe both. Hawaii is a fascinating case of both a severely endangered language (classical Hawaiian, fewer than 1,000 speakers) and a reclaimed language (neo-Hawaiian, approximately 3,000, still non-native, speakers). Hawaiian offers scholars a unique laboratory to explore the constraints of language revival. Genetically engineered neo-Hawaiian can indeed be systematically compared to the organically evolving classical Hawaiian, as the latter is still spoken by several hundred people, who are unfortunately not involved in the reclamation.

One day we may invent devices to "inject" a language into our brains. But until then, any attempt to reclaim a hibernating language will result in a hybrid that combines components from the revivalists' and documenters' mother tongues and the target tongue. In the immortal words of Jerry Seinfeld: "Not that there's anything wrong with that!"

The punch line? One, if your language is endangered, do not allow it to die. Two, if your language dies: stop, revive, survive. Three, if you revive a language, embrace its hybridity.

Postscript :
Ghil'ad Zuckermann is professor of linguistics and endangered languages and an Australian Research Council Discovery fellow at the University of Adelaide, Australia.

Ambassador Yuval Rotem - Address for the opening of the Allira Aboriginal Knowledge IT Centre

Allira Aboriginal Knowledge Centre Launch

Dubbo, NSW

September 2, 2010


Ladies and Gentlemen,


Good Afternoon and Shalom,


A year and a half ago, I made my first official visit to Queensland. As I travelled across the state, I met with business leaders, politicians, and state officials. One of the highlights of the visit was a meeting at the University of Queensland.


There, I met my fellow countryman Professor Ghil’ad Zuckermann, who had become an expert in Aboriginal languages.


A widely published academic, a linguist at Cambridge, a lecturer at several universities, with an extensive research background, and having achieved a Ph.D from Oxford, Ghil’ad was, in a word, impressive.


With his clear focus on how language creates and influences culture, and the way words emerge, interact and evolve, he had also become an expert in Aboriginal languages and culture.


He shared with me the significant elements of the revival of the ancient Hebrew language that could be utilized in the revival of Australian Aboriginal languages.


His passion for the reclamation, maintenance and empowerment of Aboriginal languages and culture inspired me, and was indeed the driving motivator of this project, and of the reason we are all here today. 


Ladies and Gentlemen,


I am so honoured to be able to welcome you all to the official opening of the Allira Aboriginal Knowledge Centre.


It is my hope that the centre will become a hub of education and learning for the Mayng Galang people of Dubbo, and a place for the dissemination and sharing of knowledge, history, language and culture.


It is with a spirit of friendship, respect and goodwill that I, on behalf of the Embassy of Israel and the community of Dubbo, thank you all for being here to celebrate this special event in the story of the Mayng Galang people.


Ladies and Gentlemen,


Jewish people have a proud tradition of story telling, of the passing down oral history in order to ensure the continuity of a rich and ancient culture.


Every year on the eve of Passover, Jewish people around the world come together to re-tell the story of the historical exodus from Egypt. This story turned a nation of slaves, into a nation of free people, called Israel.



Every year we retell this story, in order to protect our history, heritage, and legacy. We tell our children, so that they may tell the future generations. We draw lessons from our past in order to sustain our future.


It has served us as people, as the means through which modern Jewry is able to connect deeply with its collective past, and to strengthen its investment in the future.


In this vitally important task of storytelling as oral history, the Jewish and Mayng Galang peoples are very much alike.



However, the indigenous Australian and broader Australian community has witnessed first hand what can happen when the preservation of history and culture fails to be a priority.


With a disintegration and disconnection from living language, the culture of the people who once spoke it dies with them. Without an investment in safeguarding language, we stand to lose more than just words.


As prominent contemporary Aboriginal politician Aden Ridgeway said in 2009 – “Language is power.”


It is our intention through the Allira Aboriginal Knowledge Centre to empower, embolden and embrace this community to enable them to write their own stories, to sing their own songs and to document their own history.


Through this investment, it is our hope that the Mayng Galang people will have a means to reconnect with their past, so that they may take ownership of engaging and experiencing their future.


Let this centre be an ambassador for this people, a source of pride for the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, and a message of hope for reconciliation.


