---
title: "A “White Spot” in History of Linguistic Thought: the Jewish"
description: "The authors argue that Russian-language histories of linguistics give almost no attention to how Jewish scholars studied… 29 references."
authors: ["Georgy T. Khukhuni", "Yulia D. Budman"]
year: 2025
venue: "RUDN Journal of Language Studies, Semiotics and Semantics 16"
source: "https://journals.rudn.ru/semiotics-semantics/article/viewFile/46111/25389"
doi: "10.22363/2313-2299-2025-16-2-474-486"
licence: "CC BY-NC (journal licence per DOAJ; RUDN Journal of Language Studies, Semiotics and Semantics)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/khukhuni-2025-white-spot-history-linguistic-thought/"
---
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# A “White Spot” in History of Linguistic Thought: the Jewish Grammatical Tradition

**Authors:** Georgy T. Khukhuni and Yulia D. Budman · **Year:** 2025 · **Venue:** [RUDN Journal of Language Studies, Semiotics and Semantics 16](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/rudn-journal-of-language-studies-semiotics-and-semantics/) ([RUDN Journal of Language Studies Semiotics and Semantics 2025](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/rudn-journal-of-language-studies-semiotics-and-semantics/2025/)) · **Publisher:** [Peoples' Friendship University of Russia](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/peoples-friendship-university-of-russia/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC (journal licence per DOAJ; RUDN Journal of Language Studies, Semiotics and Semantics)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.22363/2313-2299-2025-16-2-474-486) · [PDF](https://journals.rudn.ru/semiotics-semantics/article/viewFile/46111/25389) · [DOI 10.22363/2313-2299-2025-16-2-474-486](https://doi.org/10.22363/2313-2299-2025-16-2-474-486) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W4415521394)

**Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
The authors argue that Russian-language histories of linguistics give almost no attention to how Jewish scholars studied Hebrew. Where the topic does appear, it is usually framed as an offshoot of Arabic grammar and a brief prelude to Christian Hebraistics. To check this claim, they examined seventeen Russian textbooks, study guides, lecture materials and monographs used in university courses on the history of linguistic thought. These were chosen for their prominence in curricula, with preference for recent editions. The authors then compared what these books say against foreign scholarship and against ancient and medieval Jewish sources. About three quarters of the books never mention the tradition at all, and those that do rely on partial or inaccurate information. The authors contend that the tradition has its own roots and motives, such as early comparison of Hebrew with Aramaic and Arabic. They also note that later work, like Spinoza's Hebrew grammar, cannot be properly understood without it. They recommend teaching it as a separate chapter of linguistic history. Even outside Russia, no full account from antiquity to the present exists.

## Key points
- The sample has 17 Russian publications: 2 textbooks (e.g., Alpatov 2024), 9 study guides, 1 set of lecture materials (Loya 1968) and 5 monographs (1 by Berezin, 4 by Desnitskaya). Soviet and recent works are mixed in the sample.
- 76% of these publications contain no information on the Jewish grammatical tradition. The rest draw on incomplete or inaccurate data.
- In the 20th century only three Russian scholars worked on the topic: P.K. Kokovtsov, M.N. Zislin (mainly Karaite grammarians) and A.Yu. Aikhenvald (Rabbanite works of the 9th–12th centuries). None traced the tradition's full development.
- Hebrew grammar became a discipline separate from exegesis and religious philosophy in the early 10th century in al-Andalus. Scholarly interest in Jewish grammatical works written after the 15th–16th centuries arose only from the late 1970s (e.g., Zwiep, Fruchtman, Wormser).
- Saadia Gaon systematically compared Hebrew with Aramaic and Arabic. The authors see this as a feature not inherited from Arabic scholars, who did little cross-language comparison.

## Interesting ideas
- Measure what a body of reference works leaves out, not only what it gets wrong, by counting how many sources omit a topic entirely.
- Select the sources for an audit by explicit criteria: actual use in curricula, plus a preference for recent editions. This makes the sample defensible and repeatable.
- Check secondary summaries against primary sources, because errors and framings get copied from one textbook to the next.
- Do not assume something is merely derivative because it came later or borrowed vocabulary; look for features the supposed source lacks.
- Saadia's method of setting a language beside its close relatives to show shared and divergent traits is a useful analytic tool.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (learn): Evaluation reports could include an explicit coverage audit listing which construction types or text genres are absent from training and test sets. That way, gaps become visible numbers instead of silent blind spots.
- **I2** (answer): When building school-course test suites, document why each source textbook was chosen, so benchmark results can be traced back and reproduced.
- **I3** (world): Facts compiled from WordNet, FrameNet or Wikidata could be spot-checked against original definitions or texts. This would catch inherited mistakes before they spread through the knowledge graph.
- **I4** (tree): When converting between UD dialects or treebanks, treat each scheme's distinctive analyses as possibly meaningful rather than forcing everything into one base scheme. Unique distinctions may carry information worth keeping.
- **I5** (tokens): Comparing English morphology rules against closely related patterns, such as variant spellings or dialect forms, could expose where lemma and tagger rules overgeneralize.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

Also on the byline: [St Petersburg University](https://ror.org/023znxa73) · [Federal State University of Education](https://ror.org/00zv9ny53).

