Nominal plurals in Antwerp Hasidic Yiddish: An empirical study

Abstract

Yiddish is a Germanic Jewish language that is natively spoken by adults and children in segregated Hasidic communities around the world. The current study investigates the system of noun plurals as spoken by Hasidic adults living in Antwerp, Belgium. In the absence of evidence-based detailed grammatical descriptions of Antwerp Hasidic Yiddish, the aims of this study were (a) to arrive at a description of the plural system and (b) to detect if phonological regularities govern the selection of plural suffixation and stem change.An experimental pluralization task containing 87 singular nouns was administered to 100 Yiddish-speaking adults. Findings show that the system of noun plurals in Antwerp Hasidic Yiddish consists of plural markers that do not exist in Standard Yiddish (e. g.