The research of Classical Hebrew tends to focus on the major ancient corpora: Biblical Hebrew, Ra... more The research of Classical Hebrew tends to focus on the major ancient corpora: Biblical Hebrew, Rabbinic Hebrew, and Qumranic Hebrew, and regularly neglects more minor manifestations of the language. Uri Mor’s book Judean Hebrew offers an examination of the language of a small yet revealing corpus: the Hebrew documents from Judaea between the First and the Second Revolts—a group of legal documents, military letters, and other everyday-life inscriptions, written in the Judean Desert region and discovered in the 20th century in Masada and the refuge caves on the western shore of the Dead Sea. The linguistic importance of the documents lies in the direct evidence that they provide on the character of Hebrew during the turbulent period between the destruction of the Second Temple and the final redaction of the Mishna. The typical phonetic spellings in the documents, e.g. אנמקבל (=אני מקבל ‘I receive’), תמקום (=את המקום ‘the site’ [accusative]), and their non-literary, non-prestigious nature offer an intriguing glance into writing practices and speech customs of Hebrew users in ordinary circumstances, recording a legal process or inscribing a military edict. Judean Hebrew describes and analyzes this Hebrew idiom and determines its status in the sociolinguistic realm of Palestine. The detailed study of the linguistic features and their analysis reveal that in this period Hebrew was a living language in Judea, despite the undeniable influence of Aramaic, and that it was typologically similar—but not identical—to Rabbinic Hebrew.
This article investigates two phenomena in Judean Hebrew and Aramaic, both of which concern not o... more This article investigates two phenomena in Judean Hebrew and Aramaic, both of which concern not only the Judean corpora but also more profound questions of lexicography, dialectology, realia, and language contact. a. The semantic field of taking and receiving (and buying) – לקח was partially replaced by other verbs (נטל, נשא, and קיבל in Hebrew, נסב and נשא in Aramaic), and a semantic dissimilation evolved between קנה ‘acquire’ and לקח/זבן ‘buy’ (Hebrew/Aramaic). Judean Hebrew exhibits significant resemblance to Rabbinic Hebrew on the one hand and the influence of Aramaic legal formulae on the other. b. The verb עימר/עמר (Hebrew/Aramaic) in the letters – a survey of the various interpretations suggested for this verb leads to the conclusion that the most plausible is ‘gather’ or ‘gather and prepare.’
The paper offers a comprehensive description and analysis of the orthographic conventions and pho... more The paper offers a comprehensive description and analysis of the orthographic conventions and phonological features in the two Genizah fragments of the halakhic Midrash Sifre Zuta on Numbers: MS Saint Petersburg (Firkovich) and MS Oxford. Orthographically, the two fragments are comparable with the best manuscripts of Rabbinic Literature, and contain an abundant of typical rabbinic orthographic forms. This affirms, on the one hand, the reliability of the text and the high quality of its transmission; on the other hand, it might suggest that some of its unique features were modified in order to resemble ordinary rabbinic manuscripts. The Phonologically data similarly reveal close resemblance to reliable manuscripts of rabbinic literature, significantly to Palestinian witnesses. However, in several details, for example h–ḥ interchanges, the Genizah fragments are in alignment with extra-rabbinic sources of southern Palestine.
A common assumption among scholars of rabbinic literature is that the halakhic midrash Sifre Zuta... more A common assumption among scholars of rabbinic literature is that the halakhic midrash Sifre Zuta on Numbers is stylistically and halakhically distinct from other tannaitic midrashim, but to date this supposition has not been supported by comprehensive structural (grammatical) analysis. This paper, part of a larger project on the language of Sifre Zuta on Numbers, offers an initial step in this direction by examining the formation of six distinctive nominal forms found in Genizah copies of Sifre Zuta on Numbers: גומים ‘hollows’ (rather than גומות); מכתישה ‘mortar’ (rather than מכתשת); יוריות ‘cauldrons’ (rather than יורות); דוליות ‘buckets’ (rather than דליים, etc.); פונדקין ‘inns’ (rather than פונדקאות, etc.); and יצורה ‘pottery work’ (rather than יצירה or צורה). This group of six nouns demonstrates that the Genizah documents preserve ancient, authentic traditions of Mishnaic Hebrew, including features which deviate from so-called standard Mishnaic Hebrew. However, it appears that the nonstandard phenomena do not add up to a significant typological, i.e., dialectal, distinction.
Contemporary popular discourse on Hebrew prescriptivism betrays an interesting ambivalence: accep... more Contemporary popular discourse on Hebrew prescriptivism betrays an interesting ambivalence: acceptance of institutional standards on the one hand and objection to normative intervention on the other. This ambivalence can be traced to the tension between the Language Committee and the Palestine Teachers’ Association during the Second Aliya. Both promoted a modern national language, but the former was in favor of a systematic language planning grounded in the past, while the latter was in favor of spontaneous language implementation aimed at the present and the future. In the 1950s, a similar tension developed between the older generation of parents and educators and the Sabras (native speakers), whose generational identity had crystallized during the pre-State period. The language promoted by the former group was an institutional variety bound to a prescriptive norm and the tradition of Jewish texts, while that promoted by the latter was a native variety bound to conventional norms and real-life experience. The transition from settlement to state in 1948 and the natural generational shift led to normative intensification in both camps – vigorous planning activity vs. promotion of the prestige of the Sabra variety. The tension in these two episodes led to a deep cultural rift – one that is familiar to every Hebrew speaker in Israel – between the formal language of the state, which reflects a national outlook of unification and statehood, and the natural language of Hebrew speakers, which reflects a more individualistic and popular national outlook. A crosslinguistic perspective reveals a resemblance between Israeli Hebrew and European Late Dialect Selection languages, suggesting that the ambivalence towards prescriptivism in fact indicates ambivalence towards the national language, which is perceived, simultaneously, as a manifestation of a stable national identity and an institutional interference in individual speech.
Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew. Background, Morpholexicon, and Syntax, 2020
This chapter surveys prescriptive activity and discourse in Modern Hebrew from historical and soc... more This chapter surveys prescriptive activity and discourse in Modern Hebrew from historical and sociolinguistic perspectives. The first prescriptive efforts in the pre-Mandate period (up to 1918) were part of an intensive language planning process aimed at creating a uniform functional national language based on classical Hebrew sources. After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the nationalistic tone of public discourse in Israel increased, and with it prescriptive activity, up until the 1970s. At a very early stage in the formation of the speech community, even prior to World War 1, two types of ideal (hegemonic) Hebrew began to emerge: institutional (planned), reflecting a nationalistic and puristic stance grounded in the Jewish past, and native (unplanned), reflecting a contrasting anti-institutional stance. Both types are still active in contemporary public discourse in Israel, and together constitute a complex approach to prescriptivism and the concept of correct language.