📚 Shelves (2): [🎭 Arts and Humanities](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · 9,296 works · [🗣️ Language and Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) · 9,206 works

🧭 Topics (2): [Semitic languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/semitic-languages/) · 1,485 works · [🕎 Hebrew & Aramaic](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/hebrew-aramaic/) · 482 works

## Cite

Cite as: Georgy T. Khukhuni and Yulia D. Budman. 2025. A “White Spot” in History of Linguistic Thought: the Jewish Grammatical Tradition. RUDN Journal of Language Studies, Semiotics and Semantics 16.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@article{khukhuni2025white,
  title = {{A “White Spot” in History of Linguistic Thought: the Jewish Grammatical Tradition}},
  author = {Georgy T. Khukhuni and Yulia D. Budman},
  journal = {RUDN Journal of Language Studies, Semiotics and Semantics 16},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.22363/2313-2299-2025-16-2-474-486},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.22363/2313-2299-2025-16-2-474-486}
}
```

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29. Budman, Yu. (2022). Christian Hebraistics with Jewish Roots: Philippe D’aquin and His Dictionary. Uchenye Zapiski Natsional’nogo Obshchestva Prikladnoi Lingvistiki, 4(40), 8–22. EDN: GYOQAO Сведения об авторах: Хухуни Георгий Теймуразович, доктор филологических наук, профессор, профессор кафедры теории языка, англистики и прикладной лингвистики, Государственный университет просвещения (105005, Российская Федерация, г. Москва, ул. Радио, д. 10А, стр. 2); сфера научных интересов: теория и история перевода, история языкознания, теория языка, сопоставитель-ное языкознание, социолингвистика, психолингвистика; e-mail: khukhuni@mail.ru ORCID: 0000-0002-7423-5393; Scopus Author ID: 57204197917; ResearcherId: AAG-6340-2021; SPIN-код: 3656-9529, AuthorID: 732032 Будман Юлия Дмитриевна, кандидат филологических наук, доцент кафедры филологии и лингвокультурологии, Российский государственный университет им. А.Н. Косыгина (Технологии. Дизайн. Искусство) (115035, Российская Федерация, г. Москва, ул. Садов-ническая, д. 33, стр. 1); старший научный сотрудник кафедры иудейской теологии и еврейской культуры Института теологии, Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет (199034, Российская Федерация, г. Санкт-Петербург, Университетская наб., д. 7–9); сфера научных интересов: современный иврит, древнееврейский язык, история языкознания, еврейская и современная израильская литература; e-mail: budman-yud@rguk.ru ORCID: 0000-0002-9015-530X; Scopus Author ID: 57862990200; ResearcherId: CAF-1586-2022; SPIN-код: 1567-1390, AuthorID: 849070 Information about the authors: Georgy T. Khukhuni, D.Sc. (Philology), Full Professor, Professor of the Department of the Theory of Language, English Studies and Applied Linguistics, Federal State University of Education (10A/2 Radio st, Moscow, Russian Federation, 105005); Research interests: Theory and History of Translation, History of Linguistics, Theory of Language. Comparative Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Psycholinguistics; e-mail: khukhuni@mail.ru ORCID: 0000-0002-7423-5393; Scopus Author ID: 57204197917; ResearcherId: AAG-6340-2021; SPIN-code: 3656-9529, AuthorID: 732032 Yulia D. Budman, PhD in Philology, Associate Professor of the Department of Philology and Linguocultural Studies of The Kosygin State University of Russia (Technologies. Design. Art) (33/1 Sadovnicheskaya St., Moscow, Russian Federation, 115035; Senior Research Fellow of the Department of Jewish Theology and Jewish Culture, St Petersburg University (7–9 Universitetskaya Embankment, St Petersburg, Russian Federation, 199034); Research interests: Modern Hebrew, Biblical Hebrew, History of Linguistics, Jewish and Modern Israeli Literature; e-mail: budman-yud@rguk.ru ORCID: 0000-0002-9015-530X; Scopus Author ID: 57862990200; ResearcherId: CAF-1586-2022; SPIN-code: 1567-1390, AuthorID: 849070. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Budman%2C+Yu%2E+%282022%29%2E+Christian+Hebraistics+with+Jewish+Roots%3A+Philippe+D%E2%80%99aquin+and+His+Dictionary%2E+Uchenye+Zapiski+Natsional%E2%80%99nogo+Obshchestva+Prikladnoi+Lingvistiki%2C+4%2840%29%2C+8%E2%80%9322%2E+EDN%3A+GYOQAO+%D0%A1%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F+%D0%BE)

*Updated 24 October 2026*