Negative Concord in Modern Israeli Hebrew and its Origin

Einat Keren
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Negative Concord in Modern Israeli Hebrew and its Origin
Modern Israeli Hebrew (MIH) is allegedly the result of the revival of Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew. Its
syntax, however, differs substantially from that of its predecessors, and seems to be heavily influenced by the
native languages of its first users, mostly Germanic and Slavic languages. This is in accordance to similar patterns
of transfer found in the formation of contact languages (Siegel, 2001). My work looks at one particular structure,
Negative Concord, and tries to trace down its origin. For this purpose, I have used methods taken from generative
linguistics, diachronic linguistics and the study of contact languages.
MIH is a strict Negative Concord language (Giannakidou, 2006): A sentence containing an N-word,
whether in subject or object position, must include negation (examples 1-2). The relevant expressions are not
licensed in non-negated contexts typical of Negative Polarity Items (NPI‟s), such as questions and conditionals
(examples 3-4). For item negation, MIH mainly uses inherited N-words: „meuma‟ (Biblical), „klum‟ (Rabbinic)
and „ʃum-davar‟ (Middle Ages Hebrew). In old Hebrew texts, however, those lexical items – quantifiers usually
necessitating negation – can appear in such contexts (Examples 5-9). So it seems reasonable to assume that they
originally functioned as NPI‟s. As for person negation, Classical Hebrew's lexical items, „iʃ‟ (man) and „exad‟
(one) (Biblical), joined by „adam‟ (human) in Rabbinic Hebrew (Tzivoni, 1993), are considered positive in
previous research (Rosén, 1952; Ben-Nun, 1965; Ben-Asher, 1972). So, apparently Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew
used NPI's for person negation as well. Spoken MIH mainly uses the phrase „af-exad‟, comprised of the particle
„af‟ and the numeral „exad‟ (one), for person negation. According to Ben-Nun (1964), the expression „af / afilu lo
exad‟ („not even one‟) gradually became shorter, until speakers mistook „af‟ as denoting negation.
As it seems that MIH's predecessors were NPI languages, while MIH is clearly an NC language
(Examples 1-4), my work addresses the issue of how did this shift come to occur. According to Bickerton's Bio-
Program Hypothesis (1999), NC might be a manifestation of the default parameter set for children acquiring an
unstable contact language. Zeijlstra (2002), suggests that languages corresponding to Stage I in the Jespersen
Cycle tend to exhibit NC. As Creoles are almost always relatively „new‟ languages, it only makes sense that they
should be stage I languages. So, Bickerton‟s hypothesis and his observation of negation in Creoles, corresponds to
Zeijlstra hypothesis based on his observation of different stages and dialects of Dutch. None of those models,
however, offer an explanation of why negation in new languages is so.
But NC‟s presence in MIH could be the result of transfer, from the native languages of members in the
community during the years of its formation. This hypothesis, that lexical items‟ shift from NPI‟s to N-words is
due to influence from Slavic languages and Yiddish, is not new (Ben-Nun, 1964, Rosén, 1977). Following Blanc
(1968) and Zuckerman (2008), I view MIH is a contact language, Classical and Rabbinic Hebrew being its
lexifiers, Slavic and Germanic languages donating it syntactic structures. Since three of those, Yiddish, Polish and
Russian, all exhibit NC (van der Auwera & Gybels, 2010, Richter & Sailer, 2002, and Fitzgibbons, 2008,
respectively), substrate influence is indeed a possible explanation for NC‟s presence in MIH.
To test this hypothesis, I compared the syntactic details of NC in MIH, to those of NC in Yiddish, Polish
and Russian. If there turn out to be differences in terms of locality constraints, then Reinforcement (Siegel) of
grammatical structures from substrate languages alone, would not be able to account for NC‟s presence in Modern
Hebrew. Results show similarity between Polish, Russian and MIH: Most speakers accept N-word licensing
across one TP (where sentential negation licenses an N-word in an embedded clause), but not two TP's. There are,
however, some unique N-word constructions, judged as grammatical by most Polish informants (10) and about
half of the Russian informants (11), which were rejected by most MIH speakers. But as these constructions seem
to be marginal, low prevalence might explain why they did not get enough Reinforcement, and were eventually
not transferred to MIH. Interestingly, my data seems to show that younger speakers of MIH are more likely to
accept the unique construction taken from Russian. Because of substantial variability in native speakers‟
judgments, my conclusions are not yet final. As for Yiddish, more work needs to be done in order to identify the
particular dialects spoken by the first speakers of MIH, before grammaticality judgments can be gathered from
current speakers of the language. However, since negation in sentences with N-words in object position seems to
be optional, in at least some Yiddish dialects (van der Auwera & Gybels, 2010, example 12), while being
obligatory in MIH (example 1), substrate influence from Yiddish seems less likely. My conclusion is that NC in
MIH does not parallel NC in Yiddish, Russian or Polish. Instead, it seems to be more restrictive than any of them.
So far, my conclusion supports Bickerton‟s Bio-Program Hypothesis (1999), that NC might be a default
parameter set, and also the competing view (Siegel, 2001), that grammatical properties found in contact languages
can be explained solely by substrate influence.

