LINGUIST List 25.1943
Thu
May 01 2014
Summer Schools: Summer
Session course ''History of Hebrew and Jewish
languages: Cultural, historical and linguistic
aspects'' / New Haven, Connecticut,
USA
Editor for this issue:
Malgorzata Cavar <gosialinguistlist.org>
Date: 30-Apr-2014
From: Tamas Biro
<tamas.biro
yale.edu>
Subject: Summer Session course
''History of Hebrew and Jewish languages:
Cultural, historical and linguistic aspects'' /
New Haven, Connecticut, USA
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Host Institution: Yale University
Coordinating Institution: Yale University
Website: http://birot.hu/courses/2014-HB/
Dates: 02-Jun-2014 - 04-Jul-2014
Location: New Haven, Connecticut, USA
Focus: A 5-week-long course on linguistics and
history of Hebrew and Jewish languages,
approached from various perspectives.
Minimum Education Level: No Minimum
Description:
The Jewish culture has always been in a very
intimate relationship to texts and language.
But what language did the Jews actually speak?
Did King David converse in Biblical Hebrew? How
did the vernacular turn into the language of
the rabbinic literature? Why could a dead
language flourish in the Middle Ages? How did
Yiddish and other Jewish languages emerge? Is
it self-evident that Hebrew became the language
of the modern State of Israel? By looking at
the history of the languages of the Jews, this
course will offer a unique perspective on
social and cultural aspects of Jewish
history.
The course will offer an overview of the
history of the Hebrew language and the Jewish
languages, as well as an introduction to a
multitude of linguistic methodologies. The
historical-comparative method will be discussed
to locate Hebrew among the Semitic languages.
The family tree model will be contrasted to the
wave model when discussing the Northwest
Semitic continuum. Biblical Hebrew can be
approached by traditional philology as much as
by generative linguistics. Understanding
rabbinical and medieval Hebrew requires the
perspective of the sociolinguist. Modern Hebrew
has been posing constant challenges to
contemporary linguistic theories since the MA
thesis of Noam Chomsky to the problem of
opacity in Optimality Theory.
The course requires no familiarity with
linguistics, and no knowledge of Hebrew,
although any of these will prove beneficial.
Attendees will however be expected to have at
least a superficial knowledge of Jewish
history. The course does not teach Hebrew, but
provides a familiarity with interesting
phenomena in Semitic languages. The course does
not teach a specific linguistic framework, but
explain why we should keep our minds open to a
plethora of methodologies.
Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics
Sociolinguistics
Subject Languages: Hebrew
Hebrew, Ancient
Language Families: Semitic
Registration: 01-Apr-2014 to 12-May-2014
Contact Person: Tamas Biro
Email:
tamas.biro
yale.edu
Registration Instructions:
Please visit http://summer.yale.edu/.
Page Updated: 01-May-2014