Syntax and Morphology of Yiddish Dialects

Lea Schäfer

doi:10.5771/9783487424255

Summary

20th century fascism largely destroyed European Jewish cultures in their original form and distribution. Survivors brought their culture to new environments, where it was partly revitalized. Languages were also victim to this, or were abandoned in the course of assimilation and acculturation, or at least were strongly influenced by the different new contact situations. In the 1950s, when it was foreseeable that many survivors who had grown up in the old European territories would not pass on their mother tongue to their children and grandchildren, Uriel Weinreich recognized the necessity and opportunity to systematically document the language and culture of these speakers. Within the framework of his project “Language and Culture Archive of Ashkenazic Jewry” (LCAAJ), 18 interviewers collected interviews with almost 1,000 informants between 1959 and 1972 on the basis of an extensive questionnaire. The material collected within the framework of the LCAAJ is an inexhaustible fund and the best source we have on the historical Yiddish dialects of Central Europe. With the publication of the digitized copies of the written records (field notes) by Columbia Libraries in 2018 the raw data of the LCAAJ became available to the public. Between 2017 and 2022 the project “Syntax of Eastern Yiddish Dialects” (SEYD) analyzed these field notes with regard to syntactic and also morphological structures. The present volume presents a selection of these phenomena. The focus is on the empirical data as well as their embedding in a (micro)typological context. A large number of maps illustrate the spatial dimension of the grammatical variation given in the former European Yiddish dialects.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2023
ISBN-Print: 978-3-487-16182-2
ISBN-Online: 978-3-487-42425-5
Publisher: Georg Olms Verlag, Baden-Baden
Series: Deutsche Dialektgeographie
Volume: 132
Language: English
Pages: 468
Product type: Book Titles

Titelei/Inhaltsverzeichnis No access Pages I - XI
1. Introduction No access Pages 3 - 6
2. 1. Uriel Weinreich’s Structural Dialectology No access
  2. Methodology No access
  3. Theinformants No access
  4. Publications and data documentation No access
  5. The field notes’ accuracy: transcription of final de-/voic-ing No access
3. 1. Syntax of (Eastern) Yiddish dialects No access
  2. Syntax data in the LCAAJ No access
  3. Approach and mapping No access
  4. Phenomena covered by other publications No access
1. 1. Future No access
  2. Pluperfect No access
  3. Perfect auxiliary of Hebrew based periphrastic verbs No access
2. 1. Iterative aspect: the halt-in-eyn construction No access
  2. Habitual aspect: the flegn-construction No access
  3. Diminutive-iterative aspect:The stem construction No access
3. 1. Passive Voice No access
  2. Paradigm of the reflexive/middle marker No access
  3. Reflexive Voice No access
  4. Middle Voice No access
4. 1. Regularizations No access
  2. Irregularizations No access
  3. Semantic differentiations and further effects No access
5. 1. Inchoative phasal verbs No access
  2. Benefactive verbs No access
6. 1. Prepositional dative marking No access
  2. Noun Inflection No access
7. 1. Plural forms of personal pronouns (enk, ets, enker) No access
  2. Double agreement No access
  3. Syncretism of personal pronouns (1./3. Pl.) No access
8. 1. Negative Concord No access
  2. n-indefinite nix No access
  3. Paratactic negation No access
9. 1. Comparative and equative comparison No access
  2. Correlative comparative No access
10. 1. Predicative adjectives No access
  2. Comparative and superlative No access
Bibliography No access Pages 403 - 440
List of Figures No access Pages 441 - 452
List of Tables No access Pages 453 - 454
Abbreviations No access Pages 455 - 458
Index No access Pages 459 - 464
Index of LCAAJ questions No access Pages 465 - 468