Mishnaic Hebrew shows considerable linguistic variation, which may be narrowed down to three phas... more Mishnaic Hebrew shows considerable linguistic variation, which may be narrowed down to three phases: the original living language, its literary crystallization, and its written and oral transmission. While scholars of Mishnaic Hebrew are well aware of this fact, they generally do not explore it and neglect to utilize tools of variationist linguistics and historical sociolinguistics in order to enhance their understanding of the language and the motivations of its users. This paper calls for a careful integration of variationist and sociolinguistic methods into the research on Mishnaic Hebrew, and offers two case studies that demonstrate the advantages of this approach. The first case study concerns the distribution of the two feminine singular demonstrative pronouns זו and זאת, for which I argues for a variationist rather than structuralist analysis. The second case study concerns a metalinguistic discussion in tractate ‛Eruvin of the Babylonian Talmud, which is claimed here to demonstrate the ideological nature of rabbinic literature and its linguistic implications.
The word מספר ‘number’ in Ancient Hebrew is a floating quantifier: it can either follow a noun ph... more The word מספר ‘number’ in Ancient Hebrew is a floating quantifier: it can either follow a noun phrase (NP), e.g., ימים מספר ‘a few days’ (lit. days [of] number; Num 9:20), or precede it, e.g., מספר ימים ‘a few days’ (Ben Sira 41:13, MS Masada). An intermediary stage between the original meaning ‘number’ and the quantifier meaning ‘a few’ appears to be ‘limited, predetermined number’, e.g., מספר ימי חיו ‘the limited days of his life’ (Eccl 5:17). Throughout the history of Hebrew the NP+מספר order prevailed, but from the Jewish Enlightenment period onwards the reverse order is found as well, and it is conventional in Israeli Hebrew. Nonetheless, many copyeditors nowadays consider the construction מספר+NP incorrect. Online discussions on this matter in professional forums suggest that this is because copyeditors favor simple unequivocal rules and rely heavily on canonical prescriptive literature.
The paper characterizes the PP–nominal (prepositional phrase + nominalization) pattern in Biblica... more The paper characterizes the PP–nominal (prepositional phrase + nominalization) pattern in Biblical Hebrew and Rabbinic Hebrew (e.g., עלינו לעשות ‘it is our duty to do’) and discusses its relation to the so-called evaluative or חג״ם pattern (e.g., טוב לנו עבֹד ‘it would have been better for us to serve’). In spite of the resemblance between the two, it is argued that the former is a distinct pattern both historically and typologically, but that both share similar generalizations within predicate-initial sentence patterns. Historically, the PP-nominal sentences are a unique case of prepositional phrase predicate sentences with simple noun phrase subjects, having fixed word order and nominalized subjects. Typologically, they are essentially marked for person. Changes in the PP-nominal pattern in Rabbinic Hebrew suggest that it grew closer to the evaluative pattern
Prescriptive discourse ordinarily conceals ideological stances in a formal discussion of authorit... more Prescriptive discourse ordinarily conceals ideological stances in a formal discussion of authoritativeness and correctness. In עברית לכל רגע (‘Hebrew for all seasons’, Haifa 1978), a prescriptive Hebrew guidebook which comprises 877 short conversations, the straightforward occupation with gender hierarchy presents a rare opportunity to examine gender alignment in prescriptive discourse of Hebrew and to expose patterns of authority and exclusion in Israeli society of the late 1970s. The book adopts a traditional viewpoint which associates men with learnedness and restraint, and women with disorganized thought and insecurity. This is achieved through intensive reliance on Jewish texts on the one hand and a popular trope (“the foolish wife and her husband”) on the other. Women are constructed as a symbolic threat to social structure and standard language, and by putting them in their place the sociolinguistic order is secured. The book reflects an additional, less apparent, class alignment. It pretends to address an imagined wide audience of Hebrew users who share a national identity and behavior patterns, but the content of the conversations and the construction of an ideal variety of Hebrew disclose a distinction between ‘proper’ citizens – Ashkenazi Jews and native-born Israelis – who aspire to proper language and proper behavior, and other Hebrew users. These two patterns of alignment give expression to fears of social change felt by the male Ashkenazi Israeli elite: a feminist awakening in Israel during the 1970s, and an increase in the power of Sephardic Israelis in consequence of the weakening of the Ashkenazi elite and the ascent of the Likud party in the 1977 elections. It is suggested that the book attempts to restore the authority of the old elite through forming an all-national “legitimate” discourse.
Modern Hebrew (MH) presents an interesting case of a national language whose crystallisation invo... more Modern Hebrew (MH) presents an interesting case of a national language whose crystallisation involved not only intensive planning, but also unplanned processes of stratification, which have resulted in a continuous reevaluation and reallocation of existing features. The role of nonclassical inherited elements in this progression is revealing, as they emblematise popular ‘authentic’ usage on the one hand and diasporic (i.e. nonnative) premodern being on the other, thus exposing the tension between standard and nonstandard language. This study examines the stylistic status of two such elements, be'im ‘if’ and bixde ‘for’, ‘in order’, in two major phases in the short history of MH, in order to characterise the prescriptive discourse of MH and its national undertones.
Nominal predication where no obvious subject is present is a common pattern in Modern Hebrew and ... more Nominal predication where no obvious subject is present is a common pattern in Modern Hebrew and has been described and analyzed in numerous works. In this paper we trace the history of the pattern and propose a historical scenario to account for its innovation. We argue that the pattern is already attested in Amarna Canaanite. Contrary to what is claimed by others, we further argue that this pattern has a subject, and suggest tests to prove that. In Rabbinic Hebrew, the distinction between this non-canonical pattern and a canonical equivalent with a covert subject was neutralized in certain syntactic and semantic contexts. This led to reinterpretation of canonical patterns and to further expansion of the non-canonical pattern.
The paper examines three normative details in Hebrew from three perspectives – normative, linguis... more The paper examines three normative details in Hebrew from three perspectives – normative, linguistic, and sociolinguistic: (a) באם ‘if’ instead of normative אם; (b) בכדי ‘for, in order’ instead of normative כדי; (c) נקט ב- ‘take (measures, stand, etc.)’ instead of normative נקט (את). The first two are documented, from the seventeenth century onwards, in various genres of written Hebrew, both literary (e.g. Mendele Mokher Sfarim) and non-literary (e.g. the responsa literature and municipal posters). The third, originally a Babylonian Aramaic verb, is documented very sparsely from the sixteenth century onwards and becomes more widespread in late-nineteenth-century nonliterary genres, presumably as a result of analogy to the Hebrew verb אחז ‘seize’. All three are condemned as mistakes in the prescriptive literature of the 1950s and 1960s – but not anteriorly – and in the accompanying normativist discourse. The study of these three seemingly unequivocal cases reveals two conduits that facilitated the infiltration of nonclassical elements into Modern Hebrew: formal nonliterary genres and popular satiric literature. It also suggests that, during the 1950s, following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the Hebrew prescriptive discourse became nationalistic and necessitated a reevaluation of the inherited Hebrew inventory. From this new perspective, nonclassical elements such as the three discussed here were considered undesirable.
