Itamar Francez
Biographic Data
| ID | 808060 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Itamar Francez |
| GIVEN NAMES | Itamar |
| FAMILY NAME | Francez |
| SIGNATURE | FRANCEZ I |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 36 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
A Voice that Would Sound All the Notes: Sound and Regeneration in Vladimir Jabotinsky's Hebrew Revivalism
The vernacularization of Hebrew speech was an integral component of the Zionist conception of national revival. In this article I explore some of the ways in which the discourse of regeneration and the figure of the "muscle Jew" shaped ideas about the sonic component of Hebrew speech, through the case of study of Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky. I show that Jabotinsky took speech, and Hebrew speech in particular, to be a potent site of regeneration, vi…
Three arguments for an individual concept analysis of specificational sentences
Summative Existentials
Under certain conditions, existential sentences have readings that are not predicted and cannot be modeled, given common assumptions about the construction. For example, the sentence There could be three outcomes to this election is normally taken to express that three things could be the outcome of the election, not that it is possible that the election will have three outcomes. This article proposes the first analysis of such “summative” readin…
Meaning and category: Semantic constraints on parts of speech
Taking the Lexical Semantic Variation Hypothesis and the well-known fact that property concept lexemes vary in lexical category as the points of departure, it is considered whether there is any correlation between the meaning of a property concept lexeme and its lexical category. A novel observation is made about a lexical gap: while nouns across languages can denote qualities as well as sets of individuals, adjectives can never denote qualities.…
Conclusion
This concluding chapter highlighting outstanding issues related to its main topics, among these the notion of translational equivalence; the uniformity/transparency debate in the explanation of morphosyntactic variation; the lexical semantics of lexical categories; and the nature of mass nouns. The book closes by situating the main issues against the broader issues of key import in the field, particularly the issue of linguistic diversity, and th…
Quality nouns and other mass nouns
This chapter considers the relation between qualities and masses, showing that the order-theoretic difference here posited between them—qualities are ordered by a preorder called size and a mereological partial order, whereas masses are only ordered by the latter—explains a range of interpretational and distributional contrasts between quality and mass-denoting nouns in various languages, in contexts such as exclamatives and count quantifiers. Th…
The locus of variation in property concept sentences
This chapter contrasts the uniformity and transparency approaches to explaining variation in the domain of property concept sentences, examining their respective predictions with case studies from Ulwa and Malayalam. Two ways of spelling out a uniformity-based analysis are exemplified, and contrasted with the transparency-based Lexical Semantic Variation Hypothesis, which is argued to be superior on empirical and theoretical grounds. The broader …
Variation in the form of property concept sentences: The explananda
This chapter demarcates the empirical scope of the book, defining the key notions of property concept sentence and property concept lexeme, showing that property concept sentences vary in whether they invoke the morphosyntax of canonical predication or the morphosyntax of possession. We consider, at a descriptive level, how the nature of the property concept lexeme in a property concept sentence is tied to this variation. Facts from several langu…
The lexical semantic variation hypothesis
This chapter lays out the main hypothesis about variation in the form of property concept sentences explored in the book—the Lexical Semantic Variation Hypothesis—and introduces the semantics of qualities that underlies the analyses developed in the rest of the book. The hypothesis is that property concept lexemes can have two different kinds of denotation: sets of individuals or qualities. Building on the observation that quality-denoting proper…
Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation: Qualities and the Grammar of Property Concepts
Systematic variation in form between semantic equivalents across languages is a key explanandum of linguistic theory. Two contrasting views of the role of lexical semantics in the analysis of such variation can be found in the literature: (1) uniformity, whereby lexical meaning is universal, and morphosyntactic variation arises from idiosyncratic differences in the inventory and phonological shape of language-particular functional material, and (…
The Implications of Managing
Since Karttunen's original observations about the two-way implicative verb manage, there has been no consensus as to the descriptive and analytical characterization of the implicational behavior of this verb. This short paper presents a reevaluation of the relevant descriptive generalizations, and proposes an analysis, couched within the causal modeling approach to causation developed by Schulz (2011) . We propose that manage sentences presuppose…
A note on possession and mereology in Ulwa property concept constructions
