Edited by Edit Doron, Malka Rappaport Hovav, Yael Reshef and Moshe Taube
The emergence of Modern Hebrew as a spoken language constitutes a unique event in modern history: a language which for generations only existed in the written mode underwent a process popularly called “revival”, acquiring native speakers and becoming a language spoken for everyday use. Despite the… read more
The paper assesses the influence on Modern Hebrew of the two previous spoken stages of Hebrew: Biblical Hebrew and Rabbinic Hebrew in its early, Mishnaic, phase. Contra the received view in the current literature, I argue that Modern Hebrew has in many respects readopted the syntax of Biblical… read more
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… read more
The paper presents an analysis of the contribution of resumptive pronouns to the structure and interpretation of relative clauses in Hebrew. Traditionally, resumptive pronouns have been treated as overt phonological realizations of gaps, since it was believed that the interpretation of relative… read more
The French anticausative is attested in two separate constructions: one focuses on the result (Res-AC), e.g. Le rameau s’est flétri; the second focuses on the process (Proc-AC) – Le rameau a flétri, both translated to English as ‘The branch withered’. The paper proposes to explain the differences… read more
