21/12/2021 - 15:30 - 14:00
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2021-12-21 14:00:00
2021-12-21 15:30:00
Linguistics Colloquium: Dalit Assouline
Dalit Assouline, University of Haifa
Title: The emergence of grammatical animacy in Israeli Hasidic Yiddish
Abstract:
The distinction between animate and inanimate entities is reflected in most, if not all languages of the world (Comrie 1989). In some languages, animacy is salient in the grammar, whereas in others the various effects of animacy seem invisible. In languages with salient grammatical animacy, animacy can, for example, affect the marking of number (e.g. only animate nouns have plural forms), determine the marking of case (e.g. animate or human objects have special accusative marking), and constrain verbal agreement (e.g. verbs can agree only with animate or human nouns).
The present talk discusses the surfacing of grammatical animacy in contemporary spoken Israeli Hasidic Yiddish. Grammatical animacy was hardly evident in Hasidic Yiddish up to the late 1990s, but now is increasingly controlling two number agreement patterns, the assignment of gender and the marking of direct objects. The talk will focus on animacy-based verbal agreement in a corpus of spoken Hasidic Yiddish recorded in 2019-2020.
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אוניברסיטת בר-אילן
internet.team@biu.ac.il
Asia/Jerusalem
public
Dalit Assouline, University of Haifa
Title: The emergence of grammatical animacy in Israeli Hasidic Yiddish
Abstract:
The distinction between animate and inanimate entities is reflected in most, if not all languages of the world (Comrie 1989). In some languages, animacy is salient in the grammar, whereas in others the various effects of animacy seem invisible. In languages with salient grammatical animacy, animacy can, for example, affect the marking of number (e.g. only animate nouns have plural forms), determine the marking of case (e.g. animate or human objects have special accusative marking), and constrain verbal agreement (e.g. verbs can agree only with animate or human nouns).
The present talk discusses the surfacing of grammatical animacy in contemporary spoken Israeli Hasidic Yiddish. Grammatical animacy was hardly evident in Hasidic Yiddish up to the late 1990s, but now is increasingly controlling two number agreement patterns, the assignment of gender and the marking of direct objects. The talk will focus on animacy-based verbal agreement in a corpus of spoken Hasidic Yiddish recorded in 2019-2020.
Subscribe to our Telegram channel to get notified about upcoming talks and events
