Cover not available

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. 583–622

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 16
Negation in Modern Hebrew

 | The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Published online: 18 March 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.210.17sho
This chapter examines the expression of negation in spontaneous spoken Modern Hebrew. It provides a quantitative description of syntactic negation in the Corpus of Spoken Israeli Hebrew (CoSIH) to address syntactic, pragmatic, and prosodic properties of negation. The study shows that in addition to the prototypical function of rejection and denial, negative utterances are used for mitigating evaluations, implying the desirability of a state/event, and strengthening the speaker’s claim by rejecting potential counter-arguments. Moreover, the prosodic prominence of negators may be influenced by cognitive and interactional motivations. Particular attention is paid to phenomena that usually remain unaddressed in descriptions of negation, such as negative sentences with extra-sentential scope, negation-based discourse markers, and non-linguistic negation.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and methodology
  • 3.Quantitative results
  • 4.Wide-scope negation
    • 4.1The negator ‘lo’
    • 4.2The negator ‘al’
    • 4.3The negator ‘en’
  • 5.Narrow-scope negation
    • 5.1Contrastive negation
    • 5.2Preposing
  • 6.Negative indefinites
  • 7.Negation and prosody
  • 8.Negation-based discourse markers
  • 9.Non-linguistic negation
  • 10.Concluding comments
  • Notes
  • References
References (91)
References
Amiraz, Omri. Forthcoming. Negation in Modern Hebrew. In: Miestamo, Matti & Ljuba Veselinova (eds.), Negation in the languages of the world: Typologically and functionally based descriptions (Studies in Diversity Linguistics). Berlin: Language Science Press.
Altman, Ya’akov. 1999. tmimah Ɂani lo – mabaʕey hašlilah hamemukedet (Innocent I am not – utterances with focused negation). ћelkat lašon 27. 62–75.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anderwald, Lieselotte. 2002. Negation in Non-Standard British English: Gaps, Regularizations, Asymmetries. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bar, Tali. 2009. On cleft sentences in Contemporary Hebrew. In Egyptian, Semitic and General Grammar Studies in Memory of H.J. Polotsky, Gideon Goldenberg & Ariel Shisha-Halevy (eds), 337–355. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bardenstein, Ruti. (in preparation). Grammaticalization Paths of Rectification Constructions. PhD dissertation, Tel-Aviv University. (in Hebrew)Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bar-Adon, A. 1966. New imperative and jussive formations in Contemporary Hebrew. Journal of the American Oriental Society 86(4): 410–413. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bar-Asher Siegal, Elitzur A. 2015. The case for external sentential negation: Evidence from Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. Linguistics 53(5): 1031–1078.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ben Moshe, Yotam M. & Yael Maschler. "Hebrew non-lexical vocalizations as discourse markers." Paper presented at the Symposium on Pragmatic Particles: Talk-in-interaction, Thessaloniki, June 24-25, 2019.
Berman, Ruth A. 1978. Modern Hebrew Structure. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1985. Acquisition of Hebrew. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Birner, Betty J. & Ward, Gregory. 1998. Information Status and Noncanonical Word Order in English [Studies in Language Companion Series 40]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bolozky, Shmuel. 2013. Imperative and prohibitive: Modern Hebrew. In Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, Geoffrey Khan (ed.), 245–248. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bressem, Jana & Müller, Cornelia. 2014. The family of away-gestures: Negation, refusal, and negative assessment. In Body – Language – Communication: An international Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction [Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science 38.2], Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill & Jana Bressem (eds), 1592–1604. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burstein, Ruth. 1999. darxey hašeɁelah vehatšuvah baʕivrit haktuvah bat yameynu – Ɂaspektim taћbiriyim, semantiyim vepragmatiyim (Questions and responses in contemporary Hebrew: A syntactic semantic and pragmatic approach). PhD dissertation, Bar-Ilan University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clancy, Brian. 2015. Investigating Intimate Discourse: Exploring the Spoken Interaction of Families, Couples and Friends. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. 1996. Using Language. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen. 2010. Typology of negation. In The Expression of Negation, Laurence R. Horn (ed.), 9–38. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dekel, Nurit. 