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Ghil'ad Zuckermann ( he, גלעד צוקרמן, ; ) is an
Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
i-born language revivalist and
linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...
who works in
contact linguistics Contact may refer to: Interaction Physical interaction * Contact (geology), a common geological feature * Contact lens or contact, a lens placed on the eye * Contact sport, a sport in which players make contact with other players or objects * ...
, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity. Zuckermann is Professor of Linguistics and Chair of Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide,
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
.Sarah Robinson, March 11, 2019, The LINGUIST List
Featured Linguist: Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
, accessed May 4, 2020
He is the president of the
Australian Association for Jewish Studies The Australian Association for Jewish Studies (AAJS) is a scholarly organization in Australia that promotes academic Jewish Studies. AAJS was founded in 1987 and held its first annual conference that year in Melbourne. AAJS is Australia's nati ...
.


Overview

Zuckermann was born in
Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...
in 1971 and raised in Eilat. He attended the United World College (UWC) of the Adriatic in 1987–1989. In 1997 he received an M.A. in Linguistics from the Adi Lautman Program at
Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) ( he, אוּנִיבֶרְסִיטַת תֵּל אָבִיב, ''Universitat Tel Aviv'') is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Locate ...
. In 1997–2000 he was Scatcherd European Scholar of the
University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...
and Denise Skinner Graduate Scholar at St Hugh's College, receiving a
D.Phil. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
( Oxon.) in 2000. While at Oxford, he served as president of the Jewish student group L'Chaim Society. As Gulbenkian research fellow at
Churchill College Churchill College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It has a primary focus on science, engineering and technology, but still retains a strong interest in the arts and humanities. In 1958, a trust was establis ...
(2000–2004), he was affiliated with the Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Studies, University of Cambridge. He received a titular Ph.D. ( Cantab.) in 2003. Zuckermann is a polyglot, with his past teaching positions ranging from Univeristies in England, China, Australia, Singapore, Slovakia, Israel, and the United States. In 2010-2015 he was China's Ivy League Project 211 "Distinguished Visiting Professor", and "Shanghai Oriental Scholar" professorial fellow, at Shanghai International Studies University. He was Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellow in 2007-2011 and was awarded research fellowships at various universities in various countries. He was awarded a
British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars s ...
Research Grant, Memorial Foundation of Jewish Culture Postdoctoral Fellowship, Harold Hyam Wingate Scholarship and Chevening Scholarship. Currently, Zuckermann is Professor of Linguistics and Chair of Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide. He is elected member of the
Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), established as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS) in 1964, is an independent Australian Government statutory authority. It is a collecting, ...
and the Foundation for Endangered Languages. He serves as Editorial Board member of the Journal of Language Contact ( Brill), consultant for the
Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a c ...
(OED), and expert witness in (corpus) lexicography, (forensic) linguistics and trademarks (
intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...
). In 2013-2015 he was President of the Australasian Association of Lexicography (AustraLex). Since February 2017 he has been the president of the
Australian Association for Jewish Studies The Australian Association for Jewish Studies (AAJS) is a scholarly organization in Australia that promotes academic Jewish Studies. AAJS was founded in 1987 and held its first annual conference that year in Melbourne. AAJS is Australia's nati ...
(AAJS). In 2017 Zuckermann secured extensive research funding from Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) to study effects of Indigenous language reclamation on wellbeing.


