Luka Crnič received his PhD from MIT in 2011. His primary research interests lie in syntax, semantics and the syntax-semantics interface. His current grants are:
ISF 1926/14 Polarity items across languages
GIF I-2353-110.4/2014 Alternative-sensitive computations in natural language: focus-sensitive particles and embedded exhaustification
Dr. Maayan Keshev studies the psycholinguistic process of sentence processing. She is interested in the memory mechanisms that support our ability to understand language, and the ways in which people use grammatical knowledge while sentences unfold word by word. Her work is based on controlled experiments, and uses various methods testing acceptability judgments, interpretation, response times, and eye-movements. This research occasionally also features computational cognitive models.
Dr. Maayan Keshev received her PhD from Tel Aviv University in 2021, then moved to the University of Massachusetts Amherst to conduct her postdoctoral research, before joining our department in 2023.
My research revolves around capturing, describing, and explaining linguistic diversity. I am interested in the linguistic variation found in the languages of the world and approaches to explaining this variation. The phenomena I study primarily come from the domain of morpho-syntax and include grammatical relations, information structure, and clause linkage. In addition, I have been collaborating in projects on phonetics, conversation analysis, and psycholinguistics. In my research, I combine large-scale typological studies involving several hundreds languages with studies of the phenomena of interest in single language families (micro-typology), as well as with in-depth studies on individual languages. I am also actively involved in language documentation and description and conducted multiple fieldtrips collecting primary data on the Khoisan languages Khoekhoe (Khoe-Kwadi) and Nǁng (or Nǀuu, ǃUi-Taa) spoken in South Africa. At the moment, I am working on the previously undescribed Bantu language Ruuli spoken in Uganda.
Aynat Rubinstein studies semantics of natural of language and its interfaces with pragmatics and syntax. She is interested in the linguistic mechanisms that underlie the uniquely human ability to speak not just of the "here and now" but also to describe thoughts about the past, the future, what is possible or necessary, and what may have happened but did not come to pass. In her work, she makes use of empirical research methods including mining of large corpora (corpus linguistics), natural language processing (computational algorithms), and psycholinguistic experiments. Her recent work is focused on corpus based studies of the development of Modern Hebrew around the turn of the 20th century.
Malka Rappaport Hovav graduated from MIT in 1984 with a thesis on phonological and morphological aspects of Tiberian Hebrew. She was associated with the Lexicon Project at the Center for Cognitive Science at MIT in the years 1984 – 1987. She taught linguistics in the English department at Bar Ilan from 1984 – 1999, when she moved to HU. She is a founding member of the Language, Logic and Cognition Center. Her work focuses on lexical semantics and its interface with morphosyntax and conceptual categories, with papers published on nominalizations, adjectival passives, lexical aspect, diathesis alternations such as the causative alternation and the dative alternation and conceptual categories such as manner and result. She is author with Beth Levin of Unaccusativity (MIT Press, 1995) and Argument Realization (CUP, 2005) and editor, with Edit Doron and Ivy Sichel of Syntax, Lexical Semantics and Event Structure (OUP 2010).
My research revolves around the question how language is used in different discursive contexts and how these uses shape the structure of language. I study Semitic languages, specifically Classical Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Palestinian Arabic, Modern Hebrew, and Neo Aramaic. The topics on which I conducted research include: tense-usage in different discourse environments, clause combining, presentatives, expressive structures, narrative structure, discourse markers, digital genre analysis, spoken and written discourse, and language contact (Arabic and Hebrew). My present research project, funded by the Israel Science Foundation, focuses on discourse markers in conversational and written Egyptian Arabic. In addition, I am a member of a network of interactional linguists studying responsive particles in conversation. Another field which I study is emergent practices in interactional digital discourse (e.g., in WhatsApp).
Eitan Grossman’s research revolves around the questions why are languages the way they are, and how do they become that way? He is interested in empirical approaches to explanations for linguistic diversity, and conducts research in the framework that has come to be called Distributional Typology, which asks "what's where why (when)?" Ongoing projects include:
The World Survey of Phonological Segment Borrowing (SEGBO), which explores the typology of phonological segment borrowing and its relevance for evaluating the Uniformitarian Hypothesis;
BDPROTO, a database of ancient and reconstructed sound systems;
The areal typology of sound change; and
The typology of contact-induced change in a few domains of grammar and lexicon, including valency and transitivity patterns, case markers and adpositions, and verb alternations.
He also works on (or has worked on) the description of Ancient Egyptian-Coptic, Nuer, Spanish, Minangkabau, and Modern Hebrew.
