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A Grammar of the Eastern European Hasidic Hebrew Tale Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics

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A Grammar of the Eastern European Hasidic Hebrew Tale Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics A Grammar of the Eastern European Hasidic Hebrew Tale Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics Editorial Board A.D. Rubin and C.H.M. Versteegh volume 77 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ssl A Grammar of the Eastern European Hasidic Hebrew Tale By Lily Kahn leiden | boston This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (cc-by-nc 3.0) License, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. The author gratefully acknowledges ucl for generously funding the Open Access publication of this book. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kahn, Lily, author. A grammar of the Eastern European Hasidic Hebrew tale / by Lily Kahn. pages cm. – (Studies in Semitic languages and linguistics ; volume 77) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-28143-1 (hardback : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-90-04-28162-2 (e-book) 1. Hebrew language–Europe, Eastern–Grammar. 2. Hebrew language–Europe, Eastern–History–18th century. 3. Hebrew language–Europe, Eastern–History–19th century. 4. Hasidim–Legends–History and criticism. 5. Hasidic parables–History and criticism. I. Title. PJ4528.K34 2014 492.4'7–dc23 2014032461 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0081-8461 isbn 978-90-04-28143-1 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-28162-2 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Lily Kahn. This work is published by Koninklijke Brill nv. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff and Hotei Publishing. Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of offprints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re-use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv. This book is printed on acid-free paper. This book is dedicated to Ada Rapoport-Albert ∵ Contents Acknowledgements xi 1 Introduction 1 1.1 The Hasidic Hebrew Tale 1 1.2 Previous Scholarship on Hasidic Hebrew 3 1.3 The Language of the Hasidic Hebrew Tales 4 1.4 About This Grammar 7 2 Phonology 11 2.1 Consonants 11 2.2 Vowels 12 3 Orthography 14 3.1 Script 14 3.2 Omission of Final Letter(s) 15 3.3 Plene and Defective Spelling 16 3.4 Non-Standard Use of matres lectionis 20 3.5 Spelling of Eastern European Proper Nouns and Loanwords 24 3.6 Spelling of Divine Labels 32 3.7 Vocalization 32 3.8 Gershayim 34 3.9 Punctuation 34 3.10 Numerals and Dates 38 4 Nouns 40 4.1 Gender 40 4.2 Number 51 4.3 Construct 56 4.4 Articles 73 4.5 Apposition 78 4.6 Cognate Accusative 79 5 Adjectives 81 81 - ןי Plural Suffix 5.1 5.2 Comparative Adjectives 81 5.3 Superlative Adjectives 83 5.4 Noun-Adjective Concord 85 viii contents 5.5 Demonstrative Adjectives 91 103 וזיא / הזיא Indefinite Adjective 5.6 6 Pronouns 106 6.1 Independent Personal Pronouns 106 6.2 Pronominal Suffixes 115 6.3 Demonstrative Pronouns 129 6.4 Interrogative Pronouns 131 6.5 Indefinite Pronouns 131 6.6 Reflexive Pronouns 132 6.7 Reciprocal Pronouns 133 6.8 Relative Pronouns 134 7 Numerals 135 7.1 Paradigm 135 7.2 Gender 136 7.3 Number 139 7.4 Definiteness 140 7.5 Word Order and State 141 8 Verbs 145 8.1 Qaṭal 145 8.2 Yiqṭol 152 8.3 Wayyiqṭol 168 8.4 Weqaṭal 177 8.5 Qoṭel 178 8.6 Periphrastic Constructions 188 8.7 Volitives 198 8.8 Infinitives 206 8.9 Stems 218 8.10 Root Classes 236 8.11 Suffixed Verbs 249 8.12 Gerunds 249 8.13 Subject-Verb Concord 251 8.14 Sequence of Tense 259 9 Prepositions 261 9.1 Commonly Attested Prepositions 261 contents ix 10 Adverbs 262 10.1 Interrogative Adverbs 262 10.2 Adverbs of Place 263 10.3 Adverbs of Time 263 10.4 Adverbs of Manner 264 11 Conjunctions 265 11.1 Coordinating Conjunctions 265 11.2 Subordinating Conjunctions 265 12 Particles, Prefixes, and Suffixes 268 12.1 Possessive Particles 268 275 אין 12.2 277 את 12.3 283 הנה 12.4 289 יש 12.5 289 נא 12.6 292 -ה Directive 12.7 294 ה- Interrogative 12.8 12.9 Interjections 295 13 Clauses 296 13.1 Causal 296 13.2 Circumstantial 298 13.3 Comparative 299 13.4 Complement 299 13.5 Concessive 304 13.6 Conditional 305 13.7 Contrast 310 13.8 Exceptive 311 13.9 Interrogative 312 13.10 Purpose 313 13.11 Relative 317 13.12 Result 321 13.13 Separative 322 13.14 Temporal 322 x contents 14 Clause and Sentence Syntax 329 14.1 Equational Sentences 329 14.2 Negation 331 14.3 Constituent Order 339 15 Shibbuṣ 346 15.1 Similarities with Maskilic Hebrew shibbuṣ 346 15.2 Closely