Israeli future 1st person

אני ילך לסופר ‘I will go to the supermarket’ /anI yelEx la-sUper/

Standardized form: אני אלך /anI elEx la-sUper/

Most of the Israeli readers are horrified the moment they read this sentence. True, seeing it written down is a little unusual, but actually most of the Israelis are used to hearing this new 1^st-person-singular-future inflectional prefix /y-/ and do not notice when people pronounce anI elEx or anI yelEx.

How has it happened?

Israeli verbal inflection of 1^st-sg-future requires a preceding pronoun. Most Israelis would say ‘I will go’ anI elEx, ‘You-sg-ms will go’ atA telEx, ‘He will go’ hu yelEx, rather than just elEx, telEx, yelEx, respectively.

The pronoun requirement exists only in part of the inflections, mostly in present tense, 3^rd person past tense, 1^st and 3^rd person future tense.

Note that Hebrew did not require a pronoun preceding verbs, as the person was expressed in the verbal prefix /?-/, i.e. אלך /?elEx/. This glottal stop disappears gradually in Israeli, weakening the inflectional marker of 1^st person sg.

Then came y. why?

1. Phonological reason: Breaking vowel string Israeli 1^st person future verbs always begin with a vowel: /e/ as in ercE ‘I-will-want’ /a/ as in axil ‘I-will-contain’ /o/ as in oxAl ‘I-will-eat’ /u/ as in uxAl ‘I-will-be-able’ /i/ as in iSAn ‘I-will-sleep’.

The sound /i/ at the end of the pronoun anI ‘I’, followed by the vowel that starts the future verb (agreeing in gender and number), create an unfavorable consequence of two vowels. An epenthetic /y/ breaks it and creates a CV.CV sequence, with an unmarked syllable structure:

אני אלך anI elEx à אני ילך anI yelEx (‘I will go’, lit. ‘I go-1^st-sg-future’)

2. Morphological reason: Fewer inflectional person forms

After the /y/ epenthesis, 1^st-sg-future inflection of the verb ‘go’ is yelEx, similar to 3^rd-sg-ms-future: הוא ילך ‘he will go’ hu yelEx (lit. ‘he go-3^rd-sg-ms-future’).

This is not a new phenomenon to Israeli: the verbal inflections of 2^nd-sg-ms-future and of 3^rd-sg-fm-future are the same:

אתה תלך atA telEx ‘you-sg-ms will go’

היא תלך hi telEx ‘she will go’

To sum, there are three singular future verbal person inflections using three forms:

אני ילך anI yelEx ‘I will go’

אתה תלך atA telEx ‘you-sg-ms will go’

את תלכי at telxI ‘you-sg-fm will go’

הוא ילך hu yelEx ‘he will go’

היא תלך hi telEx ‘she will go’

For comparison, Hebrew singular future verbal inflections:

אלך ?elEx ‘I will go’

תלך telEx ‘you-sg-ms will go’

תלכי telxI ‘you-sg-fm will go’

ילך yelEx ‘he will go’

תלך telEx ‘she will go’