Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew

Download or read book Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew written by G. Zuckermann and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-11-04 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Israeli Hebrew is a spoken language, 'reinvented' over the last century. It has responded to the new social and technological demands of globalization with a vigorously developing multisourced lexicon, enriched by foreign language contact. In this detailed and rigorous study, the author provides a principled classification of neologisms, their semantic fields and the roles of source languages, along with a sociolinguistic study of the attitudes of 'purists' and ordinary native speakers in the tension between linguistic creativity and the preservation of a distinct language identity.