Examples
1. *(lo) ra‟iti af-exad (Modern Hebrew)
no see- PAST -1s af-exad
I didn‟t see anybody / I saw no-one
2. af-exad *(lo) ra‟a oti (Modern Hebrew)
af-exad no see- PAST -sm ACC-1s
Nobody has seen me
3. *ra‟ita af-exad? (Modern Hebrew)
see- PAST -2sm af-exad
Did you see anyone?
4. *„im tir‟e af-exad, tagid lo… (Modern Hebrew)
if see-2sm af-exad tell- FUTURE -2sm to-him
If you happen to see anyone, tell him…
5. …hine ba‟ti elaixa „ata ha-yaxol uxal daber (Biblical Hebrew)
…here come-1s to-you-sm now Q-can-inf can-1s talk-inf
meuma ha-davar aʃer yasim elohim be-fi oto adaber
meuma the-thing that put-sm god in-mouth-mine-sm ACC-sm speak-1s
“…Lo, I am come unto thee: have I now any power at all to say any thing? the word that God putteth in my mouth,
that shall I speak” (Numbers, 22, 38)
6. ki taʃe be-re‟axa maʃ‟at meuma lo tavo el- beito (Biblical Hebrew)
If lend-2sm in-friend-yours-m thing meuma no come-2s to house-his-m
la‟avot avoto
take-inf pledge-his
“When thou dost lend thy brother any thing, thou shalt not go into his house to fetch his pledge” (Deuteronomy,24,10)
7. im yo‟mar lexa Yitro klum min ha-ʃvu‟a emor lo… (Rabbinic Hebrew)
if say-3s to-you-sm Jethro klum from the-oath say-imp-sm to-him
“Should Jethro at all remind you of your oath, you can say…” (Midrash Rabbah – Exodus, IV, 4)
8. ro‟im atem klum be-exad min he-harim halalu? (Rabbinic Hebrew)
see- PRES -pm you-pm klum in-one of the-mountains those?
“…Do you see anything upon one of those mountains?” (The chapters of Rabbi Eliezer the Great, chapter 31)
9. ve-exad ʃe-sho‟el et ha-be‟alim le-ota ha-mla‟xa o … o le-ʃum-davar
and-one-m that-borrow-sm ACC the-owners for- ACC -sf the-work-f or … or for-ʃum-davar
ba-olam … harei zo ʃe‟ila ba-be‟alim ve-patur (Middle Ages Hebrew)
in-the-world-m… emphatic it-f borrowing-f in-the-owners and-quit- PASS -3sm
“whether the commodatory borrowed the services of the owner or hired them, whether he borrowed the services for
the same work, … or for anything in the world,… it is a case of borrowing with the owner and the commadatory is
quit.” Borrowing and Depositing, 2, 1 (6), The book of civil laws, The code of Mimonides (Mishne Torah).
10. Kocham ją jak żadną inną (Polish)
love-1 her like-from nobody-f else-sf
*ani ohev ota kmo af-axat axeret (Modern Hebrew)
I love-m ACC-sf like af-one-sf else-sf
“I love her more than anybody else”, “I love her like I love nobody else” (Taken from Richter & Sailer, 2002)
11. ?Ti ischez v nikuda (Russian)
you disappeared to nowhere
*ata ne‟elamta le- ʃum-makom (Modern Hebrew)
you-ms disappear- PAST -2sm to ʃum-place
“You disappeared to nowhere” (Taken from Fitzgibbons, 2008)
12. Ikh her gornit. (Yiddish)
I hear nothing / not at all
ani *(lo) some‟a klum (Modern Hebrew)
„I hear nothing.‟ or „I don‟t hear at all.‟ (Taken from van der Auwera & Gybels, 2010)
References
Bickerton, Derek (1999). How to acquire language without positive evidence: What acquisitionists can learn from
Creoles. in DeGraff, M. (ed.) Language Creation and Language Change. MIT Press.
Blanc, Haim (1968). The Israeli Koine as an Emergent National Standard. in Fishman, J.A., Ferguson, C.A. and Das-
Gupta, J (eds.) Language Problems in Developing Nation. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: New York.

Fitzgibbons, Natalia V. (2008) Freestanding Negative Concord Items in Russian. Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3,
Vol. 2. (pp 51–63)
Giannakidou, Anastasia (2006). N-words and negative concord. in van Riemsdijk, H, et al. (eds.). The syntax companion,
Oxford: Blackwell, 327-391.
Richter, Franc, & Sailer, Manfred. (2002) Polish Negation and Lexical Resource Semantics. Electronic Notes in
Theoretical Computer Science, Vol. 53.
Rosén, Haiim B. (1977). Contemporary Hebrew. In Winter, W. (ed) Trends in Linguistics, State-of-the Art Reports.
Mouton & Co. B.V., Publishers, The Hague: Paris / Hungary.
Siegel, Jeff (2001). Koine formation and creole genesis. in Smith, N. and Veenstra, T. (eds.) Creolization and Contact.
Creole Language Library, 23, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam / Philadelphia. pp 175-197.
van-der Auwera, Johan, and Gybels, Paul (2010). On negation, indefinites, and negative indefinites in Yiddish.
URL: http://webh01.ua.ac.be/vdauwera/Neg%20indef%20Yid%20Aug%202010.pdf
Zeijlstra, Hedde H. (2002), What the Dutch Jespersen Cycle may reveal about negative concord, in Alexiadou, A.,
Fischer, S. and Stavrou, M. (eds.) Linguistics in Potsdam, Vol. 19 (pp. 183–206)
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