Morphological ergativity is attested in all Neo-Aramaic dialects of the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) group, which comprises over a hundred different dialects spoken by Jewish and Christian communities originating in the border areas of Turkey/Iraq/Iran. Historically, Aramaic (Semitic) is nominative-accusative, and ergativity developed through contact with ergative Iranian languages, especially Kurdish, which is spoken by the Muslim population of the region. Ergativity developed in the perfective aspect only, and is marked by verb-agreement rather than Case. We divide NENA dialects into three types according to their degree of ergativity, reflected by differences in the distribution of the ergative marking of intransitive verbs. In dialects exhibiting the highest degree of ergativity, which we call Split-S, the ergative marker is restricted to transitive and unergative verbs, and is not found with unaccusative verbs. In a second type of dialect, which we call Dynamic-Stative, the ergative marker is also optionally found with unaccusative verbs. Dialects exhibiting the lowest degree of ergativity, Extended-Ergative, mark all intransitive subjects as ergative. This is surprising from the perspective of theories of ergativity, since it contradicts Marantz's Generalization, and suggests that ergative Case is not inherent but structural, and, specifically, that it is assigned by v and not by T. We show that the parametric variation between the different dialects reduces to the distribution of v. v is obligatory in Extended-Erg dialects, and assigns ergative Case to its argument if it has one, or to the internal argument otherwise. In Dynamic-Stative dialects, the presence of v is optional. In Split-S dialects - v is obligatorily missing: this is nevertheless compatible with verbs having an external argument, since ergative languages allow the merge of the external argument as an adjunct. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

It is proposed to derive the two distinct French anticausative constructions from the interplay of two functional heads, Voice and v, where non-active Voice dominates the morpheme se, and v is the verbal head introducing a dynamic subevent and assigning the Agent role. The middle anticausative derivation (Le vase se casse 'The vase breaks') results from the insertion of se under non-active Voice, coupled with the absence of a vP projection. By contrast, the active anticausative derivation (Le vase casse 'The vase breaks') results from the use of active Voice with a v projection lacking a specifier. It is shown how these hypotheses account for the derivation of change of state verbs, verbs of movement, as well as the middle anticausative construction with a typically agentive verb, construire 'to build'. Adapted from the source document

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.]

In this paper, it is proposed that natural languages express two concepts of habituality: a gnomic and an aspectual concept of regular event recurrence. The two concepts are modelled as distinct habituality operators, HabMOD and HabASP, sharing a semantic core of event recurrence over a contextually long interval. The operators differ syntactically and semantically. HabMOD is an adverb which modifies VP, whereas HabASP is an aspectual head. The paper shows first that English and Modern Hebrew grammaticalize these two concepts by two verbal forms, a periphrastic form and a simple form. Secondly, the paper shows how the proposed syntactic and semantic analysis of the operators accounts for the properties of the two habitual forms in these languages. Adapted from the source document

Semitic templates systematically encode two dimensions of verb meaning: (a) agency, the thematic role of the verb's external argument, and (b) voice. The assumption that this form-meaning correspondence is mediated by syntax allows the parallel compositional construction of the form and the meaning of a verb from the forms and the meanings of its root and template. The root and its arguments are optionally embedded under a light verb v which introduces the agent (Hale and Keyser 1993; Kratzer 1994). But this is only the unmarked case, which, in Semitic, is encoded by the simple templates. Two dimensions of markedness are introduced by two additional types of syntactic heads: (a) agency heads, which modify agency and are morphologically realized as the intensive and causative templates, and (b) voice heads, which modify voice and are morphologically realized as the passive and middle templates. Causative and middle morphemes are thus accounted for within a unified system, which, first, explains their affinity in language in general (both are found crosslinguistically as markers of transitivity alternations), and which, moreover, sheds new light on problems in the interface of semantics and morphology. One problem is the impossibility, mostly ignored in linguistic theory, of deriving the semantics of middle verbs from that of the corresponding transitive verbs. The second is explaining the identity found crosslinguistically between middle and reflexive morphology. The third is determining the grammatical function of the causee in causative constructions.

