Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics
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Subject: Language And Linguistics
Edited by: Geoffrey Khan
Associate editors: Shmuel Bolozky, Steven Fassberg, Gary A. Rendsburg, Aaron D. Rubin, Ora R. Schwarzwald, Tamar Zewi
The Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online offers a systematic and comprehensive treatment of all aspects of the history and study of the Hebrew language from its earliest attested form to the present day.
The Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online features advanced search options, as well as extensive cross-references and full-text search functionality using the Hebrew character set. With over 850 entries and approximately 400 contributing scholars, the Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online is the authoritative reference work for students and researchers in the fields of Hebrew linguistics, general linguistics, Biblical studies, Hebrew and Jewish literature, and related fields.
Subscriptions: Brill.com
Associate editors: Shmuel Bolozky, Steven Fassberg, Gary A. Rendsburg, Aaron D. Rubin, Ora R. Schwarzwald, Tamar Zewi
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The Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online offers a systematic and comprehensive treatment of all aspects of the history and study of the Hebrew language from its earliest attested form to the present day.
The Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online features advanced search options, as well as extensive cross-references and full-text search functionality using the Hebrew character set. With over 850 entries and approximately 400 contributing scholars, the Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online is the authoritative reference work for students and researchers in the fields of Hebrew linguistics, general linguistics, Biblical studies, Hebrew and Jewish literature, and related fields.
Subscriptions: Brill.com
Codicology
(5,922 words)
1. Introduction Codicology is a relatively new discipline, whose main purpose is the study of manuscripts as material objects in their own right. This study is complementary to, but distinct from the study of the textual contents and palaeography (script and handwriting) of manuscripts. In a narrow sense, codicology focuses on materials and techniques of handwritten book production. More broadly it deals with the relationship between these material aspects and the script and genre of the text, wit…
Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Biblical Hebrew
(1,445 words)
Traditional approaches to language have focused on the structure of linguistic utterances. Grammarians analyze linguistic data in order to account for the occurrence and position of each and every lexical item; semanticists explain how the meanings of individual words contribute towards the meaning of entire phrases and sentences; and discourse analysts address the structure of larger units of text. Cognitive linguistics takes a different approach, which views language as first and foremost a product of the human mind. Humans see the world in and around…
Coherence and Cohesion
(2,266 words)
Coherence and cohesion are related conceptual and linguistic properties of a text, respectively: coherence refers to the nature of a text as forming a conceptual unity and cohesion refers to the linguistic phenomena that manifest this conceptual unity. A text that is coherent is one that can be summarized by one point, such as, for example,
Samuel’s birth narrative or
David’s victory psalm. Coherence requires that all elements relate to each other on the basis of a single unifying thread, the theme, or the point of conceptual integration. Cohesion is the t…
Cohortative
(557 words)
Cohortative is a term which designates the lengthened imperfect first-person form in Biblical Hebrew, e.g.,
ʾεqṭəlå̄, niqṭəlå̄ (versus regular imperfect
ʾεqṭōl, niqṭōl). Sometimes the term is also used to refer to lengthened imperatives ending in -
å̄ such as שובה
šūḇå̄ ‘return!’ (Imperative and Prohibitive). There are rare occurrences of lengthened imperfects in the third person, e.g., Isa. 5.19: יָחִ֛ישָׁה
yaḥīšå̄ ‘may he hasten’ and תָב֗וֹאָה
ṯå̄ḇōʾå̄ ‘let it come’. With the exception of אֶֽהֱמָיָ֑ה
ʾεhε̆må̄yå̄ ‘I moan’ Ps. 77.4, the cohortative suffix -
å̄ is unattested on ver…
Collectives: Biblical Hebrew
(1,524 words)
Collective nouns in Biblical Hebrew are distinguished from other nouns by referring to a group rather than a single object. Thus for example, עַם
