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In:Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew: Background, Morpho-lexicon, and Syntax
Edited by Ruth A. Berman
[Studies in Language Companion Series 210] 2020
► pp. 421–464

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Chapter 12
Agreement alternations in Modern Hebrew

 | The Open University of Israel
Published online: 18 March 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.210.13mel
Agreement is a type of relationship between two linguistic elements, often characterized as an asymmetric relationship where one element, the controller, determines the agreement features of another, the target, within a particular syntactic domain. Although according to prescriptive grammars, agreement relationships are stable and deterministic, usage-based data reveal considerable variation. Building on data retrieved from heTenTen 2014, a billion-token web-crawled Hebrew corpus, we present and discuss two types of agreement alternations: (1) agreement targets which alternate between exhibiting feminine vs. masculine gender, full vs. default agreement, and formal vs. semantic agreement, and (2) controller competition, where an agreement target is controlled by one of two possible controllers. Naturally, this perspective on agreement highlights the exceptions and overlooks the regularities, yet we argue that an examination of such alternations provides clues as to the true nature of the agreement relation.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Feminine–masculine alternations
    • 2.1Plural marking
    • 2.2Dual–plural marking
    • 2.3Numerals and gender agreement
      • 2.3.1Preliminary definitions
      • 2.3.2Absolute numeric quantifiers
      • 2.3.3Construct numeric quantifiers
      • 2.3.4Single nouns with numeric quantifiers
    • 2.4Plurals and gender agreement
      • 2.4.1Subject–verb agreement with plural–feminine nouns
    • 2.5Gender agreement: Summary
  • 3.Personal–impersonal alternations
    • 3.1Verb-initial clauses
    • 3.2The existential yeš
    • 3.3The question-word / quantifier eyze
    • 3.4Personal-impersonal agreement: Summary
  • 4.Form/meaning alternations
    • 4.1Place names
    • 4.2Names of firms
    • 4.3Agreement variations with the noun bealim ‘owner(s)’
    • 4.4Summary
  • 5.Controller alternations
    • 5.1Construct state NPs
      • Partitives
    • 5.2The copular construction
      • 5.2.1Copula agreement alternations
      • 5.2.2Partitives and copulas
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
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Shor, Leon
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