Person Markers in Spoken Spontaneous Israeli Hebrew
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Person markers in Spoken Spontaneous Israeli Hebrew A systematic description and analysis Published by LOT phone: +31 30 253 6111 Trans 10 3512 JK Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://www.lotschool.nl Cover illustration: Tzipora Ben Mordekhai, Tzipy Art Studio, Israel Typesetting: Karin Rotem, Judith Sternberg ISBN: 978-94-6093-212-0 NUR 616 Copyright © 2016: Smadar Cohen. All rights reserved. Person markers in Spoken Spontaneous Israeli Hebrew A systematic description and analysis ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. dr. ir. K.I.J. Maex ten overstaan van een door het College voor Promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Agnietenkapel op 27 september 2016 te 12.00 uur door Smadar Cohen Geboren te Tel-Aviv, Israel Promotiecomissie Promotor: Prof. Dr. P. C. Hengeveld, Universiteit van Amsterdam Overige leden: Prof. Dr. W.J. van Bekkum, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Dr. D. Gil, Max Planck Institut Leipzig Dr. Y. Hagbi, Universiteit van Amsterdam Prof. Dr. J.J.M. Hazenbos, Universiteit van Amsterdam Prof. Dr. J.C. Schaeffer, Universiteit van Amsterdam Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen I thank the foundations that assisted in funding this research: the Salti Foundation and the Naime and Yehoshua Salti Center for Ladino Studies at Bar Ilan University (Israel), the Dov Sadan Foundation of Hebrew Language, Hebrew Literature, and Yiddish Studies (Israel), the Ignatz Bubis Foundation of Jewish Studies (Germany), the Yael and Zeev Yaakobi Foundation for Research in the Hebrew Language (Israel), and the Universiteit van Amsterdam and the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication (ACLC) (Holland) In memory of my grandparents The precision of pain and the blurriness of joy. I’m thinking how precise people are when they describe their pain in a doctor’s office. Even those who haven’t learned to read and write are precise: “This one’s a throbbing pain, that one’s a wrenching pain, this one gnaws, that one burns, this is a sharp pain and that — a dull one. Right here. Precisely here, yes, yes.” Joy blurs everything. I’ve heard people say after nights of love and feasting, “It was great, I was in seventh heaven.” Even the spaceman who floated in outer space, tethered to a spaceship, could say only, “Great, wonderful, I have no words.” The blurriness of joy and the precision of pain — I want to describe, with a sharp pain’s precision, happiness and blurry joy. I learned to speak among the pains. Yehuda Amichai (Translation: Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld) דיוק הכאב וטשטוש האושר. אני חושב על הדיוק שבו בני אדם מתארים את כאבם בחדרי רופא. ]...[ טשטוש האושר ודיוק הכאב ואני רוצה לתאר בדיוק של כאב חד גם את האושר העמום ואת השמחה. למדתי לדבר אצל הכאבים. יהודה עמיחי Yehuda Amichai, “The Precision of Pain”, in Open Closed Open, Edited by Robert Alter, New York, Harcourt, 2000. יהודה עמיחי, "דיוק הכאב וטשטוש האושר", פתוח סגור פתוח, הוצאת שוקן, תל אביב 1998 © כל הזכויות שמורות להוצאת שוקן. Acknowledgments The time has come. This book was written out of pain, within pain, flooded and surrounded by pain. But despite that, it has come to an end, and from within the pain, I wish to describe the bliss precisely. Years of anticipation have come to the point of completion — first, from within yearning and exhilaration, and finally from a sense of fulfilling an obligation, with the hope of subsequent relief. The start of my work on this research was interwoven with feelings of spiritual elation alongside bodily pains, excitement of the heart alongside sadness of treatments, but mostly it gave me the feeling of returning to life. This book was written in hospital beds, surgery rooms, and during moments when I considered abandoning the undertaking. Nevertheless, and despite it all, the fact it was written provides a feeling of victory of having mastered the impediments and hardships, mostly those of the body. Moreover, it contains a feeling of fulfillment of my grandmother’s wish. Of course, I could not have finished this study without the assistance of many good people alongside my path, people who lent a hand, who were often there just to listen or to “dry my tears,” and for that I wish to thank them — all of them together and each one separately. First and foremost: Professor Shlomo Z. Berger, the Hebrew language guide for my research. I met him after various experiences in the academic world, and that meeting made me realize things can be different. I knew him only for a limited time, but I discovered what everyone else who knew him had discovered: his kind heart, his joy of life, his ability to “gobble up” life, and how he could simultaneously be down to earth, concrete, and exceptionally