Source:

http://canberra.mfa.gov.il/mfm/web/main/document.asp?DocumentID=186111&MissionID=2

רֵעד אל העם!: על המהפך הנדרש בהוראת תנ"ך בישראל

Let My People Know!: Towards a Revolution in the Teaching of the Hebrew Bible

גילוי דעת 1

Gilui Daat 1

2011

pp. 13 -31

Professor Ghil'ad Zuckermann
Dr Gitit Holzman

גלעד צוקרמן
גתית הולצמן


תקציר

ידע התנ"ך וכן ידע השפה הם בין הנושאים החשובים ביותר אותם אמורה מערכת החינוך הישראלית להקנות לבוגריה. נשאלת השאלה מדוע המשאבים הרבים המופנים להוראת מקצועות אלה אינם תורמים בפועל לידיעת תנ"ך ואף לא לידיעת הלשון העברית.

המאמר מצביע על כך כי קיים קשר הדוק בין הכשלים בהוראת שני המקצועות. שורש הבעיה טמון בחוסר ההבחנה בין שפת התנ"ך לבין השפה המדוברת כיום בישראל :הישראלית. שפה זו היא הכלאה בין העברית, היידיש ושפות נוספות, היא בעלת דקדוק משל עצמה, והיא היא שפת אמם של רוב ילידי ישראל מזה כמאה שנים.

המאמר עומד על כך כי יש הבדל מהותי בין אופן הרכישה של שפת האם ודרך השימוש בה, לבין המנגנונים הפועלים בעת השימוש בשפות הנרכשות באופן אחר. לפיכך, היות והתנ"ך כתוב בְּשפה שאינה שפת אימם של דוברי הישראלית, הוראתו חייבת להעשות בשיטות המשמשות בתחום הוראתן של שפות זרות. במקביל לכך יש לכבד את השפה הישראלית הנוהגת כיום ולחדול מלייסר את הציבור הדובר אותה על כי לשונו אינה כפופה לחוקי העברית הקדומה.

החברה הישראלית עתירת פולמוסים הנוגעים לדת ולתרבות, ומסתמכים במידת מה על מקורות היהדות. הבנת לשון המקורות הקדומים והכרות מעמיקה עם רעיונותיהם אשר תושג אך ורק על ידי נקיטת אמצעים פדגוגיים הולמים, תשכלל את השיח הציבורי ותשפר את יכולת הכלל להפיק תועלת של ממש מאותם ויכוחים.




רשימת מקורות

אברהים, רפיק (2010). דיגלוסיה ודו-לשוניות בהקשר של השפה הערבית: עדות ממחקר קוגניטיבי, מגמות - כתב עת למדעי ההתנהגות, כרך מו, עמ' 625-598.

אפלטון, (תש"מ 1979). 'אפולוגיה של סוקרטס', כתבי אפלטון, תירגם מיוונית יוסף ג. ליבס, כרך ראשון. ירושלים ותל-אביב: הוצאת שוקן, עמ' 206 – 238.

בן חיים, זאב. (התשנ"ב 1992). 'האחדות ההיסטורית של הלשון העברית וחלוקתה לתקופות – כיצד?', במלחמתה של לשון, ירושלים: האקדמיה ללשון העברית עמ' 3 – 35.

הראל, עמוס. (2011 14 יוני). הרמטכ"ל, בני גנץ, קבע שיש לומר בטקסים "יזכור אלוהים" ולא "יזכור עם ישראל". הארץ. נדלה ב 11 באוגוסט 2011 מתוך:
http://www.haaretz.co.il/

הרמתי, שלמה. (תשנ"ז 1997). עברית - מ"שיח שפתיים" ללשון לאומית. תל אביב: הוצאת ירון גולן.

הרמתי, שלמה. (תש"ס 2000). עברית שפה מדוברת, תל אביב: משרד הבטחון

הרשב, בנימין. (תשס"ח 2008). לשון בימי מהפכה, המהפכה היהודית המודרנית ותחיית הלשון העברית. ירושלים: כרמל.

'עברית קדוּמה ועברית בּת ימינוּ – לשוֹן אחת?' שיח בלשנים, לשוֹננוּ לעם, מחזור לא קוּנטרס ד, אדר תש"ם (1980).

