Reflexification in Yiddish and in Israeli
Event Details
- Date:
- Wednesday, 12 September 2007
- Time:
- 2:30 pm - 3:45 pm
- Room:
- 437
- UQ Location:
- Michie Building (St Lucia)
- Event category(s):
Event Contact
- Name:
- Assoc Prof Ghil`ad Zuckermann
- Phone:
- 51445
- Email:
- gz@uq.edu.au
- Org. Unit:
- Communication and Arts
Event Description
- Full Description:
- Reflexification in Yiddish and in Israeli
Prof Paul Wexler
Tel Aviv University
This talk will briefly define the phenomenon of relexification in language, with special attention to a number of Jewish languages. The standard view defines Yiddish as a variant of Middle High German. In contrast, I argue that Yiddish is a merged West-East Slavic language which was relexified by non-Jewish converts to Judaism between the 9th and 12th centuries in two separate venues. In these events, the Slavic lexicon was primarily replaced by German roots, and secondarily by Hebrew and Aramaic roots, leaving the Slavic syntax, phonology and phonotactics largely intact. In the late 19th century, a small coterie of Yiddish speakers again relexified their language to Classical Hebrew words to create 'Modern Hebrew'. Hence, 'Modern Hebrew' - perhaps best called 'Israeli', following Zuckermann 1999 - having been relexified from Yiddish, should, like its parent Yiddish, be classified as a member of the Slavic language family. This model stands in stark opposition to the popular theory which views Israeli as the end result of a mystical unattested process of 'language revival'.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Professor Paul Wexler is the author of 14 books and over a hundred articles on Slavic and Jewish linguistic topics, mostly with a historical bent. Among his books are A historical phonology of Belorussian (Heidelberg 1977); Modern Hebrew: A Slavic language in search of a Semitic past (Wiesbaden 1990); The non-Jewish origins of the Sephardic Jews (Albany, NY 1996); Relexification in Creole and Non-Creole Languages (Wiesbaden 1997, with Julia Horvath, eds); Two-tiered relexification in Yiddish: Jews, Sorbs, Khazars and the Kiev-Polessian dialect (Berlin-New York 2002); Jewish and non-Jewish creators of Jewish languages (Wiesbaden 2006).
Directions to UQ
- Google Map:
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- Directions:
- St Lucia Campus | Gatton campus.
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