The 'Schizoid' Nature of Modern Hebrew Linguistics:
A Contact Language in Search of a Genetic Past


Devon L. Strolovitch


Honors Thesis
Individual Major - Linguistics
Oberlin College
April 21, 1997

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Table of contents

Hebrew & Phonetic fontage

Back to languages, back home

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Oh, speak to me Yiddish, my Jewish land,
And I will speak Hebrew as a matter of course.

- Yankev Glatshteyn

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1. Introduction (.pdf format)

1.1. A Jewish language in Israel
1.2. Modern Hebrew and Israeli Hebrew
1.3. The Revival of Hebrew
1.4. Issues and objectives

2. Hebrew Diglossia (.pdf)

2.1. A Holy Tongue
2.2. The phonology of diglossia: Whole and Merged Hebrew
2.3. Language shift as linguistic change
2.4. The Ashkenazic substratum of Israeli Hebrew

3. Modern Hebrew Linguistics (.pdf)

3.1. Diachrony vs. synchrony
3.2. The description of Israeli Hebrew
3.3. Generativism and native Hebrew competence

4. The Study of Sound Change in Hebrew (.pdf)

4.1. Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Israeli
4.2. Grapho-phonology
4.3. Non-normativity and psychological reality

5. The Genealogy of Israeli Hebrew (.pdf)

5.1. Nativization as creolization
5.2. Semitic vs. Slavic: the Ashkenazic substratum revisited
5.3. The barometer of linguistic change
5.4. Non-genetic development: Abrupt Creolization

6. Conclusion (.pdf)

6.1. A Hebrew Esperanto?
6.2. Jewish linguistic unity

References (.pdf)

Appendix

1997 Devon L. Strolovitch