צוקרמן, גלעד. (תשס"ט 2008). ישראלית שפה יפה. תל אביב: עם עובד.

קלוזנר, יוסף. (1957). עברית עתיקה ועברית חדשה, בתוך: העברית החדשה ובעיותיה., תל אביב: מסדה, עמ' 36 – 56.

קשתי, אור. (2011 24 פברואר). ירידה חדה במספר התלמידים הניגשים לבגרות מורחבת בתנ"ך. הארץ. נדלה ב 1 במרץ 2011 מתוך:
http://www.haaretz.co.il/

רבין חיים . (תשל"ה 1975), ). מהותו של הדיבּוּר העברי שלפני התחייה, לשוננו לעם כו, עמ' 227 - 233.

רבין, חיים. (תשנ"ט 1999)., מה הייתה תחיית הלשון העברית?, חקרי לשון, אסופת מאמרים בלשון העברית ובאחיותיה, ערוכה בידי משה בר-אשר וברק דן, ירושלים: מוסד ביאליק. עמ' 359 – 376.

רביצקי אביעזר. (תשנ"ז 1997). דתיים וחילוניים בישראל: מלחמת תרבות?, ירושלים: המכון הישראלי לדמוקרטיה.

רוזן, חיים. (תשט"ז 1956). העברית שלנו :בלשנות שיטות באור דמותה , תל אביב: עם עובד.

רוזן, חיים. (תשל"ד 1974)., הלשון העברית בת ימינו, האנציקלופדיה העברית, (כרך כו, עמ' 660 – 664). ירושלים: מסדה.

שלום גרשם. (תש"ן 1989). הצהרת אמונים לשפה שלנו, מכתב לפרנץ רוזנצווייג ב 26.12.1926. עוד דבר, פרקי מורשה ותחיה (ב). כינס וערך: אברהם שפירא, תל אביב: עם עובד. עמ' 59 – 60.

שפירא אניטה. (תשנ"ז 1997). בן-גוריון והתנ"ך: יצירתו של סיפר היסטורי?, יהודים חדשים, יהודים ישנים, תל אביב: עם עובד. עמ' 217 – 247.

שפירא אניטה. (תשס"ו 2005). התנ"ך והזהות הישראלית. ירושלים: מאגנס.


Chomsky, Noam. (1957)., Syntactic Structures, The Hague: Mouton.

Ibrahim, Raphiq. (2009). Selective deficit of second language: a case study of a brain-damaged Arabic-Hebrew bilingual patient, Behavioral and Brain Functions. 5:17.

Zuckermann, Ghil'ad. (2006). A New Vision for "Israeli Hebrew": Theoretical and Practical Implications of Analysing Israel's Main Language as a Semi-Engineered Semito-European Hybrid Language. Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5.1: 57-71.

Zuckermann, Ghil'ad. (2009). Hybridity versus Revivability: Multiple Causation, Forms and Patterns. Journal of Language Contact Varia 2: 40-67.



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גילוי דעת - כתב עת רב-תחומי לחינוך, חברה ותרבות

כתב עת שפיט חדש

בהוצאת מכללת סמינר הקיבוצים והוצאת הקיבוץ המאוחד

"גילוי דעת" – תעודת זהות"גילוי דעת" הוא כתב עת מדעי שפיט, שעומד לצאת לאור על ידי מכללת סמינר הקיבוצים והוצאת הקיבוץ המאוחד, וששם לו למטרה להעשיר ולהעמיק את הדיון בסוגיות חינוכיות, חברתיות ותרבותיות המעסיקות את החברה הישראלית והעולמית עם תחילת העשור השני של המאה ה-21.

מתוך עמדה המאמינה בחשיבותה של ראייה אינטלקטואלית רחבה ומקפת ובנחיצות קיומה של קשת מגוונת של נקודות מבט ותחומי מחקר ושיח, כתב העת יפרסם מאמרים שישקפו מנעד רחב של פרספקטיבות דיסציפלינאריות, שיטות חקירה והשקפות ערכיות. בהתאם לכך, מערכת "גילוי דעת" כוללת, לצד חוקרים בתחומי החינוך, מלומדים בעלי שם מתחומי דעת שונים במדעי החברה והרוח.

