Statement of Originality I hereby certify that this study, which I now submit for the requirement of a Master’s degree in Language Studies, is completely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others unless such work has been cited and acknowledged by means of references. Signed by: Ilyes SI MOHAMMED i Dedication First and foremost, I am grateful to the Almighty God for his guidance and blessings without which we would not finish this work. I wholeheartedly dedicate this work to my beloved mother and father who have been my main source of encouragement all along my academic journey. And my dear brother. ii Acknowledgments I owe a special debt of gratitude to my teacher and supervisor Pr. ZoubirDendane, for his constant support, patience, motivation and immense knowledge. I would also express my sincere gratitude to members of the jury, and all the teachers in the English department for their inspiration. iii Abstract Allah, Ellohim, don’t they sound similar?. Salam, Shalom, maybe another coincidence, Tisa’ah, Tesh, three coincidences? , but the logical mind does not believe in coincidences therefore I daresay this is definitely worth a research. In many languages you hear words pronounced similarly, especially within languages that have the same origin, or the same language family, belonging to the same tree language, or in general words to the same roots. Semitic languages have marked a historical and continuous effects from the most ancient to the most modern, or to new languages or dialects and that might have caused death of other languages because of eras, and whole other factors throughout history of human tongue. Arabic and Hebrew are two main Semitic sister languages that do still exist today, the two represent more than language slight differences but also a huge cultural religious contrast. Because of the same roots they share, I got curious in this research about the level of closeness historically speaking of development and on the language system itself, up to the current status. Arabic as the language of Quran improved the tribes tongue and united them with one miraculous language, and became the language of classical Arabic and still in modern world. Hebrew and its people, in other words, mostly Jews, they experienced with the language different path despite of the historical religious depth back to the primitive Hebrew. Arabic as well have developed, but not forcibly similar to Hebrew, periodically and linguistically speaking. Which means historical part, and the language on how it is spoken, which means basically how It is structured and formed depending on a particular general period of time, and on comparison level with the other sister Semitic language, the whole latter is the goal of this research. iv List of contents Statement of Originality………………………………………………………………… I Dedication……………………………………………………………………………… II Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………….. III Abstract …………………………………………………………………………… IV List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………. V General introduction……………………………………………………………………. 01 Chapter 1 : Historical development of Arabic and Hebrew……………………………... 08 1.1 Introduction:…………………………………………………………………….. 08 1.2 Arabic language throughout time……………………………………………………. 09 1.2.1 on early times:…………………………………………………………………….. 09 1.2.2 The coming of Quran:……………………………………………………………... 12 1.3 Historical development of Hebrew language……………………………………….. 18 1.3.1 Hebrew; the language, between Early and medieval ages:……………………… 21 1.3.2 From Medieval to Modern time…………………………………………………… 23 Use of Hebrew at home:……………………………………………………………….. 26 School :………………………………………………………………………………….. 27 v Newspapers……………………………………………………………………………….. 28 1.4 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….. 30 ChapterII Comparative view between Arabic and Hebrew Morphologies………. 2.1 Introduction:…………………………………………………………………………. 34 2-2 General morphology of Arabic………………………………………………………. 34 2-2.1 The role of Morphology and Prosodic theory:……………………………………. 34 2.2.2 The relevancy with Arabic Morphology:………………………………………….. 35 2.2.3 Moras:……………………………………………………………………………… 35 2.2.4 Stress:……………………………………………………………………………… 36 .…………………………………………………………………:الصرف Arabic Sarf 2.2.5 38 2.2.6 Scales of Sarf:……………………………………………………………………… 40 4-1The Hebrew‘’Binyan’’:……………………………………………………………… 42 2.3.1 Five main benyanim:………………………………………………………………. 43 2.3.2 Verbs and nouns………………………………………………………………….. 43 2.4- Comparison of the two Morphologies………………………………………………. 48 vi 2.4.1 Phonological comparison:………………………………………………………… 48 2.4.2 Gender:…………………………………………………………………………… 51 2.4.3 Plural:……………………………………………………………………………… 53 2.4.4 The construct:…………………………………………………………………….. 53 2.4.5 Adjectives:………………………………………………………………………….. 54 2.4.6 Verbs……..……………………………………………………………………….. 