effective. Shlomo was one of my two supervisors in this research, and he contributed both his knowledge and his precise discernment. To my deep sorrow, Shlomo died suddenly in one bitter moment, shortly before I completed work on this book. Shlomo, for me you have been an ear, a mouth, an exemplary academic mentor, and a supervisor for whom your students’ success was just as important as your own. May your memory be blessed! Many special thanks to Professor P. C. (Kees) Hengeveld, who supervised the research with mindfulness, knowledge, wisdom, charm, kindness, and gentleness. Kees has given me the freedom to think, as well as having demanded that thinking of me, and he did not give up until I discovered that, indeed, explanations and systematization can also be found where I had not believed they could exist. Kees immersed himself entirely in the “deep waters” of my research, and he supervised my work on a language unknown to him. His ability of fast thinking, accurate perception, and knowledge of structures and behavior of many languages amazed me, and he contributed vastly to this research in particular and to my views on linguistic research in general. Thank you, Kees, for being available at all times, for dealing with my time and health limitations, and for enabling me to complete this research. I also thank the Universiteit van Amsterdam and the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication (ACLC) for providing me with office space and with a pleasant and friendly working environment to perform my research during my stays in Amsterdam. I would like to thank Professor Dr. W. J. van Bekkum (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen ), Dr. D. Gil (MPI Leipzig), Dr. Y. Hagbi, Professor Dr. J. J. M. Hazenbos, and Professor Dr. J. C. Schaeffer (Universiteit van Amsterdam) for agreeing to be members of my thesis committee. Dr. Ora Ambar and the late Dr. Rivka Yarkoni from Tel Aviv University, my supporting pillars, guided my path in researching the Hebrew language. Without them, I would not have been working in this field today. My thanks also go to all the teachers throughout my study years in the various frameworks, who sharpened my senses, enlightened me, broadened my horizons, quenched my thirst with their wisdom, answered every question and wonderings that I brought up, and helped me find solutions. Much of what I absorbed from their teachings is embedded in this work. I thank Professor Shlomo Izre’el from the Department of Hebrew Culture at Tel-Aviv University for his guidance when I was taking my first steps in the research in the field of Spontaneous Spoken Israeli Hebrew. I also thank him for his permission to use pilot recordings from the Corpus of Spoken Israeli Hebrew (CoSIH) for this research. And, of course, I would also like to thank all the informants who agreed to participate in this study and to be recorded for such a long time. I send special thanks to the late Professor Gideon Goldenberg, a great linguist whom I had the chance to know for only a very short while, even though he is one of the pillars of this research. He was the one who encouraged me to believe in myself and to follow through with my intuition about the structure and behavior of person markers in SSIH; he gave me the strength to move forward and describe the system that is presented in this book. Additionally, I thank the foundations that assisted in funding this research — first and foremost, the Salti Foundation and the Naime and Yehoshua Salti Center for Ladino Studies at Bar Ilan University (Israel), the Dov Sadan Foundation of Hebrew Language, Hebrew Literature, and Yiddish Studies (Israel), the Ignatz Bubis Foundation of Jewish Studies (Germany), the Yael and Zeev Yaakobi Foundation for Research in the Hebrew Language (Israel), and Tel Aviv University (Israel) for their generous supporting grants. I thank my colleague Nurit Dekel, with whom I collected my corpus. Her partnership in the collection and transcription of the corpus as well as the professional discussions I had with her were helpful and inspiring. I would like to thank my friends, from the virtual forums and in the real world. Thank you for being there for me whenever I needed. A private thank you to Uri Mor, a friend, a colleague, and a partner. Thank you for being there and for letting me share with you all my difficulties and ideas. Our friendship is priceless to me. Special thanks to Allan Edmands, who was my reliable and critical reader. He was the first to read every draft that I wrote of this book; he commented, questioned, and improved the text and the visual presentation of the tables. Allan, your sharp eye, patience, and caring were a great help, and I thank you for that. From the bottom of my heart I thank my paternal grandparents, who provided a stable piece of earth for me to walk on in this world.