TITLE:
Semantic Shift of Hebrew Words Borrowed into Palestinian Arabic in Hebron City
AUTHORS:
Tasnim Swaitti, K. Yeshoda
KEYWORDS:
Language Borrowing, Semantic Change, Hebrew Language, Palestinian Arabic
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics,
Vol.12 No.5,
October
14,
2022
ABSTRACT: This research paper is an attempt to explore some of the changes in the Palestinian Arabic lexical items due to the contact between Arabic and Hebrew. Both Arabic and Hebrew belong to the Semitic language family (Blau & Blau, 1981). The nature of the contact and its effect on both languages has gained the interest of the scholars in the field of sociolinguistics and language contact. The objective of this paper is to shed light on the Hebrew lexical elements borrowed to the Palestinian Arabic, and identify these words with respect to the replacement of the original Arabic words by borrowed Hebrew words. The data have been collected from the native speakers of Arabic, and the data are classified and analyzed to find out whether the lexical borrowed elements affect the semantic properties of the original Palestinian Arabic words in the Hebron area. The discussion concludes that the high impact of Hebrew lexical elements is using the nouns more than other elements.