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Language Contact, Continuity and Change in the Genesis of Modern Hebrew
Edited by Edit Doron, Malka Rappaport Hovav, Yael Reshef and Moshe Taube
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 256] 2019
► pp. 365–386

“Mame Loshen”

The role of gender-biased language contact in the syntactic development of Yiddish

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This paper examines the socio-linguistic situation and mechanisms that led to diachronic changes in the syntax of Eastern Yiddish, such as the emergence of embedded Verb-Second. Following Weinreich (1958), Santorini (1989, 1992) and my earlier work (Pereltsvaig 2017), I analyze these changes as resulting from contact with Slavic languages. Furthermore, I argue that contact involved interference through shift and “Pattern replication” (in Matras and Sakel’s 2007 terminology) rather than borrowing or “Matter replication”. In addition, I propose that the “shifters” to Yiddish who introduced Slavic grammatical features were at least in part Slavic-speaking women who converted to Judaism.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: The problem
  • 2.Two types of transfer in contact situations
  • 3.Were the local Slavs, Knaanic Jews, and/or descendants of Khazars the “shifters”?
  • 4.Slavic converts to Judaism as the “shifters”
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgment
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 September 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.256.14per
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