Symposium on the Emergence of Modern Hebrew: Introduction

After centuries in which Hebrew was largely a literary and liturgical langauge, in the late 19^th century and in the first decades of the 20^th century it resumed its function as a spoken language in everyday use. In October 2017, Prof. Edit Doron initiated an ERC research project at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem seeking to explore this dramatic historical process from a theoretical linguistic point of view. Titled "The Emergence of Modern Hebrew as a Case-Study of Linguistic Discontinuity," the project sought to trace the linguistic trajectory of Modern Hebrew during its early years, while also undertaking a theoretically-informed study of the linguistic mechanisms underlying the revival process. As its title suggests, the project had an even broader goal as well, namely to understand the processes underlying various types of "linguistic discontinuity" in general.

In a tragic blow to the linguistic research community, and especially to this research group, Edit passed away in March 2019. Hoping to follow her legacy, the research group managed to continue the work for another 18 months, even during the Covid-19 pandemic, and held an online concluding conference in November 2020. The studies presented at that conference, which offered preliminary answers to the big questions at the heart of the project, comprise this issue of Hebrew Studies.

One of the main conclusions of these studies is that a central key to understanding this process is not to assume discontinuity at all, but rather focus on the different types of linguistic continuity between the early stages of Modern Hebrew and the preceding periods, especially the Interim period of Hebrew, during which it functioned a literary tongue. Edit herself took this direction in some of her last studies.

Furthermore, as various recent studies have demonstrated, it is crucial to distinguish between different stages in the emergence of Modern Hebrew: the Revival period (1880–1920), the Mandate period (1920–1948), and contemporary Hebrew (from around 1950 until today). As the studies of Bar-Ziv Levy and Stern in this volume demonstrate, the first stage, the revival period, certainly continues the Interim period. In fact, from a linguistic point of view, the revival era is part of the Interim period. This conclusion is significant in several ways. First, the myth of the "revival of Hebrew" assumes that, before this, Hebrew was a "dead" language, which later underwent a unique process of revitalization. However, as Bar-Asher Siegal's paper in this volume shows, although Hebrew functioned throughout the Interim-period exclusively as a literary language, it continued to develop linguistically; therefore, the terminology of "death" and "revival" is inaccurate. Moreover, Bar-Asher Siegal's study shows that, from a cognitive perspective, the knowledge of literary languages is not significantly different from the knowledge of any other second language. Consequently, it is not surprising that they experience internal development, just like other langauges.

Bar-Asher Siegal, Bar-Ziv Levy, and Stern also show in their respective studies that a main feature of the Interim period is the co-existence of competing grammars, inherited from different classical sources. Consequently, the subsequent periods (the Mandate period and contemporary Hebrew) were characterized by an accelerated process of regularization, in which linguistic variants were eliminated. This is the main topic of Bar-Ziv Levy's article, which focuses on counterfactual condition. This characteristic is also illustrated in Stern's study, dealing with the presentative particles hinneni and hareni, which underwent many changes in the Interim period.

While most of the processes outlined by Stern are Hebrew-internal, she also identifies some contact-induced aspects of the particles' development in the Interim period. Another study in this volume, by Agranovsky, likewise explores the role of the contact languages in the development of Hebrew. She focuses on the evolution of verbal root patterns – specifically on a process whereby patterns that were not associated with a particular semantic profile in premodern Hebrew, or were only partly associated with such a profile, developed a particular meaning in Modern Hebrew. Her paper shows that, although some of the developments had their roots in earlier periods of Hebrew...