Animacy-Based Verbal Agreement in Israeli Haredi Yiddish

Abstract

The article presents the first evidence of the emergence of a new animacy-based verbal agreement pattern in Israeli Haredi Yiddish. A study of recordings from the years 2017–2020 reveals that plural verbal agreement is always maintained with animate plural nominal subjects, but it is usually lost with inanimate plural nominal subjects. It is suggested that this linguistic change may be supported by the sociolinguistic setting of Israeli Haredi Yiddish speakers.