In support of broad subjects in Hebrew

תקציר:

In previous work we have argued that Hebrew and Arabic share with Japanese the property of allowing an 'extra' clause-initial DP that has the properties of a subject rather than, e.g. a left-dislocated or topicalized phrase in an A-bar position: we called this type of clause-initial phrase the 'Broad Subject'. Landau (2009) argues that this analysis is incorrect for Hebrew, and that all the cases that we discuss are better analysed as left-dislocations. In this reply we show that 1. much of Landau's argumentation is based on a fundamental misreading of our work, 2. of his proposed tests for subjecthood, those that are valid confirm the status of the broad subject, 3. the distinction between left-dislocation and broad subjects in Hebrew stands. [Copyright Elsevier B.V.]