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In:Causation, Permission, and Transfer: Argument realisation in GET, TAKE, PUT, GIVE and LET verbs
Edited by Brian Nolan, Gudrun Rawoens and Elke Diedrichsen
[Studies in Language Companion Series 167] 2015
► pp. 271–293

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Enabling and allowing in Hebrew

A usage-based construction grammar account

 | Tel Aviv University
Published online: 14 January 2015
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.167.10dat
Three-Argument Dative constructions in Hebrew include two sub constructions, each with a specific form-meaning correlation, a specific usage pattern, and a particular discursive context. Syntactically, the two sub-constructions differ in that the THEME argument can be either (i) a noun phrase, or (ii) an infinitival predicate. In particular, the verb natan ‘give’ represents a prototypical construal in both sub-constructions. That is, with a NP THEME argument the verb natan ‘give’ has its literal meaning. With an infinitival THEME argument, however, the verb has the meaning of ‘allow, enable.’ Analyzing corpus data of the Infinitival complement Construction (ii), I account for these uses of the verb natan ‘give’ in a Usage-Based Construction Grammar perspective (Bybee, 2010). Utilizing the exploratory statistics techniques of Multidimensional Scaling (Borg and Groenen, 2005), Multiple Correspondence Analysis (Greenacre, 2010), and Hierarchical Classification on Principal Components (Husson et al., 2011) on corpus data, I show that multiple factors play a role in structuring an Argument Structure Construction. Furthermore, based on the bottom-up statistical analysis I argue that the verb’s morphological paradigm is one of the main cues for interpreting the relevant event frame and Dative participant roles in Hebrew.
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Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Berman, Ruth A. & Elitzur Dattner
2020. Introduction. In Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew [Studies in Language Companion Series, 210], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Ravid, Dorit
2020. Derivation. In Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew [Studies in Language Companion Series, 210], ► pp. 203 ff. DOI logo
Dattner, Elitzur
2019. The Hebrew dative: Usage patterns as discourse profile constructions. Linguistics 57:5 ► pp. 1073 ff. DOI logo

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