My work is mainly descriptive and comparative, covering various phases and registers of several languages—Akkadian, Neo-Aramaic, Biblical and modern Hebrew, as well as various aspects of comparative linguistics of Semitic. The domains covered in my work are syntax and macro-syntax, including such topics as information structure, the functional analysis of verbal systems (tense, aspect and modality, as well as its functions in narrative), the structure of narrative, conditional structures, relative clauses, and more. It always has to do with the interrelationships between the discursive/pragmatic background as well as syntactic environment on the one hand, and the function of the form itself (whether simple or complex) on the other. Currently I am working on a syntactic description of Old Babylonian Akkadian, funded by a grant from the ISF and on several additional topics—interrogative markers in Semitic, the diachrony of epistemic particles from a comparative perspective, genitive constructions in Semitic and conditional constructions in Semitic.
Nora Boneh (PhD 2003, Université Paris 8, Saint Denis) joined the Linguistics Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2007, after being a research and teaching associate at the universities of Paris 7, Denis Diderot and Paris 8, Saint Denis. Her research topics include the study of the linguistic manifestation of conceptual categories such as temporality, possession, and causation; within this exploration, particular attention is given to complex verb constructions, mainly from a syntactic synchronic perspective, but also from a historical one. She has mostly worked on the expression of habituality, on the aspectual properties of the Modern Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew verbal systems, and their stability over time, on argument realization and the syntax of ditransitive verbs and datival arguments, and on causative constructions. Her linguistic analyses are carried out in semi-typological perspective applied to languages such as Hebrew, dialectal Arabic, French, English and Russian.
Diane Brentari joined the department at Hebrew University in 2019 as Distinguished Visiting Professor, and is also the Mary K. Werkman Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Center for Gesture Sign and Language at the University of Chicago.
Lecturer of the courses "Phonology A" and "Phonology B". Received her Bachelor and Master degrees in Linguistics (summa cum laude) from Tel-Aviv University, and today she is a PhD student in Linguistics in Tel-Aviv University, under the supervision of Prof. Outi Bat-El.
Diane Brentari joined the department at Hebrew University in 2019 as Distinguished Visiting Professor, and is also the Mary K. Werkman Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Center for Gesture Sign and Language at the University of Chicago.
Her research addresses the extent to which the modality of a language—auditory, visual, or tactile—has an effect on language structure, on variation among languages, and on the flexibility of the human language capacity. This work focuses primarily on sign language grammars, particularly problems at the intersection of morphology, phonology, and prosody. She has written two books, edited five volumes, and published over 100 articles or book chapters, on these and other themes.
Her research has expanded to include language emergence. Her current projects include analyses of the emergence of sign languages, as well as a new protactile language that is emerging in DeafBlind communities in the USA, which uses the modalities of proprioception and touch. Her work has been supported by a Guggenheim fellowship (2020-2021) and by multiple awards from the National Science Foundation of the United States (2001- present). Brentari is a fellow of the Linguistic Society of America and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Lecturer of the courses "Phonology A" and "Phonology B". Received her Bachelor and Master degrees in Linguistics (summa cum laude) from Tel-Aviv University, and today she is a PhD student in Linguistics in Tel-Aviv University, under the supervision of Prof. Outi Bat-El. Her PhD research focuses on Phonotactics, particularly the restrictions on consonant sequences in Hebrew. She takes interest in Phonology, Morphology and Phonetics, and combines in her research corpus analysis and psycholinguistic experiments.
Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal (PhD 2009, Harvard University), Joined the faculty of the department of Hebrew Language at Hebrew University in 2010 after being the lecturer in Semitics at Yale University.
His areas of research: The history of the Semitic Languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Akkadian), Historical linguistics, formal semantics and typology. He also studies the history of the linguistic discipline using methodologies from the field of philosophy of sciences.
In recent years he mostly works on reciprocal constructions, causative constructions and constructions with non-argument datives, both from the semantic and the historical point of views. He also publishes in fields related to rabbinic literature and Jewish Studies more broadly.
Elitzur was a visiting professor at Harvard University and Yale University.
As a specialist in Spanish philology, Ibero-romance languages and Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), her research and teaching focus on historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and language variation of Spanish and Judeo-Spanish. M.A. from the Freie Universität Berlin and PhD from the Hebrew University, she was a research fellow at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) before she has joined the Department of Romance and Latin American Studies in 2009. Her current projects include the “Annotate diachronic corpus of Judeo-Spanish (Ladino)" and “Civic responses after terror attacks in Europe: linguistic issues”. She is corresponding academician of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE).