ʿam ‘people’ refers to an entity which is a collection of individual members (Waltke and O’Connor 1990:113; von Siebenthal 2009:69). Von Siebenthal suggests that ‘collectives’ in Biblical Hebrew may be helpfully split into three sub-groups: ‘group nouns’ like עַם
ʿam ‘people’ or יִשְׂרָאֵל
yiśrå̄ʾēl ‘Israel’ which “refer to a plurality of real world entities”; ‘generic nouns’ like אַרְבֶּה
ʾarbε ‘locust(s)’ or צֹאן
ṣōn ‘small cattle’ which …
Collectives: Modern Hebrew
(372 words)
Collective Nouns are singular nouns which denote a group as a whole or a set of uncountable individual entities. Such nouns are usually marked morphologically as singular. Collective nouns in Hebrew may be formed by the omission of a feminine ending from a singular count noun, e.g., אֳניה
ʾoniya ‘ship’—ending
a(t) > collective noun אֳני
ʾoni ‘fleet’. Other collective nouns are formed in the reverse direction, by adding a feminine ending to a regular singular count noun, e.g., דג
dag ‘(a) fish’ +
a(t) > collective דגה
daga ‘fish as a collective’ (Schwarzwald [Rodrigue] 2002:25). Sy…
Collocation: Biblical Hebrew
(1,898 words)
In Biblical Hebrew lexicography, the term ‘collocation’ is nearly synonymous with ‘word pair’ and is applied to individual contexts. Firth (1968:180, 182) popularized the plural, ‘collocations’, which he defined very generally as “actual words in habitual company”. Subsequent analyses have made Firth’s definition more specific. In recent years, lexicographers and grammarians have paid increasing attention to collocations, and computational linguists have based statistical analyses of the biblical text on collocational facts. 1. The characteristics of collocations Firth …
Collocation: Modern Hebrew
(2,433 words)
1. Definition The term collocation refers to two or more words which habitually associate in a lexical bond while retaining their individual meanings. Thus, the words
precious and
stone, when used together mean ‘gem, piece of jewelry’. The cohesion of collocations is so strong that it does not usually allow for substitution or reversibility of components. Thus, we speak of
heavy snow but not
weighty snow, heart attack but not
heart assail, fish and chips but not
chips and fish, and
to and fro but not
fro and to. The ability of words to collocate is termed ‘collocability’. Collocabi…
Color Terms
(2,193 words)
1. Introduction The words that different languages use to denote colors have been the object of linguistic attention for some time. The questions ‘What is it that one sees when one sees a color?’ and ‘How many color words does a given language possess?’ do not have simple answers. The relativist approach stresses the differences between languages: color perception is linguistically conditioned. Thus it has been argued that speakers of a language with words for thirty colors see thirty colors, wher…
Comitative: Biblical Hebrew
(1,368 words)
A comitative complement is, technically speaking, a constituent introduced by
with, as in the utterance
Gary is singing with Angela. When the subject and the comitative complement share the action implied by the verb equally, they may be perceived as forming a compound subject, in which case the complement
with NP becomes interchangeable with
and NP in a rephrased utterance such as
Gary and Angela are singing. In the rephrased utterance, the former comitative complement is part of the subject, which is thus a coordinate subject. Fluctuation between simple and …
Comitative: Modern Hebrew
(450 words)
The comitative case, which denotes the company in which an action is performed, or with whom or what an object or person is found, is most commonly expressed in Modern Hebrew by means of a prepositional phrase introduced by עם
ʿim ‘with’, as in הערב אני הולכת לקולנוע עם חברות
ha-ʿerev ʾ ani holexet la-qolnoaʿ ʿim x̱averot ‘tonight I am going to the cinema with friends’. The inflected forms עמי,
ʿimi ‘with me’, עמך
ʿimxa ‘with you (ms)’, etc., are perceived as literary, and have been replaced in everyday speech by the inflected forms of את
ʾet (a synonym of עם
ʿim), viz., אתי,
ʾiti ‘with me’ אתך,
ʾitxa…
Community Rule (1QS)
(2,035 words)
The Community Rule (Hebrew: סרך היחד [srk hyḥd]
sereḵ hay-yaḥaḏ, lit. ‘Rule of the Community’) is a foundational document of the Qumran sect. A complete copy (1QS) was among the first of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls to be discovered in 1947. Ten additional fragmentary copies were found in Qumran Cave 4 during the subsequent years of exploration (4Q255–264 = 4QSa–b–c–d–e–f–g–h–i–j), while a very tiny portion is preserved in a document from Cave 5 (5Q11) (for convenient presentations of 1QS and the additional material from Caves 4 and 5 see Charlesworth 1994…