2014. Colloquial Israeli Hebrew: A Corpus-Based Survey. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deppermann, Arnulf. 2014. ‘Don’t get me wrong’: Recipient design by using negation to constrain an action’s interpretation. In Grammar and Dialogism: Sequential, Syntactic, and Prosodic Patterns between Emergence and Sedimentation, Susanne Günther, Wolfgang Imo & Jörg Bücker, (eds), 15–52. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Du Bois, John W. 2014. Towards a dialogic syntax. Cognitive Linguistics 25(3): 359–410. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ford, Cecilia E. 2001. At the intersection of turn and sequence: Negation and what comes next. In Studies in Interactional Linguistics [Studies in Discourse Grammar 10], Margret Selting & Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen (eds), 51–80. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2002. Denial and the construction of conversational turns. In Complex Sentences in Grammar and Discourse: Essays in Honour of Sandra A. Thompson, Joan L. Bybee & Michael Noonan (eds), 61–78. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Frajzyngier, Zygmunt & Shay, Erin. 2016. The Role of Functions in Syntax: A Unified Approach to language Theory, Description, and Typology [Typological Studies in Language 111]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gil, David. 2013. Para-linguistic usages of clicks. In The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds). Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. <[URL]> (21 January 2018).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giora, Rachel, Fein, Ofer, Ganzi, Jonathan, Alkeslassy Levi, Natalie & Sabah, Hadas. 2005. On negation as mitigation: The case of negative irony. Discourse Processes 39: 81–100. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giora, Rachel, Livnat, Elad, Fein, Ofer, Barnea, Anat, Zeiman, Rakefet & Berger, Iddo. 2013. Negation generates nonliteral interpretations by default. Metaphor and Symbol 28: 89–115. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giora, Rachel, Givoni, Shir, & Fein, Ofer. 2015. Defaultness reigns: The case of sarcasm. Metaphor and Symbol 30(4): 290–313. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1978. Negation in language: Pragmatics, function, ontology. In Syntax and Semantics, 9: Pragmatics, Peter Cole (ed), 69–112. New York NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glinert, Lewis. 2004. The Grammar of Modern Hebrew. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grishina, Elena. 2015. Russian gestures of negation (O russkom zhestikulyatsionnom otritsanii). Proceedings of Institute of Russian Language 6: 556–604.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halevy, Rivka. 2006. tifkudah šel ‘ze’ habilti leksikalit beʕivrit bat yameynu (The functions of non-lexical zeh (it) in contemporary Hebrew). lešonenu 68: 283–307.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. The dative in Modern Hebrew. In Encyclopedia for Hebrew Language and Linguistics, Geoffrey Khan (ed.), 659–663. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Harrison, Simon & Larrivée, Pierre. 2015. Morphosyntactic correlates of gestures: A gesture associated with negation in French and its organisation with speech. In Negation and polarity. Experimental perspectives, Pierre Larrivée & Chungmin Lee (eds), 75–94. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2013. Negative indefinite pronouns and predicate negation. In The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds). Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. <[URL]> (11 January 2017).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hayashi, Makoto & Kushida, Shuya. 2013. Responding with resistance to wh-questions in Japanese talk-in-interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 46: 231–255. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hedberg, Nancy & Yaeger-Dror, Malcah. 2008. The effect of informational and interactive factors on the prosodic prominence of negation. Paper presented at the Linguistic Society of America, Chicago IL.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hirschberg, Julia. 1993. Pitch accent in context: Predicting prominence from text. Artificial Intelligence 63: 305–340. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Horn, Laurence R. 2001. A Natural History of Negation. Stanford CA: CSLI.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2010. Introduction. In The Expression of Negation, Laurence R. Horn (ed.), 1–8. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Harrison, S. (2018). The impulse to gesture: Where language, minds, and bodies intersect. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Inbar, Ana. 2016. Is subordination viable? The case of Hebrew šɛ ‘that’. CHIMERA. Romance Corpora and Linguistic Studies 3(2): 287–310.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Inbar, Ana & Shor, Leon. In preparation. Negation in spoken Israeli Hebrew: From verbal to gestural communication.