Luka Crnič received his PhD from MIT in 2011. His primary research interests lie in syntax, semantics and the syntax-semantics interface. His current grants are:
ISF 1926/14 Polarity items across languages
GIF I-2353-110.4/2014 Alternative-sensitive computations in natural language: focus-sensitive particles and embedded exhaustification
My research revolves around the question how language is used in different discursive contexts and how these uses shape the structure of language. I study Semitic languages, specifically Classical Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Palestinian Arabic, Modern Hebrew, and Neo Aramaic. The topics on which I conducted research include: tense-usage in different discourse environments, clause combining, presentatives, expressive structures, narrative structure, discourse markers, digital genre analysis, spoken and written discourse, and language contact (Arabic and Hebrew). My present research project, funded by the Israel Science Foundation, focuses on discourse markers in conversational and written Egyptian Arabic. In addition, I am a member of a network of interactional linguists studying responsive particles in conversation. Another field which I study is emergent practices in interactional digital discourse (e.g., in WhatsApp).
My work is mainly descriptive and comparative, covering various phases and registers of several languages—Akkadian, Neo-Aramaic, Biblical and modern Hebrew, as well as various aspects of comparative linguistics of Semitic. The domains covered in my work are syntax and macro-syntax, including such topics as information structure, the functional analysis of verbal systems (tense, aspect and modality, as well as its functions in narrative), the structure of narrative, conditional structures, relative clauses, and more. It always has to do with the interrelationships between the discursive/pragmatic background as well as syntactic environment on the one hand, and the function of the form itself (whether simple or complex) on the other. Currently I am working on a syntactic description of Old Babylonian Akkadian, funded by a grant from the ISF and on several additional topics—interrogative markers in Semitic, the diachrony of epistemic particles from a comparative perspective, genitive constructions in Semitic and conditional constructions in Semitic.
Nora Boneh (PhD 2003, Université Paris 8, Saint Denis) joined the Linguistics Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2007, after being a research and teaching associate at the universities of Paris 7, Denis Diderot and Paris 8, Saint Denis. Her research topics include the study of the linguistic manifestation of conceptual categories such as temporality, possession, and causation; within this exploration, particular attention is given to complex verb constructions, mainly from a syntactic synchronic perspective, but also from a historical one. She has mostly worked on the expression of habituality, on the aspectual properties of the Modern Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew verbal systems, and their stability over time, on argument realization and the syntax of ditransitive verbs and datival arguments, and on causative constructions. Her linguistic analyses are carried out in semi-typological perspective applied to languages such as Hebrew, dialectal Arabic, French, English and Russian.
Born 1930, Tel Aviv; Ph.D. 1985, Hebrew University; Research Fellow 1986; Associate Professor 1992; Emeritus 1996. Died in 2014.
Research interests included comparative ancient Indo-European, especially Indo-Iranian; Indo-European etymology; a renowned expert of Vedic, especially the Rgveda;Indo-European poetic language; parallels and possible contacts between ancient Indo-European and ancient Semitic poetry.
Ph.D.1978, Academy of Sciences, Institute of Linguistics, Leningrad, Russia. 1993 - 2015 : Researcher in the Department of Linguistics, The Faculty of Humanities, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Lecturer 1993; Senior Lecturer; Associate Professor 2006.
Research interests include Germanistics (History and Dialectology of German; Phonology and Grammar of Germanic Languages (esp.: German Sprachinseln, Diachronic Phonology of German Dialects), Diachronic Linguistics, General Phonology (esp.: Structural Methods of Phonological Analysis; History of Structuralism), Languages in Contact (esp.: Code-Switching Models, Interference in Grammar and in Phonology, Russian Abroad, German Abroad; e.g., Russian in Israel, German in Russia), Folk Narratives (esp.: Linguistic Structures of Personal Narratives, Fairytales, and Charms), Poetics, Stylistics, Translation Theory, and Typology.
Born 1945, Haifa; Ph.D. 1973, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Lecturer 1973; Senior Lecturer 1978; Associate Professor 1984; Professor 1987; Member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. His research interests include Celtic grammar, especially the syntax of Irish and Modern and Middle Welsh, Egyptian and Coptic grammar, typological-comparative grammar, and text linguistics, especially narrative grammar.
Born 1932, Krakow; Ph.D. 1969, Hebrew University; Lecturer 1970; Senior Lecturer 1972; Associate Professor 1981; Professor 1985; Emerita 1994; Recipient of the Israel Prize in General Linguistics 2005. Research interests include Semitic languages, especially Ethio-Semitic and Neo-Aramaic, as well as synchronic and diachronic syntax and language interference.
Born 1930, Tel Aviv; Ph.D. 1967, Hebrew University; (Tel Aviv Univ., 1965-1985); Prof. (HU) 1985; Emeritus 1998; Recipient, Israel Prize for Language Sciences, 1993; Member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, since 1996; Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, since 1999. Died 2013.
