Jewish-Languages Mailing List: October 2002

October 2002

Message from Moshe Cohen <cohnat @ macam.ac.il>. Please respond directly to
him.

-------------------------------------------------

On Wed, 2 Oct 2002, moshe wrote:

> HI
> For a paper on the process, i would like some advice on bibliography related
> to the expulsion of the Muslims from Spain in1496
> MOSHE COHEN

I thought you'd be interested in this conference, especially the special
session, in which Joshua Fishman is an invited speaker.

-Sarah

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 13:32:32 -0700 (PDT)
From: bls @ socrates.Berkeley.EDU
To: penguists @ BABEL.ling.upenn.edu
Subject: Berkeley Linguistics Society Call for Papers

The Berkeley Linguistics Society is pleased to announce its Twenty-Ninth
Annual Meeting, to be held February 14-17, 2003. The conference will
consist of a General Session, a Parasession and a Special Session.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*GENERAL SESSION*
The General Session will cover all areas of linguistic interest. We
encourage proposals from diverse theoretical frameworks and also welcome
papers on language-related topics from disciplines such as Anthropology,
Cognitive Science, Literature, Neuroscience and Psychology.

 *Invited Speakers*
 Judith Aissen, University of California, Santa Cruz
 Mark Hale, Concordia University
 Royal Skousen, Brigham Young University
 Arnold Zwicky, Stanford University

*PARASESSION* -- Phonetic Sources of Phonological Patterns:
 Synchronic and Diachronic Explanations
The Parasession invites submissions on the role of phonetics in shaping
phonological patterns. Papers representing all views and approaches are
sought. Those addressing the relative merits of synchronic and diachronic
explanations of phonetically-motivated phonological patterns are
particularly welcomed.

 *Invited Speakers*
 Juliette Blevins, University of California, Berkeley
 Charles Reiss, Concordia University
 Donca Steriade, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

*SPECIAL SESSION* -- Minority and Diasporic Languages of Europe
The Special Session will cover minority and diasporic languages of Europe.
Languages of interest include minority, threatened and diasporic European
languages and dialects, in both Europe and former colonies and in
immigrant and heritage situations, as well as pidgins and creoles based on
languages spoken in Europe. Proposals from linguistics and related fields
are encouraged.

 *Invited Speakers*
 Julie Auger, Indiana University
 J. Clancy Clements, Indiana University
 Joshua Fishman, Yeshiva University

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

***ABSTRACT SUBMISSION GUIDELINES***
Presented papers are published in the BLS Proceedings. Authors agree to
provide camera-ready copy (not exceeding 12 pages) by May 15, 2003.
Presentations are allotted 20 minutes with 10 minutes for questions.

An author may submit at most one single and one joint abstract. In case
of joint authorship, one address should be designated for communication
with BLS. Abstracts should be as specific as possible, with a statement of
topic, approach and conclusions. Abstracts may be at most four hundred
words. The reverse side of the single page may be used for data and
references only. 10 copies of an anonymous, one-page (8.5"x11") abstract
should be sent, along with a 3"x5" card listing:

 (1) paper title
 (2) session (General/Para/Special)
 (3) name(s) of author(s)
 (4) affiliation(s) of author(s)
 (5) address whither notification of acceptance should
 be mailed (Nov-Dec 2002)
 (6) contact phone number for each author
 (7) email address for each author
 ***for General Session submissions only***
 (8) subfield (syntax, phonology, etc.)
 ***for Para-/Special Session submissions only***
 (9) indication of whether you wish to have your
 abstract considered for the General Session if
 the organizers determine that your paper will not
 fit the other sessions

 *SEND ABSTRACTS TO*
 BLS 29 Abstracts Committee
 University of California
 Linguistics Department
 1203 Dwinelle Hall
 Berkeley, CA 94720-2650

Abstracts must be received in our office (not postmarked) by 4:00 p.m.,
November 27, 2002. We cannot accept faxed abstracts. Abstracts submitted
via e-mail are also accepted. Only those abstracts formatted as ASCII
text or a Microsoft Word (Mac version strongly preferred) attachment can
be accepted. The text of the message must contain the information
requested in (1)-(9) above. Electronic submissions may be sent to

 ***bls @ socrates.berkeley.edu***

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

***REGISTRATION INFORMATION***
All attendees, including presenters, must register for the meeting. For
advance registration, we can accept only checks or money orders drawn on
US banks in US dollars, made payable to Berkeley Linguistics Society.

