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סמינר מחלקתי

תאריך: 
ג', 02/04/201914:30-16:00
מיקום: 
חדר הסמינרים של ה-LLCC
מרצה: 
לילי כאהן וסוניה ימפולסקיה, יוניברסיטי קולג' לונדון

A Descriptive Grammar of Maskilic Hebrew

In this presentation we will discuss our current research project, a descriptive reference grammar of Maskilic Hebrew. Maskilic Hebrew is of great linguistic significance both because it can illuminate the nature and development of written Hebrew in the Ashkenazic Diaspora, and because of the insight it can give into the circumstances underpinning the emergence of Israeli Hebrew. However, despite its importance, Maskilic Hebrew has been subjected to little detailed linguistic analysis. 

In the presentation we will first provide an overview of the background to the grammar project, including the sociolinguistic heritage of the Maskilic Hebrew authors, the genres of texts which they produced (popular science, novels, short stories, news, letters, plays, and others), common misconceptions about Maskilic Hebrew (e.g. the idea that Maskilic authors comprised a small circle of elite intellectuals who strove to write in a purist biblical style lacking in practical everyday lexis), as opposed to the actual linguistic data attested in their writing, and the extent to which Maskilic Hebrew was used in Eastern Europe. We will also address our methodology and discuss the challenges inherent in the production of a reference grammar for a historical form of a language (e.g. decisions regarding which authors to include in the corpus, how to delineate the texts to be included, and issues regarding the use of databases). 

We will then go on to examine a number of noteworthy topics in Maskilic Hebrew grammar in order to provide a picture of the language’s structure. Topics to be examined include certain orthographic issues such as the spelling of loanwords; the Maskilic approach to noun gender, which includes a large category of nouns with common gender; the use of the 3rd person pronouns as polite 2nd person forms; the morphosyntax of numerals; and the use and morphology of a diverse range of loanwords as tools for lexical enrichment. We will analyse these phenomena within the context of the Maskilic relationship to earlier and later varieties of Hebrew, as well as to contemporaneous Hasidic Hebrew. We will also take into account influences from the authors’ Yiddish vernacular, as well as from German and Russian, which were major literary models in Eastern Europe in the 19th century.