This paper traces the emergence of spoken native Hebrew as a legitimate language in the years fol... more This paper traces the emergence of spoken native Hebrew as a legitimate language in the years following the establishment of the state of Israel. It discusses the relationship between the revival of Hebrew, the establishment of the state, and the ideology that shaped the spoken language of this period and that distinguished it from the Hebrew of the previous, nonnative, pioneer generation (the “halutsim” of the third and fourth waves of immigration to Palestine). In order to tap into speakers’ attitudes both toward spoken native Hebrew and toward the nonnative Hebrew of the previous generation, the paper focuses on a particular motif in the first four programs of Ha-Gashash Ha-hiver trio (1964–1969). Register elevation is a recurring motif in the trio’s skits, and—as the term suggests—it involves the use of a register that is higher than what the discourse circumstances actually call for. Jokes based on register elevation are particularly revealing of the linguistic attitudes of the time because of the complex sociolinguistic knowledge that jokes in this category presuppose. Through exaggeration and ridicule, such jokes exemplify the detachment of the formal Hebrew of the public sphere from the spoken language of its native speakers. The attitude toward formal Hebrew expressed in the skits is part of a broader ideological stance toward the contemporary Hebrew that dominated the Ashkenazi-Sabre culture of the time, including both the stilted and often ceremonious nonnative Hebrew of the previous generation as well as the emerging native spoken variety. The relationship between these varieties was redefined during the 1950s and early 1960s, as part of broader generational, class, and ethnic shifts and as their direct reflection. At least until the late 1940s, native Hebrew had been considered inadequate, a child language that with time and correction might come to resemble the “proper” Hebrew designed by language planners in the spirit of the classical texts. It is only in the course of the 1950s and 1960s that the Hebrew of native speakers began to gain acceptance as a legitimate language, appropriate for the public sphere. Our project offers a preliminary step in the construction of an archive of the history of Hebrew speech. A fuller study of the history of speech styles and varieties will fill a gap in the study of the Hebrew revival, and it will contribute to our understanding of the significance of Hebrew speech in the context of nation building and the establishment of the state. Spoken language and the ideologies that shape it play a significant role in the creation of embodied subjectivities and shared identities. From this perspective, the relation between Hebrew and the state of Israel is exemplary, and the chronological proximity of language revival and the creation of the state make Hebrew and Israel particularly revealing of these processes.
Sifre Zuta on Numbers is one of two Tannaitic halakhic midrashim that belonged to the ‘Zuta schoo... more Sifre Zuta on Numbers is one of two Tannaitic halakhic midrashim that belonged to the ‘Zuta school,’ a southern rabbinic center situated in Lod. A preliminary examination of a geniza fragment of the text (MS Firkovich) yielded three groups of linguistic features: (a) authentic features of Rabbinic Hebrew, which demonstrate the high quality of the text preserved in the manuscript; (b) lexical connections with Biblical Hebrew and Palestinian piyyuṭ, which point to lexical and stylistic singularity within rabbinic literature; (c) unique linguistic features that suggest grammatical (and perhaps dialectical) singularity. Several connections between the language of Sifre Zuta and another southern idiom, Qumranic Hebrew, were identified.
This paper traces the history of two Hebrew items that are largely considered incorrect in contem... more This paper traces the history of two Hebrew items that are largely considered incorrect in contemporary normative discourse, but appear in ancient Hebrew texts.
In Classical Hebrew, and most significantly in Rabbinic Hebrew, adverbial prepositions often become subordination particles with the addition of the particle ש-. However, some of these constructions are viewed by certain Modern Hebrew speakers, especially in the educational system, as substandard usage. The first part of the paper portrays the lexico-syntactic development of בגלל ש- and למרות ש- versus the history of their normative status.
In the second part of the paper the usage of the Aramaic construct form ברת (‘daughter of’) in Hebrew is discussed. ברת is found in Classical Aramaic (alongside its alternative בת, which is also the Hebrew cognate); but unlike its masculine counterpart בר (‘son of’) it is very rarely used in Classical Hebrew. In later times, however, the originally Aramaic בר and ברת were integrated into Hebrew with several figurative meanings (e.g., expressing ability, like -able in English and French), but normativists often consider ברת a mistake and recommend replacing it with בת (possibly due to the influence of Babylonian Aramaic, where בת is the prevalent construct form).
Second Temple Hebrew (Late Biblical Hebrew, Ben Sira, and Qumranic Hebrew) makes predicative use ... more Second Temple Hebrew (Late Biblical Hebrew, Ben Sira, and Qumranic Hebrew) makes predicative use of two seemingly similar constructions: לא + infinitive and אין + infinitive. A syntactic examination of the two from a historical perspective, in light of morphosyntactic changes in the verbal system of Second Temple Hebrew and its sentence patterns, reveals that in spite of the similarities between them in form and in function, these are two separate constructions that evolved independently. The former, initially a verbal phrase, is the negative counterpart of the affirmative predicative infinitive, and the latter, which constitutes a complete predication, is an offshoot of the existential pattern יש/אין + nominal phrase. In the Hebrew style of the Second Temple period the difference between them narrowed, so that they were occasionally interchangeable.
The verbal noun שְׂרִיפָה ‘burning’ in Rabbinic Hebrew stands in contrast to its biblical counter... more The verbal noun שְׂרִיפָה ‘burning’ in Rabbinic Hebrew stands in contrast to its biblical counterpart שְׂרֵפָה ‘fire’ both in form and in function. This contrast is not, as have been suggested, a simple alternation between nominal patterns or between vowels, but rather part of a wide morphological change in Rabbinic Hebrew: the transition of the verbal nouns into a grammatical category, which can be seen in other forms and other nominal patterns as well. The inherited biblical forms that, like שְׂרֵפָה, did not fit the new alignment and were not considered appropriate verbal nouns any more, were kept in use and maintained their potential lexical status, but for expressing the verbal noun they were often replaced by other patterns.
