Edition 1.2
12
December 2011
History of the Ancient and Modern Hebrew
Language
By David Steinberg
David.Steinberg@houseofdavid.ca
Home page http://www.houseofdavid.ca/
·
Excursus 5 - Growth in the Number and Range of Israeli Hebrew
Verbs
·
Excursus 6 - New Word Formation
·
Excursus 7 - Changes in Syntax
Excursus 5
Growth in the Number and Range of Israeli Hebrew Verbs
There
are two main methods:
1. By
extracting 3 or 4 consonant roots out of Hebrew or foreign nouns and forming
verbs in the piel/pual/hitpael forms. E.g. from telephone the verb tilfen
and from torpedo tirped
2.
For most roots, only 2 or 3 of the 7 main stems were in use in pre-modern
Hebrew. Israeli Hebrew has been able to massively activate unused
forms in order to create variants on the root idea. E.g. classically זרק was
used in the kal stem meaning to cast. Now it is still used in kal for
that idea but is also used , on the analogy of European languages, in
hiphil/huphal to mean to give (hiphil ) or receive (huphal) an injection. (See
Tene in
Select Bibliography below)
Israeli Hebrew has taken many inherited resources and
regularized their uses to enable it to closely parallel modern European
languages. A few items of note:
o
wide use of suffixes such as וּת to form abstract nouns and ֽי to freely form adjectives
o
use of what are essentially prefixes to freely form adverbs
e.g. באופן
o
the use of inherited particles in ways that closely
parallel the usages of European languages e.g. אֽי, בֽלְתֽי
For details see Glinert 1989 .
Changes in
Syntax
In Mishnaic and Israeli Hebrew Biblical Hebrew’s richly varied uses of the infinitives largely disappears
(see Gesenius pp 339-355; Williams, Segal p. 54 and Glinert in Select Bibliography). The infinitive construct prefixed by ל is now used mainly in ways
analogous to the English infinitive. Also, in Mishnaic and Israeli Hebrew
the “consecutive tenses” have disappeared thus changing the look and feel of the
language drastically.
Kutscher (see Select Bibliography below) wrote
“H Rosén has noted
a …
phenomenon which has changed the whole makeup of Israeli Hebrew –
its syntax.
“The
development of the “period”
with its many subordinate clauses has made Israeli Hebrew flexible enough to be
employed like any other modern (i.e. European) language. … Biblical Hebrew is to a large extent paratactic, i.e. it
prefers to coordinate sentences, (a start in the development of the modern
structure was made by) Mishnaic Hebrew (which) is much more syntactic, making
use of the subordinating ש (she) in all kinds of subordination.”
For more detailed discussion of some issues see Studies
in Modern Hebrew Syntax and Semantics ed., North-Holland Linguistic Series
32 1976 Peter Cole
Is Israeli
Hebrew Unique in Being a Western Language (semantics, use of tenses etc.) Under
a Semitic Skin (grammar, vocabulary, semantics, syntax)?
Interestingly, a well respected scholar of both Hebrew and
Arabic has shown the Modern Standard Arabic has developed in ways very closely
paralleling developments in Israeli Hebrew. See Joshua Blau's book "The
Renaissance of Modern Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic" (Berkeley: UC
Press, 1981.