Edit Doron

Agency and Voice: The Semantics of the Semitic Templates

Semitic templates systematically encode two dimensions of verb meaning: (a) agency, the thematic role of the verb’s external argument, and (b) voice. The assumption that this form-meaning correspondence is mediated by syntax allows the parallel compositional construction of the form and the meaning of a verb from the forms and the meanings of its root and template. The root and its arguments are optionally embedded under a light verb v which introduces the agent (Hale and Keyser 1993; Kratzer 1994). But this is only the unmarked case, which, in Semitic, is encoded by the simple templates. Two dimensions of markedness are introduced by two additional types of syntactic heads: (a) agency heads, which modify agency and are morphologically realized as the intensive and causative templates, and (b) voice heads, which modify voice and are morphologically realized as the passive and middle templates. Causative and middle morphemes are thus accounted for within a unified system, which, first, explains their affinity in language in general (both are found crosslinguistically as markers of transitivity alternations), and which, moreover, sheds new light on problems in the interface of semantics and morphology. One problem is the impossibility, mostly ignored in linguistic theory, of deriving the semantics of middle verbs from that of the corresponding transitive verbs. The second is explaining the identity found crosslinguistically between middle and reflexive morphology. The third is determining the grammatical function of the causee in causative constructions.

The syntactic construction of two non-active Voices: Passive and middle 1

The paper offers a theoretical characterization of the middle Voice as distinct from the passive Voice, and addresses the cross-linguistic morphological variation in realizing these two non-active Voices in different classes of languages, represented by Hebrew, Greek and English. The two non-active Voices are the morphological realization of two distinct syntactic Voice heads generating middle and passive clauses respectively. The former are cross-linguistically interpreted as (i) anticausative, (ii) reflexive (and reciprocal), (iii) dispositional middle, and (iv) medio-passive, which is distinct from passive. This variation in the interpretation of the middle Voice reflects different properties of the root rather than the application of four different lexical rules postulated by lexicalist theories.

Broad Subjects and Clitic Left Dislocation

In this paper we have further defended the claim, set out in Doron and Heycock (1999), that a language in which nominative case can be checked by more than one element can allow merging of “Broad Subjects“ in [Spec,TP]. In this earlier work, we argued that such languages included Modern Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic. Here we have further argued that Broad Subjects are found also in Levantine Arabic. The recognition of this possibility then allows an analysis of a residue of left-peripheral XPs associated with a clitic as instances of Clitic Left Dislocation, with properties near-identical to this construction as identified in Italian and Greek. While a number of questions about the nature of the configurations involved remain to be answered, we consider that some progress at least has been made in reducing the apparent proliferation of language-specific properties of elements occupying the left periphery.

Anticausative derivations (and other valency alternations) in French

Abstract It is proposed to derive the two distinct French anticausative constructions from the interplay of two functional heads, Voice and v, where non-active Voice dominates the morpheme se, and v is the verbal head introducing a dynamic subevent and assigning the Agent role. The middle anticausative derivation (Le vase se casse ‘The vase breaks’) results from the insertion of se under non-active Voice, coupled with the absence of a vP projection. By contrast, the active anticausative derivation (Le vase casse ‘The vase breaks’) results from the use of active Voice with a v projection lacking a specifier. It is shown how these hypotheses account for the derivation of change of state verbs, verbs of movement, as well as the middle anticausative construction with a typically agentive verb, construire ‘to build’.

The cognitive basis of the mass-count distinction: evidence from bare nouns

The naive view of the linguistic mass-count distinction has been that it reflects a cognitive distinction between homogeneous matter which lacks units for counting, and discrete entities which form atomic units and thus can be counted. This chapter tightens the connection between the mass-count distinction and its cognitive basis. It discusses Karitiana, a language that does not have nominal pluralization and does not have any formal masscount distinction in the structure of nouns or noun phrases, yet semantically distinguishes nouns which can be counted from nouns which cannot. The chapter brings data from Modern Hebrew, a language which has plural nominal morphology, but where, like in Karitiana, countability is not reflected by pluralization, but rather by a semantic identification of stable units. It concludes that fake mass nouns do not distort after all the correspondence between a clear cognitive distinction and the mass-count linguistic distinction. Keywords: cognitive distinction; Karitiana; mass-count distinction; Modern Hebrew; plural nominal morphology

The Impact of Contact Languages on the Degrammaticalization of the Hebrew Definite Article

The Hebrew article ha - is apparently undergoing a process of degrammaticalization within Modern Hebrew. Its distribution has been changing in a particular direction that is unexpected from the point of view of historical linguistics. Whereas in Classical Hebrew it was found with a limited number of lexical items, it now attaches to a variety of phrases. This change is indicative of a change in its morpho-syntactic category: it is becoming more a clitic than an affix. The morpho-syntactic change is accompanied by a semantic change; its function is to mark the definiteness of the phrase it attaches to, rather than being part of the Classical Hebrew state system. We propose that the change has its roots in a language-internal change that affected the periphrastic genitive construction of Mishnaic Hebrew and was enhanced through several phases of language contact such as the contact of Medieval Hebrew with Arabic and the contact of nineteenth-century Hasidic Hebrew with Yiddish.

Colloquial Modern Hebrew Doubly-marked Interrogatives and Contact with Arabic and Neo-Aramaic Dialects

This article describes the innovative DMI construction—doubly-marked interrogative—of colloquial Modern Hebrew, in which a question is doubly marked as interrogative. A DMI consists of two parts: (i) an ordinary question, which we call the content question , and (ii) an additional wh -phrase, the attitude marker , which embeds the content question, and whose function is to assign it additional illocutionary force, typically that of rejecting a presupposition salient in the discourse. The article suggests that the DMI was (re-)innovated in Modern Hebrew as a result of contact with Modern Arabic and Neo-Aramaic dialects. It may have been previously innovated in an earlier stage of Hebrew due to its contact with Aramaic.