Restoring גלה II from Exile: Discovering the Homonyms Spelled ג-ל-ה by Examining Their Usage in the Hebrew Bible (original) (raw)
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OLD FORMS, NEW FUNCTIONS: QUADRILITERAL ROOT PATTERNS AS SOURCES OF VERBAL MEANING
Hebrew Studies, 2021
This paper describes a process whereby morphological patterns that, in premodern Hebrew, were not associated with a particular semantic profile, or were only partly associated with such a profile, developed a particular meaning in Modern Hebrew. This process is exemplified by certain types of quadriliteral roots formed in the Hebrew verbal system. Of eight quadriliteral root patterns productive in Modern Hebrew, three developed meanings of their own: the pilpel pattern, which expresses a series of short, atomic events; the piʿlel pattern, which describes a reduced or attenuated event, and the šifʿel pattern, which conveys a restitutive or repetitive meaning, or increase on scale. The pilpel pattern became associated with its meaning already in Mishnaic Hebrew, and in Modern Hebrew the association became nearly exclusive, whereas the other two patterns developed their typical meanings only in Modern Hebrew itself. This research shows that a quadriliteral root-pattern develops a particular semantic profile only if it utilizes the derivational mechanism of direct rootexpansion in the verbal system without the mediation of another lexical item. Moreover, individual verbs coined in the pattern tend to be associated with that meaning if they are derived in this manner. Pilpel verbs can convey the pattern's typical meaning even if they are derived by onomatopoeia or with the mediation of noun, but only if the parent nominal form is biliteral. The research also traced the development of patterns' semantic profiles over time. It was found that this development was conspicuously influenced by the substrate and contact languages of Modern Hebrew, and that factors of reanalysis and analogy were also at play.
Homophony, Allomorphy and non-concatenative realization in the verbal system of Modern Hebrew
1 The alternation p~f is a (morpho-)phonological one. The symbol /p/ is used to represent the first element of the set, a use supported by loans such as me-fatrel 'to go on patrol (participle)' (<patrol 'patrol'). 2 The present paper assumes without discussion that such discontinuous roots are a valid morphological entity. This assumption has been challenged and defended repeatedly in the last 20 years (see Faust & Hever 2010 and references therein). 3 This generalization has some complications in Type I infinitives, which will not be discussed in the paper. Affixation G4. Type I participles are the only ones not to have a prefix. The participles of Types II,III & V have a prefix m-, and those of Type IV have ni-. G5. In Types III-V infinitives, an [h] appears that is not there in the future base, but is there in the past base , despite the validity of G1.
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.
The biblical hebrew verb system Vol5
1. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. In the present work, the fragmentation hypothesis allows us to separate, in fact, several distinct uses: episodic, gnomic and semi-gnomic. Here we discuss the semi-gnomic uses. Much has been written about the characterization of the polysemic Y. On the one extreme, it approximates a simple future, say similar to its use in modern Hebrew or late Aramaic. On the other extreme we find aspectual, modal and gnomic uses of quite a different character, and attempts to put all these uses under one simple label have proven, so far, artificial 1 . Particularly unclear is the line which separates between the episodic and gnomic uses of It is extremely difficult to classify these sentences in terms of tnse and aspect; however, a clear criterion separates the last two from the first three: the fact that Y appears on a subordinate clause. In fact, a subordinate conjunctive clause in Y is always semi-gnomic and of a parenthetic/exegetic nature, or describes a parallel ac...
Roots, stems, and the universality of lexical representations: Evidence from Hebrew
Cognition, 2007
Is the structure of lexical representations universal, or do languages vary in the fundamental ways in which they represent lexical information? Here, we consider a touchstone case: whether Semitic languages require a special morpheme, the consonantal root. In so doing, we explore a well-known constraint on the location of identical consonants that has often been used as motivation for root representations in Semitic languages: Identical consonants frequently occur at the end of putative roots (e.g., skk), but rarely occur in their beginning (e.g., ssk). Although this restriction has traditionally been stated over roots, an alternative account could be stated over stems, a representational entity that is found more widely across the world's languages. To test this possibility, we investigate the acceptability of a single set of roots, manifesting identity initially, finally or not at all (e.g., ssk versus skk versus rmk) across two nominal paradigms: CéCeC (a paradigm in which identical consonants are rare) and CiCú C (a paradigm in which identical consonants are frequent). If Semitic lexical representations consist of roots only, then similar restrictions on consonant co-occurrence should be observed in the two paradigms. Conversely, if speakers store stems, then the restriction on consonant
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
Dissertation Summary: A Linguistic Reappraisal of the Biblical Hebrew Accusative
2019
This study applies generative linguistics to the Biblical Hebrew (BH) accusative. The standard BH grammars have treated accusative noun phrases under two broad categories, roughly object/complement and adverbial/adjunct. Not only do they disagree about which are objects and which are adverbial, but they have also tended to define subcategories without a clear methodology, usually based on lexical semantics. By contrast, my approach emphasizes syntactic definitions for the major categories, which I argue are three: secondary predicates, arguments, and modifiers. The syntactic and semantic framework of this study depends on the unified approach to predication of Bowers. Under that framework every predicate, whether primary or secondary, is assumed to have a predication phrase (PrP) structure. Secondary predicates are therefore defined very basically to be PrP structures which are somehow subordinate to a primary predication, and thus they may be adjuncts or they may be complements of the verb. Arguments are constituents which are selected by the verb according to one of its recognized valency patterns. There is a limited number of specific syntactic positions for arguments, and the underlying syntax of a verb’s arguments depends on its semantics. In particular, I aim to show that there are four different trivalent structures in BH: prepositional ditransitives, double object constructions, causatives, and complementatives. Modifiers, since they are adjoined, may exist in any number. I assume that modifiers are predicates of one of four conceptual primitives (propositions, situations, events, and manners) and that modifiers attach in the domain which corresponds to the appropriate primitive (CP, TP, PrP, and vP respectively). This study also treats cognate accusatives, where the head noun is formed from the same root as the verb. I argue here that cognateness is not itself relevant for syntax, but rather cognate accusatives may function as arguments, modifiers, or secondary predicates. The analysis of cognate accusatives depends on the transitivity of the verb. This study treats the above categories in turn, providing ample examples from the biblical corpus (Genesis-Deuteronomy). The text of the dissertation is supplemented by a digital appendix of analysed examples from the corpus.
The root and word distinction: an experimental study of Hebrew denominal verbs
Morphology, 2016
The morpho-syntactic structure of Semitic languages, traditionally seen as based on abstract root morphemes, has been analysed by some as being fully word based. Others have proposed a root-based system which allows for wordbased derivation as well. A distinction between word-based and root-based morphosyntactic derivations has previously been posited in both morpho-syntactic and lexical semantic literature. Under this distinction the semantic and phonological access to a root morpheme during morpho-syntactic construction is fully available in a root-based derivation, but is restricted by the category bearing head in a wordbased derivation. However, there has to date been no behavioural evidence for the distinction, and it is by no means universally accepted that words are morphemically decomposable into root morphemes. The current study utilized a masked priming experimental paradigm of word recognition in an attempt to differentiate root-based derivation from word-based derivation in Hebrew, proposing an analogy between availability under Marantz (2000) and Arad (2003), and linkage within the mental lexicon model under Frost et al. (2005). The results strongly support the proposed analogy, and the cognitive reality of the root morpheme as the basis of Hebrew morphological derivation. In addition they provide a first experimental verification of the theoretically motivated distinction between root derivation and word derivation.