Received in our office by February 2, 2003:
 Students $20
 Non-students $40
Received after February 2, 2003:
 Students $25
 Non-students $55

 *SEND ADVANCE REGISTRATION TO*
 BLS 29 Registration
 University of California
 Linguistics Department
 1203 Dwinelle Hall
 Berkeley, CA 94720-2650

***BLS will arrange ASL interpretation if requested through
 bls @ socrates.berkeley.edu before 12/1/02***

We may be contacted by e-mail at bls @ socrates.berkeley.edu.

..............................
Berkeley Linguistics Society
University of California, Berkeley
Department of Linguistics
1203 Dwinelle Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-2650
Phone/Fax: 510-642-5808

find information on BLS meetings and availability of proceedings at:
http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/BLS/

Date: Wed, 09 Oct 2002 13:11:47 +0200
From: Julia Ulrich <Julia.Ulrich @ deGruyter.com>
Subject: IJSL 157 (2002) FOCUS ON DIGLOSSIA

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE
General Editor: Joshua A. Fishman
ISSN: 0165-2516

ONLINE ACCESS is now available to all institutional subscribers of the
print version at no extra charge. To register for free online access,
please contact us at o-journals@deGruyter.com for more information.

2002, Issue 157
FOCUS ON DIGLOSSIA
Issue Editor: Joshua A. Fishman

This focus issue is affectionately dedicated to the memory of Charles A.
Ferguson 1921 - 1998.

CONTENTS

FOCUS ARTICLE

ALAN HUDSON
Outline of a theory of diglossia

REVIEWER'S COMMENTS

MARIA-JOSE AZURMENDI
Comentarios

FLORIAN COULMAS
Writing is crucial

NANCY C. DORIAN
Diglossia and the simplification of linguistic space

MOHA ENNAJI
Comment

RALPH W. FASOLD
The importance of community

JOSHUA A. FISHMAN
Diglossia and societal multilingualism: dimensions of similarity and
difference

ANNA FRANGOUDAKI
Greek societal bilingualism of more than a century

WALTER HAAS
Comment

ALAN S. KAYE
Comment

CHRISTINA BRATT PAULSTON
Comment

SUZANNE ROMAINE
Can stable diglossia help to preserve endangered languages?

HAROLD F. SCHIFFMAN
Comment

REBUTTAL ESSAY

ALAN HUDSON
Diglossia, bilingualism, and history: postscript to a theoretical
discussion

SMALL LANGUAGES AND SMALL LANGUAGE COMMUNITIES 39

BRUCE CONNELL
Phonetic/phonological variation and language contraction

For subscription information please contact the publisher:
Mouton de Gruyter
Genthiner Str. 13
10785 Berlin, Germany
Fax: +49 30 26005 222
e-mail: wdg-info @ degruyter.de

Journals and titles published by Mouton de Gruyter can be ordered via
the World Wide Web at: http://www.degruyter.com/

From: "Nechama" <nechamakr @ worldnet.att.net>
Please forward to colleagues interested in Sephardic Studies

> Next year the AATSP meeting will take place in Chicago. Sessions will
> run 2-4 August 2003, at the Fairmont Chicago Hotel (a great location,
> near Michigan Ave). Further details in the Sept. 2002 issue of Hispania,
>
> For your information, this year, the deadline that the AATSP set for
> proposals has been changed drastically. Please note that proposals
> should come to the chairperson by 15 October 2002. The Chairperson, in
> turn, will have until 15 November 2002, to send the AATSP the completed
> description of the session, lists of participants, title of
> presentations and a list of needed Audio Visuals. Please make sure you
> are a paid 2003 AATSP member.
>
> As a result we have but 2 months to receive your proposals.
> *****Deadline has been extended to November 10, 2002
> Please forward to interested parties.
> ******************************
> SEPHARDIC STUDIES
>
> TOPIC: COVERSOS Y EXILIO: HISTORIA Y LITERATURA
>
> Languages of presentation: English, Spanish or Portuguese.
>
> Presenters may discuss and elaborate on any facet of exile in the life
> and or the literature of the conversos:
>
> Exile as a theme in literature.
> The effect of exile on the revival of Jewish communities.
> The effect of exile on the life and literary works of the individual
> converso.
> Voluntary exile vs. forced exile.
> Conversion or exile vs. conversion or death.
> How did Iberian Expulsions (1492; 1496) and forced conversions (1497-98)
> to Christianity influenced the formation of a new literary genre, that
> of the Converso.
> Literary representations of the Diaspora/Exile of the Iberian New
> Chrisitians for more than three centuries (1492-1850).
>
> These are only some EXAMPLES, from many more you could come up with.
>
> Please send abstracts to
> Dr. Nechama Kramer-Hellinx, 54 Ingram Street, Forest Hills NY 11375, USA
>
> Email: <mailto:nechamakr @ worldnet.att.net> nechamakr @ worldnet.att.net
> Fax: 1-718-793 3385
> Tel: 1-718- 793 3384
>
> Thanks, Gracias, Obrigada
> Nechama