המכנה המשותף של המאמרים שיתפרסמו יהיה מקוריותם, יכולתם להתמודד עם סוגיות מרכזיות בשיח החינוכי והציבורי, ותרומתם למבט רחב ומשמעותי על הנושא שבו יעסקו. נעודד באופן מיוחד את הופעתם של מאמרים ביקורתיים ובעלי תכנים פולמוסיים, מתוך אמונה בחשיבותה של נועזות אינטלקטואלית ומתוך רצון להפוך את "גילוי דעת" לאתר מרכזי לחידוד ולליבון שאלות יסוד ישראליות וגלובליות.

נימנע מלפרסם ב"גילוי דעת" מאמרים המטפלים בנושאים ספציפיים ומצומצמים באופן כזה שאינם מאירים סוגיות והיבטים רחבים ושאינם בעלי השתמעויות החורגות מהמקרה הקונקרטי שהם עוסקים בו. כתוצאה מכך, לא יתקבלו לפרסום מאמרים שעוסקים בסוגיות תוך-דיסציפלינאריות צרות, שאין להן נגיעה משמעותית לסוגיות חינוכיות, חברתיות או תרבותיות.

עורך ראשי: פרופ' נמרוד אלוני, ראש המכון לחינוך מתקדם, מכללת סמינר הקיבוצים
עורך: ד"ר אמנון יובל, המכון לחינוך מתקדם, מכללת סמינר הקיבוצים

חברי מועצת המערכת: פרופ' דן אבנון, ד"ר איימן אגבריה, פרופ' חיים אדלר, פרופ' יאיר אורון, פרופ' ניב אחיטוב, פרופ' יאירה אמית, פרופ' אבנר בן עמוס, פרופ' מרים בן פרץ, ד"ר אוה ברגר, פרופ' מירי ברוך, ד"ר דפנה גולן, ד"ר יוסי דהאן, פרופ' עמוס דרייפוס, פרופ' חגית הלפרין, ד"ר רבקה ודמני, פרופ' רות זוזובסקי, פרופ' צבי טאובר, פרופ' יוסי יונה, פרופ' ציפי ליבמן, פרופ' אייל נווה, פרופ' גבי סלומון, פרופ' פניה עוז-זלצברגר, פרופ' פייסל עזאיזה, פרופ' משה צוקרמן, פרופ' יצחק קשתי, פרופ' אריאל רובינשטיין, פרופ' עוזי שביט.

Israeli-born Ghil'ad Zuckermann, a professor of linguistics and endangered languages at Adelaide University, said of the 250 known Aboriginal languages, only 15 were widely spoken or used by all age groups within a community.

``Nearly 95 per cent of Aboriginal languages are either dead or about to die,'' Professor Zuckermann said. ``These languages were killed by colonisation. There were many cases where the languages weren't allowed to be spoken or children were taken away, and other reasons.''

Professor Zuckermann, an Australian Research Council Discovery Fellow, said a person's cultural connection to their language was more significant than their connection to the land and compensation for lost languages should take precedence over native title payments.

``Why not have native tongue title? Why is it that Aboriginal people get compensated for loss of land and not loss of language?'' he said. ``In my opinion, your language is much more important. If you want to bean count, you could quantify a language at $100 million or so.''

The Oxford and Cambridge-educated academic moved to Adelaide last month to take up the chair in linguistics after teaching in the UK, China, Israel, Singapore and Slovakia.

His views on the need for international languages to evolve and adapt have often angered purists, who believe dialects need to be preserved in their original forms.

Professor Zuckermann said it was valid to question the millions of dollars to revive languages, but he said the economic benefits outweighed the cost. ``In the process of language revival in schools, Aboriginal people learn literacy and computer skills, that is a happy byproduct and they become more employable,'' he added.

``When you revive a language you can give people who have lost their way in life their pride. These people are less likely to need mental health support, they're less likely to be alcohol addicts.''

Professor Zuckermann said the nation faced huge problems because it had a monolingual mindset which could impede its ability to revive languages.

``People don't see the advantage of different languages,'' he said. ``They say Aboriginal people should learn English to solve a lot of their problems. But bilingual people tend to speak English better.''

