The emergence of Modern Hebrew as a spoken language constitutes a unique event in modern history: a language which for generations only existed in the written mode underwent a process popularly called “revival”, acquiring native speakers and becoming a language spoken for everyday use. Despite the attention it has drawn, this particular case of language-shift, which differs from the better-documented cases of creoles and mixed languages, has not been discussed within the framework of the literature on contact-induced change. The linguistic properties of the process have not been systematically studied, and the status of the emergent language as a (dis)continuous stage of its historical sources has not been evaluated in the context of other known cases of language shift. The present collection presents detailed case studies of the syntactic evolution of Modern Hebrew, alongside general theoretical discussion, with the aim of bringing the case of Hebrew to the attention of language-contact scholars, while bringing the insights of the literature on language contact to help shed light on the case of Hebrew.

Language Contact and the Development of Modern Hebrew is a first rigorous attempt by scholars of Hebrew to evaluate the syntactic impact of the various languages with which Modern Hebrew was in contact during its formative years. Twenty-four different innovative syntactic constructions of Modern Hebrew are analysed, and shown to originate in previous stages of Hebrew, which, since the third century CE, solely functioned as a scholarly and liturgical language. The syntactic changes in the constructions are traced to the native languages of the first Modern Hebrew learners, and later to further reanalysis by the first generation of native speakers. The contents of this volume was also published as a special double issue of Journal of Jewish Languages, 3: 1-2 (2015). Contributors are: Vera Agranovsky, Chanan Ariel, Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal, Miri Bar-Ziv, Isaac Bleaman, Nora Boneh, Edit Doron, Keren Dubnov, Itamar Francez, Roey Gafter, Ophira Gamliel, Yehudit Henshke, Uri Horesh, Olga Kagan, Samir Khalaily, Irit Meir, Yishai Neuman, Abed al-Rahman Mar'i, Malka Rappaport Hovav, Yael Reshef, Aynat Rubinstein, Ora Schwarzwald, Nimrod Shatil, Sigal Shlomo, Ivy Sichel, Moshe Taube, Avigail Tsirkin-Sadan, Shira Wigderson, and Yael Ziv.

This book is a comprehensive description of Hebrew from its Semitic origins and the earliest settlement of the Israelite tribes in Canaan to the present day.

The goal of the volume is to shed fresh light on Modern Hebrew from perspectives aimed at readers interested in the domains of general linguistics, typology, and Semitic studies. Starting with chapters that provide background information on the evolution and sociolinguistic setting of the language, the bulk of the book is devoted to usage-based studies of the morphology, lexicon, and syntax of current Hebrew. Based primarily on original analyses of authentic spoken and online materials, these studies reflect varied theoretical frames-of-reference that are largely model-neutral in approach. To this end, the book presents a functionally motivated, dynamic approach to actual usage, rather than providing strictly structuralist or formal characterizations of particular linguistic systems. Such a perspective is particularly important in the case of a language undergoing accelerated processes of change, in which the gap between prescriptive dictates of the Hebrew Language Establishment and the actual usage of educated, literate but non-expert speaker-writers of current Hebrew is constantly on the rise.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.

Written in language simple enough for everyone to learn, this sweeping history traces the Hebrew language's development and covers the dramatic story of the rebirth of Hebrew as a modern, spoken language.

"An emerging field of study that explores the Hispanic minority in the United States, Latino Studies is enriched by an interdisciplinary perspective. Historians, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, demographers, linguists, as well as religion, ethnicity, and culture scholars, among others, bring a varied, multifaceted approach to the understanding of a people whose roots are all over the Americas and whose permanent home is north of the Rio Grande. Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Studies offers an authoritative, trustworthy, and up-to-date intellectual map to this ever-changing discipline."--Editorial page.