Fifth International Conference of the German Association of Portuguese
Studies, hosted by the Institute of Romance Philology at Rostock
University, Germany. Sessions will run 18-21 September 2003. Scholars
from all over the world are invited to contribute to the conference
which will focus on the cultural history of the Jews in Portugal and
the Portuguese Jews in Northern Europe, Africa, Asia and in the Caribbean.

For information please contact:

Michael Halévy, University of Hamburg: mihalevy @ aol.com

Please forward to interested parties.

This is a message from Dennis Shasha <shasha @ cs.nyu.edu>. Please respond
directly to him.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Dear Colleagues,
We are amateurs at this and we seek your assistance.
We believe that the Bagdhadi Jewish dialect will no longer
be spoken by anyone in just a few years. We are generalizing from
the people in the community we know, but we believe this is true.
Besides the death of the language, there is the issue of the
death of the oral histories.
So, my brother Robert Shasha and I have become interested in
recording oral histories, recording their translations, and publishing
the translations.
Our questions:

1. Are there similar projects for Bagdhadi Judeo-Arabic already in
the works? If so, then the linguistic aspect of our project is redundant.

2. If not, would anyone on the list be interested
in participating in this project and if so how?

3. Finally, a technical point, we hear that minidiscs are a good
recording medium for this sort of thing. Could anyone tell us which
brand to get?

Warm Regards,
Robert and Dennis

Prof. Dennis Shasha
Department of Computer Science
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
New York University
251 Mercer Street
New York, N.Y. 10012-1185
U.S.A.
Tel: +1 (212) 998-3086
Fax: 212-995-4123
Internet: shasha @ cs.nyu.edu
Web: http://cs.nyu.edu/cs/faculty/shasha/index.html

Are you familiar with the Jacob Mansour (I think that's the correct
spelling) books on the subject?

P.(H.)G.

Dr. Paul (Hershl) Glasser
Associate Dean, Max Weinreich Center
Senior Research Associate, Yiddish Language
212-246-6080 X6139 (ph)
212-292-1892 (fax)
mailto:pglasser @ yivo.cjh.org

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
15 West 16 Street
New York, New York 10011
http://www.yivo.org

Another good source on the dialect is H. Blanc, Communal Dialects in
Baghdad, Cambridge, 1964.

You should also become acquainted with the works of Isaac Avishur from Haifa
University, who has dealt with Iraqi Jewish language, literature and
folklore (mostly in Hebrew papers).

Yaakov Bentolila

I thought you might be interested to know that the program of the
34th Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies
is available online now:

http://www.brandeis.edu/ajs/List%20of%20Sessions%202002.html

Tsuguya Sasaki
http://www.ts-cyberia.net/

Professor Sol Cohen is curious about the origin of the feminine Yiddish
suffix -ne or -ene, as in Yakhne and yidene. Does anyone know where this
comes from? And can anyone think of other instances of it? Please respond
to Professor Cohen <cohensol @ sas.upenn.edu> and to the list.

Thanks,
Sarah Bunin Benor

Haverim,

Here are some unconnected thoughts about Yakhne and Yidene:

The German word for "Jewess" is Ju"din.

The Romance diminutive suffix that appears as -in, -ine, in French
and -ino, -ina in Italian might survive in Yidene.

Perhaps -inke and -inyu have the Romance -in followed by another diminutive
morpheme, -ke or -ye. As we know, the Slavic suffix -in, found in surnames
based on women's first names, is often added to a diminutive. Thus, Beilin
coexists with Belkin (bel- + -ke + -in), and Rivkin coexists with Rivlin
(riv- + -l + -in).

Yakhne sounds as if it is a shortening of Yokhanan, perhaps analogous to
Johannes and Johanna.

I have a vague feeling that when -etto and -ino are both acceptable in
Italian, as in vaporetto, vaporino, poveretto, poverino, etc., Italian Jews
seem to prefer the -ino. I am not at all sure about this.

