This paper reassesses Ze’ev Ben-Ḥayyim’s provocative proposal for the periodization of Hebrew, forty years after his programmatic essay on the topic. It reconstructs his core methodological claim: that the decisive boundaries between “periods” should be drawn not only (or even primarily) by internal grammatical criteria, but by the changing ecology of spoken versus written Hebrew, specifically, by whether written Hebrew is anchored in a living vernacular or functions as a largely literary language. The discussion then traces how later scholarship has, in effect, absorbed this insight by sharpening a principled distinction between (i) the history of Hebrew as an idealized linguistic system and (ii) the history of Hebrew as attested in particular corpora, with special attention to heterogeneity, register stratification, and standardization across Biblical, Rabbinic, Medieval, and Modern contexts. The paper is framed as both a methodological intervention and an intellectual homage: it opens and closes with a personal-commemorative voice that situates the argument within a scholarly lineage and highlights Ben-Ḥayyim’s enduring impact on how we conceptualize Hebrew’s historical continuity and change.

The article reexamines the commonly accepted claim in linguistic research that there exists a grammatical category of reciprocity in Hebrew. According to this view, verbs in the hitpa'el (התפעל) stem are perceived as denoting symmetric and reciprocal situations in the world, and the reciprocity is attributed to this form. The article offers an alternative perspective, arguing that: 1) the verbs in question do not necessarily express reciprocity; 2) they are not derived from other verbs, and thus the existence of a unique grammatical category for reciprocity is not self-evident. Instead, it is suggested that the hitpa'el stem functions as a "strategy for expressing reciprocity." This means that while the form itself does not inherently convey reciprocity, it systematically appears in constructions that describe contexts involving symmetric relations. For example, the verb hitḥabeq ("hugged") describes an activity that may be reciprocal when occurring between two people, but this is not obligatory (e.g., hugging a pillow). Similarly, the verb hitmaser ("to pass") may involve reciprocal relations when referring to an interaction between people, but not when directed toward an inanimate object like a wall. Accordingly, when this verb is used to denote "passing between people" it is reciprocal, but the verb can also be used in a context that a child played catch with the wall, thus in other contexts it is not necessarily a symmetric verb. Another example is the verb hit’ahav ("fell in love"), which can describe a reciprocal relationship but does not necessarily require one. The article also proposes a new classification of four types of reciprocal verbs in Modern Hebrew and demonstrates correlations between their semantic features and the ways in which they express symmetric relations in the world.

This article examines the expression “yodea misparkhem/mispar kulkhem”, which appears in the blessing recited upon passing through a cemetery. The discussion situates the phrase within the broader linguistic context of rabbinic blessings, which draw on multiple strata of Hebrew and form a poetic tapestry interwoven with biblical and midrashic language, often conveying theological themes.

The article proposes that the phrase “yodea misparkhem” should not be understood as referring to a numerical count of the dead, but rather as “knows the story of your lives”—a knowledge that forms the basis of divine judgment and the resurrection of the dead according to justice. To support this interpretation, the paper explores the possible meaning of the Hebrew noun mispar as “narrative” or “account,” a rare usage in Hebrew but attested in biblical and other early literature.

The article further suggests that the wording of the blessing preserves a homiletic interpretation of a verse from Balaam’s blessing (Numbers 23:10), which rabbinic tradition associates with resurrection. According to the proposed reconstruction, the phrases “‛afar ya‛akov” and “rova‛ Israel” were understood as metonymies for the dead, while the verbs mana and safar were interpreted in the narrative sense. Thus, the cemetery blessing is shown to reflect a rich poetic and exegetical tradition, embedding biblical reference and eschatological theology within a fixed liturgical formula.

This study delves into the intricate process of reanalysis, wherein linguistic expressions undergo grammatical or semantic changes, or sometimes both. The primary objective of this study is to explore the theoretical aspects surrounding historical changes of this nature. To facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the topic, we provide a formal description of reanalysis as an analytical tool. Our formal description allows for the differentiation of various change scenarios, enabling us to identify distinct types of shifts from one analysis to another. This approach not only focuses on what has been reanalyzed, be it the morphology, syntax or the semantics, but also emphasizes the interplay between all three linguistic modules (Form, Grammar, and Meaning) and their relationships. This holistic perspective enables a systematic examination of the significance of what remains constant at both points in time during the reanalysis process. The key insight arising from this analysis leads us to propose and substantiate the Early Semantic Stability Hypothesis. This hypothesis posits that the truth-conditional semantics of the original proposition remain unchanged throughout reanalysis, either in all contexts or in specific "bridging contexts" where the reanalysis occurs. To demonstrate these phenomena, we present a compelling test case, focusing on the development of the counterfactual conditional marker ʾilmale in Hebrew and Aramaic. Through a detailed examination of the syntactic and semantic reanalyses it underwent, we observe the emergence of unique semantic features. By adopting a formal semantic perspective, we address fundamental questions such as the level of ambiguity required for reanalysis to take place, the potential existence of universal constraints on reanalysis, and potential motivations driving these linguistic changes. This investigation provides valuable insights into the intricate mechanisms at play during reanalysis and contributes to the broader understanding of linguistic evolution and development.

