New book: Hebrew Grammar

[LINCOM EUROPA]

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Modern Hebrew


ORA (RODRIGUE) SCHWARZWALD
Bar Ilan University

Modern Hebrew revival in Israel during the last century is a unique
phenomenon: a written language used by Jews over 1700 years for either
liturgy or writing has become a spoken language used for all purposes.
Although the revivers of Hebrew tried to base the spoken language on the
grammar of Hebrew classical periods, the phonetic and grammatical
structure of Modern Hebrew shows divergence from it due to various
factors.
        New words in Modern Hebrew are derived primarily in three ways: 1.
combination of a consonantal root with pattern, e.g. g-d-l+-i-e- > gidel
'raised,' g-d-l+mi--a- > migdal 'tower'; 2. stem + affix, e.g. bank+ay >
bankay 'banker,' migdal+i > migdali 'tower-like'; 3. blends, e.g. migdal
+ 'or 'light' > migdalor 'lighthouse.' Loan words are added from various
sources with some phonetic adaptation, e.g. bank, telefon, and can
follow Hebrew derivational rules, e.g. telefoni 'of the phone (adj),'
t-l-f-n+-i-e- > tilfen 'telephoned (v).'
        All verbs are derived by root and (seven) patterns' combination, unlike
nouns. There are three tenses and one mood in the verb. Nouns are either
masculine or feminine. Person inflection in the verbs is obligatory, and
so is preposition inflection. Nouns and adjectives are inflected for
number and gender, but possessive inflection is limited in nouns, e.g.
yadi ~ hayad  eli 'my hand.'
        Modern Hebrew is an SVO language with an alternating VSO word order
that was dominant in classical Hebrew. Topicalization and other word
order shifts are possible. Adjectives follow head nouns, but numeral
quantifiers precede them. Nominal sentences with no copula are very
common in Hebrew, e.g. hi yafa 'she (is) beautiful.' Copulative verbs
are obligatory in the past or the future tense.
        The lexicon of Modern Hebrew is composed of original Hebrew words from
all its language periods together with loan words. Semantic shifts occur
in many original words, however, a lot of the changes are due to loan
translations or loan shifts.

ISBN 3 89586 144 8
Languages of the World/Materials 127.
96pp. USD 36 / DM 64 / # 22.


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