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A participle can be characterized as a non-finite form of the verb inflected for a combination of nominal and verbal features. Both the nominal features and the verbal features of participles vary across languages. In Modern Hebrew, nominal features are number and gender, but not person agreement; state morphology: absolute/construct/emphatic (i.e., inflected by the definite prefix ha-); and lack of tense variation. The verbal features are the co-occurrence of arguments; accusative marking of the direct object; adverbial modification; temporal refere…

The stative-dynamic contrast is one of the aspectual distinctions among verbs. Stative verbs denote situations which involve neither agentivity nor change over time (Vendler 1957; Dowty 1979). Distinguishing stative from dynamic verbs is complicated by the fact that some stative verbs can also be interpreted as inchoative or agentive, i.e., as non-stative. Examples are כעס kaʿas ‘be angry’ (also inchoative ‘get angry’), הפריע hifriaʿ ‘disturb’ (also agentive), רכב raxav ‘ride’ (also agentive); the stative ‘be in a riding position’ interpretation of the latter is…

The syntactic structure of a sentence consists of a construction of syntactic constituents. Some of these constituents are phonologically realized (overt), and others may be phonologically null (covert). The grammar of Modern Hebrew allows null constituents in a wide variety of constructions (Uziel-Karl and Berman 2000; Borochovsky Bar-Aba 2007; 2008; 2010). The phonologically null expression of constituents is sometimes considered the manifestation of colloquial, careless, or hasty speech characteristic of non-standard or immature registers. Ye…

Verb, noun, and adjective stems in Semitic languages are derived from (tri-) consonantal roots by means of various intercalations (called templates) of consonantal patterns, vowel sequences, and affixes (Derivation). While there are scores of templates which derive nouns from roots, the number of verbal templates, traditionally called בנינים binyanim lit. ‘buildings, structures’ in Hebrew grammatical tradition, is extremely limited. In Modern Hebrew, setting aside voice variation, each active verb-stem derives from one of exactly three binyanim. These active binyanim, als…

Cataphora is the term used for backward anaphora (Discourse Anaphora): coreference between a referential expression and a pronoun which precedes it, as illustrated in (1). (1a) כאשר הוא יושב מול המחשב, דני מאושר kaʾašer hu yošev mul ha-max̱šev, dani meʾušar ‘When he sits in front of the computer, Dani is happy’. (1b) הספר שהוא כתב הקנה לדני פרסום רב ha-sefer še-hu katav hiqna le-dani pirsum rav ‘The book he wrote brought to Dani a lot of publicity’. (1c) הפתעה הסטודנטים שלומדים אתו ארגנו לדני מסיבת ha-sṭudenṭim še-lomdim ʾito ʾirgenu le-dani mesibat haftaʿa ‘The students who study with him …

In Hebrew one finds a construction in which an initial noun phrase has the properties associated with a subject, despite apparent similarity to, and in some cases ambiguity with, Left Dislocation (the latter also known as Extraposition). Such an initial noun phrase has been called ‘broad subject’ (Doron and Heycock 1999). The predicate related to a broad subject is a full clause. In (1), the broad subject ‘these words’ is the subject of the clausal predicate ‘their denotation is clear’, which in turn contains the (ordinary) subject ‘their denota…

Modern Hebrew (MH) nominal morphology preserves the nominal inflectional categories of earlier periods, and accordingly all nouns are inflected for the category of state (as well as other nominal categories such as gender and number). The unmarked state is called the absolute state, and it is distinguished from the construct state (cs) form: (1a) absolute state: גלימה glima ‘gown’ (1b) construct state (cs): גלימת glimat ‘gown-cs’ The construct state noun heads a construction called סמיכות חבורה smixut x̱avura ‘construct’, where it is immediately followed by a noun-phrase called סומ…