Hebrew Neologisms in the Writings of Anton Shammas

The article examines the impact of Arabic on Hebrew writings of a prominent Arab Israeli author. Specifically, it studies lexical neologisms in Shammas’s original Hebrew novel Arabesques as well as in his translations of Emile Habibi from Arabic into Hebrew. The distinctive literary language of Shammas that these neologisms help to shape is discussed against the multifaceted background of the complex sociocultural phenomenon of Arab authors in Israel writing in Hebrew, including the significance of Hebrew for Israeli Arabs, the incidence of Hebrew writing among them, the bilingual literary production of Arab authors, and their reluctant acceptance by Israeli society.