Ulwa (Misumalpan; Nicaragua) shows a puzzling and unique pattern in which a single affix marks the head of a possessive noun phrase and appears on roots expressing property concepts. This pattern has been argued to be semantically motivated by Koontz-Garboden and Francez (2010). This paper discusses two constructions of Ulwa that do not receive a natural treatment in their analysis, potentially casting doubt on the plausibility of a semantic moti…
Chimerical conditionals
This paper introduces and analyzes chimerical conditionals, a class of conditionals that are puzzling vis-à-vis the distinction between so-called 'biscuit' and hypothetical conditionals. An analysis of this distinction is developed which draws on the pragmatic account of Franke 2009. Building on this analysis, chimericity is then shown to derive from a systematic ambiguity of a definite and often implicit argument in the consequent of chimerical …
Modern-Hebrew lama-še Interrogatives and Their Judeo-Spanish Origins
This article describes a Modern Hebrew interrogative construction, not found in earlier varieties of the language, in which a wh -word is followed by a clause headed by the complementizer še ‘that.’ When that clause contains negation, the resulting sentence has the illocutionary force of a suggestion, with the opposite polarity to that of the complementizer clause. In this case, negation fails to license negative concord and negative polarity ite…
Semantic variation and the grammar of property concepts
This article discusses the effects of variation in the meaning of property concept (PC) lexemes (Dixon 1982) on the form of predicative and comparative constructions. We demonstrate the existence of two kinds of PC lexeme, which differ systematically in how they participate in constructions expressing the truth conditions of PC predication. The first kind of lexeme is used in canonical predicative constructions, the other in predicative construct…
Possessed properties in Ulwa
Several Problems for Predicate Decompositions
Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation: Qualities and the Grammar of Property Concepts
Systematic variation in form between semantic equivalents across languages is a key explanandum of linguistic theory. Two contrasting views of the role of lexical semantics in the analysis of such variation can be found in the literature: (1) uniformity, whereby lexical meaning is universal, and morphosyntactic variation arises from idiosyncratic differences in the inventory and phonological shape of language-particular functional material, and (…
Semantic variation and the grammar of property concepts
This article discusses the effects of variation in the meaning of property concept (PC) lexemes (Dixon 1982) on the form of predicative and comparative constructions. We demonstrate the existence of two kinds of PC lexeme, which differ systematically in how they participate in constructions expressing the truth conditions of PC predication. The first kind of lexeme is used in canonical predicative constructions, the other in predicative construct…
Three arguments for an individual concept analysis of specificational sentences
Possessed properties in Ulwa
A note on possession and mereology in Ulwa property concept constructions
Ulwa (Misumalpan; Nicaragua) shows a puzzling and unique pattern in which a single affix marks the head of a possessive noun phrase and appears on roots expressing property concepts. This pattern has been argued to be semantically motivated by Koontz-Garboden and Francez (2010). This paper discusses two constructions of Ulwa that do not receive a natural treatment in their analysis, potentially casting doubt on the plausibility of a semantic moti…
Several Problems for Predicate Decompositions
Possessed properties in Ulwa
Chimerical conditionals
This paper introduces and analyzes chimerical conditionals, a class of conditionals that are puzzling vis-à-vis the distinction between so-called 'biscuit' and hypothetical conditionals. An analysis of this distinction is developed which draws on the pragmatic account of Franke 2009. Building on this analysis, chimericity is then shown to derive from a systematic ambiguity of a definite and often implicit argument in the consequent of chimerical …
Modern-Hebrew lama-še Interrogatives and Their Judeo-Spanish Origins
This article describes a Modern Hebrew interrogative construction, not found in earlier varieties of the language, in which a wh -word is followed by a clause headed by the complementizer še ‘that.’ When that clause contains negation, the resulting sentence has the illocutionary force of a suggestion, with the opposite polarity to that of the complementizer clause. In this case, negation fails to license negative concord and negative polarity ite…
Semantic variation and the grammar of property concepts
This article discusses the effects of variation in the meaning of property concept (PC) lexemes (Dixon 1982) on the form of predicative and comparative constructions. We demonstrate the existence of two kinds of PC lexeme, which differ systematically in how they participate in constructions expressing the truth conditions of PC predication. The first kind of lexeme is used in canonical predicative constructions, the other in predicative construct…
The Implications of Managing
Since Karttunen's original observations about the two-way implicative verb manage, there has been no consensus as to the descriptive and analytical characterization of the implicational behavior of this verb. This short paper presents a reevaluation of the relevant descriptive generalizations, and proposes an analysis, couched within the causal modeling approach to causation developed by Schulz (2011) . We propose that manage sentences presuppose…
