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
Epanalepsis
(440 words)
Epanalepsis, literally resumption or reiteration, is the repetition of a word or words after an intervening word or phrase, used as a poetic device. An example is Lam. 2:12: לְאִמֹּתָם֙ יֹֽאמְר֔ו אַיֵּ֖ה דָּגָ֣ן וָיָ֑יִן בְּהִֽתְעַטְּפָ֤ם כֶּֽחָלָל֙ בִּרְחֹב֣וֹת עִ֔יר בְּהִשְׁתַּפֵּ֣ךְ נַפְשָׁ֔ם אֶל־חֵ֖יק אִמֹּתָֽם
lə-ʾimmōṯå̄m yōmrū
ʾayyē då̄ḡå̄n wå̄-yå̄yin
bə-hiṯʿaṭṭəp̄å̄m kε-h̲å̄lå̄l bi-rḥōḇōṯ ʿīr
bə-hištappēḵ nap̄šå̄m ʾεl-ḥēq ʾimmōṯå̄m ‘To their mothers they say: “Where is bread and wine?” as they languish like wounded in the town squares, as their life ebbs away in the embrace o…
Epenthesis: Biblical Hebrew
(1,941 words)
Epenthesis in phonology refers to the addition of a sound that does not exist in the underlying representation of a word in order to repair an illicit combination of sounds at the phonetic level. Generally epenthetics are ignored by rules of stress placement and syllable weight (Syllable Structure: Biblical Hebrew). The most common epenthetic vowel in the Tiberian Reading Tradition of Biblical Hebrew was the vocalic
shewa. This is a short vowel that generally had the quality of [a], but in some cases became assimilated to the quality of following sounds. At an…
Epenthesis: Modern Hebrew
(726 words)
Epenthesis is a repair mechanism whereby phonological material is inserted where it does not exist underlyingly to mend a structure not permitted by the language. For example, by inserting an intruding vowel syllable structures not tolerated by the language or phonotactically complex sequences can be avoided. Epenthesis is often used in loan words which contain a sound sequence which is illicit in the borrowing language. For example, in Modern Hebrew the word
film is often pronounced [fili̲m], with an epenthetic [i] (underlined in the example) whose function is to b…
Epigraphic Hebrew: Pre-Roman Period
(5,795 words)
Epigraphic Hebrew (= EH) is essentially a catch-all term indicating that form (or, better, those forms) of Hebrew preserved in inscriptions recovered from archaeological contexts. Although some texts written in Hebrew dating to the Persian and Hellenistic periods have been discovered, these comprise mainly the Dear Sea Scrolls (Dead Sea Scrolls). During these periods, Aramaic was far more prevalent than Hebrew as the language of documentation; thus, EH is taken here to refer to the language(s) p…
Epigraphic Hebrew: Roman and Byzantine Period
(6,636 words)
1. Introduction Most written sources of Rabbinic Hebrew exist in versions for which the evidence does not go back farther than medieval times and which have passed through the hands of copyists, who often distorted the texts and in other cases ‘corrected’ them in accordance with their understanding. Inscriptions found by archeologists, on the other hand, constitute direct evidence for the language of those who wrote them. It would thus ostensibly be correct to base the study of the language of the…
Epistolary Formulae: Biblical Period
(1,724 words)
Epistolary documents in various states of preservation are attested from the Iron Age in extra-biblical sources, whereas the literary forms found in these documents are attested in the Bible itself, in both Hebrew and Aramaic, in some cases complete and in others with only partial rendering of the epistolary formulae. Most of the extra-biblical texts are in Hebrew and Aramaic, the former primarily from the kingdom of Judah in the period immediately preceding the Babylonian exile (Pardee et al. 1982), the latter mostly from Egypt and dating to t…
Epistolary Formulae: Early Modern and Modern Period
(1,911 words)
There exists as yet no scholarly analysis of epistolary formulae in Modern Hebrew. Neither authentic letters nor the numerous didactic collections of model letters published in Hebrew from the 16th century on (Halevi-Zwick 1990) have been subject to linguistic investigation. The full inventory of terms and phrases, their distribution, and their origins thus remain unexplored. Certain points may be commented on, but no comprehensive survey can be provided given the current state of knowledge. Modern epistolary formulae, shorter and simpler than the elaborate greeting f…
