Language contacts in modern Judeo-Spanish: Notes on the concessive and concessive conditional clauses

Abstract

Since the beginning of the Sephardic diaspora in the Ottoman Empire, Judeo-Spanish has been in contact with different languages, both romance and others. The lexical borrowings from these languages are a characteristic element of Judeo-Spanish, especially the Hebraisms of the classical period (until the beginning of the 19 th century) and the Gallicisms of the modern period (from the middle of the 19 th century onward). The results of these language contacts have seldom been analyzed from a syntactical point of view, a fact that reflects the general lack of detailed studies about Judeo-Spanish syntax. The aim of this paper is to summarize the results of language contacts that can be observed in the concessive and concessive conditional clauses in modern Judeo-Spanish texts, published between 1880 and 1930. First, we see an increase and a diversification of the concessive conjunctions due to the contacts with Western European languages, especially Italian. Second, a linguistic innovation in the concessive conditional clauses reflects the fundamental changes in the language contacts of Judeo-Spanish between the 18 th century and the modern period, as well as the modernization of Judeo-Spanish that characterizes its transformation during the last decades of the 19 th and the beginning of the 20 th centuries.