Relating Morphological and Sociolinguistic Variety in Modern Hebrew to Neo-Aramaic

The article compares spoken Modern Hebrew and North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects, highlighting parallels in verbal morphology and sociolinguistic diversity. Both languages exhibit variation influenced by geographic, social, and pragmatic factors. Neo-Aramaic, shaped by contact with regional languages, displays dialectal distinctions between rural and urban communities, often aligning with religious affiliation. Modern Hebrew, revived as a vernacular in the nineteenth century, shows variation driven by register, fluency, and context. The study analyses specific morphological shifts, such as the merging of verbal classes and the loss of gutturals, observing typological similarities in their evolution as modern spoken Semitic languages. These developments reflect shared trends in phonological simplification and morphosyntactic reorganisation, while preserving elements of their Semitic roots.