Verbal multiword expressions are generally characterized by their formal rigidity, yet they exhibit remarkable diversity with respect to their flexibility. Our primary research question is whether the behavior of idioms is an... more
Verbal multiword expressions are generally characterized by their formal rigidity, yet they exhibit remarkable diversity with respect to their flexibility. Our primary research question is whether the behavior of idioms is an idiosyncratic property of each idiom or a consequence of more general constraints. \citet{nunberg94
Nonverbal predicates in Modern Hebrew (MH) have been the subject of investigation in a number of studies. However, to our knowledge, none of them was corpus-based. Corpus searches reveal that the nonverbal construc-tions which are most... more
Nonverbal predicates in Modern Hebrew (MH) have been the subject of investigation in a number of studies. However, to our knowledge, none of them was corpus-based. Corpus searches reveal that the nonverbal construc-tions which are most commonly addressed in the literature are not the most commonly used ones. Once a broader range of data is considered additional issues are raised. Our analysis addresses these issues, unifying the treatment of three types of copular constructions that we identify in MH. The analysis is implemented as part of a larger-scale grammar, and is extensively tested. 1
tions. Modern Hebrew is considered to be a ‘partial pro-drop language’. Tradi-tionally, the distinction between cases where pro-drop is licensed and those in which it is prohibited, was based on the person and tense features of the verb:... more
tions. Modern Hebrew is considered to be a ‘partial pro-drop language’. Tradi-tionally, the distinction between cases where pro-drop is licensed and those in which it is prohibited, was based on the person and tense features of the verb: 1st and 2nd person pronominal subjects may be omitted in past and fu-ture tense. This generalization, however, was found to be false in a number of papers, each discussing a subset of the data. Thus, contrary to conventional wisdom, dropped 3rd person pronouns subjects do occur in the language in particular contexts. Identifying these contexts by way of a corpus-based survey is the initial step taken in this study. Subsequently, a careful syntactic analysis of the data reveals broad generalizations which have not been made to date. Thus, what was initially assumed to be a uniform phenomenon of 3rd person pro-drop turns out to be manifested in three distinct types of constructions. Finally, the proposed HPSG-based analysis incorporates insights conce...
Multi-word expressions (MWEs) are challenging for grammatical theories and grammar development since they blur the traditional distinction between the lexicon and the grammar, and vary in the degree of idiosyncrasy with respect to their... more
Multi-word expressions (MWEs) are challenging for grammatical theories and grammar development since they blur the traditional distinction between the lexicon and the grammar, and vary in the degree of idiosyncrasy with respect to their semantic, syntactic, and morphological behavior. Nevertheless, the need to incorporate MWEs into grammars is unquestionable, especially in light of estimates claiming that MWEs account for approximately half of the entries in the lexicon. In this study we focus on verbal MWEs in Modern Hebrew: we consider different types of this class of MWEs, and propose an analysis in the framework of HPSG. Moreover, we incorporate this analysis into HeGram, a deep linguistic processing grammar of Modern Hebrew.
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The copula construction in Hebrew has received much attention in the linguistic literature. Nevertheless, one non-canonical variant has been largely neglected. In this variant the copula, flanked by two NPs, exhibits agreement with the... more
The copula construction in Hebrew has received much attention in the linguistic literature. Nevertheless, one non-canonical variant has been largely neglected. In this variant the copula, flanked by two NPs, exhibits agreement with the post-copular NP, contrary to the canonical variant, where the agreement controller is the initial NP. This phenomenon challenges the notion of subject and its relation to agreement. The current corpus-based study investigates the word order and agreement patterns exhibited by the Hebrew copular constructions and shows that their distribution is largely motivated by information structure considerations. The proposed analysis accounts for the syntactic symmetry and semantic asymmetry between the two NPs.
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We show how linguistic grammars of two different yet related languages can be developed and implemented in parallel, with language-independent fragments serving as shared resources, and language-specific ones defined separately for each... more
We show how linguistic grammars of two different yet related languages can be developed and implemented in parallel, with language-independent fragments serving as shared resources, and language-specific ones defined separately for each language. The two grammars in the focus of this paper are of Modern Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic, and the basic infrastructure, or core, of the grammars is based on "standard" HPSG. We identify four types of relations that exist between the grammars of two languages and demonstrate how the different types of relations can be implemented in parallel grammars with maximally shared resources. The examples pertain to the grammars of Modern Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic, yet similar issues and considerations are applicable to other pairs of languages that have some degree of similarity.
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V erb -In itial C on stru ction s in M odern H ebrew by Nurit Melnik B.Sc. (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) 1993 M.A. (University of California, Berkeley) 1999 A dissertation subm itted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for... more
V erb -In itial C on stru ction s in M odern H ebrew by Nurit Melnik B.Sc. (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) 1993 M.A. (University of California, Berkeley) 1999 A dissertation subm itted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the GRADUATE DIVISION of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Committee in charge: Professor Andreas Kathol, Chair Professor Paul Kay Professor Johanna Nichols Fall 2002 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
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In this paper we investigate the status of control constructions in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). MSA has several embedded clause constructions, some of which resemble control in English (and other languages). However, these constructions... more
In this paper we investigate the status of control constructions in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). MSA has several embedded clause constructions, some of which resemble control in English (and other languages). However, these constructions exhibit some notable differences. Chief among them is the fact that the embedded verb carries agreement features that can indicate both coreference and disjoint reference between a matrix argument and the understood subject of the complement clause. We conducted a thorough corpus-based investigation of such constructions, with a special focus on a search for obligatory control in the language. We show that our findings contradict accepted generalizations (and predictions) proposed by state-of-the-art theories of control, as they indicate that there are no "real" control predicates in MSA. We outline an HPSG analysis that accounts for the MSA data.
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This paper is the third in a series of papers dedicated to the investigation of subjunctive complement clauses in Modern Standard Arabic. It began with Arad Greshler et al.’s (2016) search for obligatory control predicates in the language... more
This paper is the third in a series of papers dedicated to the investigation of subjunctive complement clauses in Modern Standard Arabic. It began with Arad Greshler et al.’s (2016) search for obligatory control predicates in the language and continued with Arad Greshler et al.’s (2017) empirical and theoretical investigation of the backward control construction. In this paper we show that Arad Greshler et al.’s (2017) findings and ultimate analysis, which is cast in a transformational framework, can be straightforwardly formalized using the existing principles and tools of HPSG. Our proposed analysis accounts for all the patterns attested with subjunctive complement clauses in Modern Standard Arabic, including instances of control and no-control.
Modern Hebrew (MH) has different types of modal expressions, which do not seem to form a coherent set. Netzer et al.(2007), in their attempt to define comprehensive criteria for POS tagging, identify a subset of these expressions, which... more
Modern Hebrew (MH) has different types of modal expressions, which do not seem to form a coherent set. Netzer et al.(2007), in their attempt to define comprehensive criteria for POS tagging, identify a subset of these expressions, which covers as many as 3% of the tokens ...
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Abstract In this paper I argue that previous analyses of a class of inverted sentences in Modern Hebrew capture frequent correlations, but not hard constraints. Those analyses, which I refer to as lexically-based, focus on the properties... more
Abstract In this paper I argue that previous analyses of a class of inverted sentences in Modern Hebrew capture frequent correlations, but not hard constraints. Those analyses, which I refer to as lexically-based, focus on the properties of the lexical items which make ...