Palestinian Amoraic Hebrew As A Living Vernacular: An Indication From Morphosyntax
Presently, most scholars hold that the linguistic status of Rabbinic Hebrew from Byzantine Palestine (380-640 ce) is that of a dead literary language, influenced by Aramaic and earlier varieties of Hebrew, and that Hebrew had already died out as a spoken vernacular in the second or early third centu...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
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Published: |
Oxford University Press
[2020]
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In: |
Journal of Semitic studies
Year: 2020, Volume: 65, Issue: 2, Pages: 319-418 |
Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
Summary: | Presently, most scholars hold that the linguistic status of Rabbinic Hebrew from Byzantine Palestine (380-640 ce) is that of a dead literary language, influenced by Aramaic and earlier varieties of Hebrew, and that Hebrew had already died out as a spoken vernacular in the second or early third century ce. The sources for this variety are rabbinic texts produced by the Palestinian Amoraim and to a lesser degree, epigraphy. The article challenges this view, claiming that such opinions have not been based on a systematic morphosyntactic examination of Palestinian Amoraic Hebrew. The article presents such an analysis of a morphosyntactic structure, namely, pseudo-coordinated verb pairs. Two sub-structures are examined: (I) imperative + imperative and (II) imperative + yiqtol, in Palestinian Amoraic Hebrew, Tannaitic Hebrew, Biblical Hebrew and Jewish Palestinian Aramaic. Palestinian Amoraic Hebrew is found to clearly align with Tannaitic Hebrew, and not Biblical Hebrew and Jewish Palestinian Aramaic. |
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ISSN: | 1477-8556 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of Semitic studies
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jss/fgaa027 |