The research of Classical Hebrew tends to focus on the major ancient corpora: Biblical Hebrew, Ra... more The research of Classical Hebrew tends to focus on the major ancient corpora: Biblical Hebrew, Rabbinic Hebrew, and Qumranic Hebrew, and regularly neglects more minor manifestations of the language. Uri Mor’s book Judean Hebrew offers an examination of the language of a small yet revealing corpus: the Hebrew documents from Judaea between the First and the Second Revolts—a group of legal documents, military letters, and other everyday-life inscriptions, written in the Judean Desert region and discovered in the 20th century in Masada and the refuge caves on the western shore of the Dead Sea. The linguistic importance of the documents lies in the direct evidence that they provide on the character of Hebrew during the turbulent period between the destruction of the Second Temple and the final redaction of the Mishna. The typical phonetic spellings in the documents, e.g. אנמקבל (=אני מקבל ‘I receive’), תמקום (=את המקום ‘the site’ [accusative]), and their non-literary, non-prestigious nature offer an intriguing glance into writing practices and speech customs of Hebrew users in ordinary circumstances, recording a legal process or inscribing a military edict. Judean Hebrew describes and analyzes this Hebrew idiom and determines its status in the sociolinguistic realm of Palestine. The detailed study of the linguistic features and their analysis reveal that in this period Hebrew was a living language in Judea, despite the undeniable influence of Aramaic, and that it was typologically similar—but not identical—to Rabbinic Hebrew.
This article investigates two phenomena in Judean Hebrew and Aramaic, both of which concern not o... more This article investigates two phenomena in Judean Hebrew and Aramaic, both of which concern not only the Judean corpora but also more profound questions of lexicography, dialectology, realia, and language contact. a. The semantic field of taking and receiving (and buying) – לקח was partially replaced by other verbs (נטל, נשא, and קיבל in Hebrew, נסב and נשא in Aramaic), and a semantic dissimilation evolved between קנה ‘acquire’ and לקח/זבן ‘buy’ (Hebrew/Aramaic). Judean Hebrew exhibits significant resemblance to Rabbinic Hebrew on the one hand and the influence of Aramaic legal formulae on the other. b. The verb עימר/עמר (Hebrew/Aramaic) in the letters – a survey of the various interpretations suggested for this verb leads to the conclusion that the most plausible is ‘gather’ or ‘gather and prepare.’
The paper offers a comprehensive description and analysis of the orthographic conventions and pho... more The paper offers a comprehensive description and analysis of the orthographic conventions and phonological features in the two Genizah fragments of the halakhic Midrash Sifre Zuta on Numbers: MS Saint Petersburg (Firkovich) and MS Oxford. Orthographically, the two fragments are comparable with the best manuscripts of Rabbinic Literature, and contain an abundant of typical rabbinic orthographic forms. This affirms, on the one hand, the reliability of the text and the high quality of its transmission; on the other hand, it might suggest that some of its unique features were modified in order to resemble ordinary rabbinic manuscripts. The Phonologically data similarly reveal close resemblance to reliable manuscripts of rabbinic literature, significantly to Palestinian witnesses. However, in several details, for example h–ḥ interchanges, the Genizah fragments are in alignment with extra-rabbinic sources of southern Palestine.
A common assumption among scholars of rabbinic literature is that the halakhic midrash Sifre Zuta... more A common assumption among scholars of rabbinic literature is that the halakhic midrash Sifre Zuta on Numbers is stylistically and halakhically distinct from other tannaitic midrashim, but to date this supposition has not been supported by comprehensive structural (grammatical) analysis. This paper, part of a larger project on the language of Sifre Zuta on Numbers, offers an initial step in this direction by examining the formation of six distinctive nominal forms found in Genizah copies of Sifre Zuta on Numbers: גומים ‘hollows’ (rather than גומות); מכתישה ‘mortar’ (rather than מכתשת); יוריות ‘cauldrons’ (rather than יורות); דוליות ‘buckets’ (rather than דליים, etc.); פונדקין ‘inns’ (rather than פונדקאות, etc.); and יצורה ‘pottery work’ (rather than יצירה or צורה). This group of six nouns demonstrates that the Genizah documents preserve ancient, authentic traditions of Mishnaic Hebrew, including features which deviate from so-called standard Mishnaic Hebrew. However, it appears that the nonstandard phenomena do not add up to a significant typological, i.e., dialectal, distinction.
Contemporary popular discourse on Hebrew prescriptivism betrays an interesting ambivalence: accep... more Contemporary popular discourse on Hebrew prescriptivism betrays an interesting ambivalence: acceptance of institutional standards on the one hand and objection to normative intervention on the other. This ambivalence can be traced to the tension between the Language Committee and the Palestine Teachers’ Association during the Second Aliya. Both promoted a modern national language, but the former was in favor of a systematic language planning grounded in the past, while the latter was in favor of spontaneous language implementation aimed at the present and the future. In the 1950s, a similar tension developed between the older generation of parents and educators and the Sabras (native speakers), whose generational identity had crystallized during the pre-State period. The language promoted by the former group was an institutional variety bound to a prescriptive norm and the tradition of Jewish texts, while that promoted by the latter was a native variety bound to conventional norms and real-life experience. The transition from settlement to state in 1948 and the natural generational shift led to normative intensification in both camps – vigorous planning activity vs. promotion of the prestige of the Sabra variety. The tension in these two episodes led to a deep cultural rift – one that is familiar to every Hebrew speaker in Israel – between the formal language of the state, which reflects a national outlook of unification and statehood, and the natural language of Hebrew speakers, which reflects a more individualistic and popular national outlook. A crosslinguistic perspective reveals a resemblance between Israeli Hebrew and European Late Dialect Selection languages, suggesting that the ambivalence towards prescriptivism in fact indicates ambivalence towards the national language, which is perceived, simultaneously, as a manifestation of a stable national identity and an institutional interference in individual speech.
Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew. Background, Morpholexicon, and Syntax, 2020
This chapter surveys prescriptive activity and discourse in Modern Hebrew from historical and soc... more This chapter surveys prescriptive activity and discourse in Modern Hebrew from historical and sociolinguistic perspectives. The first prescriptive efforts in the pre-Mandate period (up to 1918) were part of an intensive language planning process aimed at creating a uniform functional national language based on classical Hebrew sources. After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the nationalistic tone of public discourse in Israel increased, and with it prescriptive activity, up until the 1970s. At a very early stage in the formation of the speech community, even prior to World War 1, two types of ideal (hegemonic) Hebrew began to emerge: institutional (planned), reflecting a nationalistic and puristic stance grounded in the Jewish past, and native (unplanned), reflecting a contrasting anti-institutional stance. Both types are still active in contemporary public discourse in Israel, and together constitute a complex approach to prescriptivism and the concept of correct language.
