THE FORMATION AND THE COGNITIVE KNOWLEDGE OF LITERARY LANGUAGES: THE CASE OF HEBREW AND ARAMAIC IN THE MIDDLE AGES

This paper characterizes Medieval Hebrew and Aramaic as literary languages and
seeks to explain how a ‘literary language’ – namely a language used mainly in
literary contexts – arises, while utilizing three types of research: comparative
philological research, which compares different languages and texts in terms of
their vocabulary and grammar; sociolinguistic research, which examines the social
functions of language use; and psycholinguistic research, which (in this particular
case) examines issues of language acquisition.
The paper builds on philological studies of literary languages to explain how
the grammar of these languages evolves. It assumes that the acquisition of such
languages is similar to second-language acquisition, while taking into account that
these languages are both acquired and used in a strictly literary context. The main
argument of the paper is that literary languages should be studied the same way as
other languages, because ultimately – after making some adjustments motivated by
their particular functions – they are compatible with the standard models of
second-language acquisition.