Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics

The study examines the competition between morphological and periphrastic structures in the Hebrew word formation, with focus on loanwords. This is based on two case studies: agent nouns and verbal constructions, as demonstrated below. 

 

(1) a. šay xofi hu trombon-ist (tickchak.co.il)

         ‘Shay Hofi is a trombone player’

     b.  oded meir hu nagan trombon (www.hotjazz.co.il)

          ‘Oded Meir is a trombone player’

(2) a. atem yexolim lebanjej ve-lo lexakot la-perek ha-ba (www.instagram.com)

          ‘you can binge-watch and not wait for the next episode’

     b. atem yexolim laasot binj matay še-ba laxem (www.tiktok.com)

        ‘you can binge-watch whenever you feel like it’

 

The agent noun ‘trombone player’ is formed in (1a) by suffixation of -ist to the loanword trombon ‘trombone’, while in (1b) it is formed periphrastically by adding the word nagan ‘player’ to ‘trombone’. Similarly, the verbal construction ‘binge-watch’ in (2a) is based on the formation of the CiCeC verb binjej in its infinitive form, derived from binj, while in (2b) it is manifested in the periphrastic construction laasot binj (lit. do binge). Such cases of competition will be discussed in the light of the challenges that Hebrew morphology presents for loanword adaptation.

Semitic morphology relies highly on non-concatenative formation, namely root and patter formation. The patterns determine the phonological shape of verbs: vowels, prosodic structure and affixes (if any) (Berman 1978, Bolozky 1978, Schwarzwald 1981, McCarthy 1981, Ravid 1990, Bat-El 1994, Aronoff 1994, among others). While non-concatenative formation is obligatory for verbs, noun (and adjective) formation is more varied and is based on other word formation strategies like affixation.

This talk will discuss cases of competition between morphological and periphrastic constructions with respect to both root-and-pattern and affixation.  I will show that the selection of either construction, as well as cases of variation, can be partially predicted based on the interaction between morpho-phonological and semantic-syntactic criteria. Specifically, I will argue that both morph-phonological and syntactic complexity tends to block word formation, and as a result, periphrastic constructions are preferred.

 

 

*** The talk will be delivered in person (MFF UK, Malostranské nám. 25, 4th floor, room S1) and will be streamed via Zoom. For details how to join the Zoom meeting, please write to sevcikova et ufal.mff.cuni.cz ***