Mishnaic Hebrew shows considerable linguistic variation, which may be narrowed down to three phas... more Mishnaic Hebrew shows considerable linguistic variation, which may be narrowed down to three phases: the original living language, its literary crystallization, and its written and oral transmission. While scholars of Mishnaic Hebrew are well aware of this fact, they generally do not explore it and neglect to utilize tools of variationist linguistics and historical sociolinguistics in order to enhance their understanding of the language and the motivations of its users. This paper calls for a careful integration of variationist and sociolinguistic methods into the research on Mishnaic Hebrew, and offers two case studies that demonstrate the advantages of this approach. The first case study concerns the distribution of the two feminine singular demonstrative pronouns זו and זאת, for which I argues for a variationist rather than structuralist analysis. The second case study concerns a metalinguistic discussion in tractate ‛Eruvin of the Babylonian Talmud, which is claimed here to demonstrate the ideological nature of rabbinic literature and its linguistic implications.
The word מספר ‘number’ in Ancient Hebrew is a floating quantifier: it can either follow a noun ph... more The word מספר ‘number’ in Ancient Hebrew is a floating quantifier: it can either follow a noun phrase (NP), e.g., ימים מספר ‘a few days’ (lit. days [of] number; Num 9:20), or precede it, e.g., מספר ימים ‘a few days’ (Ben Sira 41:13, MS Masada). An intermediary stage between the original meaning ‘number’ and the quantifier meaning ‘a few’ appears to be ‘limited, predetermined number’, e.g., מספר ימי חיו ‘the limited days of his life’ (Eccl 5:17). Throughout the history of Hebrew the NP+מספר order prevailed, but from the Jewish Enlightenment period onwards the reverse order is found as well, and it is conventional in Israeli Hebrew. Nonetheless, many copyeditors nowadays consider the construction מספר+NP incorrect. Online discussions on this matter in professional forums suggest that this is because copyeditors favor simple unequivocal rules and rely heavily on canonical prescriptive literature.
The paper characterizes the PP–nominal (prepositional phrase + nominalization) pattern in Biblica... more The paper characterizes the PP–nominal (prepositional phrase + nominalization) pattern in Biblical Hebrew and Rabbinic Hebrew (e.g., עלינו לעשות ‘it is our duty to do’) and discusses its relation to the so-called evaluative or חג״ם pattern (e.g., טוב לנו עבֹד ‘it would have been better for us to serve’). In spite of the resemblance between the two, it is argued that the former is a distinct pattern both historically and typologically, but that both share similar generalizations within predicate-initial sentence patterns. Historically, the PP-nominal sentences are a unique case of prepositional phrase predicate sentences with simple noun phrase subjects, having fixed word order and nominalized subjects. Typologically, they are essentially marked for person. Changes in the PP-nominal pattern in Rabbinic Hebrew suggest that it grew closer to the evaluative pattern
Prescriptive discourse ordinarily conceals ideological stances in a formal discussion of authorit... more Prescriptive discourse ordinarily conceals ideological stances in a formal discussion of authoritativeness and correctness. In עברית לכל רגע (‘Hebrew for all seasons’, Haifa 1978), a prescriptive Hebrew guidebook which comprises 877 short conversations, the straightforward occupation with gender hierarchy presents a rare opportunity to examine gender alignment in prescriptive discourse of Hebrew and to expose patterns of authority and exclusion in Israeli society of the late 1970s. The book adopts a traditional viewpoint which associates men with learnedness and restraint, and women with disorganized thought and insecurity. This is achieved through intensive reliance on Jewish texts on the one hand and a popular trope (“the foolish wife and her husband”) on the other. Women are constructed as a symbolic threat to social structure and standard language, and by putting them in their place the sociolinguistic order is secured. The book reflects an additional, less apparent, class alignment. It pretends to address an imagined wide audience of Hebrew users who share a national identity and behavior patterns, but the content of the conversations and the construction of an ideal variety of Hebrew disclose a distinction between ‘proper’ citizens – Ashkenazi Jews and native-born Israelis – who aspire to proper language and proper behavior, and other Hebrew users. These two patterns of alignment give expression to fears of social change felt by the male Ashkenazi Israeli elite: a feminist awakening in Israel during the 1970s, and an increase in the power of Sephardic Israelis in consequence of the weakening of the Ashkenazi elite and the ascent of the Likud party in the 1977 elections. It is suggested that the book attempts to restore the authority of the old elite through forming an all-national “legitimate” discourse.
Modern Hebrew (MH) presents an interesting case of a national language whose crystallisation invo... more Modern Hebrew (MH) presents an interesting case of a national language whose crystallisation involved not only intensive planning, but also unplanned processes of stratification, which have resulted in a continuous reevaluation and reallocation of existing features. The role of nonclassical inherited elements in this progression is revealing, as they emblematise popular ‘authentic’ usage on the one hand and diasporic (i.e. nonnative) premodern being on the other, thus exposing the tension between standard and nonstandard language. This study examines the stylistic status of two such elements, be'im ‘if’ and bixde ‘for’, ‘in order’, in two major phases in the short history of MH, in order to characterise the prescriptive discourse of MH and its national undertones.
Nominal predication where no obvious subject is present is a common pattern in Modern Hebrew and ... more Nominal predication where no obvious subject is present is a common pattern in Modern Hebrew and has been described and analyzed in numerous works. In this paper we trace the history of the pattern and propose a historical scenario to account for its innovation. We argue that the pattern is already attested in Amarna Canaanite. Contrary to what is claimed by others, we further argue that this pattern has a subject, and suggest tests to prove that. In Rabbinic Hebrew, the distinction between this non-canonical pattern and a canonical equivalent with a covert subject was neutralized in certain syntactic and semantic contexts. This led to reinterpretation of canonical patterns and to further expansion of the non-canonical pattern.
The paper examines three normative details in Hebrew from three perspectives – normative, linguis... more The paper examines three normative details in Hebrew from three perspectives – normative, linguistic, and sociolinguistic: (a) באם ‘if’ instead of normative אם; (b) בכדי ‘for, in order’ instead of normative כדי; (c) נקט ב- ‘take (measures, stand, etc.)’ instead of normative נקט (את). The first two are documented, from the seventeenth century onwards, in various genres of written Hebrew, both literary (e.g. Mendele Mokher Sfarim) and non-literary (e.g. the responsa literature and municipal posters). The third, originally a Babylonian Aramaic verb, is documented very sparsely from the sixteenth century onwards and becomes more widespread in late-nineteenth-century nonliterary genres, presumably as a result of analogy to the Hebrew verb אחז ‘seize’. All three are condemned as mistakes in the prescriptive literature of the 1950s and 1960s – but not anteriorly – and in the accompanying normativist discourse. The study of these three seemingly unequivocal cases reveals two conduits that facilitated the infiltration of nonclassical elements into Modern Hebrew: formal nonliterary genres and popular satiric literature. It also suggests that, during the 1950s, following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the Hebrew prescriptive discourse became nationalistic and necessitated a reevaluation of the inherited Hebrew inventory. From this new perspective, nonclassical elements such as the three discussed here were considered undesirable.