Inbar, A., & Shor, L. (2019). Covert negation in Israeli Hebrew: Evidence from co-speech gestures. Journal of Pragmatics, 143, 85-95.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Izre’el, Shlomo. 2012. Basic sentence structures: A view from spoken Israeli Hebrew. In Penser les langues avec Claire Blanche-Benveniste [Langues et Langage 20], Sandrine Caddéo, Marie-Noëlle Roubaud, Magali Rouquier & Frédéric Sabio (eds), 215–227. Aix-en-Provence: Presses Universitaires de Provence.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. Unipartite clauses: A view from spoken Israeli Hebrew. In Afroasiatic: Data and Perspectives [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 339], Mauro Tosco (ed.), 235–259. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. Forthcoming. The basic unit of spoken language and the interface between prosody, discourse and syntax: A view from spontaneous spoken Hebrew. In In Search of a Reference Unit for Speech: A Corpus-driven Cross-linguistic Approach to Spontaneous Spoken Communication, Shlomo Izre’el, Heliana Mello, Alessandro Panunzi, Tommaso Raso (eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kendon, Adam. 2004. Gestures: Visible Actions as Utterance. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keren, Einat-Haya. 2015. From negative polarity to negative concord–Slavic footprints in the diachronic change of Hebrew meʔuma, klum, and šum davar . Journal of Jewish Languages 3(1–2): 180–194.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kim, Stephanie Hyeri. 2015. Resisting the terms of polar questions through ani (‘no’)- prefacing in Korean conversation. Discourse Processes 52(4): 311–334. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klima, Edward S. 1964. Negation in English. In The Structure of Language: Readings in the Philosophyof Language, Jerry A. Fodor & Jerrold J. Katz (eds), 246–323. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kuzar, Ron. 2012. Sentence Patterns in English and Hebrew [Constructional Approaches to Language 12]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ladusaw, William. 1996. Negation and polarity items. In The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory, Shalom Lappin (ed.), 321–341. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee-Goldman, Russell. 2011. No as a discourse marker. Journal of Pragmatics 43: 2627–2649. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Linell, Per. 2005. The Written Language Bias in Linguistics: Its Nature, Origins and Transformations. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martin, J.-Philippe. 2015. The Structure of Spoken Language: Intonation in Romance. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maschler, Yael. 2017. The emergence of Hebrew loydea/loydat (‘I dunno m/f’) from interaction – Blurring the boundaries between discourse marker, pragmatic marker, and modal particle. In Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles: New Perspectives [Studies in Language Companion Series 186], Andrea Sansò & Chiara Fedriani (eds), 37–69. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCawley, James D. 1991. Contrastive negation and metalinguistic negation. In CLS 27: Papers from the 27th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society 1991, Part Two: italic>the Parasession on Negation, Lise M. Dobrin, Lynn Nichols & Rosa M. Rodriguez (eds), 189–206. Chicago IL: CLS.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miestamo, Matti. 2007. Negation – an overview of typological research. Language and Linguistics Compass 1(5): 552–570. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. Negation. In Grammar, Meaning and Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights 5], Frank Brisard, Jan-Ola Östman & Jef Verschueren (eds), 208–229. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miestamo, Matti & van der Auwera, Johan. 2007. Negative declaratives and negative imperatives: Similarities and differences. In Linguistics Festival, May 2006, Bremen, Andreas Ammann (ed.), 5–77. Bochum: Brockmeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miestamo, Matti, Tamm, Anne & Wagner-Nagy, Beáta. 2015. Negation in Uralic languages – Introduction. In Negation in Uralic Languages [Typological Studies in Language 108], Matti Miestamo, Anne Tamm & Beáta Wagner-Nagy (eds), 1–41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mithun, Marianne. 2012. Tags: Cross-linguistic diversity and commonality. Journal of Pragmatics 44(15): 2165–2182. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mondada, Lorenza 2017. Precision timing and timed embeddedness of imperatives in embodied courses of action. In Imperative Turns at Talk: The Design of Directives in Action [Studies in Language and Social Interaction 30], Marja-Leena Sorjonen, Liisa Raevaara & Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen (eds), 65–101. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nishi, H. 2019. Making ‘yes’ stronger by saying ‘no’: Utterance-initial iya in statements of ‘yes’ in Japanese. Pragmatics, 29(1), 133–154. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Shaughnessy, Douglas & Allen, Jonathan. 1983. Linguistic modality effects on fundamental frequency in speech. Journal of the Accoustical Society of America 74: 1155–1171. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ozerov, Pavel. 2010. miqum hahatʕama vemivneh hameser basiaћ haspontani beʕivrit (Location of Accents and Information Structure in Spontaneous Israeli Hebrew). MA thesis, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Polak-Yitzhaki, Hilla & Maschler, Yael. 2016. Disclaiming understanding? Hebrew ’ani lo mevin/a (‘I don’t understand m/f’) in everyday conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 106:163–183. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Raclaw, Joshua. 2013. Indexing Inferables and Organizational Shifts: ‘No’-prefaces in English Conversation. PhD dissertation, University of Colorado at Boulder.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rosen, Haiim B. 1977. Contemporary Hebrew [Trends in Linguistics 11]. The Hague: Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sadock, Jerry. 2012. Formal features of questions. In Questions: Formal, Functional and Interactional Perspectives, Jan P. De Ruiter (ed.), 103–122. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schwarzwald, Ora Rodrigue & Sigal, Shlomo. 2015. Modern Hebrew še- and Judeo-Spanish ke- (que-) in independent modal constructions. In Language Contact and the Development of Modern Hebrew, Edit Doron (ed.), 87–100. Leiden: Brill. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shor, Leon. 2018. milat hašlilah ‘lo’ baʕivrit hameduberet – prozodyah, siaћ vetaћbir (The negator lo in spoken Israeli Hebrew – Prosody, discourse and syntax). balšanut ʕivrit 72: 105–125.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. Forthcoming. ‘lo, Ɂata codek bemeah Ɂaxuz – šimušim proceduraliyim bemilat hašlilah ‘lo’ baʕivrit hameduberet (No, you’re one hundred percent right’ – Procedural uses of the negator lo in spoken Israeli Hebrew). Balšanut Ivrit.
