Avir' an Investigation of Aspect Semantics in Modern Hebrew
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
‘binyanim ba’avir’ An investigation of Aspect Semantics in Modern Hebrew Master’s Thesis Reut Tsarfaty Institute for Logic Langauge and Computation Universiteit van Amsterdam [email protected] December 2004 “In all Jerusalem There is not even one girl who knows anything about Hebrew” Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Ha-Zevi, 1888 1 Preface & Acknowledgements The motivation for this work arose from a conclusive experiment [50] I conducted to fulfill the completion requirements of the ‘Logic and Cognition’ course [51] in the winter semester of 2003. This course is taught by Prof. Michiel van Lambalgen and offered by the Philosophy department of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) as part of the ‘Master of Logic’ program of the ‘Institute for Logic Language and Computation’ (ILLC). This course is interdisciplinary in nature, and is concerned with philosophical, log- ical, cognitive and linguistic aspects of time. The focus that semester was on the acquisition of temporal concepts by children, and in particular on the role that planning plays there. The goals were several: (i) to obtain information about children’s use of planning in organizing a narrative, (ii) to investigate how children’s use of tenses and aspect is related to the Aktionsart of verbs (and verb phrases) to which the tense is applied, and (iii) to investigate how Hebrew native speakers compensate for the lack of grammatical aspect in Hebrew using other linguistic means. The assumption underlying the proposed outline (following [3] and others) is that since Modern Hebrew lacks grammatical aspect altogether proficient Hebrew speak- ers will try compensate using lexical means, where the term lexical is used as an umbrella for adverbial modifiers, auxiliary verbs, abundance of subordinate and adjacent clauses, etc. The result of the investigation indeed showed supporting evidence for increased use of planning components (see also [49] and [52]) in a narrative with age, and identified several ways in which additional lexical material is employed by Hebrew speakers to denote meaningful aspectual distinctions. However, what I considered most striking about the findings was the systematic occurrences of marked deviations from standardly used verb forms, by shifting to a different morphological template, (in Hebrew, Binyan) in the same root. For ex- ample, mature speakers used hithalekˇ, hit’opeˇ pˇ (walked around, fly around) instead 2 of the simple verbs halakˇ, apˇ (walk, fly) [50, p. 59], and hit’acev, ne’ecav (become sad, got sad) instead of haya acuv (was sad) [50, p. 72]. Moreover, there seemed to be some correlation between the morphological tem- plates of the verb and aspectual properties of the event it was employed to describe [50, p. 85]. However, the phenomena described using different morphological tem- plates were hard to capture and attempts to generalize introduced too many excep- tions. In April 2004 Prof. Michiel van Lambalgen suggested that I extend this preliminary work to a Master’s thesis under his supervision and I willingly engaged with the task, specifically intrigued and disturbed by the ‘morphological templates’ puzzle. Indeed, the investigation first centered around the lexicon and the study of Hebrew lexical aspect. However, the evidence for purposeful shifting between morpholog- ical templates together with meaningful tense alternations [50, p. 82–83] prompted me to the hypothesis that Modern Hebrew does grammaticalize aspect at some level. This work is an attempt to tackle both the questions of the constituents of Hebrew aspect and the semantics of the morphological templates at once. An investigation of two such fundamental issues requires coverage of a wide range of linguistic, logical, cognitive and computational topics as well as mastery of relevant linguistic forms in Hebrew, notions of general aspect theory, and the logical and computa- tional machinery of the formal semantic framework. The resulting work is thus wide in scope, as shall be seen, however we attempt to provide a deep of investiga- tion of each of the relevant components as we incorporate it into the account. The outcome of this work is a proposal that takes both lexical and grammatical components into account. The roots are considered the lexical material that carry inherent aspectual meaning, and the morphological templates (in interaction with tense) provide a grammatical dimension of investigation. As there is no de facto theory of Hebrew aspect, I adopt theoretical and formal frameworks that were pro- posed in the general linguistic literature ([47] and [52]) and demonstrate how these two components