The Schizoid Nature of Modern Hebrew

Download or read book The Schizoid Nature of Modern Hebrew written by Paul Wexler and published by Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. This book was released on 1990 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hebrew is regarded as a former living language which ceased to be a native language 1800 years ago, only to be given a spoken function anew in the late 19th century. Since the re-acquisition of a lost colloquial function has never been documented, Modern Hebrew has become an object of fascination among linguists and laymen alike.In this book the author claims- Modern Hebrew is not a direct continuation of monolingual Semitic Hebrew- Modern Hebrew was created when Yiddish speaker re-lexified their language to Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew- Yiddish is a Slavic language, derived from Sorbian and thus, Modern Hebrew is a Slavic LanguageThese claims raise a number of interesting questions: why do most speakers believe that Modern Hebrew is a Semitic language, what are the contributions of Modern Hebrew to the typology of diglossia, historical and genetic linguistics, universal grammar, 2nd language acquisition and political science?