Innovative Elements in Newly Formed Hebrew Four-Consonantal Verbal Roots (original) (raw)
Related papers
Bolozky 2003. The ‘roots’ of denominative Hebrew verbs
Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, John Benjamin's, 2003
Bolozky (1978, 1999) argues that choice of patterns in which innovations are realized is semantically triggered. At the same time, innovators attempt to preserve, whenever possible, the transparency of the (usually denominative) stem on which the innovation is based, mostly by maintaining its original consonant clustering. It appears that the speaker's target verb pattern can broadly be characterized as a structure composed of expandable consonantal slots, and that what makes the base most opaque is splitting its original consonant clusters between these slots by means of a vowel. Bat-El (1994) makes similar observations, but claims that cluster preservation is only a corollary, not a principle in itself. This article reaffirms the primacy of transparency preservation as a basic principle, and claims that when neologizing, speakers resort to either one of two strategies: (i) Regard a triliteral noun as a typical Hebrew stem, and each of its three consonants as a single 'root' slot, to be extracted and reapplied in the conventional verbforming manner. This is still an active strategy in Israeli Hebrew. (ii) Regard consonant sequences in the base that stay intact throughout as a radical slot that one should try to preserve as much as possible. This strategy is prevalent in quadriliteral nouns or longer, but is not limited to them. If the 'root' notion is to be maintained, it should be viewed as composed of 'radicalslots,' or šoršanim.
Some Notes on Consonant Reduplication in Hebrew (in Hebrew)
Reduplication of single and double identical consonants within a Hebrew word is the focus of this paper, e.g. mamon 'money', bareran 'selective', kodkod 'head', zkankan 'small beard'. There are about 1840 words with one reduplicated consonant and only 730 words with two. Consonant reduplication fits the Hebrew tendency to change mono-syllabic words into bi- or tri-syllabic words. In many cases reduplication of two consonants is created from onomatopoetic sounds. A single consonant reduplication is extremely rare (only 280 examples) in word initial position; it always requires vowel insertion between the consonants, while reduplication of a single consonant in non-initial position is widespread and follows the classical norms. Two consonants reduplication does not require vowel insertion because the consonants are different from each other to begin with and in most cases a vowel exists within each of the pairs. Most of the words with either a single reduplication in non-initial position or a double consonant reduplication are derived discontinuously by root and pattern combination. This method is rare in the initial single reduplication, and many of the words are base, non-derived words. Consonant reduplication carries diminutive-derogatory or intense-enlargement meanings only in a limited number of patterns. In most cases words with reduplication do not carry any specific meaning.
Surface Faithfulness Phenomena and the Consonantal Root in the Modern Hebrew Verb System
Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:This paper argues that from the point of view of speakers Modern Hebrew must be described as a hybrid system, possessing elements of both templatic and concatenative morphology, and that more generally, templaticity and concatenativity are not absolute, binarily opposed categories, but stand for bundles of morphological characteristics, of which a given language may possess a combination and which are subject to piecemeal diachronic change.
Phonology, 1999
This paper has greatly benefited from the help of many people. Junko Ito, Armin Mester, and Jaye Padgett have provided comments on numerous drafts, and I wish to offer them my sincere gratitude and appreciation for their helpful suggestions. Many thanks also to Judith Aissen for her detailed comments on a previous draft of this paper. In addition, I would like to thank Gene Buckley, Edit Doron, Sharon Rose, Donca Steriade, Bernard Tranel, Rachel Walker, and Andrew Wedel, who have all provided very thoughtful questions, discussions and suggestions with respect to the issues under consideration here. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to the many native speakers I have worked with as informants in
The Hebrew verbal paradigm of hollow roots: a triconsonantal account
Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 2016
Evidence from various Semitic languages suggests that 'hollow' verbs should not be reconstructed with a vowel as their middle radical, but with three radical consonants, the middle one being *w or *y. In the past, forms from Biblical Hebrew have been cited as being incompatible with such a reconstruction. This paper shows that almost all parts of the Hebrew hollow paradigm can easily be derived from their strong counterparts, leaving only the nip̄ʿal imperfect and the hip̄ʿil participle as anomalies. These two forms are then investigated in more detail. The nip̄ʿal imperfect, yikkon, is argued to be an analogical extension of the stem found in the perfect, nåk̠on, based on the model of the geminate roots. The hip̄ʿil participle, mešib̠ , is shown to be the regular outcome of earlier *mihatīb-, a reconstruction which is supported by cuneiform transcriptions .
On the Applicability of Two Level Morphology to the Inflection of Hebrew Verbs
1988
Hebrew, as other ~emitic languages, has a rich morpl1ology, observable in part by the complexity of verb inflections. The primary base of verbs in Hebrew is the past third singular form of tlfe verb. From this base, some twenty eight different inflected forms can be created according to tense, per~on, gender and number. Traditionally, inflection tables were used to describe the various inflected forms derived from the verb 'base. Research done by Oman has managed to describe the verb inflection process using the principles of Generative Grammar. In' this approach, inflCfted verb forms are viewed as constructs of the form preftx+base+sufftx. Verb inflection is described as a s~ries of sequentialpperations. The first stage converts the primary verb base to a secondary'base, when the secondary base is not the same as the primary base. Secondly, the appropriate prefix and/or suffix are concatenated to the base. Thirdly, several morpho-phonemic changes due to the affix concat...