EMODHEBREW: The Emergence of Modern Hebrew

The Emergence of Modern Hebrew (EMODHEBREW) is an ERC-funded research project that documents the development of the grammar of Modern Hebrew, in particular its syntax. Hebrew presents a unique phenomenon of a language which for generations was only used for literary purposes (mostly liturgical, scholarly, and legal literature) becoming a language spoken again for everyday use. Though the dramatic historical circumstances of this revival have been described, the linguistic process itself is not yet understood. The present project is an attempt to systematically study the linguistic aspect of the process. We construct a linguistic data-base for the documentation of the novel syntactic constructions of Modern Hebrew, their sources in previous stages of Hebrew and in the languages with which Modern Hebrew was in contact at the time of the revival, and the development of these constructions since the beginning of the revival until present time. The data-base is made available on this website for other linguists to use and to contribute to.