Pronominal state in colloquial arabic : a diachronic attempt (original) (raw)
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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.