MA - Alumni

Subject: Hebrew Spoken by Haredi Litaim (Litvish-Yeshivish) in Israel: A Linguistic Description

Supervisors: Prof. Yochanan Breuer (Hebrew University) and Dr. Dalit Asulin (University of Haifa)

Bio: Dina Sender completed her B.A. and M.A. studies (summa cum laude) in the Hebrew Linguistics department at the Hebrew University. Her M.A. thesis focuses on a linguistic phenomenon, Ashkenazi pronunciation, that characterizes Haredi Hebrew, aiming to examine it from multiple angles: to map the lexical sources of the linguistic forms with Ashkenazi pronunciation, to analyze its phonological characteristics, to trace grammatical changes that occur in forms with Ashkenazi pronunciation, and to discuss the pragmatic functions that this pronunciation serves. This work was written under the supervision of Prof. Yochanan Breuer (the Hebrew University) and Dr. Dalit Asulin (University of Haifa).

Dina is currently a PhD student in the Hebrew Linguistics department at the Hebrew University. Her research aims to describe comprehensively the Haredi Litai community’s unique linguistic repertoire, and to enrich this examination with a sociolinguistic analysis of the links between the speakers' linguistic choices and their ideology, values, and group affiliation.

Publications:

"Hebrew as a Language of Speech and Yiddish as a Language of Emotion among the Ultra-Orthodox in Israel," Language Studies (in Hebrew, forthcoming)

"Ashkenazi Pronunciation in Spoken Haredi Hebrew in Israel: Grammar and Pragmatics," Leshonenu (in Hebrew, forthcoming)

President Scholarship 2020/2021

MA Honors Program 2016/2017

Supervisor: Dr. ittay nissan-rosen

Subject: Late Modern German History

Supervisor: Prof. Ofer Ashkenazi

Abstract: I'm interested in German national identity after WW2, especially through commemoration culture

MA Honors 2018/19

Supervisor: Miriam Goldstein

Supervisor: Inbal Arnon

Abstract: Human language contains an enormous amount of information at numerous different levels (phonologically, morphologically, semantically, etc.). One of the biggest questions in cognitive language research is how this linguistic knowledge is represented, i.e., what information speakers are sensitive to. According to usage-based approaches to language, human beings learn and process language with domain general learning skills, and are sensitive to recurring structures in all levels of the linguistic environment. Hebrew morphology serves as an interesting case study for this theory. All Hebrew verbs are comprised of seven possible verb templates (Binyanim), that systematically encode information regarding the verb, e.g., voice and verb argument, thereby creating statistical relations between certain forms (e.g., huCCaC) and certain grammatical-semantic functions (e.g., passivity). This study is designed to check whether the mere processing of a verb template's form will create  predictions regarding the information this form carries for the Hebrew speaker. This question was tested with regards to the passive voice: using a masked priming paradigm, unconscious processing of Hebrew verbs was examined, enabling us to check whether Hebrew speakers are sensitive to the passive information encoded in the passive verb patterns based only on their orthographic-phonological characteristics. The findings of the experiments do not allow us to determine whether Hebrew readers are sensitive to this information in early stages of processing. The reasons for this and the possible outcomes of the results on the existing theories of language processing are discussed.