"Agent Exclusivity" Effects in Hebrew Nominalizations

In: Ruth Berman (ed.), Usage -Based Studies in Modern Hebrew. Amsterdam: John Benjamins., 2020

The study explores a range of transitive constructions of varying prototypicality in Modern Hebrew (MH) referring to causal and non-causal events, including complex predicates, semi-transitive and lexicalized constructions, with transitivity analyzed as a morpho-syntactic category rather than a semantic concept. The chapter describes various types of alternations and variations in case-frame and argument structure in MH transitive constructions, noting the growing tendency towards labile alternation (ambitransitivity), particularly in the prototypical causative morphological pattern of the hif ˈil verb-template (e.g., hilbin 'whiten' serves both as causative 'make white' and inchoative 'become white'). In such cases, a change in the valence-frame of the verb does not necessarily involve change in the verb-morphology, yielding the claim that transitivity in MH does not depend exclusively on the semantic frame or morpho-phonological nature of the verb-pattern, but instead on the overall syntactic properties of the construction, which in turn is dependent on discourse requirements. Avoidance in discourse of the core O (object) argument is shown to occur even in highly transitive constructions, in which reader-hearers resolve the unrealized argument by context-based inferences and/or based on their communicative competence in conversational discourse.

2001

Hebrew noun phrases in general, and action nominals in particular, pose interesting theoretical and descriptive problems.(1) a. ha-i��a ��el ha-politikay the-wife of the-politician b. e��et ha-politikay wife. CONSTR the-politician c. i��t-o ��el ha-politikay wife-his of the-politician 'the politician's wife'(2) a. ibud ha-mumxim et hakolot yadanit processing the-experts ACC votes manually 'the experts' manual processing of the ballots'b. sgirat ha-mankal et ha-misrad zmanit closure.

Hebrew Studies, 2017

The paper characterizes the PP–nominal (prepositional phrase + nominalization) pattern in Biblical Hebrew and Rabbinic Hebrew (e.g., עלינו לעשות ‘it is our duty to do’) and discusses its relation to the so-called evaluative or חג״ם pattern (e.g., טוב לנו עבֹד ‘it would have been better for us to serve’). In spite of the resemblance between the two, it is argued that the former is a distinct pattern both historically and typologically, but that both share similar generalizations within predicate-initial sentence patterns. Historically, the PP-nominal sentences are a unique case of prepositional phrase predicate sentences with simple noun phrase subjects, having fixed word order and nominalized subjects. Typologically, they are essentially marked for person. Changes in the PP-nominal pattern in Rabbinic Hebrew suggest that it grew closer to the evaluative pattern

2019

This paper readdresses Dowty’s classical approach to lexical decomposition of verbs. Dowty’s approach, which is incorporated into Role and Reference Grammar, presupposes a certain intuition for the language in question; an intuition that cannot be taken for granted for Biblical Hebrew. Accordingly, quantitative methods, including “covarying collexeme analysis” and Principal Component Analysis, and new qualitative criteria are explored in this paper in order to propose the internal temporal aspect (also known as Aktionsart) of Biblical Hebrew verbs. In particular, the oppositions between stative and active verbs and between causative and non-causative verbs are scrutinized.

treats the construct state nominals of Hebrew and other Semitic languages in terms of three autonomous components of grammar, syntax, semantics, and morphology. The aim is to show that the intricate and somewhat surprising properties of such forms that have engendered quite elaborate suggestions within transformational grammar fall out as interactions of three simple and almost unavoidable statements concerning independent properties in the three aforementioned dimensions. Some comparison is also made with the genitive construction of Welsh (and other Celtic languages), where similarities and dissimilarities with the construct state are traced to differences in whether the form is to be analyzed simultaneously in all three dimensions as I suggest for Semitic, or whether it deserves analysis on only two of these levels of linguistic description.

