Yiddish

[John Dunn]

Further to the recent correspondence about Paul Wexler's views on the
origin of Yiddish, as someone who occasionally (preferably when
nobody's looking) tries on the hat of a historian of syntax, I don't
see anything necessarily implausible about the syntax of a language
being extensively reconfigured under the influence of other languages
with which it is in contact. Old Church Slavonic reproduces many of
the features of Greek syntax, and during the 18th century the various
influences of Latin, Polish, German and French led to major changes
in the syntax of written Russian; indeed many of the features which
distinguish the syntax of the present-day written Russian from its
spoken equivalent can, in my view, be attributed to the remains of
these influences.

It is true, however, that these are written languages, and a more
pertinent comparison would, I suppose, be with those Slavonic
languages where the spoken form has been influenced by German,
presumably Sorbian and perhaps Czech or Slovene.  I don't know enough
about either language to pre-judge the answer, but I would have
thought that if the syntax of spoken Sorbian were found to be
significantly less 'German' than that of Yiddish, that would be a
question which needed to be addressed.  Meanwhile, those who are
prepared to extend the boundaries of this discussion beyond the
Slavonic languages might wish to contemplate the influence of Celtic
on English syntax.

Incidentally, a further Wexler reference: 'Yiddish - the fifteenth
Slavonic language', in J.I. Press and F.E. Knowles (eds), Papers from
the fourth World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies
(Harrogate, July 1990): Language and Linguistics, Papers in Slavonic
Linguistics, III, London, 1996, pp. 253-58.  The paper itself is
longer than the reference.

John Dunn.

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