might interact in an account of Hebrew aspect. As partially evident from the scope if this study, this work is a result of efforts by more than one person, and members of academia as well as ordinary people actively took part in the course of the study. Thus, it is a pleasure for me to pay here my intellectual and personal debts. First, I would like to thank Prof. Michiel van Lambalgen for introducing me to this fascinating subject, for encouraging to further investigate it, and for supporting me in exploring this path. Michiel provided me with a complete academic freedom in exploring and investigating aspect in a language that prima facie doesn’t have any, and by thus taught an important lesson about what is called ‘research’. Second, I would like to thank Prof. Susan Rothstein from Bar-Ilan University in 3 Israel who kindly agreed to meet with me and discuss matters of Hebrew aspect in the summer of 2004. The discussion with Susan was eye-opening to say the least, and provided me new insights, worthwhile research questions, and a comprehen- sive list of relevant literature to start my research with. In practice, I could never have learned and achieved as much as I did without the efforts of Darrin Hindsill. Darrin has spent long hours reading my notes and in discussion with me. His insightful questions and elucidating comments were invaluable in forming the theoretical proposal spelled out in part II of the study, and in devising the final version of the study as it is presented here. In addition, I’d like to thank my sister, Noa Tsarfaty, without whom the execution of the experimental part (described in part III) would have been simply impos- sible. Noa helped with the design of the experimental material, professionally handcrafted the enhanced storybook, and above all, transcribed a wealth of audio recorded interviews in Hebrew writings. Also, she formed a ‘forum’ of Hebrew speakers (whom I later refer to as ‘my informants’) that discussed my ideas and questions, and suggested relevant examples and counterexamples. Not of less importance, I’d like to thank each and every individual of a set (perhaps a transitive closure) of family, friends, family of friends, and friends of the family who volunteered for the interviews and allowed me to conduct a significant amount of 42 interviews during a relatively short visit to Israel in the summer of 2004. In addition I would like express my deep appreciation to my colleagues Scott Grimm and Samson de Jager for professional proof reading and help in typesetting. As I was unsponsored during my Masters studies and for matters of this research I’d like also to thank Nuriel Shem-tov and ‘de-bar’ for providing me with the per- fect job to financially support myself throughout. Special thanks to my friends in Tel-Aviv and in Amsterdam for making pressured times manageable and much more pleasant. Last but not least, I’d like to thank my parents Nurit and Itsik Tsarfaty for their unconditional support throughout and dedicate this thesis to them with all my love. 4 Contents I Prologue 10 1 Introduction 11 1.1 Theoretical Background . 12 1.1.1 Language and Cognition in the Temporal Domain . 12 1.1.2 Temporal Expressions in Modern Hebrew . 16 1.1.3 Summary . 17 1.2 Goals and Procedures . 18 1.2.1 Questions and Goals . 18 1.2.2 Method and Procedures . 19 1.2.3 A Note About Literature . 20 1.3 Forward Outlook . 21 1.3.1 General Hypothesis . 21 1.3.2 Plan of the Thesis . 22 II A Quest for Modern Hebrew Aspect 24 2 From Biblical Hebrew to Modern Hebrew 25 2.1 Background . 25 2.1.1 Hebrew and Semitic Languages . 25 2.1.2 Sketch of the History . 26 2.2 Modern Hebrew Structure . 32 2.2.1 A Three-way Tense System . 32 2.2.2 Semitic Morphology . 35 2.2.3 Semitic Templates in Modern Hebrew . 38 2.3 The Semantics of Semitic Templates . 41 2.3.1 Agency and Voice in the Semitic Templates (Doron 2003) 41 2.3.2 The Semitic Templates and Event Structure . 42 2.4 Summary . 44 3 A Theory of Aspect 45 3.1 Defining Aspect . 45 3.2 Event Classification . 47 5 3.2.1 Introduction . 47 3.2.2 Event Classification and Aktionsart . 47 3.2.3 Event Classification in Modern Hebrew . 52 3.3 Thematic Roles . 54 3.3.1 Introduction . 54 3.3.2 The Role of Thematic Roles . 54 3.3.3 The Role of the Incremental Theme . 59 3.3.4 Thematic Roles in Modern Hebrew . 60 3.4 Aspectual Systems . 60 3.4.1 Introduction . 60 3.4.2 Aspectual Systems and Aspectual Choice . 61 3.4.3 A Theory of Markedness . 63 3.5 Summary . 65 4 Semantics for Aspect 66 4.1 Why Event Calculus? . 66 4.1.1 Requirements . 66 4.1.2 Neo-davidsonian approaches . 68 4.1.3 Event Calculus . 70 4.2 Introduction to Event Calculus . 71 4.2.1 The formal system EC . 71 4.2.2 Models for EC . 73 4.3 Situation Types in Event Calculus . 76 4.3.1 Scenarios .