Balearic Hebrew: Difference between revisions

=== Consonants ===

Balearic Hebrew has 19 consonantal phonemes.

! colspan="2" rowspan="2" |

! colspan="1" rowspan="2" |Labial

===== Historical Spirantization and Allophony =====

Similar to the Hebrew dialects spoken in the Levant, the stops /p t b d g/ underwent spirantization in Balearic Hebrew. /k/ is never spirantized, unlike the Aramaic-influenced speech of the Levant.  

!Letter

!Stop

=== Vowels ===

The vowel system of Balearic Hebrew is much more conservative compared to modern Hebrew pronunciations. Nevertheless, there are significant differences that contrast Balearic Hebrew from its ancestor, Biblical Hebrew.  

!

!Front

== Nouns and Adjectives ==

Nouns are marked for gender (masculine or feminine), number (singular, plural, and dual), and state (absolute or construct), and also definiteness.  

|+Overview of Noun and Adjective Inflection

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=== With the definite article ===

These three prepositions lose the <nowiki><i> when the noun or adjective they modify is definite. Instead, the <i> is exchanged for /a/. Therefore:</nowiki>

|+Prefixing Preposition with ''bet''

!

=== Personal Pronouns ===

Balearic Hebrew has 10 distinct forms for the personal pronouns. The 1st person has no gender distinction.

! colspan="2" |Person

!Singular

==== Enclitic Pronouns ====

These are suffixes that can be attached to nouns, verbs, particles, or prepositions.  

! colspan="2" |Person

!Singular

=== Demonstratives ===

Balearic Hebrew has three kinds of demonstratives, whose use depends on the distance (physical or figurative) between the speaker and the modified noun. This is similar to Spanish or Old English, and an innovation from Biblical Hebrew

!Demonstratives

!Proximal

=== Interrogative Pronouns ===

Besides the pronouns ''mī'' and ''mū'' that also function as question words, Balearic Hebrew has many others. These pronouns also function as adjectives.

|+Question markers

!Meaning

==== Cardinal Numbers ====

Like Classical Arabic, Balearic Hebrew exhibits gender polarity in numeral agreement, but only for numbers after 20. Multiples of 10 do not decline according to the gender of the counted noun.  

|+The cardinal numerals "one" and "two"

!

|šte

|}

|+3-10

!

|}

The numbers 11-19 are formed by writing the number 10 followed by the number 1-9. In this way, Hebrew reverses English "seven-ten" with something more similar to Spanish "diez-y-siete." However, the masculine form of 10 is ''hūšūr,'' and the feminine is ''hišri''. Therefore, "seventeen" would be ''hūšūr šivan'' for 17 masculine nouns, and ''hišri šīvnū'' for 17 feminine nouns.  

|+Multiples of 10 (20-90)

!

Multiples of 10 plus units are written with the same rules as the number 11-19. For example, "thirty three" is written as ''šlošī bišūloš'', or "thirty and-three." The only thing notable about these numbers is that they exhibit gender polarity, so ''šlošī bišūloš'' refers to 33 '''feminine''' nouns, because ''šūloš'' is the masculine form of the numeral 3.  

|+Larger Numbers

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Ordinal numbers express a rank or order of items in a series, or a fraction.  

|+1st and 2nd

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The system of verb conjugations in Balearic Hebrew has many complications. In this table is outlined the conjugation of a regular verb, ''k-t-b'' in all four ''binyanim'' for the 3rd person masculine singular.

Many verbs in Biblical Hebrew which were classified as "hollow" have been regularized in Balearic Hebrew, its direct descendant. However, many weak roots remain. Regular verbs in Balearic Hebrew constitute basic, triliteral roots with three non-"weak" consonants. Weak consonants are

!'''Form'''

!'''Past'''

Here is a table outlining the indicative for one of the stems, ''qal'' for the verb ''k-t-b'' "to write."

! colspan="1" rowspan="2" |Person & gender

! colspan="2" rowspan="1" |Preterite

The reflexive stem in Balearic Hebrew is an insular innovation, resulting from Latin influence. What was previously another construction, the so-called ''hitpael,'' was lost and relexified in favor of Latin-based pronominal verb forms. The conjugation is essentially the D-stem verb with a Latin affix, these affixes descending from Latin accusative personal pronouns.  These affixes in Balearic Hebrew are:

|+Reflexive affixes

!Person

Depending on the stem of the verb, the infinitive has different vowel formations.

|+Infinitives of ''k-t-b''

!Stem

Participle conjugate for gender and number. The only participle in Balearic Hebrew is passive in meaning, likely as a result of Latin influence. Verbs of the D-stem will reform to the ''qal'' construction for a participle.

|+Participles of ''k-t-b''

! colspan="2" |

=== Verb Comparative Table with ''k-t-b'' ===

|+Binyanim for the Semitic Constructions

! colspan="2" |Qal

|hakūtbū

|}

|+Reflexive Construction

! rowspan="2" |