This paper traces the emergence of spoken native Hebrew as a legitimate language in the years fol... more This paper traces the emergence of spoken native Hebrew as a legitimate language in the years following the establishment of the state of Israel. It discusses the relationship between the revival of Hebrew, the establishment of the state, and the ideology that shaped the spoken language of this period and that distinguished it from the Hebrew of the previous, nonnative, pioneer generation (the “halutsim” of the third and fourth waves of immigration to Palestine). In order to tap into speakers’ attitudes both toward spoken native Hebrew and toward the nonnative Hebrew of the previous generation, the paper focuses on a particular motif in the first four programs of Ha-Gashash Ha-hiver trio (1964–1969). Register elevation is a recurring motif in the trio’s skits, and—as the term suggests—it involves the use of a register that is higher than what the discourse circumstances actually call for. Jokes based on register elevation are particularly revealing of the linguistic attitudes of the time because of the complex sociolinguistic knowledge that jokes in this category presuppose. Through exaggeration and ridicule, such jokes exemplify the detachment of the formal Hebrew of the public sphere from the spoken language of its native speakers. The attitude toward formal Hebrew expressed in the skits is part of a broader ideological stance toward the contemporary Hebrew that dominated the Ashkenazi-Sabre culture of the time, including both the stilted and often ceremonious nonnative Hebrew of the previous generation as well as the emerging native spoken variety. The relationship between these varieties was redefined during the 1950s and early 1960s, as part of broader generational, class, and ethnic shifts and as their direct reflection. At least until the late 1940s, native Hebrew had been considered inadequate, a child language that with time and correction might come to resemble the “proper” Hebrew designed by language planners in the spirit of the classical texts. It is only in the course of the 1950s and 1960s that the Hebrew of native speakers began to gain acceptance as a legitimate language, appropriate for the public sphere. Our project offers a preliminary step in the construction of an archive of the history of Hebrew speech. A fuller study of the history of speech styles and varieties will fill a gap in the study of the Hebrew revival, and it will contribute to our understanding of the significance of Hebrew speech in the context of nation building and the establishment of the state. Spoken language and the ideologies that shape it play a significant role in the creation of embodied subjectivities and shared identities. From this perspective, the relation between Hebrew and the state of Israel is exemplary, and the chronological proximity of language revival and the creation of the state make Hebrew and Israel particularly revealing of these processes.
Sifre Zuta on Numbers is one of two Tannaitic halakhic midrashim that belonged to the ‘Zuta schoo... more Sifre Zuta on Numbers is one of two Tannaitic halakhic midrashim that belonged to the ‘Zuta school,’ a southern rabbinic center situated in Lod. A preliminary examination of a geniza fragment of the text (MS Firkovich) yielded three groups of linguistic features: (a) authentic features of Rabbinic Hebrew, which demonstrate the high quality of the text preserved in the manuscript; (b) lexical connections with Biblical Hebrew and Palestinian piyyuṭ, which point to lexical and stylistic singularity within rabbinic literature; (c) unique linguistic features that suggest grammatical (and perhaps dialectical) singularity. Several connections between the language of Sifre Zuta and another southern idiom, Qumranic Hebrew, were identified.
This paper traces the history of two Hebrew items that are largely considered incorrect in contem... more This paper traces the history of two Hebrew items that are largely considered incorrect in contemporary normative discourse, but appear in ancient Hebrew texts.
In Classical Hebrew, and most significantly in Rabbinic Hebrew, adverbial prepositions often become subordination particles with the addition of the particle ש-. However, some of these constructions are viewed by certain Modern Hebrew speakers, especially in the educational system, as substandard usage. The first part of the paper portrays the lexico-syntactic development of בגלל ש- and למרות ש- versus the history of their normative status.
In the second part of the paper the usage of the Aramaic construct form ברת (‘daughter of’) in Hebrew is discussed. ברת is found in Classical Aramaic (alongside its alternative בת, which is also the Hebrew cognate); but unlike its masculine counterpart בר (‘son of’) it is very rarely used in Classical Hebrew. In later times, however, the originally Aramaic בר and ברת were integrated into Hebrew with several figurative meanings (e.g., expressing ability, like -able in English and French), but normativists often consider ברת a mistake and recommend replacing it with בת (possibly due to the influence of Babylonian Aramaic, where בת is the prevalent construct form).
Second Temple Hebrew (Late Biblical Hebrew, Ben Sira, and Qumranic Hebrew) makes predicative use ... more Second Temple Hebrew (Late Biblical Hebrew, Ben Sira, and Qumranic Hebrew) makes predicative use of two seemingly similar constructions: לא + infinitive and אין + infinitive. A syntactic examination of the two from a historical perspective, in light of morphosyntactic changes in the verbal system of Second Temple Hebrew and its sentence patterns, reveals that in spite of the similarities between them in form and in function, these are two separate constructions that evolved independently. The former, initially a verbal phrase, is the negative counterpart of the affirmative predicative infinitive, and the latter, which constitutes a complete predication, is an offshoot of the existential pattern יש/אין + nominal phrase. In the Hebrew style of the Second Temple period the difference between them narrowed, so that they were occasionally interchangeable.
The verbal noun שְׂרִיפָה ‘burning’ in Rabbinic Hebrew stands in contrast to its biblical counter... more The verbal noun שְׂרִיפָה ‘burning’ in Rabbinic Hebrew stands in contrast to its biblical counterpart שְׂרֵפָה ‘fire’ both in form and in function. This contrast is not, as have been suggested, a simple alternation between nominal patterns or between vowels, but rather part of a wide morphological change in Rabbinic Hebrew: the transition of the verbal nouns into a grammatical category, which can be seen in other forms and other nominal patterns as well. The inherited biblical forms that, like שְׂרֵפָה, did not fit the new alignment and were not considered appropriate verbal nouns any more, were kept in use and maintained their potential lexical status, but for expressing the verbal noun they were often replaced by other patterns.
This paper examines a set of linguistic parallels between Judean Hebrew and Aramaic, on the one h... more This paper examines a set of linguistic parallels between Judean Hebrew and Aramaic, on the one hand, and Punic and Late Punic, on the other, in order to examine J. T. Milik’s 1957 claim for a Hebrew-Phoenician koine in southern Palestine. The analysis of the evidence indeed indicates language contact (rather than parallel development), but does not support Milik’s notion of a southern koine.
This new collection of papers, which attempts to explore the factors that shaped Modern Hebrew sy... more This new collection of papers, which attempts to explore the factors that shaped Modern Hebrew syntax, is addressed to both scholars of Hebrew and linguists not well acquainted with Hebrew, who are intrigued by interesting cases of linguistic change, language contact, language acquisition, and language planning. Each of the case studies found in the volume’s twenty-four chapters, and the introductory essay, point to a complex integration of factors, primarily transmission of premodern traits, influence of contact languages, and internal development. To this one must add the intensive activity of language planners, prescriptivists, and teachers. The balance between these factors varies from generation to generation and from one phenomenon to another, but it appears that they all played an essential role in the development of Modern Hebrew.
