Comparative constructions in 'Israeli Hebrew'

Date

2007

Authors

Zuckermann, G.

Editors

Advisors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Type:

Journal article

Citation

Melilah : Journal of Jewish Studies, 2007; 2:1-16

Statement of Responsibility

Ghil'ad Zuckermann

Conference Name

Abstract

‘Hebrew’ is one of the official languages – with Arabic and English – of the State of Israel, established in 1948 on 20,770 km2 in the ‘Middle’ East. Israeli emerged at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Its symbolic first native speaker, Itamar Ben-ehuda, began speaking in 1886. Israeli is a fusional synthetic language, with non-concatenative discontinuous morphemes realised by vowel infixation. This typological paper demonstrates that the typical Israeli comparative construction involves a copula or verbless clause construction, with the ‘Parameter’ as copula complement (CC) or as a verbless clause complement (VCC). However, there is another mono-clausal comparative construction, in which the ‘Index’ of comparison is the main verb in an extended intransitive clause. Future research would demonstrate that Israeli comparatives correspond with Yiddish and ‘Standard Average European’, although the forms used are Hebrew.

School/Discipline

Dissertation Note

Provenance

Description

Access Status

Rights

Copyright status unknown

License

Grant ID

Published Version

Call number

Persistent link to this record