Gender Neutralization in Hebrew

Abstract

Classical Hebrew, as well as Modern Hebrew, distinguishes between the genders of nouns, and every noun, whether or not it is animate, is characterized as masculine or feminine. However in colloquial Modern Hebrew we witness a process of neutralization. In this paper we address one aspect of gender neutralization in Hebrew: the case of the numerals in colloquial Hebrew. The use of numerals in spoken Modern Hebrew is varied, and many speakers do not regularly distinguish numerals according to the grammatical gender of the modified noun, but rather use the unmarked ‘neutral’ form of the numeral, which in Hebrew is typically the feminine form. The object of this paper is to study gender agreement between Modern Hebrew numerals and the nouns they modify in a corpus of casual spoken Hebrew discourse. Previous studies have argued, within a variety of methodologies and frameworks, for a gradual ongoing neutralization of the gender distinction of numerals in this environment. In our research, we will explore the conditions and the scope of this neutralization. This study is based on the collection of recordings in the CoSIH “Corpus of Spoken Israeli Hebrew”, and it analyzes the various usages of the numerals in this corpus. It presents the scope and nature of the neutralization process in colloquial Hebrew and shows that although there is a bias towards neutralization, this bias is not absolute and depends on particular circumstances.