'The unknown grammar of Abraham Ibn Ezra: Syntactic features of Yesod Diqduq', in Abraham Ibn Ezra Y Su Tiempo, F. De Esteban (ed.) Madrid, 1989, pp. 129-36.

From three syntactic phenomena, the copula, the accusative and the possessive, we derive the tentative hypothesis that Aloni's edition of Abraham Ibn Ezra's Yesod Diqduq reflects Ibn Ezra's systematic idiolect for Written Hebrew as a Second Language. This idiolect seems to show signs of a subliminal Spanish substratum (in the manipulation of the copula), modulated by the grammarian's conscious decision to place clear-cut, Arabicising syntactic constraints on his style in matters of high grammatical profile.

Little is known about the attitude of legislators and judiciaries to linguistic phenomena outside the language of law itself -- such as the choice of medium, acts of speech, demonstrations of semantic intent and the like. This study examines Jewish legal philosophy of language embodied in attitudes of Halakhah (Jewish traditional normative law) to language choice -- Hebrew vs. the local vernacular -- in the exercise of certain key sacred acts, notably marriage, vowing, and worship. Halakhah makes much use of theoretical argument to justify its norms and create new ones, while also taking regular note of popular custom; similar interaction can be found between the philosophy of language choice propounded by the religious elite and the actual choices made in Jewish folk religion. Two trends can be identified: A relativistic, naturalistic conception and a semi-absolute Hebrew-centered conception. This distinction involves, in turn, Halakhic notions of felicitous communication, sacred vs. secular language, substandard vs. norm, dialect and creole, and artificial vs. natural language.

These Halakhic attitudes embody a two- or three-way distinction between (a) speech acts that have a material effect -- interpersonal communication (e.g. declaration of marriage) and speech addressed to God that have a natural impact (e.g. vows and oaths) -- and (b) speech acts that have a purely metaphysical effect (acts of worship).

Abstract
This study explores the correlation between notions of language and territory in the ideology of a present-day Ultraorthodox Jewish group, the Hasidim of Satmar, in the context of Jewish Ultraorthodoxy ('Haredism') in general. This involves the present-day role of Yiddish vis-a-vis Hebrew, particularly in Israel. We first address the 'relative sanctity' of a space that accommodates a closed Haredi life-style and of a language in which it is expressed, then contrast this with the 'absolute sanctity' of the Land of Israel and the Language of Scripture both in their intensional (positive) and in their extensional (negative) dimensions, and finally examine the 'quasi-absolute sanctity' with which the Yiddish language and Jewish habitat of Eastern Europe have been invested. Our conclusion is that three such cases of a parallel between linguistic and territorial ideology point to an intrinsic link. Indeed, the correlation of language and territory on the plane of 'quasi-absolute sanctity' betokens an ongoing, active ideological tie, rather than a set of worn, petrified values evoking mere lip-service -- for these notions of quasi-sanctity find many echoes in reality: in the use of Yiddish and in the creation of a surrogate Eastern European life-style in the Haredi 'ghettos'.

Neither in Eretz-Israel nor in Europe was a large-scale language congress held in the early stages of the Modern Hebrew movement. In Eretz-Israel, material and political difficulties, combined with an ethos of individualism, youth and anti-academism, conspired against any concerted corpus planning or status planning; when a deus ex machina arrived in the form of the Russian Zionist, Ussishkin, in 1903, the result was a first Teachers' Conference and Teachers' Association, in which the goal of an all-Hebrew society and polity underlay all that was said and done -- and was so taken for granted and so self-evidently to be achieved through the schools that the conference could afford to concentrate on matters pedagogical.
      The European Hebrew movement, in touch (and largely responsible) for what was emerging in Eretz-Israel, was aware of its own distinctive needs for a brand of Hebraism that would provide a modern -- some would say, substitute -- Diaspora identity. But despite the congress-mania that came with the success of first Zionist Congress of 1897, a congress of Hebrew failed to transpire. Fear of creating a secular-religious Kulturkampf and pressure against Jewish culture in the Czarist Jewish heartland were key (extrinsic) obstacles. But even as forces built up to hold conferences and to plan for a congress, the old intrinsic problem remained of a Diaspora Jewry without its own polity and autonomy, undergoing relentless assimilation, waging a losing war for its traditions of written Hebrew and its ethnic culture as a whole -- in contrast with the steady development of a new Jewish polity in the Holy Land. There they had already raised a generation of native Hebrew speakers; here, it was a theory.
     To a great degree, the Eretz-Israel and European Hebrew language movements represented two very different sociolinguistic endeavors: the one essentially concerned with high-culture functions (and in which the Spoken Hebrew enterprise was arguably a means to high-culture ends) -- and the other concerned with creating a practical all-purpose indigenous speech community, for which being seen to speak Hebrew meant more than high-sounding congresses with all their 'arm-chair Zionist' connotations.
      And the dichotomy between the two movements was also the basic dichotomy between a homeland and a diaspora. Eretz-Israel might be meagre in resources, but the Diaspora movement rapidly recognised that they were the periphery and Eretz-Israel the 'vital center' (using Laponce's (1987) notion, characterized as 'the ideal place for the deployment of the functions of command, social integration, economic adaptation, and historic continuity.')
      And beyond all these factors lay personality: Individualistic, promethean forces in unlikely alliance with the grim, gradualistic realism of an Ahad Ha'am, to give unwitting affirmation to the truth expressed by Fishman that 'languages are neither saved nor spread by language conferences. Ideology, symbolism and rhetoric are of undeniable significance in language spread... but without a tangible and considerable status-power counterpart, they become under conditions of social change competitively inoperative in the face of languages that do provide such.'

