This article will be permanently flagged as inappropriate and made unaccessible to everyone. Are you certain this article is inappropriate? Excessive Violence Sexual Content Political / Social
Email Address:
Article Id: WHEBN0030713780 Reproduction Date:
Ghil'ad Zuckermann (Hebrew: גלעד צוקרמן; born June 1, 1971) is an Israeli linguist who works with language revival, contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity.[1] Zuckermann is Professor of Linguistics and Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide and holds an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellowship, as well as a Project 211 Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Shanghai International Studies University.[2]
According to Zuckermann, "Israeli" 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).[3] Zuckermann's approach to language revival weakens the family tree tool in historical linguistics.[4]
His publications include the books Israelit Safa Yafa (Israeli – A Beautiful Language) (Am Oved, 2008, ISBN 978-965-13-1963-1) and Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, ISBN 978-1403917232), the latter establishing a socio-philological framework for the analysis of camouflaged borrowing such as phono-semantic matching, and introducing a classification for "multisourced neologization". He has published academic articles in English, Hebrew, Italian, Yiddish, Spanish, German, Russian and Chinese.[5]
Zuckermann was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, on June 1, 1971, attended the United World College (UWC) of the Adriatic in 1987–1989 and served in the Israel Defense Forces in 1989–1993. In 1993–1997 he was a scholar at the Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Programme for Outstanding Students of Tel Aviv University, receiving an M.A. (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.[5] 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. He received a titular Ph.D. (Cantab.) from the University of Cambridge in 2003.[5]
He has taught at universities in the United Kingdom, United States, Israel, Singapore, China, Slovakia and Australia, for example University of Cambridge (Faculty of Oriental Studies, now known as Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies), National University of Singapore, University of Miami, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, University of Queensland, University of Pavol Jozef Šafárik and Shanghai International Studies University.[6] He has also taught preparatory courses for various psychometric examinations and co-authored several books in this field.
He has been awarded research fellowships at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio 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 won a British Academy Research Grant, Memorial Foundation of Jewish Culture Postdoctoral Fellowship, Harold Hyam Wingate Scholarship[7] and Chevening Scholarship.[5]
Zuckermann is a full Professor of Linguistics and Endangered Languages, and Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellow in linguistics, at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. He is also China's Ivy League Project 211 Distinguished Visiting Professor, and "Shanghai Oriental Scholar" professorial fellow, at Shanghai International Studies University. He serves as Editorial Board member of the Journal of Language Contact (Brill),[8] and consultant for the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).[9]
Zuckermann applies insights from the Hebrew revival to the revitalization of Aboriginal languages in Australia.[10] According to Yuval Rotem, the ambassador of the State of Israel to the Commonwealth of Australia, Zuckermann's "passion for the reclamation, maintenance and empowerment of Aboriginal languages and culture inspired [him] and was indeed the driving motivator of" the establishment of the Allira Aboriginal Knowledge IT Centre in Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia, on September 2, 2010.[11]
Zuckermann has been an invited speaker on various TV programmes in Israel (e.g. Channel 1, Channel 2, Channel 10, Channel 23, YES, YES DOCO) and the United Kingdom (e.g. BBC), as well as different radio programmes in Australia (e.g. ABC Lingua Franca programmes,[12] an ABC Encounter programme with David Rutledge, an ABC Big Ideas panel broadcast (April 15, 2010), SBS interviews in Hebrew, Yiddish, Italian and English[13]), Israel (e.g. Galei Tzahal, Reshet Bet, Kol Yisrael), Spain (e.g. Radio Sefarad[14]), New Zealand, South Africa and Germany.
He has featured in newspaper articles in the United Kingdom (e.g. Reuters), the United States (e.g. The Forward), Canada (e.g. The Globe and Mail, Israel (e.g. Haaretz,[15] Maariv, Yediot Aharonot, The Jerusalem Post, English Haaretz, Ynetnews,[16] nrg Maariv, Time Out, Makor Rishon), the Netherlands (e.g. Trouw[17]), Spain (e.g. Terra), Sweden (e.g. Språktidningen), New Zealand (e.g. New Zealand Jewish Chronicle), Germany (e.g. Jüdische Zeitung), and Australia (e.g. The Australian, The Courier Mail, Australian Jewish News, Rhapsody).
