YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

xiv Volume 7 in the series Yiddish: Editions & Research presents for the first time an annotated and orthographically standardized edition, supplemented by four new essays, of Elye Falkovitsh's remarkable Yiddish grammar, Yidish. Fonetik, grafik, leksik un gramatik [Yiddish. Phonetics, Graphics, Lexis, and Grammar]. It was published in Moscow in 1940 and remains one of the most important reference works in Yiddish linguistics. This theoretical grammar provides a comprehensive description of modern Yiddish in the context of general linguistics. A descriptive account of the language system, including dialectal variations, is joined to an explanation of the normative rules. The synchronic approach informed by Russian Formalism is supplemented by passages bearing on the history of Yiddish and the development of particular forms, the goal being to establish a standard Soviet Yiddish. Elye Falkovitsh (1898 -1979) was among the leading Yiddish linguists of the Soviet Union. In the 1920s and 1930s, he contributed to the development of reforms in spelling and punctuation. In 1929 and 1936 he authored two textbooks, which can be considered prefatory to his 1940 grammar. Unlike his earlier works, this most comprehensive of his grammars has not been digitized and is hard to find in libraries, though it has proven indispensable to any in-depth engagement with Yiddish. With the present annotated edition, the work is again in print for research and teaching, and for the first time it is also available online. Between 1920 and 1940, in geographically distinct cultural spaces (Vilna, Warsaw, Moscow, Minsk), several Yiddish grammars were published. The recognition, after the October Revolution of 1917, of national minorities and their languages had set in motion, in the Jewish minority, a dynamic of cultur al construction that between the wars produced an intensive development of Yiddish in the Soviet Union, in particular in language policy. Elye Falkovitsh was an important contributor to this process. The approach of Soviet Yiddish linguists was in many ways influenced by the formalist tendencies prominent in Russian-language discourse. Central among these were the systematization of paradigms and a comprehensive xv Foreword