Peer-Reviewed Articles • Hebrew Language Resources 35

grammar. Fortunately, many of these texts have been digitized, and seminal studies have been published on others.

Many of the best studies on Mishnaic Hebrew today are published in Modern Hebrew. A few works in English that should be mentioned are Segal’s Grammar and Perez’s Introduction.85 Segal’s is older, but still serviceable. Perez covers more than the period of the Mishna. In Hebrew, Azar’s book has provided a detailed look at the syntax of the Mishna.86 Also, Yalon’s work gives a good presentation of the vocalization found in the various manuscripts of the Mishna.87

Modern Hebrew

Israeli scholars are publishing a wealth of scholarship in all periods of Hebrew, and there are many good tools to aid in reading that scholarship. Glinert’s Modern Hebrew is a good practical grammar for beginning students of Modern Hebrew.88 The chapters are clear and well laid out, and the exercises are well planned. For reference questions, Coffin’s grammar is serviceable.89 For questions of Hebrew grammar beyond these two works, one will need to look at either textbooks for the 5 th and 6 th levels of Hebrew or special publications.

The best dictionary for Modern Hebrew is Even-Shoshan’s.90 It is a comprehensive dictionary with ample citations from all periods of Hebrew. For quick lookup of Hebrew words for English speaking students, Morfix is an excellent website.91

Conclusion

Research into the Northwest Semitic languages continues to progress, though not always evenly. The understanding of Hebrew syntax is in a much better state than it was at the turn of the 20 th century, when Kautzsch and Cowley published their update of Gesenius’s venerable grammar. The comparative work of that period, however, is still enduring through the works of Bauer and Leander, and even Brockelmann. Moreover, scholarly understanding of Ugaritic has improved in leaps and bounds, so much so that even works published twenty-five years ago must be used with great care.

The future of computational work on Hebrew and the surrounding languages is bright and exciting, especially if the dangers of closed and proprietary systems can be balanced with an openness to progressing scholarship. Not all of the recent research into Semitic grammar has replaced the work of previous generations, and even the most sophisticated algorithm should be developed in dialogue with the masters of the last century, whose work continues to endure.

85 M. H. Segal, A Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927); Miguel Pérez Fernández, An Introduc-tory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew, trans. John Elwolde (Leiden: Brill, 1997).

86 Moshe Azar, She ṭ a ḥ ṿ a-ʻome ḳ Ba-Ta ḥ bir. (Haifa: Universi ṭ at Ḥ efah, 737AD).

87 Henoch Yalon, Mavo Le-Ni ḳ ud Ha-Mishnah (Jerusalem: Mosad Byali ḳ, 1964).

88 Lewis Glinert, Modern Hebrew : An Essential Grammar., 3 rd ed. (New York : Routledge, 2005).

89 Edna Amir Coffin, A Reference Grammar of Modern Hebrew (Cambridge ; Cambridge University Press, 2005).

90 Even-Shoshan, Milon Even Shoshan.

91 http://www.morfix.co.il/.