Research

Zuckermann applies insights from the Hebrew revival to the revitalization of Aboriginal languages in Australia. According to Yuval Rotem, the Israeli Ambassador to Australia, Zuckermann's "passion for the reclamation, maintenance and empowerment of Aboriginal languages and culture inspired imand was indeed the driving motivator of" the establishment of the Allira Aboriginal Knowledge IT Centre in Dubbo,
New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...
, Australia, on 2 September 2010. He proposes Native Tongue Title, compensation for language loss, because "linguicide"Zuckermann, Ghil'ad
"Stop, revive and survive"
''The Australian Higher Education'', June 6, 2012.
results in "loss of cultural autonomy, loss of spiritual and intellectual sovereignty, loss of soul". He uses the term ''sleeping beauty'' to refer to a no-longer spoken language and urges Australia "to define the 330 Aboriginal languages, most of them sleeping beauties, as the official languages of their region", and to introduce bilingual signs and thus change the linguistic landscape of the country. "So, for example, Port Lincoln should also be referred to as Galinyala, which is its original Barngarla name." His edX MOOC ''Language Revival: Securing the Future of Endangered Languages'' has had 20,000 learners from 190 countries. Zuckermann proposes a controversial hybrid theory of the emergence of Israeli Hebrew according to which Hebrew and Yiddish "acted equally" as the "primary contributors" to
Modern Hebrew Modern Hebrew ( he, עברית חדשה, ''ʿivrít ḥadašá ', , '' lit.'' "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Israeli, and generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew ( ), is the standard form of the He ...
.
John-Paul Davidson John-Paul Davidson is a director, producer and writer for television and film. He was born in London and after attending Bristol University, The University of Malaya and San Francisco Art Institute he went on to work for the BBC for a number of y ...
(2011), ''Planet Word'', Penguin. pp. 125-126.
Scholars including Yiddish linguist
Dovid Katz Dovid Katz (Yiddish: , also , Hirshe-Dovid Kats, , born 9 May 1956) is an American-born, Vilnius-based scholar, author and educator, specializing in Yiddish language and literature, Lithuanian Jewish culture, and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. ...
(who refers to Zuckermann as a "fresh-thinking Israeli scholar"), adopt Zuckermann's term "Israeli" and accept his notion of hybridity. Others, for example author and translator Hillel Halkin, oppose Zuckermann's model. In an article published on 24 December 2004 in The Jewish Daily Forward, pseudonymous column " Philologos", Halkin accused Zuckermann of political agenda. Zuckermann's response was published on 28 December 2004 in ''The Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Language''. As described by
Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was est ...
in a 2006 article, "Zuckermann's lectures are packed, with the cream of Israeli academia invariably looking uncertain on whether to endorse his innovative streak or rise to the defense of the mother tongue." According to Omri Herzog (''Haaretz''), Zuckermann "is considered by his Israeli colleagues either a genius or a provocateur".


Reclamation of the Barngarla language

"In 2011 ..Zuckermann contacted the Barngarla community about helping to revive and reclaim the Barngarla language. This request was eagerly accepted by the Barngarla people and language reclamation workshops began in Port Lincoln, Whyalla and Port Augusta in 2012" (Barngarla man Stephen Atkinson, 2013). The reclamation is based on 170-year-old documents.Dr Anna Goldsworthy on the Barngarla language reclamation
The Monthly, September 2014
He tries to convince
Eyre Peninsula The Eyre Peninsula is a triangular peninsula in South Australia. It is bounded by the Spencer Gulf on the east, the Great Australian Bight on the west, and the Gawler Ranges to the north. Originally called Eyre’s Peninsula, it was named af ...
principals to teach Barngarla at their schools.


Adelaide Language Festival

Zuckermann is the founder and convener of the Adelaide Language Festival.