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The linguistic importance of the documents lies in the direct evidence that they provide on the character of Hebrew during the turbulent period between the destruction of the Second Temple and the final redaction of the Mishna. The typical phonetic spellings in the documents, e.g. אנמקבל (=אני מקבל ‘I receive’), תמקום (=את המקום ‘the site’ [accusative]), and their non-literary, non-prestigious nature offer an intriguing glance into writing practices and speech customs of Hebrew users in ordinary circumstances, recording a legal process or inscribing a military edict. Judean Hebrew describes and analyzes this Hebrew idiom and determines its status in the sociolinguistic realm of Palestine. The detailed study of the linguistic features and their analysis reveal that in this period Hebrew was a living language in Judea, despite the undeniable influence of Aramaic, and that it was typologically similar—but not identical—to Rabbinic Hebrew.
a. The semantic field of taking and receiving (and buying) – לקח was partially replaced by other verbs (נטל, נשא, and קיבל in Hebrew, נסב and נשא in Aramaic), and a semantic dissimilation evolved between קנה ‘acquire’ and לקח/זבן ‘buy’ (Hebrew/Aramaic). Judean Hebrew exhibits significant resemblance to Rabbinic Hebrew on the one hand and the influence of Aramaic legal formulae on the other.
b. The verb עימר/עמר (Hebrew/Aramaic) in the letters – a survey of the various interpretations suggested for this verb leads to the conclusion that the most plausible is ‘gather’ or ‘gather and prepare.’
Orthographically, the two fragments are comparable with the best manuscripts of Rabbinic Literature, and contain an abundant of typical rabbinic orthographic forms. This affirms, on the one hand, the reliability of the text and the high quality of its transmission; on the other hand, it might suggest that some of its unique features were modified in order to resemble ordinary rabbinic manuscripts.
The Phonologically data similarly reveal close resemblance to reliable manuscripts of rabbinic literature, significantly to Palestinian witnesses. However, in several details, for example h–ḥ interchanges, the Genizah fragments are in alignment with extra-rabbinic sources of southern Palestine.
This group of six nouns demonstrates that the Genizah documents preserve ancient, authentic traditions of Mishnaic Hebrew, including features which deviate from so-called standard Mishnaic Hebrew. However, it appears that the nonstandard phenomena do not add up to a significant typological, i.e., dialectal, distinction.
In the 1950s, a similar tension developed between the older generation of parents and educators and the Sabras (native speakers), whose generational identity had crystallized during the pre-State period. The language promoted by the former group was an institutional variety bound to a prescriptive norm and the tradition of Jewish texts, while that promoted by the latter was a native variety bound to conventional norms and real-life experience. The transition from settlement to state in 1948 and the natural generational shift led to normative intensification in both camps – vigorous planning activity vs. promotion of the prestige of the Sabra variety.
The tension in these two episodes led to a deep cultural rift – one that is familiar to every Hebrew speaker in Israel – between the formal language of the state, which reflects a national outlook of unification and statehood, and the natural language of Hebrew speakers, which reflects a more individualistic and popular national outlook.
A crosslinguistic perspective reveals a resemblance between Israeli Hebrew and European Late Dialect Selection languages, suggesting that the ambivalence towards prescriptivism in fact indicates ambivalence towards the national language, which is perceived, simultaneously, as a manifestation of a stable national identity and an institutional interference in individual speech.
The book reflects an additional, less apparent, class alignment. It pretends to address an imagined wide audience of Hebrew users who share a national identity and behavior patterns, but the content of the conversations and the construction of an ideal variety of Hebrew disclose a distinction between ‘proper’ citizens – Ashkenazi Jews and native-born Israelis – who aspire to proper language and proper behavior, and other Hebrew users.
These two patterns of alignment give expression to fears of social change felt by the male Ashkenazi Israeli elite: a feminist awakening in Israel during the 1970s, and an increase in the power of Sephardic Israelis in consequence of the weakening of the Ashkenazi elite and the ascent of the Likud party in the 1977 elections. It is suggested that the book attempts to restore the authority of the old elite through forming an all-national “legitimate” discourse.
The study of these three seemingly unequivocal cases reveals two conduits that facilitated the infiltration of nonclassical elements into Modern Hebrew: formal nonliterary genres and popular satiric literature. It also suggests that, during the 1950s, following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the Hebrew prescriptive discourse became nationalistic and necessitated a reevaluation of the inherited Hebrew inventory. From this new perspective, nonclassical elements such as the three discussed here were considered undesirable.
The attitude toward formal Hebrew expressed in the skits is part of a broader ideological stance toward the contemporary Hebrew that dominated the Ashkenazi-Sabre culture of the time, including both the stilted and often ceremonious nonnative Hebrew of the previous generation as well as the emerging native spoken variety. The relationship between these varieties was redefined during the 1950s and early 1960s, as part of broader generational, class, and ethnic shifts and as their direct reflection. At least until the late 1940s, native Hebrew had been considered inadequate, a child language that with time and correction might come to resemble the “proper” Hebrew designed by language planners in the spirit of the classical texts. It is only in the course of the 1950s and 1960s that the Hebrew of native speakers began to gain acceptance as a legitimate language, appropriate for the public sphere.
Our project offers a preliminary step in the construction of an archive of the history of Hebrew speech. A fuller study of the history of speech styles and varieties will fill a gap in the study of the Hebrew revival, and it will contribute to our understanding of the significance of Hebrew speech in the context of nation building and the establishment of the state. Spoken language and the ideologies that shape it play a significant role in the creation of embodied subjectivities and shared identities. From this perspective, the relation between Hebrew and the state of Israel is exemplary, and the chronological proximity of language revival and the creation of the state make Hebrew and Israel particularly revealing of these processes.
In Classical Hebrew, and most significantly in Rabbinic Hebrew, adverbial prepositions often become subordination particles with the addition of the particle ש-. However, some of these constructions are viewed by certain Modern Hebrew speakers, especially in the educational system, as substandard usage. The first part of the paper portrays the lexico-syntactic development of בגלל ש- and למרות ש- versus the history of their normative status.
In the second part of the paper the usage of the Aramaic construct form ברת (‘daughter of’) in Hebrew is discussed. ברת is found in Classical Aramaic (alongside its alternative בת, which is also the Hebrew cognate); but unlike its masculine counterpart בר (‘son of’) it is very rarely used in Classical Hebrew. In later times, however, the originally Aramaic בר and ברת were integrated into Hebrew with several figurative meanings (e.g., expressing ability, like -able in English and French), but normativists often consider ברת a mistake and recommend replacing it with בת (possibly due to the influence of Babylonian Aramaic, where בת is the prevalent construct form).
