Ghil'ad Zuckermann

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Ghil'ad Zuckermann (Hebrew: גלעד צוקרמן‎ , Chinese: 诸葛漫) (born June 1, 1971, in Tel Aviv, Israel) is an Israeli/Italian/British linguist who argues that Israeli (his term for Modern Hebrew) is a Semito-European hybrid language, simultaneously based on Hebrew, Yiddish and other languages such as Russian and Polish. His multi-parental hybridization model is in contrast to both the traditional revival view (i.e. that Israeli is Hebrew revived) and the relexification position (i.e. that Israeli is Yiddish with Hebrew words).^[1] His publications include the book Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew(Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), which establishes a socio-philological framework for the analysis of camouflaged borrowing such as phono-semantic matching, and introduces a classification for multisourced neologization.

Zuckermann is Associate Professor and Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellow at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. He holds doctorates from Oxford and Cambridge universities and an M.A. summa cum laude from Tel Aviv University.^[2]

[edit] Biography

Zuckermann was born in Tel Aviv, Israel on June 1, 1971. In 1987 he won the Israeli scholarship to attend the United World College (UWC) of the Adriatic, where he gained an International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma in 1989. He served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 1989-1993, during the First Intifada (1987-1992) and Gulf War (1990-1991). In 1993-1997 he was a scholar at the Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Programme for Outstanding Students of Tel Aviv University, where he studied philosophy, psychology, classics, literature, law and mathematics, and specialized in linguistics, receiving an M.A. (97%, summa cum laude) from the Department of Linguistics in 1997. In 1997-2000 he was Scatcherd European Scholar of the University of Oxford and Denise Skinner Graduate Scholar at St Hugh's College, Oxford, receiving a D.Phil. (Oxon.) in 2000.^[3]

As Gulbenkian Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge (2000-2004), he was affiliated with the Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Studies, University of Cambridge, and taught at the Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies (then known as Faculty of Oriental Studies), University of Cambridge. He received a titular Ph.D. (Cantab.) from the University of Cambridge in 2003.^[4]

Zuckermann has taught at universities in the United Kingdom, United States, Israel and Singapore. He has also taught preparatory courses for various psychometric examinations and co-authored several books in this field. He has been research fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation's Study and Conference Center (Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, Lake Como, Italy), Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (University of Texas at Austin), Research Centre for Linguistic Typology (Institute for Advanced Study, La Trobe University, Melbourne), and National Institute for Japanese Language (Tokyo). He has held a British Academy Research Grant, Memorial Foundation of Jewish Culture Postdoctoral Fellowship, Harold Hyam Wingate Scholarship, Chevening Scholarship and German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Scholarship.^[5]

Currently, Zuckermann is Associate Professor and Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellow at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.

[edit] Contributions to linguistics

Zuckermann’s research focuses on language contact and comparative linguistics. Throughout his work, whether it is the analysis of a lexical item^[6], a grammatical construction^[7], the genetic affiliation of a language^[8] or globalization^[9], one could notice motifs such as syncretism, hybridity, multiple causation, reinforcement, subconscious influence, survival and camouflage.

[edit] Historical linguistics - characterization of Israeli Hebrew

According to Zuckermann, Israeli Hebrew, which he calls Israeli, is genetically both Indo-European (Germanic, Slavic and Romance) and Afro-Asiatic (Semitic). He suggests that Israeli Hebrew is the continuation not only of literary Hebrew but also of Yiddish, as well as Polish, Russian, German, English, Ladino, Arabic and other languages spoken by Hebrew revivalists. Zuckermann's hybridic model is based on two main principles: the Congruence Principle and the Founder Principle.

According to the Congruence Principle, the more contributing languages a linguistic feature exists in, the more likely it is to persist in the target language.^[10] Based on feature pool^[11] statistics and recognizing simultaneous multiple sources, the Congruence Principle is in contrast to the family tree tool in historical linguistics. The Congruence Principle challenges the relexification model, according to which Israeli Hebrew is Indo-European: Yiddish with Hebrew words.^[12]

The Founder Principle underlines the impact of the founder population on the emerging language. Thus, "Yiddish is a primary contributor to Israeli Hebrew because it was the mother tongue of the vast majority of revivalists and first pioneers in Eretz Yisrael at the crucial period of the beginning of Israeli Hebrew".^[13] According to Zuckermann, although the revivalists wished to speak Hebrew, with Semitic grammar and pronunciation, they could not avoid the Ashkenazi mindset arising from their European background. He argues that their attempt to deny their European roots, negate diasporism and avoid hybridity (as reflected in Yiddish) failed. "Had the revivalists been Arabic-speaking Jews (e.g. from Morocco), Israeli Hebrew would have been a totally different language – both genetically and typologically, much more Semitic. The impact of the founder population on Israeli Hebrew is incomparable with that of later immigrants."^[14] The Founder Principle challenges the traditional revival view, according to which Israeli Hebrew is Hebrew revived and thus Afro-Asiatic (Semitic).

Zuckermann concludes that when one revives a no-longer spoken language, one should expect to end up with a hybrid.