Lessons in native languages / Chantal Abitbol


ISRAELI-BORN linguistics professor Ghil’ad Zuckermann (pictured) hopes to resurrect some of the dead languages of the Aboriginal people by applying the lessons learnt from the revival of Hebrew.

Prof Zuckermann, who recently became Australia’s first chair of endangered languages at the University of Adelaide, estimated that of the 250 known Aboriginal languages, only 15 are still widely spoken.

“That means the other 235 original languages are either sleeping beauties or endangered, either dead or about to die,” the Oxford and Cambridge-educated academic told The AJN.

He said these languages deserved to be revived for “historical justice and social equality”, and even went so far as to suggest that Aborigines’ cultural connection to their language was more important than ties to their land.

“Aboriginal people are compensated for the loss of land. Why don’t they get paid for the loss of language? Is land more important than langue?” he asked.

“I believe in a native tongue title, every language should have a price tag, and the Government should allocate, say, $100 million for each language lost.”

That doesn’t appear to be happening anytime soon. But Prof Zuckermann said he believed the millions spent reviving languages would also have economic benefits.

“Some of these people have lost their heritage and purpose in life. If you are involved in language resurrection as an Aboriginal person, you actually improve your chance to get a job, for example by learning literacy and computer skills,” he said.

As part of his mission, Prof Zuckermann will spend coming years surveying Aboriginal communities across Australia to determine where there is a desire to revive the indigenous language. He will then advise them on how to go about it.

“It’s something that has to be enacted by the communities themselves,” he stressed. “I can listen, observe, analyse, inspire and advise. But language reclamation ought not to be conducted to but rather with Aboriginal people.”

Describing himself as an “anti-purist”, he said he has analysed the successes and failures of the Hebrew revival, and believed that it was important to “embrace the inevitable hybridity of the emerging language”.

“I’m realistic, I’m not selling them ideologically based myths. On the other hand, I’m very much pro-revival. As seen in Israel, the revival of the ancient tongue, albeit partially successful, is a remarkable achievement.”

Endangered languages have a new champion


The University of Adelaide has appointed Australia's first Chair of Endangered Languages - Israeli-born, Oxford-educated linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann.


Professor Zuckermann, who holds an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellowship, has vowed to make Adelaide a world centre for language revival.

His new role as Professor of Linguistics and Endangered Languages in the School of Humanities will involve both research and teaching, with the aim of establishing a new sub-discipline of linguistics - "revival linguistics".

"Along with my colleagues Professor Peter Mühlhäusler and Dr Rob Amery, I shall be analysing how to resurrect languages that are no longer spoken or about to become extinct," Professor Zuckermann said.

These include more than 100 Aboriginal languages that are "critically endangered".

Professor Zuckermann said one of his goals was to raise the value of language diversity in today's society, given the prediction that 90% of the world's 6000 languages will disappear by 2100.

"From an Australian perspective, it is critical on a number of fronts that Aboriginal languages are revived and preserved.

"These fascinating, complex languages provide a sense of identity for Aboriginal people, reflecting a close interaction with their culture, heritage and history. Reclaiming and maintaining Aboriginal languages helps to empower some Indigenous people and give them a strong sense of pride and purpose."

Professor Zuckermann said Aboriginal traditions, spirituality, ecology and land were inextricably linked to their languages.

The multilingual Israeli academic is internationally renowned for his innovative and provocative approach to language revival (Modern Hebrew in particular), defining himself as an anti-purist.

"I don't think we should be rigid about languages. They are forever changing and evolving and are the result of cross-fertilisation of numerous lects and languages.

"Even if you isolated a community on the moon without external influences, you would find in the space of several generations that their language would have altered significantly."

Professor Zuckermann holds doctorates from Oxford and Cambridge universities and has taught at universities in the United Kingdom, United States, China, Israel, Singapore, Slovakia and Australia. He has also been a senior research fellow in Italy and Japan.

He has published several books and numerous articles in eight different languages.

Professor Zuckermann has also consulted to the Oxford English Dictionary and Oxford University Press, among many others, and delivered hundreds of keynote speeches, plenary conference papers and public lectures.