55 5-2Morphological comparison…………………………………………………………… 59 6-Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………... 63 General conclusion……………………………………………………………………… 64 References:……………………………………………………………………………… 68 vii List of Tables Table 1: Arabic sarf scale ......................................................................... - 41 - - scale ........................................................................... - 42 ( ل) Table 2: Letter Table 3: active-verb binyanim .................................................................. - 44 - Table 4 : Hebrew Mishkal patterns ........................................................... - 45 - Table 5: Printed form & Word pattern ...................................................... - 47 - Table 6: Arabic & Hebrew pronouns ........................................................ - 62 - viii ix General Introduction General introduction According to the Oxford dictionary, the word Hebrew means ‘’A member of an ancient people living in what is now ‘’Israel’’ and Palestine, and, according to biblical tradition, they descended from the patriarch Jacob, grandson of Abraham. After the Exodus (c.1300 BC) they established the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and their scriptures and traditions form the basis of the Jewish religion’’ There is a relation between the word Hebrew and the religion of Judaism, it is not any simple word, it is something heavy in sense in the Jewish culture, and basically; the religion. Meaning the language and the people referring to the Israelites. Religiously speaking The term Hebrew was mentioned thirty four times in the Hebrew bible from more than thirty verses, the word Hebrew or Hebrews, does not particularly refer to the language but also to a group of Semitic speaking communities, especially when they were a living nomads, during what’s known as the monarchic period. In the biblical signification, the word Hebrew means to ‘’pass over’’ or ‘’traverse’’, yet the meaning is not so precise. In the roman era the equivalent Greek word for Hebrew which is Hebraios did mean the Jews as a whole especially those settling in the Roman province of Judea, Judea’s modern location would be round the southern mountains of Palestine. Book of torah, which is what it is believed to be Moses’s book, torat Moshe, and in different words ‘’laws of Moses’, the symbol figure of Judaism, this is believed to be divine book from heavens was originally presented in Hebrew language, Hebrew as Arabic in Quran, it is to be a sacred language because of religious background and legitimacy because it is simply the language that talks of ideals represented as language of perfect and it talks to every believer in the content of the Torah. Religion and especially in antique times and fresh earliest centuries that followed the relevancy of non secular texts, people were more spiritual than ever, and - 1 - General Introduction nothing much powerful than word of god in belief, in eras witnessing the relevancy of these sacred books as a savior against common bad and evil. And so people recited and practiced and used in daily lives. Torah like Quran brought lot of secular knowledge about life. And people adapted these words and recreated poetries and literatures backed up by a whole spiritual and linguistic mightiness. Arabic of Quran, the book revealed to the prophet Mohamed, the symbol man of Islam that faithfully appreciated the book of his god ‘’Allah’’ sent to him. And so did the rest of his believers, they had faith in the words of Allah and read the words by heart, and prayed with words that is to be without any alike source of power within the words of identity, identity of Islam in Arabic tongue. The sensitivity between Arab speakers of Arabic and Jews speakers of Hebrew wasn’t always a negative thing, because despite of the massive cultural religious contrast, one language affected the other, no matter of what took a lion part in affecting or on a pre-existence. But the spark was there, and still there, if you go to the middle east, and Jerusalem you will see such, when though each language has its class division , without shedding the political light over the superior significance of one language over the other, but over the linguistics, one might say it’s something normal if nearby communities have linguistically in common because of geographical positioning of these speakers, and interactions, even though sometimes forcible. To be objective both Hebrew and Arabic have been given justice to be what they are considering all historical cultural political events, even if the track wasn’t practically the same to each. Comparing to Arabic along the time, Hebrew language has seemed to be more soft and able to change though times since the sacred revelation. And sometimes you find it difficult