[edit] Lexicology - analysis of camouflaged borrowing

Zuckermann's analysis of multisourced neologization^[15] challenges Einar Haugen's classic typology of lexical borrowing ^[16]. While Haugen categorizes borrowing into either substitution or importation, Zuckermann explores cases of "simultaneous substitution and importation" in the form of camouflaged borrowing. He proposes a new classification of multisourced neologisms, words deriving from two or more sources at the same time. Examples of such mechanisms are phonetic matching, semanticized phonetic matching and phono-semantic matching. Phono-semantic matching is distinct from calquing. While calquing includes (semantic) translation, it does not consist of phonetic matching (i.e. retaining the approximate sound of the borrowed word through matching it with a similar-sounding pre-existent word/morpheme in the target language). Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew compares phono-semantic matches in Israeli Hebrew to those in Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Arabic, Yiddish and creole languages.

Zuckermann concludes that language planners, for example members of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, employ the very same techniques used in folk etymology by laymen, as well as by religious leaders.^[17] He urges lexicographers and etymologists to recognize the widespread phenomena of camouflaged borrowing and multisourced neologization and not to force one source on multi-parental lexical items.

[edit] Writing systems - characterization of Chinese orthography

Zuckermann’s exploration of phono-semantic matching in Standard Mandarin and Meiji period Japanese concludes that the Chinese writing system is multifunctional: pleremic ("full" of meaning, e.g. logographic), cenemic ("empty" of meaning, e.g. phonographic - like a syllabary) and simultaneously cenemic and pleremic (phono-logographic). Zuckermann argues that Leonard Bloomfield’s assertion that "a language is the same no matter what system of writing may be used"^[18] is inaccurate. “If Chinese had been written using roman letters, thousands of Chinese words would not have been coined, or would have been coined with completely different forms”.^[19]

[edit] References

1. ^ Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2006), "Complement Clause Types in Israeli", Complementation: A Cross-Linguistic Typology, edited by R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 72-92.
2. ^ UQ reSEARCHers: Biography for Assoc Prof Ghil'ad Zuckermann, accessed June 14, 2008.
3. ^ UQ reSEARCHers: Biography for Assoc Prof Ghil'ad Zuckermann, accessed June 14, 2008.
4. ^ UQ reSEARCHers: Qualifications for Assoc Prof Ghil'ad Zuckermann, accessed June 14, 2008.
5. ^ UQ reSEARCHers: Biography for Assoc Prof Ghil'ad Zuckermann, accessed June 14, 2008.
6. ^ E.g. Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2004), "Cultural Hybridity: Multisourced Neologization in 'Reinvented' Languages and in Languages with 'Phono-Logographic' Script", Languages in Contrast 4 (2), pp. 281-318.
7. ^ E.g. Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2006), "Comparative Constructions in 'Israeli Hebrew'", Melilah 2006/2, pp. 1-16;
   Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2006), "Direct and Indirect Speech in Straight-Talking Israeli", Acta Linguistica Hungarica 53, pp. 467-481.
8. ^ E.g. Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2006), “Hebrew, Israeli”, Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (Second Edition), edited by Keith Brown, Oxford: Elsevier, Volume 5, pp. 265-268.
9. ^ E.g. Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2003), “Language Contact and Globalisation: The Camouflaged Influence of English on the World’s Languages – with special attention to Israeli (sic) and Mandarin”, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 16 (2), pp. 287-307.
10. ^ See p. 62 in Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2006), "A New Vision for 'Israeli Hebrew': Theoretical and Practical Implications of Analysing Israel's Main Language as a Semi-Engineered Semito-European Hybrid Language", Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5 (1), pp. 57-71.
11. ^ See Mufwene, Salikoko (2001), The Ecology of Language Evolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
12. ^ See Horvath, Julia and Wexler, Paul (editors) (1997), Relexification in Creole and Non-Creole Languages: With Special Attention to Haitian Creole, Modern Hebrew, Romani and Rumanian, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
13. ^ See p. 63 in Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2006), "A New Vision for 'Israeli Hebrew': Theoretical and Practical Implications of Analysing Israel's Main Language as a Semi-Engineered Semito-European Hybrid Language", Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5 (1), pp. 57-71.
14. ^ See p. 63 in Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2006), "A New Vision for 'Israeli Hebrew': Theoretical and Practical Implications of Analysing Israel's Main Language as a Semi-Engineered Semito-European Hybrid Language", Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5 (1), pp. 57-71.
15. ^ Zuckermann, Ghil’ad (2003), ‘‘Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew’’, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
16. ^ Haugen, Einar (1950), "The Analysis of Linguistic Borrowing", Language 26, pp. 210-231.
17. ^ See Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad (2006), "'Etymythological Othering' and the Power of 'Lexical Engineering' in Judaism, Islam and Christianity. A Socio-Philo(sopho)logical Perspective", Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion, edited by Tope Omoniyi and Joshua A. Fishman, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 237-258.
18. ^ Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), Language, New York: Henry Holt, p. 21.
19. ^ Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad (2003), Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 255.

[edit] External links

• Ghil'ad Zuckermann's website
  
• UQ reSEARCHers: Biography for Assoc Prof Ghil'ad Zuckermann
  
• Associate Professor Ghil'ad Zuckermann, School of English, Media Studies and Art History, The University of Queensland, Australia
• Jewish Language Research Website: Ghil`ad Zuckermann