Epistolary Formulae: Late Middle Ages
(2,949 words)
The tradition of writing artistically rhymed epistles in Hebrew was widespread in both the Eastern and Western Jewish communities from the beginning of the 10th century. This was the style in which the Gaonic sages of Babylon (Gaonic Correspondence) as well as the rabbinic leaders in countries, such as Spain, Italy, and France, wrote. From the beginning of the 11th century most of the openings of the epistles—both in the East and West—were written in rhyme and in high-register rhythmic prose and…
Equative Sentence: Modern Hebrew
(2,362 words)
Equative sentences are sentences such as דויד קרני הוא ראש המועצה
david qarni hu roš ha-moʿaṣa ‘David Qarni is the head of the council’, יצחק נווה הוא אחיה
yiṣx̱aq nave hu ʾax̱iha ‘Yitzhak Naveh is her brother’, זאת דליה, בת דודתי
zot dalia, bat dodati ‘This is Dalia, my cousin’. Such sentences generally have the following structure: definite noun phrase (subject) + 3rd person pronoun/copular verb/demonstrative pronoun (copula) + definite noun phrase (predicate) (see, for example, Rubinstein 1968:61; Agmon-Fruchtman 1980:23; 1982:56; Sadk…
Esperanto and Hebrew
(609 words)
Of all the so-called ‘international planned languages’, Esperanto is the only one that functions socially as a neutral second language by speakers of various native languages around the world. It was created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887. Although Hebrew was one of the languages he knew, and although he translated the whole Hebrew Bible into Esperanto, words of Hebrew origin in Esperanto are rather few in number; they are limited almost exclusively to nouns, Biblical Hebrew personal names, and place…
Ethiopian Semitic, Hebrew Loanwords in
(636 words)
In the two major modern Ethiopian Semitic languages, Amharic and Tigrinya, as spoken by the one hundred and twenty thousand Ethiopian Jews living in Israel since the 1980s, there are many Hebrew loanwords. These mainly concern the realities of Israeli life, various local institutions, and administrative and military vocabulary. However, they cannot be considered significant loans from a linguistic point of view because they are felt by speakers to be foreign and their use constitutes no more tha…
Date:
2014-10-01
Ethiopian Semitic, Hebrew Loanwords in
(640 words)
In the two major modern Ethiopian Semitic languages, Amharic and Tigrinya, as spoken by the one hundred and twenty thousand Ethiopian Jews living in Israel since the 1980s, there are many Hebrew loanwords. These mainly concern the realities of Israeli life, various local institutions, and administrative and military vocabulary. However, they cannot be considered significant loans from a linguistic point of view because they are felt by speakers to be foreign and their use constitutes no more tha…
Euphemism in the Hebrew Bible
(1,844 words)
Euphemism is the substitution of a word that is unpleasant, offensive, or taboo with another word. Since a euphemism’s primary function is substitution, it can, and often does, overlap with other usages and devices, such as antiphrasis, litotes, metaphors,
double entendres, and
aḍdād-words (i.e., contronyms, lexemes that bear both one meaning and its opposite meaning). There are numerous types of euphemisms in the Hebrew Bible, and many can be found in the cognate languages (Landsberger 1929; Anbar 1979; Marcus 1980; Held 1987; Paul 199…
Euphemisms and Bible Translations
(2,553 words)
Euphemisms are terms used as polite substitutes (metonyms) for others which may be considered too directly referential (too explicit) for a particular social situation, or threatening to the face of a particular addressee because they bring him into contact with socially unacceptable realities (taboos). Most commonly, euphemisms are used for reference to the negative taboos of particular body parts and their associated functions (especially sex, excretion, and certain sicknesses) and to death. H…