His hybridic theory of the emergence of Israeli Hebrew is controversial and well known among linguists, Israelis and the Jewish world. Some scholars, for example Yiddish linguist Dovid Katz (who refers to Zuckermann as a "fresh-thinking Israeli scholar"), adopt Zuckermann's term "Israeli" and accept his notion of hybridity.[18] Others, for example author and translator Hillel Halkin, oppose Zuckermann's model. In an article published December 24, 2004, in The Forward under the pseudonym "Philologos", Halkin accused Zuckermann of political agenda.[19] Zuckermann's response was published December 28, 2004, in The Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Language.[20]
As described by Reuters in a 2006 article, "Zuckermann's lectures are packed,[21] with the cream of Israeli academia invariably looking uncertain on whether to endorse his innovative streak or rise to the defense of the mother tongue."[22] According to Omri Herzog (Haaretz), Zuckermann "is considered by his Israeli colleagues either a genius or a provocateur".[23]
In 2012 Zuckermann and the Parnkalla aboriginal community of Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, Australia, launched a reclamation of the Parnkalla language, based on 170-year-old documents.[24]
Zuckermann's research focuses on contact linguistics, lexicology, revival linguistics, Jewish languages, and the study of language, culture and identity. According to Joshua Fishman, Zuckermann is a "creative, innovative, scholarly force" and his linguistic approach "is so reminiscent of, and is the successor of, the pioneering work of Uriel Weinreich".[25] Throughout Zuckermann's work, whether it is the analysis of a lexical item,[26] a grammatical construction,[27] the genetic affiliation of a language,[28] purism,[29] prescriptivism,[30] othering[31] or globalization,[32] there are motifs such as syncretism, hybridity, multiple causation, reinforcement, subconscious influence, survival and camouflage.
Zuckermann argues that 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.[33] Based on feature pool[34] 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.[35]
The Founder Principle underlines the impact of the [36] 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.[36]
Zuckermann's analysis of multisourced neologization[37] challenges Einar Haugen's classic typology of lexical borrowing.[38] 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, Estonian, Yiddish and creole languages. The book received outstanding reviews at Linguist List,[39] as well as by James Matisoff ("fascinating and multifaceted ... a paean to linguistic creativity"), Jeffrey Heath and Geoffrey Lewis.[40]
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.[31] 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.
Zuckermann introduces Revival Linguistics as a new subdiscipline of linguistics, complementing documentary linguistics and aiming to provide a systematic general linguistic analysis especially of attempts to resurrect no-longer spoken languages (language reclamation) but also of initiatives to reverse language shift (language renewal or revitalization). "Zuckermann's term 'Revival Linguistics' is modelled upon 'Contact Linguistics' (language reclamation, renewal and revitalization. It draws perspicacious comparative insights from one revival attempt to another, thus acting as an epistemological bridge between parallel discourses in various local attempts to revive sleeping tongues all over the globe."[41]
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"[42] 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".[43]
Zuckermann wrote the longest known palindrome in Hebrew, a meaningful palindromic story,[44] as well as the longest known Italo-Hebraic homophonous poem.[45]
Jerusalem, West Bank, Hebrew language, Tel Aviv, Syria
Trinity College, Cambridge, St John's College, Cambridge, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, Darwin College, Cambridge
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, Oxford University Press, Colleges of the University of Oxford, Jesus College, Oxford
United Kingdom, New Zealand, New South Wales, Canada, Queensland
Linguistics, Anthropology, Pragmatics, Society, Gender
Université Laval, Language, Sociolinguistics, Bengali Language Movement, Council of Europe
Endangered language, United Kingdom, Human rights, Irish language, Israel
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Bollywood, Nickelodeon, The Simpsons, Blues
Linguistics, Word, Semantic change, Acronym, Video game
Translation, Quran translations, Language interpretation, Literal translation, Translation studies