This paper delves into the semantics of the reciprocal construction recognized in the literature as "verbal" or "lexical" reciprocals. A common assumption is that predicates of this construction inherently encode a symmetric meaning, often marked morphologically in many languages. This paper advocates for a crucial distinction between two types of predicates: rec-predicates (e.g., the Hebrew verb hitnašek 'kiss') - a class of predicates that do not inherently denote symmetry but carry an underspecified meaning, so that in specific defined contexts, they can induce a symmetric reading. In contrast, sym-predicates (e.g., the Hebrew attribute zehe 'be identical') - this class of predicates inherently encodes symmetric relations. Drawing upon Winter’s (2002) typology of verbs, it is posited that rec-predicates are dyadic, taking two atoms as their arguments, while sym-predicates are monadic, with a single argument denoting a set. The analysis in this paper adopts Bar-Asher Siegal’s (2020) methodology for identifying strategies expressing reciprocity and is substantiated with a survey of the various syntactic structures in which the relevant predicates manifest, along with their diverse interpretations. The paper critically examines previous analyses of these predicates, scrutinizing both empirical and theoretical challenges encountered by these analyses. With a specific focus on verbal strategies for expressing reciprocity in Hebrew, the study, informed by the shared characteristics identified in previous research, suggests that the conclusions drawn for Hebrew may be applicable to other languages as well.

 

In 1894, Jacob Barth proposed that the preformative conjugation in some of the Semitic languages goes back to a – generally bygone – inverse  correlation between the thematic vowel of the stem and that of the conjugational prefix.
Evidence for such a distribution is well attested in all branches of Central Semitic, yet it remains disputed whether it should be reconstructed for
Proto-Semitic as well. This paper makes use of new data from a living
Semitic variety, namely the Arabic dialect of Ḥugariyyah in the south of
Yemen, where the pattern observed by Barth is still operative. We examine
the interaction of the conjugational prefixes with the dialectal future tense
marker š(a)-, and point to cases where the inverse correlation is violated.
We outline a sequential development, starting with a phonetically-driven
re-distribution of the preformative vowels, and followed by their reanalysis
as integral to the prefix. We then propose that comparable developments may
have taken place in other Semitic varieties, predominantly Akkadian, and
thus view the Akkadian preformative conjugation as a derivative of a former
inverse correlation, as reconstructed by Barth.
 

This paper proposes a formal definition of reanalysis, while emphasizing the importance of the distinction between two different kinds of reanalysis: those in which the change is confined to the grammatical level, and those in which it is confined to the semantic level. After tracing the history of a negative counterfactual conditional marker in Hebrew and Aramaic which underwent both syntactic and semantic reanalyses, the paper assesses the concept of reanalysis with focus on the following questions: Is reanalysis a single, clearly-defined phenomenon, and if so, what is its nature? Is it merely a descriptive label for a certain observable state of affairs, or does it explain diachronic changes? Alternatively, perhaps it is a theoretical constraint, a theoretical requirement that linguistic change must be associated with specific environments where reanalysis can take place? A detailed analysis of the marker and its evolution yields the following broad hypothesis: Reanalysis of a linguistic form does not change the truth conditions of the proposition that contains it, regardless of whether the reanalysis is on the grammatical level or on the semantic level.

This paper deals with two presentative dative constructions in Modern Hebrew, characterizing them from two angles: as dative constructions and as presentative constructions. It demonstrates that this dual perspective allows to account for both the syntactic and the semantic differences between them.

In discussing the history of the Hebrew language, a distinction must be made between its history as a linguistic system and the history of its written forms. The former assumes an idealized periodization of the language and distinguishes between Early Hebrew (EH) and Late Hebrew (LH). The latter bases the division on corpora, resulting in the traditional classification into Biblical Hebrew, Qumranic Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew, with further sub-divisions such as early vs. late Biblical Hebrew, Early vs. Late Mishnaic Hebrew, Babylonian vs. Palestinian Talmudic Hebrew, etc. Although these two perspectives are fundamentally different, they are clearly interrelated: on the one hand, our knowledge about the history of the structure(s) of the language is based on data gathered from the Hebrew corpora and on the historical setting of these texts; on the other hand, the analysis of the linguistic information in the corpora is a de facto description of how the different linguistic systems were used in each corpus. This paper aims to examine the language of the Mishnah from these two perspectives and explore the conceptual distinction between the two categories with which it is associated, namely Late Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew. I will outline what it means to provide a description of Late Hebrew as a linguistic system, and what it means to examine Mishnaic Hebrew as the language of a written corpus. Accordingly, this paper has a twofold goal: 1) to explain the difference between the two perspectives as relevant to the language of the Mishnah. 2) to demonstrate the advantages of keeping them separate.

This paper characterizes Medieval Hebrew and Aramaic as literary languages and seeks to explain how a 'literary language' namely a language used mainly in literary contexts arises, while utilizing three types of research: comparative philological research, which compares different languages and texts in terms of their vocabulary and grammar; sociolinguistic research, which examines the social functions of language use; and psycholinguistic research, which (in this particular case) examines issues of language acquisition. The paper builds on philological studies of literary languages to explain how the grammar of these languages evolves. It assumes that the acquisition of such languages is similar to second-language acquisition, while taking into account that these languages are both acquired and used in a strictly literary context. The main argument of the paper is that literary languages should be studied the same way as other languages, because ultimately after making some adjustments motivated by their particular functions they are compatible with the standard models of second-language acquisition.