George

The English feminine suffix -ine is thought
to come from Greek via Latin and French:

 -ine [4]
 a suffix of distinctively feminine nouns
 (chorine; heroine), given names Josephine;
 Pauline), and feminine titles (margravine).
 [< F -ine < L -ina < Gk -ine]

 margravine (mär'gruh veen ) n.
 wife of a margrave [equivalent to a British marquis].
 [1685-95; < MD marcgravinne = marcgrave MARGRAVE +
 -inne fem. n. suffix; cf. G Markgräfin]

So, this feminine suffix also occurs in German.

Israel Cohen
izzy_cohen @ bmc.com

Does anyone have a guess at the source of the name of the Zionist hero,
Trumpledor?
Miriam Isaacs

Is it perhaps Trumpoli+Dorf?
gz
www.zuckermann.org

Trumpeldor was born in Pyatigorsk, in the northern Caucasus. I don't know
what languages are spoken there, nor do I know whether that was where the
family came from, since his father was in the army of the Tsar. But perhaps
the name reflects a language of the Caucasus, although it doesn't sound like
a Caucasian language.

George

http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0eg40
Perhaps the most cryptically named street is Rehov Hagidem,
in Jerusalem as well as in Haifa. Its meaning: street of the
amputated one; it was named after Joseph Trumpledor, who was
killed defending the northern settlement of Tel Hai, and who
had previously lost an arm when fighting for Russia against
Japan in 1906.

Compare truncate
 [1480-90; < L truncatus, ptp. of truncare to lop,
 der. of truncus TRUNK; see - ATE 1]

trumpet
 [1375-1425; ME trumpette, trompette < MF, = trompe
 TRUMP 2 + -ette - ET]

trump
2. Informal. a fine person; brick = an admirable person.
4. to excel; surpass; outdo.
 [1520-30; unexplained var. of TRIUMPH]
+ Fr le doré = the golden/gilded one -> "gold brick" :-)

tramp
 [1350-1400; ME: to stamp, prob. < MLG trampen = to
 tramp, tread; akin to Go anatrimpan = to crowd]

trample
[1350-1400; ME tramplen = to stamp, akin to MHG trampeln;
 see TRAMP, - LE]

MY BEST GUESS:

Maybe Joseph Trumpledor's ancestors were circus performers.

trampoline (tram puh leen', tram'puh leen , -lin) n.
[1790-1800; var. of trampolin < It trampolino = springboard
 < trampol(i) = stilts (< Gmc; see TRAMPLE) + -ino - INE 3]

Of course, they may simply have wandering Jews from Poland. :-)
Pole -> LG, dial. D stilte = pole -> It trampoli -> Trumple+dor

izzy_cohen @ bmc.com

Since we are "kind of" on the subject, I would like to know the origin of the
Yiddish word "az" as the conjunction for (non-relative) nominal clauses, or
propositions.

I assume German "als" and English "as" are cognate with "az."

George

Polish "czy" means "whether" and is used to introduce a yes-no question.

According to my Random House Dictionary, English "as" comes from Old English
_alswa_ ,_ealswa_ meaning "all so," and is thus related to "also,"
reflecting a semantic split. By cognate, I mean descending from a common
ancestor, perhaps West Germanic.

George

On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, George Jochnowitz wrote:

> I assume German "als" and English "as" are cognate with "az."

I assumed that "az" was a Hebrew loan word. Its syntactic usage seems
somewhere in between the Hebrew word "als" and the Hebrew word "az."

But I could be wrong.

Jess Olson

On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, Jess Olson wrote:

> On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, George Jochnowitz wrote:
>
> > I assume German "als" and English "as" are cognate with "az."
>
> I assumed that "az" was a Hebrew loan word. Its syntactic usage seems
> somewhere in between the Hebrew word "als" and the Hebrew word "az."
>
> But I could be wrong.

Sorry...the above should read "somewhere in between the _German_ word als
and the Hebrew word "az."

Jess Olson

I always "thought" that Trumpeldor was "Spanish" (or
"Judeo-Spanish"?) as one can see from the following anecdote
(submitted in the spirit of Halloween):

An Israeli in Spain went to see a bullfighting, but he didn't have
the money for the ticket. So, he stood aside and watched which
people are let in without paying. One says "Matador!", and is let
in; another says "Toreador!", etc. The Israeli says to himself:
"OK, I got the trick!" and approaches the gate man and says:
"Trumpeldor!", and he is let in ....

Yona Sabar

Have you considered that it might quite simply be derived from Middle High
German? What does M. Weinreich have to say?

Kalman Weiser

Woops. My apology for my earlier response concerning 'az.' I did not read
my email in the correct order and understand now that the question
originally posed is more complicated than I had realized.

K Weiser