Another View on Rabbi Abraham Ibn-Ezra's Contribution to Medieval Hebrew Grammar

The purpose of this article is to illustrate the contribution of Abraham Ibn-Ezra to the study of Hebrew Grammar in the medieval period. While a broad consensus maintains that Ibn-Ezra disseminated the legacy of Jewish grammatical knowledge in Andalusia into Christian Europe, there is little agreement about his original contribution to the insights of his predecessors.

This article describes the setting of Ibn-Ezra's work and, through a series of focused case studies, examines how he used the body of knowledge available to him in working out original solutions to vexing grammatical questions.