To add a sudden 10% to its population in the form of 0.5 million Soviet migrants, professionalized and wedded to Russian culture, would test any monolingual society. Faced with this, Israel's traditional Hebrew-enforcement policy in the Ingathering of the Diaspora is apparently in retreat. Israel is now officially committing large resources to fostering an immigrant language as a channel of information, education and culture. This study documents and evaluates this policy shift, with particular reference to the procedures and rationales of decision makers themselves. In 1993-4 we conducted interviews across central and local government and quasi-official agencies. Instead of a centralized language policy, we found a multiplicity of individual Russian-language initiatives and creative budgeting within ministries and agencies, made possible by the privatization of absorption and policy fragmentation. These measures were widely portrayed as an emergency tactic for coping with the scale and alien nature of the influx, while maintaining traditional strategies of hebraization. Vote-catching and budget-boosting have also played a part, helped by the low level of administrative and public opposition (reflecting the general decline in Hebraic nation-building ideology). This is evidence of a powerful faith in the instrumental motive for acquiring a host language, however low the immigrants' integrative motive may be. However, a positive promotion of Russian culture in some quarters points to changes of a strategic kind.

By examining the role of popular and specialized lexicography in the re-nativization of Hebrew, we can cast light on the question of how far a society needs its dictionaries. Even where popular and specialist lexical need would appear to be extreme, as in the urgent, politically charged re-vernacularization of Hebrew for a broad range of casual and formal functions, other cultural and political forces may militate against deploying or employing the dictionary.

In the case of Modern Hebrew, both literary and popular pressures were arrayed: Elite literary circles favoured gradualistic, literary development over forced, philological solutions. This may have had as much to do with social conflict between competing cultural elites as with ideological or aesthetic differences. Popular circles of pioneers, ideologically and pragmatically opposed to the traditional Jewish 'republic of learning' and its authority, building a new, individualistic culture, saw no reason to support lexicography with its ponderous traditions.

As these forces waned and the institutional need for standardized Hebrew lexis grew, popular lexicography did begin to be done and to claim allegiance, and specialized lexicography grew apace. But new social forces now seem to have intervened, to limit the lucrative dictionary "market" to a succession of monopolies: the apparent need for a linguistic authority to which symbolic or shambolic allegiance could be paid.

It is only 20-30 years since full-scale attempts began in Britain at transmitting Yiddish from Holocaust survivors to children as a mother tongue. It involves both speaking proficiency, generally as a first language for boys and a second language for girls, and varying degrees of literacy. Our interest in educators reflects the fact that school plays as crucial a role as the home, by the sheer length of the school day and year, in developing first language proficiency.

Yiddish educators show a combination of highly valued social and religious goals with covert strategies. For boys, most educators combine nonchalance with vigorous ideology: They point to the use of Yiddish as a first language by and with men in the home, hence Yiddish in school just 'speaks itself'; or they can play up the threat from English among Hasidic womenfolk or from the outside world. Yiddish is thus portrayed through the same prism as Judaism: thriving and secure, a Jew's natural lifestyle, or at risk (contingent or existential). Then the values of Yiddish will be enumerated: a Jewish language (Jews having some degree of religious duty to maintain linguistic boundaries); an international Hasidic lingua franca; a bond between Hasidim, Orthodox, and potentially all Jews; it gives effect to the philosophical ideal of the founder of Hasidism that Jews should form bonds through a low-status, down-to-earth medium; in its written form, it guarantees that the holy letters are used in everyday life; it underlines, implicitly, the distinctiveness of the individual Hasidic sect; for Lubavitch, it accesses the original words of the Rebbe; and it prepares boys for the Yiddish-speaking Yeshiva world.

Low priority is assigned to cultivating norms for written or spoken Yiddish. Two values are intersecting: Yiddish as a hotchpotch of Jewish and Gentile speech patterns; and general Haredi dismissal of linguistic formal awareness as 'Goyim naches' in contrast with content awareness.

For girls, Yiddish is perceived as being somewhat in conflict with English and as needing promotion. Conflict focuses on the language of womenfolk, particularly in more affluent Hasidic neighborhoods. The campaign is generally gentle and optimistic, with satisfaction that girls often already use Yiddish with male kin and a desire to equip them to use it as a main language with the next female generation. The sense of duty, as with the boys, is expressed in broad ethno-religious terms of Jewish distinctiveness, peoplehood, and Hasidic solidarity, and -- in the case of Lubavitch -- access to the Rebbe's words. Yiddish study is more structured than among the boys, due in part to the status of secular study for girls.

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