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In:The Ziggurat of Grammar: In honor of Ur Shlonsky
Edited by Lena Baunaz, Giuliano Bocci and Andrew Nevins
[Language Faculty and Beyond 20] 2025
► pp. 20–33

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Chapter 2
De-gendering the plural markers of Modern Hebrew

 | Université Paris 8, CNRS SFL
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

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Published online: 13 November 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.20.02fau
Abstract
By and large, mpl forms in Modern Hebrew end in [im], and fpl forms end in [ot]. Yet the system also allows quite a few nouns to exhibit the opposite marking: mpl ending in [ot], fpl ending in [im]. In this paper, I provide a novel analysis of both regular and exceptional nouns according to which the realization of pl depends not on the gender of the noun, but on its morpho-syntactic structure. I claim that /im/ expones a pl feature on the head num whenever that head is adjacent to the head n; /ot/ is the realization of the same feature elsewhere.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Singular and plural marking on nouns and adjectives
  • 3.Analyses
    • 3.1Previous accounts
    • 3.2A strictly morpho-syntactic analysis
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (14)
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