A note on possession and mereology in Ulwa property concept constructions
Ulwa (Misumalpan; Nicaragua) shows a puzzling and unique pattern in which a single affix marks the head of a possessive noun phrase and appears on roots expressing property concepts. This pattern has been argued to be semantically motivated by Koontz-Garboden and Francez (2010). This paper discusses two constructions of Ulwa that do not receive a natural treatment in their analysis, potentially casting doubt on the plausibility of a semantic moti…
Meaning and category: Semantic constraints on parts of speech
Taking the Lexical Semantic Variation Hypothesis and the well-known fact that property concept lexemes vary in lexical category as the points of departure, it is considered whether there is any correlation between the meaning of a property concept lexeme and its lexical category. A novel observation is made about a lexical gap: while nouns across languages can denote qualities as well as sets of individuals, adjectives can never denote qualities.…
Conclusion
This concluding chapter highlighting outstanding issues related to its main topics, among these the notion of translational equivalence; the uniformity/transparency debate in the explanation of morphosyntactic variation; the lexical semantics of lexical categories; and the nature of mass nouns. The book closes by situating the main issues against the broader issues of key import in the field, particularly the issue of linguistic diversity, and th…
Quality nouns and other mass nouns
This chapter considers the relation between qualities and masses, showing that the order-theoretic difference here posited between them—qualities are ordered by a preorder called size and a mereological partial order, whereas masses are only ordered by the latter—explains a range of interpretational and distributional contrasts between quality and mass-denoting nouns in various languages, in contexts such as exclamatives and count quantifiers. Th…
The locus of variation in property concept sentences
This chapter contrasts the uniformity and transparency approaches to explaining variation in the domain of property concept sentences, examining their respective predictions with case studies from Ulwa and Malayalam. Two ways of spelling out a uniformity-based analysis are exemplified, and contrasted with the transparency-based Lexical Semantic Variation Hypothesis, which is argued to be superior on empirical and theoretical grounds. The broader …
Variation in the form of property concept sentences: The explananda
This chapter demarcates the empirical scope of the book, defining the key notions of property concept sentence and property concept lexeme, showing that property concept sentences vary in whether they invoke the morphosyntax of canonical predication or the morphosyntax of possession. We consider, at a descriptive level, how the nature of the property concept lexeme in a property concept sentence is tied to this variation. Facts from several langu…
The lexical semantic variation hypothesis
This chapter lays out the main hypothesis about variation in the form of property concept sentences explored in the book—the Lexical Semantic Variation Hypothesis—and introduces the semantics of qualities that underlies the analyses developed in the rest of the book. The hypothesis is that property concept lexemes can have two different kinds of denotation: sets of individuals or qualities. Building on the observation that quality-denoting proper…
Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation: Qualities and the Grammar of Property Concepts
Systematic variation in form between semantic equivalents across languages is a key explanandum of linguistic theory. Two contrasting views of the role of lexical semantics in the analysis of such variation can be found in the literature: (1) uniformity, whereby lexical meaning is universal, and morphosyntactic variation arises from idiosyncratic differences in the inventory and phonological shape of language-particular functional material, and (…
Summative Existentials
Under certain conditions, existential sentences have readings that are not predicted and cannot be modeled, given common assumptions about the construction. For example, the sentence There could be three outcomes to this election is normally taken to express that three things could be the outcome of the election, not that it is possible that the election will have three outcomes. This article proposes the first analysis of such “summative” readin…
Three arguments for an individual concept analysis of specificational sentences
A Voice that Would Sound All the Notes: Sound and Regeneration in Vladimir Jabotinsky's Hebrew Revivalism
The vernacularization of Hebrew speech was an integral component of the Zionist conception of national revival. In this article I explore some of the ways in which the discourse of regeneration and the figure of the "muscle Jew" shaped ideas about the sonic component of Hebrew speech, through the case of study of Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky. I show that Jabotinsky took speech, and Hebrew speech in particular, to be a potent site of regeneration, vi…
Linguistics (15 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (13 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis (7 works) · Natural Language Processing Techniques (7 works) · Mathematics (6 works) · Programming language (6 works) · Lexical Semantics (5 works)