Tzivoni, Leah. 2015. darxey hašlilah (Negation in Israeli Hebrew). Tel-Aviv: Tzivonim.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van der Auwera, Johan & Ludo Lejeune (with Valentin Goussev). 2013. The prohibitive. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. <[URL]> (11 January 2017).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Valin, Robert D. & LaPolla, Randy J. 1997. Syntax: Structure, Meaning, and Function. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vázquez Carranza, Ariel. 2017. Some uses of ‘no’ in Spanish talk-in-interactions. International Review of Pragmatics 9: 1–24. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Veselinova, Ljuba. 2013. Negative existentials: A cross-linguistic study. Rivista di Linguistica 25(1): 107–145.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ward, Gregory & Birner, Betty J. 2004. Information structure and non-canonical syntax. The Handbook of Pragmatics, Laurence Horn & Gregory Ward (eds), 152–174. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Willis, David, Lucas, Christopher & Breitbarth, Anne. 2013. Comparing diachronies of negation. In The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean: Vol. I: Case Studies. David Willis, Christopher Lucas & Anne Breitbarth (eds), 1–50. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yaeger-Dror, Malcah. 1985. Intonational prominence on negatives in English. Language and Speech 28: 197–230. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1996. Register as a variable in prosodic analysis: The case of the English negative. Speech Communication 19: 39–60. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. Register and prosodic variation, a cross language comparison. Journal of Pragmatics 34: 1495–1536. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yaeger-Dror, Malcah, Takano, Shoji, Hall-Lew, Lauren & Granadillo, Tania. 2011. The sociophonetics of prosodic contours on NEG in three language communities: Teasing apart socio-, -linguistic and phonetic influences on speech. In Sociophonetic Reader, Dennis R. Preston & Nancy Niedzielski (eds),133–176. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zewi, Tamar. 1998. milat hašlilah kenasu hamišpat beʕivrit (The negative particle as a predicate in Hebrew). In Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of Societatis Linguisticae Europaeae Sodalicium Israelense, Emanuel Allon & Pnina Trumer (eds), 41–48. Kfar-Sava: Beit Berl College.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (7)

Cited by seven other publications

Inbar, Anna
2025. Contrastive negation constructions in Israeli Hebrew. In Multimodal Communication from a Construction Grammar Perspective [Constructional Approaches to Language, 38], ► pp. 251 ff. DOI logo
Inbar, Anna & Yael Maschler
2025.  Teasing via the [ lo, ki ‘no, because’ + ironic utterance] structure in Hebrew talk-in-interaction . Discourse Studies 27:5 ► pp. 759 ff. DOI logo
Ben-Moshe, Yotam M. & Yael Maschler
2024. Request for confirmation sequences in Hebrew. Open Linguistics 10:1 DOI logo
Cohen-Achdut, Miri & Leon Shor
2024. “Does being pretty help?”. Journal of Language and Politics 23:2 ► pp. 239 ff. DOI logo
Harrison, Simon
2024. On Grammar–Gesture Relations: Gestures Associated with Negation. In The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies, ► pp. 446 ff. DOI logo
Izre'el, Shlomo
2022. The syntax of existential constructions. Journal of Speech Sciences 11 ► pp. e022002 ff. DOI logo
Izre'el, Shlomo
2022. The syntax of existential constructions. Journal of Speech Sciences 11 ► pp. e022001 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue