Paul Wexler (born November 6, 1938, Hebrew: פאול וקסלר, pronounced [ˈpaul ˈveksler]) is an American-born Israeli linguist, and Professor Emeritus of linguistics at Tel Aviv University. His research fields include historical linguistics, bilingualism, Slavic linguistics, creole linguistics, Romani and Jewish languages. Wexler is known in Yiddish linguistics mainly for his hypothesis that Eastern Yiddish is ultimately derived from Judaeo-Slavic, a hypothesis that has been widely rejected by other Yiddish and Germanic linguists and geneticists. Wexler has argued that the Yiddish language structure provides evidence that Jews had "intimate contact" with early Slavs in the German and Bohemian lands as early as the 9th century.
Biography Wexler was born to parents of Ukrainian Jewish background and raised in the United States, earned his B.A. at Yale University in 1960, his M.A. in 1962 at Columbia University, where he studied under Uriel Weinreich and George Shevelov, and his Ph.D. at the same university in 1967. In the same year, while resident at the University of Washington, he wrote a pedagogical grammar of the Aymara language for Peace Corps volunteers. He moved to Israel in 1969. He did his basic training in the IDF in 1974.
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