Although he officially started at the University of Adelaide in February, Professor Zuckermann spent the first three months of his appointment as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Shanghai International Studies University.

"I hope to make Adelaide known in the world as the place where revival linguistics emerged as a new paradigm of linguistics," he said.

"We have the core expertise here - with strengths in Kaurna, Israeli and creole languages - and with the help of the Mobile Language Team, established in 2009 through Federal Government funding, we can go a long way towards supporting and reviving Aboriginal languages in South Australia as a first step," Professor Zuckermann said.

To read more about the University of Adelaide's work supporting Aboriginal languages and resources in South Australia, visit: ua.edu.au/linguistics/mlt

The University of Adelaide offers both undergraduate and postgraduate linguistics degrees. If you're interested visit: ua.edu.au/programs/2011


Story by Candy Gibson

למה כולנו לא מדברים
באותה השפה?
גלעד צוקרמן

ש א ל ו ת מ ה ו ת י ו ת

במונחים ביולוגיים, הלשון איננה אורגניזם
אלא קבוצה של אורגניזמים. יש שיסיקו,
אם כן, שהשאלה הנכבדה איננה "למה לא
כל בני האדם מדברים באותה שפה?"
אלא, באופן מפתיע, "למה יש בני אדם
המבינים זה את זה?"
איור: מורן ברק

