In:The Form of Structure, the Structure of Form: Essays in honor of Jean Lowenstamm
Edited by Sabrina Bendjaballah, Noam Faust, Mohamed Lahrouchi and Nicola Lampitelli
[Language Faculty and Beyond 12] 2014
► pp. 361–374
The interpretation of Construct-State morphology
Published online: 17 December 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.12.28dor
https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.12.28dor
The paper argues that both nouns and adjectives are interpreted as relational in the construct state. Accordingly, relational nouns can all be inflected in the construct state, and so can some sortal nouns which can be coerced to a relational interpretation. Similarly, relational adjectives can all be inflected in the construct state, and so can some predicative adjectives which can be reinterpreted as relational when in construct with a relational annex. The present approach accounts for the non-modifiability of such relational annex, and the restriction of its denotation to intra-individual relations. The latter restriction also accounts for the possible reinterpretation of a possessive affix on the annex of a nominal construct as the possessor of the construct as a whole.
References (39)
. 1988. “Language Knowledge and Language Use: Binominal Constructions in Modern Hebrew.” General Linguistics 28: 261–285.
Borer, Hagit. 1984. Parametric Syntax: Case Studies in Semitic and Romance Languages. Dordrecht: Foris.
. 1988. “On the Morphological Parallelism between Compounds and Constructs.” In Yearbook of Morphology 1, ed. by Geert Booij, and Jaap van Marle, 45–65. Dordrecht: Foris.
. 1996. “The Construct in Review.” In Studies in Afroasiatic Grammar, ed. by Jacqueline Lecarme, Jean Lowenstamm, and Ur Shlonsky, 30–61. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.
. 1999. “Deconstructing the Construct.” In Beyond Principles and Parameters, ed. by Kyle Johnson, and Ian Roberts, 43–98. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
. 2009. “Compounds: The View from Hebrew.” In The Oxford Handbook of Compounding, ed. by Rochelle Lieber, and Pavol Štekauer, 491–511. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Coffin, Edna A., and Shmuel Bolozky. 2005. A Reference Grammar of Modern Hebrew. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Danon, Gabi. 2001. “Syntactic Definiteness in the Grammar of Modern Hebrew.” Linguistics 39: 1071–1116.
. 2010. “The Definiteness Feature at the Syntax-semantics Interface.” In Features: Perspectives on a Key Notion in Linguistics, ed. by Anna Kibort, and Greville G. Corbett, 143–165. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen. 2000. “(In)definiteness Spread: From Romanian Genitives to Hebrew Construct State Nominals.” In Comparative Studies in Romanian Syntax, ed. by Virginia Motapanyaneh, 177–226. Oxford: Elsevier.
. 2003. “From DPs to NPs: A Bare Phrase Structure Account of Genitives.” In From NP to DP, volume 2: The Expression of Possession in Noun Phrases, ed. by Martine Coene, and Yves D’hulst, 75–120. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Doron, Edit, and Irit Meir. 2010. “Definiteness in Standard and Colloquial Hebrew.” talk at BAALL, University Paris 7.
. 2013. “Construct State: Modern Hebrew.” In The Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, vol. I, ed. by Geoffrey Khan, 581–589. Leiden: Brill.
Engelhardt, Miriam. 1998. The Syntax of Nominalized Properties. Ph.D. dissertation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
. 2000. “The Projection of Argument-taking Nominals.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18: 41–88.
Faust, Noam. 2011. Forme et fonction dans la morphologie nominale de l’hébreu moderne. Ph.D. dissertation, Université Paris Diderot.
Hazout, Ilan. 1991. Verbal Nouns: Theta-theoretic Studies in Hebrew and Arabic. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
. 1995. “Action Nominalization and the Lexicalist Hypothesis.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 13: 355–404.
Heller, Daphna. 2002. “Possession as a Lexical Relation: Evidence from the Hebrew Construct State.” In Proceedings of WCCFL 21: Proceedings of the 21st West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, ed. by Line Mikkelsen, and Christopher Potts, 127–140. Somerville, Massachusetts: Cascadilla.
Meir, Irit, and Edit Doron. 2013. “Degrammaticalization as Linguistic Change: The Case of the Definite Article in Modern Hebrew.” (in Hebrew). Leshonénu 75 (2–3): 317–358.
Partee, Barbara H., and Vladimir Borschev. 2001. “Some Puzzles of Predicate Possession.” In Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics and Discourse: A Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer, ed. by Robert M. Harnish, and István Kenesei, 91–117. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
. 2003. “Genitives, Relational Nouns, and Argument-modifier Ambiguity.” In Modifying Adjuncts (Interface Explorations 4), ed. by Ewald Lang, Claudia Maienborn, and Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen, 67–112. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Ravid, Dorit, and Yitzhak Shlesinger. 1995. “Factors in the Selection of Compound-type in Spoken and Written Hebrew.” Language Sciences 17: 147–179.
Ritter, Elizabeth. 1988. “A Head Movement Approach to Construct-state Noun Phrases.” Linguistics 26: 909–929.
Rothstein, Susan. 2009. “Individuating and Measure Readings of Classifier Constructions: Evidence from Modern Hebrew.” Brill’s Annual of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics 1: 106–145.
. 2012. “Adjectivally Headed Construct States.” Lecture at the Tel-Aviv University Linguistics Colloquium
.
Siloni, Tal. 2000. “Nonnominal Constructs.” In Research in Afroasiatic Grammar 2, ed. by Jacqueline Lecarme, Jean Lowenstamm, and Ur Shlonsky, 301–323. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
. 2001. “Construct States at the PF Interface.” In Linguistic Variation Yearbook, vol. 1, ed. by Pierre Pica, and Johan Rooryck, 229–266. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
. 2002. “Adjectival Constructs and Inalienable Constructions.” In Themes in Arabic and Hebrew Syntax, ed. by Jamal Ouhalla, and Ur Shlonsky, 161–187. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
. 2003. “Prosodic Case Checking Domain: The Case of Constructs.” In Research in Afroasiatic Grammar 2, ed. by Jacqueline Lecarme, 481–510. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Rothstein, Susan & Adina Moshavi
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