Contributions to linguistics

Zuckermann's research focuses on contact linguistics, lexicology,
revivalistics ''Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond'' is a scholarly book written by linguist and revivalist Ghil'ad Zuckermann. It was published in 2020 by Oxford University Press. The book introduces r ...
, Jewish languages, and the study of language, culture and identity. Zuckermann argues that Israeli Hebrew, which he calls "Israeli", is a hybrid language that is genetically both
Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...
( Germanic, Slavic and Romance) and Afro-Asiatic ( Semitic). He suggests that "Israeli" is the continuation not only of literary Hebrew(s) but also of Yiddish, as well as Polish, Russian,
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
,
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
, Ladino,
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
and other languages spoken by
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
revivalists. Zuckermann's hybridic synthesis is in contrast to both the traditional revival thesis (i.e. that "Israeli" is Hebrew revived) and the
relexification In linguistics, relexification is a mechanism of language change by which one language changes much or all of its lexicon, including basic vocabulary, with the lexicon of another language, without drastically changing the relexified language's g ...
antithesis (i.e. that "Israeli" is Yiddish with Hebrew words). While his synthesis is multi-parental, both the thesis and the antithesis are mono-parental. Zuckermann introduces revivalistics as a new transdisciplinary field of enquiry surrounding language reclamation (e.g. Barngarla), revitalization (e.g. Adnyamathanha) and reinvigoration (e.g. Irish). Complementing documentary linguistics, revivalistics aims to provide a systematic analysis especially of attempts to resurrect no-longer spoken languages (reclamation) but also of initiatives to reverse
language shift Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are percei ...
(revitalization and reinvigoration). His analysis of multisourced neologization (the coinage of words deriving from two or more sources at the same time) challenges
Einar Haugen Einar Ingvald Haugen (; April 19, 1906 – June 20, 1994) was an American linguist, writer, and professor at University of Wisconsin–Madison and Harvard University. Biography Haugen was born in Sioux City, Iowa, to Norwegian immigrants from ...
's classic typology of lexical borrowing. Whereas Haugen categorizes borrowing into either substitution or importation, Zuckermann explores cases of "simultaneous substitution and importation" in the form of camouflaged borrowing. He proposes a new classification of multisourced neologisms such as
phono-semantic matching Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of a word into one language from another, often creating a neologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it with phonetically and semantically similar words or roots fro ...
. Zuckermann's exploration of phono-semantic matching in
Standard Mandarin Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern standa ...
and
Meiji period The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...
Japanese concludes that the Chinese writing system is multifunctional: pleremic ("full" of meaning, e.g.
logographic In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, '' kanji'' in Japanese, '' hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms ...
), cenemic ("empty" of meaning, e.g. phonographic – like a syllabary) and simultaneously cenemic and pleremic (phono-logographic). He argues that
Leonard Bloomfield Leonard Bloomfield (April 1, 1887 – April 18, 1949) was an American linguist who led the development of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s. He is considered to be the father of American distributionalis ...
's assertion that "a language is the same no matter what system of writing may be used"Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), ''Language'', New York: Henry Holt, p. 21. is inaccurate. "If Chinese had been written using roman letters, thousands of Chinese words would not have been coined, or would have been coined with completely different forms".


Selected publications

Zuckermann has published in
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
,
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
, Italian, Yiddish, Spanish,
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
, Russian,
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
, Korean and Chinese.


Books authored

* *'' Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond''. New York
Oxford University Press
2020. / . * ( ''Israelit Safa Yafa'') *'' Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew''
Palgrave Macmillan
2003. / .
''Mangiri Yarda (Healthy Country: Barngarla Wellbeing and Nature)''
Revivalistics Press, 2021. *
''Barngarlidhi Manoo'' - Part 2''Dictionary of the Barngarla Aboriginal Language''
2018.

2015.


Books edited

* ttps://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/ijsl/2014/226/html ''Jewish Language Contact''(Special Issue of the '' International Journal of the Sociology of Language'', Vol. 226), 2014.
''Burning Issues in Afro-Asiatic Linguistics''
2012. / .


Journal articles and book chapters

* * * * * * * *


Filmography


Fry's Planet Word
Stephen Fry interviews Prof. Zuckermann about the revival of Hebrew
The Politics of Language
Stephen Fry interviews Prof. Zuckermann about language
SBS: Living Black: S18 Ep9 - LinguicideBabbel: Why Revive A Dead Language? - Interview with Prof. Ghil'ad ZuckermannedX MOOC: Language Revival: Securing the Future of Endangered Languages


References


External links


University of Adelaide: Researcher Profile: Ghil'ad ZuckermannUniversity Staff Directory: Ghil'ad Zuckermann

Ghil'ad Zuckermann, AcademiaGhil'ad Zuckermann's website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Zuckermann, Ghilad 1971 births Living people People from Tel Aviv Linguists from Australia Australian lexicographers Linguists from Israel Israeli philologists Israeli Jews Australian Jews Historical linguists Etymologists Linguists of Yiddish Linguists of Australian Aboriginal languages Sociolinguists Israeli Hebraists Scholars of nationalism Israeli emigrants to Australia Semiticists Linguists at the University of Cambridge University of Adelaide faculty University of Queensland faculty National University of Singapore faculty University of Texas at Austin faculty Shanghai Jiao Tong University faculty East China Normal University faculty Shanghai International Studies University faculty La Trobe University faculty Tel Aviv University alumni Alumni of St Hugh's College, Oxford Fellows of Churchill College, Cambridge Israeli translation scholars People educated at a United World College 20th-century linguists 21st-century linguists Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding Students alumni Presidents of the Australian Association for Jewish Studies Language revival Chevening Scholars