1991

1 The present work is taken from a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in "The Bible and Its World" ‫בירושלים‬ ‫העברית‬ ‫האוניברסיטה‬ , ‫רותברג‬ ‫שם‬ ‫על‬ ‫לארץ‬ ‫מחוץ‬ ‫לתלמידים‬ ‫הספר‬ ‫בית‬ June 8, 2003. important to note, however, that it is only due to limits of space that such clauses are excluded from the present discussion. Despite important pragmatic and generative differences, there are striking functional similarities between intra-clausal frontings and extra-clausal constituents occurring before the clause, both in BH and cross-linguistically. It is worth briefly mentioning those differences and similarities here. Pragmatically, extra-clausal constituents are rarely if ever focal, whereas this is common for intra-clausal fronted constituents. Generatively, there is a marked difference between how the two elements relate to the rest of the clause. Dik (1981:127-44) discusses the distinction between what he terms topic (i.e. a non-focal intra-clausal fronted element) and theme (i.e. an extra-clausal element occurring before the clause), the main point being that the former should be regarded as integral to the utterance, while the latter cannot be regarded as being part of the underlying predication. Topics and themes (to adopt, for the moment, Dik's terminology) in BH are functionally similar, however, in that both can specially mark the entity about which an assertion is made or more specifically define the domain in which a given assertion holds true. This similarity extends to the theme created by the insertion of a resumptive pronoun. See Khan (1988) for a discussion of the function and various uses of extra-clausal constituents that occur before the clause. See Buth (1999) for an insightful discussion of themes created by the insertion of a resumptive pronoun in the BH verbless clause. It is worth noting that, despite the exclusion of such clauses from the present study, it is predicted that the theories proposed herein could be used effectively to explain them. 4 In other words, this paper does not examine verbless (e.g., nominal and participial) clauses, imperatival clauses (though yiqtol forms used as negative injunctions are included in the study), or conditional clauses. It is important to emphasize, however, that the decision to exclude such clause-types derives from concerns of space, not from the inadequacy of the theories proposed herein to account for similar word order phenomena in such clause-types. The pragmatics of word order variation in the verbless (i.e. nominal and participial) clause has already been capably dealt with by Buth (1999).

The article discusses the evolution of the syntax of Free Relative clauses (FRs) in Modern Hebrew, from the beginning of the Revival period in the 1880s until the 1980s. Two different FR constructions are used during this period, one originating in Biblical Hebrew, and the other in Mishnaic Hebrew. The article points to two processes that affected these constructions and that have likely been influenced by the languages with which Modern Hebrew was in contact (Yiddish, Slavic). First, the Mishnaic construction gradually replaced the Biblical one. A factor favoring this process was the affinity of the Mishnaic construction to the structure of FRs in Yiddish and in Slavic. Second, the case marking of the Mishnaic construction (at least in direct object position) underwent a process of differentiation that encoded the semantic distinction between definite and universal FR interpretations. The same semantic distinction is also structurally encoded in the Yiddish/Polish FR construction.

This article focuses on Hebrew adjectival passives, showing that, as was claimed for other languages, the class of adjectival passives in Hebrew is not homogenous , but rather consists of two sub-classes. Former attempts to capture the non-homogenous nature of the class of adjectival passives in different languages relied mainly on the existence versus absence of an event in their interpretation. In contrast, I argue that the criterion distinguishing the two sub-classes of adjectival passives in Hebrew is the presence versus absence of an implicit Agent or Cause argument. Thus, the split parallels a very well-known split in the verbal system—that between passive and unaccusative verbs. Once this parallelism between the adjectival and the verbal systems is recognized, it is possible to claim that the same valence-changing processes (namely, saturation and decausativization) are operative in both systems. This assumption can predict the syntactic and semantic behavior of the two sub-classes of adjectives, as well as their composition, without resorting to operations unique to adjectival passive formation.

Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages, 2019

The particle כי communicates a variety of causal relationships as an adverbial conjunction. This has led to a profusion of different approaches to describe its use, from the taxonomy approach of many lexica which simply list a variety of uses without any clear and principled groupings, to various proposals of causal categories which attempt to explain the varying distribution of causal כי .Much of the previous research on this topic has been the fruitful result of keen observations by seasoned Hebraists. Building on the intuitive insights of past work, this paper offers an analysis of causal כי based on theoretically grounded and psychologically plausible causal categories attested to by converging evidence from crosslinguistic and cognitively-oriented research on adverbial conjunctions.

2002

I analyze ’ăšer in biblical Hebrew as a nominalizing particle on the basis of a broad typology of clausal nominalization drawn from recent work on non-Western languages. I argue that the nominalizing function of ’ăšer developed through a grammaticalization process in which the lexical significance of ’ăšer (‘place’) was bleached, forming a light noun. Light nouns often act as the head of nominalized clauses in other languages (meaning, for example, “the one that,” “the time that,” “the reason that,” etc.) and I suggest that a light noun analysis of ’ăšer offers many advantages over previous analyses of ’ăšer as a nominalizer. Robert D. Holmstedt, for example, has argued that ’ăšer is a nominalizer based on a Chomskian framework in which covert head nouns alongside ’ăšer are frequently posited, but these covert head nouns are superfluous in my analysis. Moreover, according to Holmstedt’s framework, the use of ’ăšer is limited to two syntactic functions, namely complementizer and relativizer, and the ’ăšer clauses that do not fit into this framework (for example, those that can only be analyzed as matrix clauses) are regarded as ungrammatical. However, the broader typology that I use in this paper emphasizes the close link between clausal nominalization and adverbial clauses as well as stand-alone nominalization (nominalization of a matrix clause). Therefore, I suggest that we include these supposedly ungrammatical examples within a coherent typology of clausal nominalization, gaining a unified picture of the different ways in which ’ăšer functions as a nominalizer in biblical Hebrew.