Acknowledgments

The journey for this book began sometime in 2007 as I was writing the proposal for my dissertation on a theory of argument realization. Back then, it occurred to me that reciprocal predicates might serve as a litmus test in evaluating theories that posit rules that link the meaning of the components of the verb to the syntactic positions of their arguments. I’ve been under a spell ever since, seeing reciprocity wherever I went. It didn’t matter whether I was poring over philological enigmas of a medieval text, puzzling over data on diachronic changes in Old Babylonian or another Semitic language, or attempting to unravel the interactions between negation and propositions – invariably, reciprocal constructions seemed to hold the key to the essence of the phenomenon. They always surprised me with some unexpected feature that, as if by magic, illuminated a new analytical path. Obviously then, when my twin boys started talking and used reciprocal anaphors for the first time, I got wildly excited.

This all-encompassing preoccupation with reciprocity made me wonder if perhaps – excuse the pun – my variegated academic interests can mutually contribute to each other. As I worked on similar phenomena in different linguistic sub-disciplines, I pondered methodologies through which these areas could justifiably interact. On the one hand, I explored how philological and historical linguistic evidence can inform the investigation of universal properties of languages; while on the other, I probed the relevance of the semantics and syntax of various expressions for their evolution in the history of individual languages.

This book is the outcome of this long journey. The analyses proffered in its chapters interface multiple linguistic areas. Sorting through all these components and putting them together would certainly have been impossible without the generous contribution and assistance of my teachers, colleagues and students, who were invariably forthcoming in sharing their knowledge and insights and offering advice. I would like to thank everyone who invested time in reading the numerous drafts of the different parts of the book and for those who provided comments on my ideas and analyses, thereby making this journey both fascinating and rewarding:

Moysh Bar-Lev, Nora Boneh, Brian Buccola, Eran Cohen, Cleo Condoravdi, Luka Črnič, Karen De-Clercq, Ashwini Deo, Edit Doron, Margherita Farina, Steve Fassberg, Benjamin Foster, Danny Fox, Eckart Frahm, Mary Frazer, Uri Gabbay, Zoltán Gendler Szabó, Kevin Grasso (who read the entire manuscript), Yael Greenberg, Eitan Grossman, William Hallo, Larry Horn, John Huehnergard, Geoffrey Khan, Ekkehard König, Alda Mari, Nadine Pavie, Malka Rappaport Hovav, Aynat Rubinstein, Yona Sabar, Ori Shachmon, Ivy Sichel, Tod Snider, Benjamin Spector, David Stein, Adam Strich, Daniela Viale, Yoad Winter and Yael Ziv.

The comments and feedback from my students in the seminar on Reciprocal Constructions during the Spring of 2013 were valuable in setting the foundations for the book’s structure. This book would have not seen the light of day without the hospitality of three institutions that provided the environment necessary for such a project: Center for Jewish Studies and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University (Spring 2012), the Judaic Studies Program at Yale University (with the appointment as the Jacob Perlow Visiting Professor, academic year of 2017–8); and finally the Mandel Scholion Research Center at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School for Advanced Studies in Humanities at the Hebrew University, which hosts and funds the three-year project of a research group on Historical Linguistics and Formal Semantics (2017–2020). I wish to take this opportunity to thank all members of this research group for stimulating discussions, which were crucial for this daunting endeavor.

I also had the privilege of presenting some of the materials and rationale from this book at different academic venues. These opportunities were crucial in developing my ideas and I am truly grateful for them.

I would like to thank my research assistants Tali Oren, Lotem Allouche and Tali Heyman for their help. The book has benefited immensely from language editing by Nina Luskin and Hagit Migron, both of whom also added many important observations on its content and linguistic analysis.

I am also grateful for the financial support that I have received throughout this long project. First and foremost, I wish to thank the Mandel Scholion Research Center, and especially its heads Daniel Schwartz and Elisheva Baumgarten and all the administrative stuff, for helping financially and in so many other ways. I am grateful for the financial assistance from the Charles Wolfson Research Fund, provided by The Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the David Ettinger Fund for the Promotion of Modern Hebrew, the Department of Hebrew Language. Research for some parts of this book was supported by the Volkswagen Stiftung, "Forschungskooperation Niedersachsen-Israel” for the project "Talking about causation: linguistic and psychological perspectives" given to me together with Nora Boneh and York Hagmayer. Other parts have received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's H2020 Framework Programme (H2020/2014-2020) / ERC grant agreement n° 741360, Principal Investigator Edit Doron.

I wish to thank my parents Nechama and Moshe Bar-Asher for their endless support.

As in any journey, there have been many bright moments – like when you reach the crest of a hill and the view takes your breath away; however, at times, the road must inevitably go down, and you are once again making your way into the unknown. My family has made those descents so much more endurable, but more importantly, without them I would not have been able to celebrate the joy of standing at the top, the joy of discovery. I am indebted to Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, the love of my life, for endless discussions on our respective research, but equally so, for learning together how to cherish all kinds of moments, the high and the low. I am also grateful to our three inquisitive boys Nattaf, Yadid and Yahav. At the beginning of the project, they only provided data, but later on participated in the analysis as well. I will always cherish our togetherness – our sociativity.