Research interests included comparative Semitic linguistics, linguistic typology, the history of linguistics thought, the grammatical traditions of Arabic, Syriac, Ethiopic and Hebrew as well as European traditions. In addition, he was a prominent expert in the Semitic languages and of Syriac.
Born in New-York, 1958. Member of the Israeli Association for Theoretical Linguistics' and in the International Lexical-Functional Grammar Association. Professor of Linguistics at the English department since 1984, and then from 2008 at the Linguistics Department, Generative Track. Passed away in 2012.
Primary area of research interest is theoretical generative syntax with a typological orientation, in the theoretical framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar; The nature of the basic elements of syntactic representation -- constituent structure and grammatical functions -- and the relation between them. Subjecthood, development of LFG analyses for various constructions in both English and Hebrew (auxiliaries, mixed categories, infinitives, etc.).
Anita was born in 1926 in Berlin; the family moved to England in 1939. She had a BA and MA in classics from University of London. Her MA was on the first book of Maccabees.She then worked in a bookstore, and taught Latin and classics in various highschools in England. She moved to Israel in 1963, where she began teaching English in the English department. She returned to English to be with her ailing mother in 1968 and then enrolled in the PhD program in Linguistics (though it looks like she also considered studying psycholinguistics). Her PhD is from 1971. Her research interests included the semantics of temporal expressions: aspect, adverbials of duration and frequency, tense; the Davidsonian theory of events, specifically as it affects the interpretation of adverbials and cognate object and of bare infinitivals.
Dr. Mori Rimon is a part-time adjunct professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the interdisciplinary Language, Logic and Cognition Center (LLCC). Mori is also a self-employed hi-tech consultant in areas of his expertise. His background includes R&D activities in hi-tech/IT companies, most notably in managerial and technical positions in IBM Research. Mori holds a PhD in Computer Science, an MSc in Mathematics and a BSc in Mathematics and Physics, all from the Hebrew University. Professional interests and teaching areas include computational linguistics, text analytics / NLP, machine learning and knowledge management (aka "big data" these days).
Yael Ziv's primary research areas are discourse/pragmatics, with specific interests in relevance theory, the syntax-pragmatics interface, information structure, discourse markers and reference/anaphora.
Professor in the Dept of Linguistics and the Dept of German, Russian and East European Studies. Tamara and Saveli Grinberg Chair in Russian Studies.
Research areas:
- Medieval East Slavic languages and literatures: Old Russian, Ruthenian (predecessor of modern Ukrainian and Belarusian), in particular the medieval translations from Hebrew into these languages. Slavonic Bible translations. Slavonic extra-canonical literature. The Old Russian Chronicles and Chronographs (universal historical compilations).
- Yiddish language and literature in all its aspects, in particular the syntax, semantics, pragmatics and phraseology of the written language of the 19th-20th centuries, but also earlier stages. The historical development of the language, its dialects, and its recent impoverishment among the ultra-orthodox speakers in Israel and the US. The impact of the co-territorial languages (Polish, Ukrainian and Belarusian) on the grammar and lexicon of Yiddish, and nowadays the impact of Modern Hebrew and English on the new spoken and written varieties of Yiddish, as well as the impact of Yiddish and Slavic on the syntax of Modern Hebrew.
Ivy Sichel's work focuses on syntactic theory in its relatively recent developments within the Minimalist Program, and more specifically the syntax-semantics interface. She is interested in the syntactic contribution to meaning in all its aspects and has worked on a variety of empirical domains with this broad question in mind. These domains include the event properties of nominalizations, the structural decomposition of the meaning of POSSESSION, the effect of structure and movement on the interpretation of negative expressions, the interpretation of resumptive pronouns and ordinary pronouns, the propensity of demonstrative pronouns for deictic use, and in the domain of locality, the factors which enter into allowing selective extraction from relative clauses in some languages. She is also interested in the Sociolinguistics of the revival of Hebrew speech, and has written about women’s contribution to the revival project at the turn of the 20th century (with Miri Bar-Ziv Levi), and about the relationship between the revival and the establishment of the State of Israel (with Uri Mor).
Edit Doron's research concerns the interface of semantics, morphology and syntax, particularly such topics as the Semitic verbal system, nominal predicates, the subject-predicate relation, resumptive pronouns, ergativity, ellipsis, free indirect discourse, habituality, the semantics of voice, definiteness, and reference to kinds. The main languages she has worked on are Hebrew (with special emphasis on the historical ties of Modern Hebrew to Classical Hebrew), Arabic, Aramaic, English and French.
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