DEDICATION In memory of David & Blanca Nathan Betty & Yehoshua Kastner ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This is my favorite part! As any graduate student will tell you, the acknowledgments are the most inter- esting chapter of every dissertation that you read. I’m glad to report that they’re also the best chapter to write. There is a dissertation lurking beyond these acknowledgments, one that I could not have written anywhere else. I am indebted to the constant feedback from syntacticians, morphologists, semanticists, phonologists, computational modelers, cognitive scientists and variationists that it was my good fortune to have at NYU while working on this project. The range of topics that I have attempted to cover here is clearly not one that I could have wrangled by myself. Any good idea to be found in the main text arose through the continued guidance of the many people who have educated me along the way. Any clarity in the writing is likewise the result of many kind souls commenting furtively on my written work. Many colleagues are to be thanked for this, but first and foremost, this means my committee. I won’t embarrass myself or my advisor, Alec Marantz, by attempting to wax poetic about his contributions to my intellectual development or about the amazing speed with which he thinks on his feet. Instead, here’s one anecdote that stuck with me. The neurolinguistics lab at NYU hosts a program in which one exceptional high school student comes in every summer to learn experimental design and develop their own project. The student is usually mentored by the research assistant managing Alec’s MorphLab (of which I was a member). One of these high schoolers was sitting in the lab one day, dis- cussing their project with Alec, and it soon became evident that this kid did not know how to conduct a basic statistical test. Instead of telling them to consult a textbook or go ask the lab manager, Alec qui- etly picked up a pencil and a sheet of paper and started explaining to this 17-year-old how a t-test works. iii Working with Alec can be like that; I have been on the receiving end of this kindness time and time again, and I am grateful for it. The rest of my committee has been just as generous. From day one it was clear to me that I’d want to work with Stephanie Harves; in this I’m not much different than any other NYU-trained syntactician. Stephanie is an inspiring mentor, a prediction generating machine, a true syntactician, an invaluable colleague and a perfect party host. Simply put, every department needs a Stephanie. From my very first class at NYU till my last meeting with her shortly before the dissertation was due, drawing tableaux on her beloved blackboard, I never stopped learning from Maria Gouskova: phonology, morphology, experimental design, how to present and analyze data, how to give an elevator pitch. Meetings with Maria always went on far longer than expected and ended far too soon. The moment I started working on Hebrew morphology in earnest I realized that any idea must pass muster with Edit Doron. Luckily for me, she was happy to let me draw on her encyclopedic knowl- edge of interesting patterns in Semitic and beyond, synchronically and diachronically. Edit was always generous with her time, encouraging with her feedback and insightful with her comments. I don’t know how she does it. The moment I started working on Hebrew morphology in earnest I still had no idea that I would want Michael Becker on my committee. Why would a dissertation in syntax need a product-oriented phonologist? But once the idea came up, it was a perfect match. Michael struck an incredibly difficult balance between pushing against me and going with the flow, nudging me towards different kinds of questions while allowing himself to be convinced by different arguments than those he usually works with. Or at least that’s what it felt like on my end during our long, thorough, wonderfully productive phone meetings. Alongside my official committee, I’m fortunate to have had Dylan Bumford, Tal Linzen and Vera Zu around. Between the three of them they probably commented on every piece of work that I produced iv at NYU: Dylan in patient sessions at the whiteboard, Vera in delightfully snarky written comments, and Tal in our code-switching mish-mash of Hebrew, English and shoulder shrugs. It’s hard for me to imagine life in New York without them. I like to think that I had an additional “shadow committee” consisting of Tricia Irwin, Jim Wood and Neil Myler (our own Sir Bobby Charlton). Considering all of their support and influence, this disser- tation might as well be titled Building and interpreting Hebrew morphosyntax and argument structure at the interfaces. I’m not sure where I would be without their friendship and mentorship. An additional shout-out goes out to Teon Brooks (for showing us how it’s done), Nicole Holli- day (for many dropped mics), Dani Szeredi (for happy salmon and Passover hours, or vice versa), Dunja Veselinović (for stories of explosions that reminded me of home), Katie Wallace (for gladly explaining both Optimal Interleaving and Galaxy Trucker), Masha Westerlund (for “work meetings” consisting of 10% cognitive neuroscience and 90% Joss Whedon) and James Whang (for long chats about the recov- erability of high vowels and/or the meaning of life). I miss hanging out with everyone already. I’m glad to have cohorted with K.C. Lin and Linmin Zhang. These last five years went by in a flash, thanks in no small part to Meera Al Kaabi, Diogo Almeida, Carina Bauman, Ruth Brillman, Chris- tian Brodbeck, Dustin Alfonso Chacón, WooJin Chung, Esti Blanco Elorrieta, Isaac Bleaman, Dan Dun- can, Masha Esipova, Allyson Ettinger, Steven Foley, Phoebe Gaston, Laura Gwilliams, Nizar Habash, Néha Hirve, Maria Kouneli, Jeremy Kuhn, Becky Laturnus, Miriam Lauter, Tim Leffel, Kim Leiken, Sean Martin, Salvador Mascarenhas, Yining Nie, Yohei Oseki, Steve Politzer-Ahles, Mary Robinson, Kevin Schluter, Cara Shousterman and Amanda Dye and Evan and Maury Povich’s menora, Tara Stephan- Sawyer, Gabriella Swii, Ildi Szabó, Matt Tucker, Adina Williams, and to most everyone else I met here. During my time at NYU I learned a great amount in the most enjoyable fashion from fellow students, faculty colleagues and occasional visitors. v I owe a great deal to classes and meetings with virtually the entire NYU linguistics faculty, but es- pecially Chris Barker, Lucas Champollion, Lisa Davidson, Richie Kayne, David Poeppel and John Singler. A dedicated word of thanks to Anna Szabolcsi for valuable input into my first qualifying paper and the resulting article; to Frans Adriaans for our collaboration; to Liina Pylkkänen for reminding us to always look at the data; and to Gillian Gallagher for asking me why Hebrew was so weird. Kate Davidson, Karen Emmorey, Jeremy Kuhn and Philippe Schlenker were always able to teach me something new about sign language linguistics with great grace. It was a wonderful treat being able to work on sign languages at NYU and I’m grateful for the cooperation of the NY Deaf community with my various projects. Thanks also to Jon Lamberton for bearing with me. Being part of the neuro lab broadened my horizons in all the ways I’d hoped it would when I came to NYU. I don’t know why Alec and Liina let me run MEG studies on Hebrew, Arabic and ASL but I’m happy they did. Rebecca Egbert and Joe Fruchter were around to help me out and stop me from doing something stupid. Paul Del Prato, Amanda Kaczmarek, Samir Reddigari and Tori Sharpe kept things running smoothly. And Jeff Walker deserves special mention for tidying up things I probably never even knew I broke. Thanks to Aura Holguin for all the work behind the scenes and to Teresa Leung for being the students’ guardian angel. Before coming to NYU I spent an exhilarating year at the Sign Language Research Lab at the University of Haifa. Thanks to Wendy Sandler and Irit Meir for taking a gamble on me and to Oksana Tkachman and Christina Healy for kvetching with me. At Queen Mary University of London I was trained, challenged, educated and inspired by David Adger and Daniel Harbour; edified by Erez Levon and Devyani Sharma; taught and encouraged by Paul Elbourne, Justin Fitzpatrick, Robert Gillett, Rüdiger Görner, Astrid Köhler, Anouk Lang, Falco Pfalzgraf and Graham White; and made to feel at home by Simon Carter, Ahmad El Sharif, James Hawkey, Eva vi Klingvall, Ruth Kircher, Philippa Law, Fryni Panayidou, Tsela Rubel, Rachelle Vessey, Sirvan Yahyaei and John Weston. Extra special thanks to Christof Monz for giving me my first chance. Thanks to Anette Frank and the Institute for Computational Linguistics at the University of Hei- delberg (then still the Seminar for Computational Linguistics) for their hospitality and for trying to teach me LFG. Over the years and travels I had the good fortune to talk shop with some very bright people who shared very bright thoughts about Semitic with me. I’m lucky to have bent the willing ears of Artemis Alexiadou, Inbal Arnon, Rajesh Bhatt, Bronwyn Bjorkman, Jonathan D. Bobaljik, Hagit Borer, Dave Em- bick, Noam Faust, Vera Gribanova, Ruth Kramer, Mohamed Lahrouchi, Lior Laks, Beth Levin, Lisa Pearl, Malka Rappaport Hovav, Ezer Rasin, Florian Schäfer, Giorgos Spathas and the participants of Roots IV and various other meetings. A conference-goer’s fist bump to Byron Ahn, Faruk Akkuş, Eleanor Chodroff, Einar Freyr Sig- urðsson, mitcho, Alfredo García Pardo, Lelia Glass, Peter Guekguezian, Laura Kalin, Hadas Kotek, Helen Koulidobrova, Mythili Menon, Isabel Oltra Massuet, Jason Ostrove, Jason Overfelt, Juliet Stanton, Lin- naea Stockall, Meredith Tamminga and Coppe van Urk.