נניח לרגע שגרסה עתידית של תוכנית
הטלוויזיה "האח הגדול" תכלול ניסויים בבני
אדם באופן אף יותר מרחיק לכת מהיום. ערוץ 2
יחפש למשל צעיר וצעירה דוברי ישראלית, ושום
שפה אחרת. הם ישוגרו למושבה בחלל לתקופה בלתי מוגבלת
וללא שום קשר עם בני אדם או יצורים אחרים. בהנחה שתוחלת
החיים תהיה 120 שנה ולא 1,200 , כפי שיש המנבאים, צאצאי
הזכיינים של ערוץ 2 יחזרו למושבה הזאת כעבור 2,000 שנה כדי
לבדוק איזו שפה תדובר שם.
אין לי צל של ספק שהשפה שם תהיה שונה מאוד מהישראלית
של היום, חרף העובדה שלא מדובר על השפעות זרות, כי הרי לא
היתה שום תקשורת עם דוברי לשונות אחרות. נשאלת השאלה, אם
כן, מה גרם לאבולוציה האורגנית של הישראלית ההיפותטית הזאת?
התשובה לשאלה זאת מהווה, אליבא דידי, את אחד היסודות היפים
במחקר הבלשני. אל תאמינו לאף בלשן שיגיד לכם שהוא לא עושה
הכללות. בלשנות היא הכללה מיסודה. השפה היא למעשה לקט לקטים:
אנסמבל ערטילאי של אידיולקטים. אידיולקט הוא שפה של אדם ספציפי.
לשונו האידיוסינקרטית של המאסטר שף אייל שני שונה מזו של מיכל
אנסקי. ג'קי מנחם, זוכה העונה השלישית של "האח הגדול", משתמש
בביטויים שונים מאלו של ליהיא גרינר )מקום 2 בגמר (, שדוברת אידיולקט
השונה מזה של נופר מור )שכונתה "בייגלה" בפי ג'קי (, וכו'. יתר על כן,
השפה היא גם אוסף אבסטרקטי של סוציולקטים )סוציולקט הוא לשון של
שכבה חברתית מסוימת (, דיאלקטים )של אזור גאוגרפי מסוים (, אטולקטים
)של בני גיל מסוים (, אתנולקטים )לפי מוצא אתני (, ושאר לקטים.
במונחים ביולוגיים, הלשון איננה אורגניזם אלא מין ) species (, קבוצה
של אורגניזמים. גם אם כל הזבובים נראים לנו אותו הדבר, תחת עדשת
המיקרוסקופ לכל זבוב יש שערות שונות על הבטן. יש שיסיקו, אם כן,
שהשאלה הנכבדה איננה "למה לא כל בני האדם מדברים באותה שפה?"
אלא, באופן מפתיע, "למה יש בני אדם המבינים זה את זה?"
התשובה לשאלה זו נעוצה ביכולת האדירה של יצורי האנוש
לבצע אקומודציה, הסגלה, משא ומתן לשוני. דוברי הישראלית
לא זקוקים לתרביץ ללשון הישראלית )הידוע יותר בכינויו
"האקדמיה ללשון העברית" ( או למשטרת לשון אחרת. למרות
ההבדלים הרבים בין האידיולקטים השונים, דוברי הישראלית
מסוגלים להבין זה את זה ללא שום בעיה. מי שאומר "עשרה
קילוגרמים" לבטח יתאים את לשונו ל"עשר קילו" כשיקנה
מלפפונים בשוק הכרמל בתל אביב.
המשא ומתן הלשוני, המתרחש בדרך כלל באופן טבעי
ובלתי־מודע, הוא הגורם לאבולוציה הלשונית שתוצאתה:
ישראלית חללית השונה לגמרי מהישראלית של היום.
המגע בין הלקטים השונים כולל הפריה הדדית, אורגיה
גנטית לשונית, ערבוב גנים ברבייה מינית, שכפול נגיפי
וכיוצא באלה. ממש כפי שכבר מקדמת דנא, כשחד־תא
נתקל בחד־תא אחר הוא מחדיר את הדנ"א שלו אל התא
האחר, כך נוצרות קומבינציות וקומבינות חדשות
בשפה. וכמו בביולוגיה, גם בלשון יש
מוטציות.
המילה "מהפך" חדרה לישראלית
ביתר שאת לאחר שחיים יבין השתמש
בה ב– 17 במאי 77 ' לתיאור שינוי כיוון
דרמטי בבחירות. כיום יש גם מהפך בכדורגל, וכו'. הביטוי האידיוסינקרטי
"התחת שלי במים" )אני מאושר ( של ג'קי מנחם מובן, לפחות בימים אלו, על
ידי דוברי ישראלית רבים.
נניח עתה שכתוצאה מתחרות מסחרית, ערוץ 10 לא יעמוד בפיתוי
וישגר גם הוא צעיר וצעירה, בעלי רקע דומה כשל אלו מערוץ 2,
למושבה אחרת בחלל ללא שום קשר עם יצורים אחרים. צאצאי
הזכיינים של ערוץ 10 יחזרו למושבה הזאת כעבור 2,000 שנה
כדי לבדוק אם השפה שתדובר שם תהיה שונה מהשפה שתדובר
במושבת ערוץ 2. אין לי שום צל של ספק שהשפה שם תהיה
שונה מאוד לא רק מהישראלית של היום אלא גם מהישראלית
העתידית של צאצאי ערוץ 2.
תרחישים דומים קרו בעבר ולכן הגענו עד הלום, עם
יותר מ– 6,000 שפות. סיפור מגדל בבל אכן משקף במידה
זו או אחרת את המציאות ההיסטורית לפני לכל הפחות
50 אלף שנה, גם אם לא ניתן להוכיח זאת באמצעים
הבלשניים העומדים לרשותנו כיום.
האבולוציה משפה אחת, או ממספר מוגבל של
שפות היוליות, ליותר מ– 6,000 לשונות נובעת,
אם כן, לא רק ממגע בין לשונות אלא גם ממגע
בין אידיולקטים. יחד עם זאת, בעוד שבעבר
המגמה הכללית היתה היווצרות ניבים
חדשים ולשונות שונות, העידן הטכנולוגי
והטוקנולוגי )מלשון t alk ( יצר מציאות
חדשה של צמצום מספר הלשונות וריבוי
השפות בסכנת הכחדה.
לדעתי, האינטרנט והתקשורת
ההמונית הם המהפכה הרביעית: אחרי
היווצרות השפה, הכתב והדפוס. נותר רק
לקוות, שהשאלה של מערכת "הארץ"
לבלשן התורן בשנת 3011 לא
תהיה "למה כל בני האדם
מדברים באותה שפה?" *


פרופ' גלעד צוקרמן הוא מופקד
הקתדרה לבלשנות ושפות בסיכון
באוניברסיטת אדלייד, אוסטרליה,
ומכהן גם כפרופסור מן המניין
במעמד מיוחד באוניברסיטת שנחאי
ללימודים בינלאומיים