About
The Department of Hebrew Language addresses a wide range of individual interests in its field. It seeks to present different perspectives on Hebrew’s diverse forms, functions, registers, and styles.
The Department offers instruction on the systematic aspects of language, as well as its heterogeneous and incidental characteristics. Studies include such topics as early Hebrew and its affinity to other Semitic languages, such as Akkadian, Aramaic, and Arabic, along with Hebrew’s historical development to the present.
Departmental studies and research touch upon numerous academic fields, including sociology, psychology, neurology, anthropology, philosophy, literature, and art. Fields such as sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics reflect and develop this interdisciplinary nature.
Mission
The Department has aimed (and succeeded) to become an international center for research on the Hebrew and Aramaic of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and on lexicography and philology of biblical language in light of the early Semitic languages, as well as on documentation of contemporary Bedouin Arabic in the Negev. The academic achievements of faculty members are known in the field worldwide.
Learn
The Department teaches ancient Semitic languages, modern linguistics, Hebrew pragmatics, and psycholinguistics.
Courses are offered at the BA, MA, and PhD levels, and are intended for Hebrew speakers only.
Participate
The Department’s unique MA program in copyediting addresses a growing need in Israel for editors in areas of literature, television, cinema, and journalism. The program trains editors and language consultants through practical and theoretical instruction.
Research
Research is conducted on different aspects of Hebrew, including its place among its sister languages. The Department is committed to teaching and research, particularly regarding the people who speak and write the language, and the psychological, social, geographical, and technological factors that motivate them.
Areas of research include:
Historical-philological aspects of Hebrew and Jewish literature and their linguistic structure (phonology, morphology, grammar, lexicon, and semantics):
v Biblical Hebrew and its relation to other ancient Semitic languages
v Rabbinic Hebrew and the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls, along with the different Hebrew dialects of their time
v Various genres of Medieval Hebrew
v Hebrew in the modern era: the enlightenment period, the revival period, and the present day
Linguistic and sociolinguistic factors of Hebrew in different contexts and modalities (such as speech and writing):
v Interrelations between language, society, culture and ideology
v Pragmatics and discourse analysis
Projects include:
v A dictionary of biblical Hebrew, in cooperation with other BGU departments
v Bedouin dialects of the Negev