Comparative Clause: Biblical Hebrew
(251 words)
Subordinate clauses may have the function of making a comparison with the action or situation of the main clause. In most such cases the protasis, introduced by כַּאֲשֶׁר
ka-ʾăšεr, denotes the compared situation in the subordinate clause, followed by the apodosis in the main clause, introduced by כֵּן
kēn, which provides the standard of comparison, e.g., וַיְהִ֛י כַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר פָּֽתַר־לָ֖נוּ כֵּ֣ן הָיָ֑ה
wa-yhī ka-ʾăšεr på̄ṯar-lå̄nū kēn hå̄yå̄ ‘And just as he interpreted for us, so it happened’ (Gen. 41.13). The reverse order is also possible, e.g., כֵּ֥ן תַּעֲשֶׂ֖ה כַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר דִּבַּֽרְתָּ
kēn taʿăśε …
Comparative Clause: Modern Hebrew
(512 words)
Equative constructions can be scalar or non-scalar (Glinert 1989a:101, 218, 343–348). Scalar equative clauses in Modern Hebrew are single-marked in the positive, using a clause or phrase introduced by כמו
kmo ‘like, as’ or, with a full clause, also by the more formal כפי
k-fi: הוא גבוה כמו אמו
hu gavoah kmo ʾimo ‘He’s [as] tall as his mother’, גבוה כמו/כפי שחשבתי
gavoah kmo/k-fi še-x̱ašavti ‘[as] tall as I thought’. In the negative they may be double-marked, with the determiner כל-כך
kol-kax or כזה
ka-ze ‘so’ in addition to כמו
kmo, e.g., זה לא זול כל-כך כמו שחשבתי
ze lo zol kol-kax kmo še-x…
Comparative Clause: Rabbinic Hebrew
(606 words)
Comparative sentences express equality or similarity, usually by means of a subordinate clause. The comparative component is introduced by certain lexical items, which may be (a) prepositions: -כ
ke- ‘like, as’, (-כמו/כמות (ש
kemo/kemot (še-) ‘like, as’ (the complementizer -ש
še- ‘that’ is used to introduce a clause); or (b) prepositional phrases consisting of the preposition -כ
ke- ‘as’ followed by a participle or noun, e.g., -כיוצא ב
kay-yoṣe be- ‘like (lit. ‘as it goes out in’)’, -כשם ש
ke-šem še- ‘just as’, -כדרך ש
ke-dereḵ še- ‘in a similar way’, -כעניין ש
ke-ʿinyan še- ‘in a simila…
Comparative Linguistics in the Medieval Hebrew Grammatical Tradition
(2,160 words)
Medieval comparative philology began with Saʿadia’s grammatical work, evolving and reaching peak after peak, until it became an important foundation for Hebrew philology and for the פשט
pešaṭ ‘literal’ interpretation of the Bible. The medieval Hebrew grammarians’ theory of comparative philology did not develop merely through imitation of the grammarians of other languages, but also out of their own experience in a trilingual culture, in which Arabic was the language of daily life and Hebrew and Aramaic were employed in in…
Compensatory Lengthening
(2,829 words)
The term compensatory lengthening refers to the lengthening of a vowel as a substitution for the loss of a consonantal segment in the historical development of the language. The most common context in which this has taken place is when a guttural (laryngeal and pharyngeal) consonant or
resh loses its gemination and a preceding short vowel is lengthened in compensation for this, e.g., בֵּרֵךְ
bērēḵ < *
birrēḵ ‘he blessed’. The process has been interpreted as a means of maintaining the prosodic structure of the word by the spreading of the vowel to occupy the mora…
Complement Clause
(12 words)
see Adverbial; Argument; Complementizer; Content Clauses; Infinitive Complements; Object
Complementizer
(4,329 words)
1. Introduction A complementizer is defined as a syntactic element or grammatical item (a word, particle, clitic, or affix) that functions as the marker of a subordinate complement construction, or—according to the standard definition—the argument of a predicate (Noonan 2006; 2007; but see Cristofaro 2003 for a functional definition of complement constructions; for a current review of Hebrew complement clauses see Zewi 2008 and references therein; Zuckermann 2006; Content Clauses; Complement Claus…
Componential Analysis of Meaning
(2,090 words)
1. Definition ‘Componential Analysis of Meaning’ (= CA) is a semantic methodology that has its roots in structural linguistics (cf. particularly the works of E. Coseriu). According to CA, the meaning of a word is
composed (hence the name) of single semantic units resulting from sense-oppositions between the given word and other semantically related lexical items, which together constitute a system of sense-relations called a lexical field. 2. Componential Analysis of Meaning and the Vocabulary of Ancient Hebrew The application of CA to the study of Ancient Hebrew (= AH) v…