Resembling Biblical Model 347 15.3 Differences from Biblical Model 348 16 Lexis 352 16.1 Hebrew 352 16.2 Aramaic 356 16.3 Yiddish 367 16.4 Slavic Languages (Russian, Polish, Ukrainian) 394 16.5 Other Languages 397 Glossaries 399 Terms Deriving from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Yiddish 399 Ashkenazi Personal Names 400 Eastern European Place Names 400 Rebbes and Other Prominent Figures 402 Facsimiles 403 References 419 Subject Index 434 Acknowledgements I wish to express my very deepest gratitude to the British Academy for gener- ously funding the research project that led to the production of this volume. My warmest thanks go to the staff of the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at ucl for their continual encouragement and support. I am partic- ularly indebted to Ada Rapoport-Albert, who has contributed to this volume in countless positive ways, as well as to Lia Kahn-Zajtmann and Belinda Sto- janovic. Special thanks go also to Vanessa Freedman, ucl Hebrew and Jewish Studies Subject Librarian, for sourcing many of the primary materials which made my research possible. I am extremely grateful to Geoffrey Khan, Aaron Rubin, and Shmuel Bolozky for their wholehearted support of this project and for their very helpful com- ments on individual portions of the research. I would also like to thank Riitta- Liisa Valijärvi for her invaluable discussion sessions, Jacek Cegielski for his insightful observations on Eastern European Hebrew printing conventions, Jörg Schulte for his generous and enthusiastic assistance with the Slavic expres- sions in the tales, and the anonymous reviewer for providing many excellent suggestions. Finally, my eternal gratitude goes to James Holz, who has been there for me throughout this entire process, and to Tails, for making sure I left the laptop and went to the park every day. chapter 1 Introduction The Eastern European Hasidic Hebrew tale corpus is a large collection of hagio- graphic stories composed during the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century by followers of the Hasidic spiritual movement in a region spread chiefly over parts of present-day Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The tales, which focus on the lives and works of the rebbes, or Hasidic spiritual leaders, provide an unparalleled linguistic insight into the Hebrew language from both synchronic and diachronic standpoints. Firstly, they offer a unique perspective on the nature of Hebrew in traditional East- ern European Jewish society in the pre-modern period because they constitute the sole extensive record of narrative and discursive language use from this set- ting. The tales are the product of a fascinating multilingual environment: the authors spoke Yiddish as their native vernacular, had been schooled from a very early age in the reading, writing, and recitation of a range of Biblical and post- Biblical Hebrew texts, were familiar with various Aramaic writings, and were surrounded by speakers of Slavic languages (typically Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish). Thus, examination of their work sheds light on the remarkable product of this unusual case of language contact. Secondly, the idiom of the tales plays a pivotal role in the historical development of Hebrew: it is one of the two chief narrative forms of the language, along with that employed by the Maskilim (adherents of the Jewish Enlightenment), which flourished immediately prior to and were in many ways the direct forerunners of the revernacularization project in Palestine beginning in the 1880s. Therefore, a thorough understand- ing of Hasidic Hebrew can help pinpoint ways in which this hitherto unexam- ined linguistic variety relates to and perhaps influenced contemporaneous and subsequent forms of Hebrew. 1.1 The Hasidic Hebrew Tale Hasidic literature has come down to us in a variety of genres, of which the two dominant ones are a) homiletical (transcriptions of sermons delivered by the Hasidic masters) and b) narrative (tales by and about the Hasidic mas- ters) (Gries 1992: 17–46). The narrative literature can be divided into three distinct categories. The first consists of the parables embedded within the homiletical writings. The earliest example of this is the 1780 volume Tole- © Lily Kahn, 2015 | doi: 10.1163/9789004281622_002 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (cc-by-nc 3.0) License. 2 chapter 1 dot Yaʿaqov Yosef, with other such works appearing during the final decades of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century (Wineman 2001: xiii, xix).
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