The paper examines the linguistic expression of habituality showing that two concepts must be distinguished: gnomic habituality & actualized habituality. It is claimed, on the basis of Modern Hebrew, that the two concepts are derived from non-quantificational habitual operators – Hab which is modal & yields gnomic habituality, & (phi)Hab which is aspectual & yields actualized habituality. The core meaning of both operators is iteration over a contextually long interval. Syntactically, the operators differ with respect to their position: Hab is argued to be a VP-level adverb & (phi)Hab – an aspectual head. This is correlated with the fact that gnomic habituality is expressed via the simple form of the verb while the expression of actualized habituality involves periphrasis. The paper ends with a diachronic consideration of the Hebrew periphrastic form suggesting that its habitual use can already be detected in Biblical Hebrew. Figures, References. Adapted from the source document

Regularities of patterning in the Hebrew verb derivation system are adduced to support a new analysis of transitivity alternations that unifies causative & middle morphology. Verbs are constructed in the syntax from lexical roots & functional heads; the root, not the simple verb, provides the basic predicate & is merged with the light verb v as defined by Kenneth Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (1993). Although v introduces the agent, a pair of agency heads are available to specify the thematic role of the external argument as cause vs agent of action & mark the verb morphologically with a causative vs intensive template; a second pair of functional heads provide voice morphology: the passive voice head applies to the fully constructed verb, whereas the middle voice head modifies the root & derives middle verbs independently from active verbs. 36 References. J. Hitchcock

The existence of multiple subject constructions is attested uncontroversially in Japanese & more controversially in Modern Hebrew & Modern Standard Arabic. In all three languages, it is shown that the initial noun phrase (NP) of a multiple subject construction, termed a broad subject, is not dislocated or in a designated focus position but has subject properties that include combination with a sentential predicate that (1) denotes a complex property, (2) assigns a nonthematic argument, & (3) contains a subject termed the narrow subject. Under the minimalist hypothesis that allows multiple tense specifiers & multiple checking of nominative case, broad subjects are merged at the tense specifier & therefore take obligatory broad scope, fail to induce verbal agreement, & have a generic interpretation; narrow subjects are merged at the VP specifier & raise to a tense specifier to check features. 34 References. J. Hitchcock

Although the Hebrew null-object construction is superficially similar to verb phrase (VP) ellipsis, as the latter strands the verb in the tense head & does not impose strict identity on it, the two constructions are syntactically & semantically distinct: only the null-object construction requires strict object identity & displays locality effects. Unlike VP ellipsis, bare argument ellipsis in Hebrew is disallowed in islands & does not permit the antecedent to follow the remnant; Hebrew elliptical constructions with no overt verb have the properties of bare argument ellipsis, not VP ellipsis. Under this analysis, the absence of an otherwise mandatory resumptive oblique pronoun in a relative construction of the type dani yaSav al kol kise Se-ben-gurion yaSav 'Dani sat on each chair that Ben-Gurion did' can be explained as antecedent-contained VP ellipsis. 29 References. J. Hitchcock