The linguistic importance of the documents lies in the direct evidence that they provide on the character of Hebrew during the turbulent period between the destruction of the Second Temple and the final redaction of the Mishna. The typical phonetic spellings in the documents, e.g. אנמקבל (=אני מקבל ‘I receive’), תמקום (=את המקום ‘the site’ [accusative]), and their non-literary, non-prestigious nature offer an intriguing glance into writing practices and speech customs of Hebrew users in ordinary circumstances, recording a legal process or inscribing a military edict. Judean Hebrew describes and analyzes this Hebrew idiom and determines its status in the sociolinguistic realm of Palestine. The detailed study of the linguistic features and their analysis reveal that in this period Hebrew was a living language in Judea, despite the undeniable influence of Aramaic, and that it was typologically similar—but not identical—to Rabbinic Hebrew.
a. The semantic field of taking and receiving (and buying) – לקח was partially replaced by other verbs (נטל, נשא, and קיבל in Hebrew, נסב and נשא in Aramaic), and a semantic dissimilation evolved between קנה ‘acquire’ and לקח/זבן ‘buy’ (Hebrew/Aramaic). Judean Hebrew exhibits significant resemblance to Rabbinic Hebrew on the one hand and the influence of Aramaic legal formulae on the other.
b. The verb עימר/עמר (Hebrew/Aramaic) in the letters – a survey of the various interpretations suggested for this verb leads to the conclusion that the most plausible is ‘gather’ or ‘gather and prepare.’
Orthographically, the two fragments are comparable with the best manuscripts of Rabbinic Literature, and contain an abundant of typical rabbinic orthographic forms. This affirms, on the one hand, the reliability of the text and the high quality of its transmission; on the other hand, it might suggest that some of its unique features were modified in order to resemble ordinary rabbinic manuscripts.
The Phonologically data similarly reveal close resemblance to reliable manuscripts of rabbinic literature, significantly to Palestinian witnesses. However, in several details, for example h–ḥ interchanges, the Genizah fragments are in alignment with extra-rabbinic sources of southern Palestine.
This group of six nouns demonstrates that the Genizah documents preserve ancient, authentic traditions of Mishnaic Hebrew, including features which deviate from so-called standard Mishnaic Hebrew. However, it appears that the nonstandard phenomena do not add up to a significant typological, i.e., dialectal, distinction.
In the 1950s, a similar tension developed between the older generation of parents and educators and the Sabras (native speakers), whose generational identity had crystallized during the pre-State period. The language promoted by the former group was an institutional variety bound to a prescriptive norm and the tradition of Jewish texts, while that promoted by the latter was a native variety bound to conventional norms and real-life experience. The transition from settlement to state in 1948 and the natural generational shift led to normative intensification in both camps – vigorous planning activity vs. promotion of the prestige of the Sabra variety.
The tension in these two episodes led to a deep cultural rift – one that is familiar to every Hebrew speaker in Israel – between the formal language of the state, which reflects a national outlook of unification and statehood, and the natural language of Hebrew speakers, which reflects a more individualistic and popular national outlook.
A crosslinguistic perspective reveals a resemblance between Israeli Hebrew and European Late Dialect Selection languages, suggesting that the ambivalence towards prescriptivism in fact indicates ambivalence towards the national language, which is perceived, simultaneously, as a manifestation of a stable national identity and an institutional interference in individual speech.
The book reflects an additional, less apparent, class alignment. It pretends to address an imagined wide audience of Hebrew users who share a national identity and behavior patterns, but the content of the conversations and the construction of an ideal variety of Hebrew disclose a distinction between ‘proper’ citizens – Ashkenazi Jews and native-born Israelis – who aspire to proper language and proper behavior, and other Hebrew users.
These two patterns of alignment give expression to fears of social change felt by the male Ashkenazi Israeli elite: a feminist awakening in Israel during the 1970s, and an increase in the power of Sephardic Israelis in consequence of the weakening of the Ashkenazi elite and the ascent of the Likud party in the 1977 elections. It is suggested that the book attempts to restore the authority of the old elite through forming an all-national “legitimate” discourse.
The study of these three seemingly unequivocal cases reveals two conduits that facilitated the infiltration of nonclassical elements into Modern Hebrew: formal nonliterary genres and popular satiric literature. It also suggests that, during the 1950s, following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the Hebrew prescriptive discourse became nationalistic and necessitated a reevaluation of the inherited Hebrew inventory. From this new perspective, nonclassical elements such as the three discussed here were considered undesirable.
The attitude toward formal Hebrew expressed in the skits is part of a broader ideological stance toward the contemporary Hebrew that dominated the Ashkenazi-Sabre culture of the time, including both the stilted and often ceremonious nonnative Hebrew of the previous generation as well as the emerging native spoken variety. The relationship between these varieties was redefined during the 1950s and early 1960s, as part of broader generational, class, and ethnic shifts and as their direct reflection. At least until the late 1940s, native Hebrew had been considered inadequate, a child language that with time and correction might come to resemble the “proper” Hebrew designed by language planners in the spirit of the classical texts. It is only in the course of the 1950s and 1960s that the Hebrew of native speakers began to gain acceptance as a legitimate language, appropriate for the public sphere.
Our project offers a preliminary step in the construction of an archive of the history of Hebrew speech. A fuller study of the history of speech styles and varieties will fill a gap in the study of the Hebrew revival, and it will contribute to our understanding of the significance of Hebrew speech in the context of nation building and the establishment of the state. Spoken language and the ideologies that shape it play a significant role in the creation of embodied subjectivities and shared identities. From this perspective, the relation between Hebrew and the state of Israel is exemplary, and the chronological proximity of language revival and the creation of the state make Hebrew and Israel particularly revealing of these processes.
In Classical Hebrew, and most significantly in Rabbinic Hebrew, adverbial prepositions often become subordination particles with the addition of the particle ש-. However, some of these constructions are viewed by certain Modern Hebrew speakers, especially in the educational system, as substandard usage. The first part of the paper portrays the lexico-syntactic development of בגלל ש- and למרות ש- versus the history of their normative status.
In the second part of the paper the usage of the Aramaic construct form ברת (‘daughter of’) in Hebrew is discussed. ברת is found in Classical Aramaic (alongside its alternative בת, which is also the Hebrew cognate); but unlike its masculine counterpart בר (‘son of’) it is very rarely used in Classical Hebrew. In later times, however, the originally Aramaic בר and ברת were integrated into Hebrew with several figurative meanings (e.g., expressing ability, like -able in English and French), but normativists often consider ברת a mistake and recommend replacing it with בת (possibly due to the influence of Babylonian Aramaic, where בת is the prevalent construct form).