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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. 403–415

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Chapter 19
Insights into post-verbal argument reordering in Hebrew and Italian

ORCiD logo with link | University School for Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia
ORCiD logo with link | NeTS Lab @ IUSS Pavia
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 13 November 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.20.19che
Abstract
Reordering the direct and indirect arguments of ditransitive predicates can be achieved either by moving the first argument over the second or vice versa. The first strategy is subject to strict structural constraints. Here we discuss some of these structural, prosodic, and semantic constraints as examined in a pilot experiment in Italian and Hebrew.
Article outline
  • 1.Theoretical background
    • 1.1Hierarchy and position of post-verbal arguments
    • 1.2Focalization of shifted NPs and Why questions
    • 1.3From theory to practice: Bridging the gap between minimalist derivation and experimental evidence
  • 2.Experimental evidence
    • 2.1Materials and methods
      • Materials
      • Analysis
      • Participants
    • 2.2Results
  • 3.Discussion
  • 4.Conclusion
  • References
References (18)
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