SOME USES OF DEIXIS IN RABBINIC HEBREW

I put forth two main arguments in the present study. First, that an adequate understanding of a number of Rabbinic Hebrew passages originating in Roman Palestine depends on a fuller appreciation of their employment of proximate and distant deixis. Interestingly, already the rabbinic scholars of Babylonia fail to recognize the distinction between proximate and distant deixis. Thus, the second argument, that though this distinction is known in Biblical Hebrew, its preservation among Palestinian rabbis is due to its vitality in Greek and so counts as contact-induced maintenance.