Gennaro Chierchia's (1998) neo-Carlsonian account of reference to kinds via nominalization type-shift from properties to kinds, which applies to mass & plural properties exclusively, is upheld despite evidence of bare singular reference to kinds in Hebrew & Brazilian Portuguese, both of which have definite articles & plural inflection of nouns. Languages that admit bare singular nouns in addition to nouns with definite determiners are shown to use incorporation to obtain existential interpretations of bare nouns; reference to kinds requires a noun to be either plural or the subject of a categorical judgment, in which case it is interpreted as definite. Whereas definiteness requires morphological marking in Hungarian & Arabic, which allow bare singulars as indefinites, morphological definiteness marking is not required for subjects of categorical judgments in Hebrew & Brazilian Portuguese; bare singulars referring to kinds are also held to have definite interpretations in Hindi & Russian, which lack morphological definiteness marking. References. J. Hitchcock

The paper studies the passive participle in Modern Hebrew, & argues for a systematic homonymy between the verbal & adjectival forms of the passive participle. It shows that the two forms result from two different derivations: The verbal passive participle is syntactically derived from the corresponding transitive verb, whereas the adjectival passive participle is derived lexically (from the transitive verb, but also from intransitive verbs & from nouns). One consequence of this difference in derivation is that, whereas there exists a verbal passive participle for each passive verb, the corresponding adjectival passive participle does not always exist. The paper provides a semantic aspectual characterization of those verbs for which an adjectival passive participle exists. Adjectival passive participles denote states, not events; therefore, they are derived only from verbs whose lexical meanings include a state, ie, either stative verbs (which denote a state) or dynamic verbs which denote bounded events that result in a state. 2 Tables, 33 References. Adapted from the source document

The relatively limited number of morphological templates available in the Hebrew verb system is classified along two dimensions, agency & voice. The thematic role of the external argument determines agency: cause induces the causative template; actor, the intensive template; & agent, the simple template. Voice - active, middle, & passive - intersects with this trichotomy to produce only seven templates, as Hebrew lacks simple passive & causative middle templates. In the framework of the light-verb concepts of Kenneth Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (1993) & Angelika Kratzer (1994), Hebrew middle & passive templates are analyzed as the morphological realization of heads introduced into the derivation to block argument insertion, whereas the intensive & causative templates are the morphological realization of actor & cause role assignments, respectively. 18 References. J. Hitchcock

The relatively limited number of morphological templates available in the Hebrew verb system is classified along two dimensions, agency & voice. The thematic role of the external argument determines agency: cause induces the causative template; actor, the intensive template; & agent, the simple template. Voice - active, middle, & passive - intersects with this trichotomy to produce only seven templates, as Hebrew lacks simple passive & causative middle templates. In the framework of the light-verb concepts of Kenneth Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (1993) & Angelika Kratzer (1994), Hebrew middle & passive templates are analyzed as the morphological realization of heads introduced into the derivation to block argument insertion, whereas the intensive & causative templates are the morphological realization of actor & cause role assignments, respectively. 18 References. J. Hitchcock

We study spectral properties of quasi-one-dimensional extended systems that show deterministic diffusion on the classical level and Anderson localization in the quantal description. Using semi-classical arguments we relate universal aspects of the spectral fluctuations to features of the set of classical periodic orbits, expressed in terms of the probability to perform periodic motion, which are likewise universal. This allows us to derive an analytical expression for the spectral form factor which reflects the diffusive nature of the corresponding classical dynamics. It defines a novel spectral universality class which covers the transition between GOE statistics in the limit of a small ratio of the system size to the localization length, corresponding to the ballistic regime of disordered systems, to Poissonian level fluctuations in the opposite limit. Our semi-classical predictions are illustrated and confirmed by a numerical investigation of aperiodic chains of chaotic billiards.