Hebrew Linguistics

Is the Banking Contract a Legal Contract? Linguistic-Pragmatic Study

Sol Azuelos-Atias — 2024-01-11

As is well known, banking contracts are essential for regulating the financial affairs of most individuals in modern society. This article discusses the unique linguistic and contextual characters of the text of the standard banking contract. I will show that its characteristics differ from those of "legal text" and the text of "legal contract". The theoretical basis for this work is based on the results of research that emphasize the involvement of the contextual and functional factors (communicative, cognitive, and referential) in designing a linguistic genre. The discussion will also be based on the conclusions of legal scholars as to the conceptual essence of "(legal) contract" and "(banking) contract", and the functions that "contract" come to fulfill as a social-legal instrument. The description of the linguistic and contextual characters is based on an analysis of test cases concerning issues that have a great impact on individuals and the property of the entire public. It is suggested that from the point of view of genre analysis, the anomalies observed in the texts of the banking contracts, the goals that the banks intend to achieve through them and the set of discourse participants built through them may change the boundaries of the "legal contract", and redefine its function as a social instrument in Israeli law.

Onomatopoeias in the Poetry of Uri Zvi Greenberg as a Linguistic-Interpretive Junction

Neta Dan — 2024-01-11

This study examines onomatopoeic elements in the book Streets of the River: The Book of Dirges and Power (1951) by Uri Zvi Grinberg. The book contains many onomatopoeic components in which language mimics and recreates the sounds of the Jewish European world that was destroyed in the Second World War. This paper aims to analyze the multitude of ways in which these onomatopoeic elements were created and how they are deciphered in the poetic context. At the heart of the discussion are two types of onomatopoeias: acoustic onomatopoeias and onomatopoeic VPC’s (void pragmatic connectives), as defined by Itamar Even-Zohar. These elements allow the poet to represent human voices and various sounds through morphological means, thus overcoming the difficulty to present the quality, duration, and frequency of a sound in writing. The discussion is based on morphologic, semantic, and pragmatic terms, highlighting the onomatopoeic components as a type of linguistic style in Grinberg's poetry, while examining the way they are formed.

Everyday Hebrew, Standards, and Language Variation

Shlomo Izre'el — 2024-01-11

This paper tries to reevaluate the notion of linguistic error in the light of modern research on standard language, linguistic variation and the history of contemporary Hebrew since its emergence as a vernacular at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. I ask why Israelis perceive their Hebrew speech as faulty or bad and whether this perception is appropriate. I then discuss linguistic variation—synchronic and diachronic—and how acknowledging it as an inherent characteristic of language should affect our view of language and language education. Finally, I try to see how we can overcome preconceptions and do research not only on written Hebrew but also on its spoken varieties, so that they receive their proper place in our life and culture.

The Significance of Multi-lingualism and of the Canaanite Melting Pot on Shaping Late Biblical Hebrew

Ohad Cohen — 2024-01-11

This paper centers on the multilingual situation in the southern and central parts of Palestine during the Persian period, which significantly contributes to our understanding of Late Biblical Hebrew. It utilizes a variety of sources and lines of inquiry, including linguistic evidence from epigraphy concerning various morpho-syntactic constructions, to emphasize the influence of colloquial Canaanite dialects, particularly the Phoenician, on LBH. The primary aim of this paper is to demonstrate that a comprehensive understanding of the historical characterization of the Hebrew language during the Persian period necessitates an interdisciplinary approach.

Excessive Concern or Well-founded Fear: Students' Writing on WhatsApp and in Essays

Shir Finkelstein — 2024-01-11

The language of text messages has a unique style that is a hybrid of both oral and written language, characterized by frequent deviations from standard language. With the increasing use of mobile phones, particularly among adolescents, there is serious concern about the effect of the non-standard register used in text messaging on pupils’ literacy skills, and particularly on their writing skills. The current study investigates the frequency of deviations from normative Hebrew grammar rules, comparing between pupils’ writing in two different genres: informal written language used in WhatsApp messages vs. formal written language used in essays written as part of the school curriculum. The deviations studied include initial placement of the definite article in construct-state phrases, use of an initial consonant y preceding the vowel in verbs in the first-person-singular future form, and others. Findings indicate that grammatical deviations that are frequent in WhatsApp messages rarely occur in pupils’ formal writing. The study thus serves as an “all-clear signal” for those concerned about the negative influences of WhatsApp messaging on the writing skills of Israeli youngsters.

Josef ibn Kaspi's Retukot Kesef

Moshe Kahan — 2024-01-11

Josef ben Abba Mari ibn Kaspi is one of the radical philosophers that were Maimonides' disciples and followers, active in Provence in the 13^th century. Kaspi composed two commentaries on Maimonides' The Guide for the Perplexed, one esoteric and one exoteric.

Three of Kaspi's biblical commentaries deal with linguistics in general and Hebrew linguistics in particular: Tzeror ha-Kesef, a summary of the Aristotelian Organon, which deals with general linguistic concepts as well; Retuqot Kesef, a logical-linguistic treatise in which Kaspi applies the laws of logic on the Hebrew language; Sharshot Kesef, a Hebrew-Hebrew dictionary based on Retuqot, whose purpose is to explain the Hebrew roots by the laws of logic, unlike the classical dictionaries prevalent at the time. The most original of the three, and the least researched so far, is Retuqot Kesef.

This article points out the unique structure of Retuqot, as suggested by Kaspi's introduction, and aims to describe how logical concepts are applied on Hebrew linguistics and biblical philology. This article focuses on the theory of motion. In the article I investigate how Aristotle perceives motion and survey the views of Al-Farabi and other Arab philosophers that wrote on this notion, as well as Maimonides'. Finally, I focus on Josef Kaspi and demonstrate how Kaspi employed the theory of motion in order to change the grammatical and philological perceptions common in his time.

DEGEL KAHOL-LAVAN BE'ERETS YESHANA-HADASHA (A blue and white flag in an old new land): Study of "combining juxtaposition"

Yariv Shock — 2024-01-11

This paper discusses a special type of Hebrew Juxtaposition which is expressed in phrases such as: glidat shoko-vanil (chocolate vanilla ice cream), mahaze tragi-komi (tragicomic play), rotev hamuts-matok (sweet and sour sauce), kursa-mita (armchair bed) and nifkadim-nokhehim (present absentee). Such phrases have been classified by some researchers as a type of Apposition, while others include them within the discussion of coordination. An examination of the lexical, morphological, syntactical, semantic and pragmatic features of these phrases in various genres of written Hebrew underscores the importance of defining these phrases as a unique and independent category of coordination. These phrases combine two or more cohyponyms which have the same grammatical status and creates one lexical and syntactic unit through the process of combination. The Hebrew term chosen to be used to define the category in this article is Tsmidut Meshalevet (Combining Juxtaposition).