Origins of Yiddish Dialects
Title | Origins of Yiddish Dialects PDF eBook |
Author | Alexander Beider |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 646 |
Release | 2015 |
Genre | Foreign Language Study |
ISBN | 0198739311 |
This book traces the origins of modern varieties of Yiddish and presents evidence for the claim that, contrary to most accounts, Yiddish only developed into a separate language in the 15th century. Through a careful analysis of Yiddish phonology, morphology, orthography, and the Yiddish lexicon in all its varieties, Alexander Beider shows how what are commonly referred to as Eastern Yiddish and Western Yiddish have different ancestors. Specifically, he argues that the western branch is based on German dialects spoken in western Germany with some Old French influence, while the eastern branch has its origins in German dialects spoken in the modern-day Czech Republic with some Old Czech influence. The similarities between the two branches today are mainly a result of the close links between the underlying German dialects, and of the close contact between speakers. Following an introduction to the definition and classification of Yiddish and its dialects, chapters in the book investigate the German, Hebrew, Romance, and Slavic components of Yiddish, as well as the sound changes that have occurred in the various dialects. The book will be of interest to all those working in the areas of Yiddish and Jewish Studies in particular, and historical linguistics and history more generally.
Jewish Languages from A to Z
Title | Jewish Languages from A to Z PDF eBook |
Author | Aaron D. Rubin |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 230 |
Release | 2020-09-13 |
Genre | Foreign Language Study |
ISBN | 1351043439 |
Jewish Languages from A to Z provides an engaging and enjoyable overview of the rich variety of languages spoken and written by Jews over the past three thousand years. The book covers more than 50 different languages and language varieties. These include not only well-known Jewish languages like Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino, but also more exotic languages like Chinese, Esperanto, Malayalam, and Zulu, all of which have a fascinating Jewish story to be told. Each chapter presents the special features of the language variety in question, a discussion of the history of the associated Jewish community, and some examples of literature and other texts produced in it. The book thus takes readers on a stimulating voyage around the Jewish world, from ancient Babylonia to 21st-century New York, via such diverse locations as Tajikistan, South Africa, and the Caribbean. The chapters are accompanied by numerous full-colour photographs of the literary treasures produced by Jewish language-speaking communities, from ancient stone inscriptions to medieval illuminated manuscripts to contemporary novels and newspapers. This comprehensive survey of Jewish languages is designed to be accessible to all readers with an interest in languages or history, regardless of their background—no prior knowledge of linguistics or Jewish history is assumed.
Yiddish
Title | Yiddish PDF eBook |
Author | Neil G. Jacobs |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 366 |
Release | 2005-03-03 |
Genre | Foreign Language Study |
ISBN | 9780521772150 |
This 2005 book was the first ever overview of all aspects of Yiddish language and lingustics.
Default Semantics
Title | Default Semantics PDF eBook |
Author | Katarzyna Jaszczolt |
Publisher | Oxford Linguistics |
Pages | 300 |
Release | 2005 |
Genre | Computers |
ISBN | 0199261989 |
In this pioneering book Kasia Jaszczolt lays down the foundations of an original theory of meaning in discourse, reveals the cognitive foundations of discourse interpretation, and puts forward a new basis for the analysis of discourse processing. She provides a step-by-step introduction to thetheory and its application, and explains new terms and formalisms as required. Dr Jaszczolt unites the precision of truth-conditional, dynamic approaches with insights from neo-Gricean pragmatics into the role of speaker's intentions in communication. She shows that the compositionality of meaningmay be understood as merger representations combining information from various sources including word meaning and sentence structure, various kinds of default interpretations, and conscious pragmatic inference. Among the applications the author discusses are constructions that pose problems in semantic analysis such as referring expressions, propositional attitude constructions, presupposition, modality, numerals, and sentential connectives. She proposes solutions to cutting edge problems in thesemantics/pragmatics interface - for example, how many levels of meaning should be distinguished; the status of underspecification; how much contextual information should be placed in the representation of the speaker's meaning; whether there are default interpretations; the stage of utteranceinterpretation at which pragmatic inference begins; and whether compositionality is a necessary feature of the theory of meaning and if so how it is to be defined.The book is for students and researchers in semantics, pragmatics, computational linguistics, and philosophy of language at advanced undergraduate level and above.
Yiddish, a Survey and a Grammar
Title | Yiddish, a Survey and a Grammar PDF eBook |
Author | Salomo A. Birnbaum |
Publisher | Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press |
Pages | 424 |
Release | 1979 |
Genre | Foreign Language Study |
ISBN |
Bibliography. Includes index.
Languages in Jewish Communities, Past and Present
Title | Languages in Jewish Communities, Past and Present PDF eBook |
Author | Benjamin Hary |
Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |
Pages | 657 |
Release | 2018-11-05 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 150150455X |
This book offers sociological and structural descriptions of language varieties used in over 2 dozen Jewish communities around the world, along with synthesizing and theoretical chapters. Language descriptions focus on historical development, contemporary use, regional and social variation, structural features, and Hebrew/Aramaic loanwords. The book covers commonly researched language varieties, like Yiddish, Judeo-Spanish, and Judeo-Arabic, as well as less commonly researched ones, like Judeo-Tat, Jewish Swedish, and Hebraized Amharic in Israel today.
Jewish Languages in Historical Perspective
Title | Jewish Languages in Historical Perspective PDF eBook |
Author | Lily Kahn |
Publisher | BRILL |
Pages | 259 |
Release | 2018-07-10 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 9004376585 |
Jewish Languages in Historical Perspective is devoted to the diverse array of spoken and written language varieties that have been employed by Jews in the Diaspora from antiquity until the twenty-first century. It focuses on the following five key themes: Jewish languages in dialogue with sacred Jewish texts, Jewish languages in contact with the co-territorial non-Jewish languages, Jewish vernacular traditions, the status of Jewish languages in the twenty-first century, and theoretical issues relating to Jewish language research. This volume includes case studies on a wide range of Jewish languages both historical and modern and devotes attention to lesser known varieties such as Jewish Berber, Judeo-Italian, and Karaim in addition to the more familiar Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, Yiddish, and Ladino. "On top of Brill’s Journal of Jewish Languages and a number of recent publications providing systematic overviews of Jewish languages as well as related theoretical discussions, this volume is a valuable addition to the increasing interest in Jewish languages and linguistics." -Wout van Bekkum, Groningen, Bibliotheca Orientalis LXXVI 3-4 (2019)