Tal Siloni
Biographic Data
| ID | 966044 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tal Siloni |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tal |
| FAMILY NAME | Siloni |
| SIGNATURE | SILONI T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tel Aviv University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1709-8468 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 124 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Subject to change: Agreement and Case
In contemporary colloquial Hebrew, unaccusative verbs may fail to exhibit φ-agreement with their subject when the latter appears postverbally, but not when it appears preverbally. To resolve disagreements regarding the role that intervention may play in licensing this lack of agreement, we conducted two acceptability judgment experiments, whose design and results we report. The findings indicate that intervention is not the factor licensing lack …
Syntactic variation in contemporary Hebrew: From participial to tensed relatives
Decomposability and the syntactic flexibility of Hebrew idioms
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.Idioms seem to be restricted in their syntactic flexibility (i.e., their ability to undergo syntactic operations, such as pronominalization, fronting, etc.) compared to literal phrases, but at the same time they also differ from one another along this metric. One of the most prominent accounts of this phenomenon is provided by Nunberg et al. (1994), who suggest that it …
The Relevance of Unaccusativity to Possessive Datives
The possessive dative construction has been widely adopted as an unaccusativity diagnostic (Borer and Grodzinsky 1986). Gafter (2014) casts doubt on the relevance of unaccusativity to the acceptability of the construction. We conducted a series of acceptability judgment experiments to investigate the validity of the possessive dative construction as an unaccusativity diagnostic, controlling for possible confounds such as animacy, definiteness, pl…
The Dative Dispositional Construction in Russian
The article sheds new light on the so-called dative dispositional construction in Russian. We revise the characterization of the classes of verbs able to feed the construction, showing that its input is best defined in terms of the Theta System (Reinhart's ( 2002 , 2016 ) approach to thematic relations). To resolve controversies in the literature regarding the licensing conditions of the construction and its possible interpretations, we ran two s…
Idioms: The type-sensitive storage model
Idiom surveys conducted on both English and Hebrew motivate a distinction between phrasal idioms, which are headed by a lexical head, and clausal idioms, which involve sentential functional material. The surveys show that these two types of idioms have different patterns of distribution across diathesis alternations. A verbal passive phrasal idiom necessarily shares its idiomatic meaning with the corresponding transitive, while the unaccusative, …
Ditransitive idioms in Hebrew
Idiom storage and the lexicon
Using a new methodology, the paper reports experimental work that sheds light on the organization of the lexicon, the storage technique of phrasal idioms, and the derivation of various diatheses. We conducted an experiment to examine the pattern of distribution of phrasal idioms across several diatheses. Native speakers of Hebrew were taught invented Hebrew idioms inspired by French idioms. The idioms were headed by predicates of three diatheses:…
Anticausatives have no Cause(r): A rejoinder to
Reciprocal verbs and symmetry
Causatives across components
Anticausatives: Against reflexivization
Hebrew Idioms: The Organization of the Lexical Component
The paper argues that the empirical domain of idioms can shed light on the architecture of the mental lexicon and the nature of its building blocks whether roots or words. A corpus-based study of the distribution of various diatheses in verb phrase idioms in Hebrew was conducted. Its results reveal an intriguing discrepancy between the behavior of unaccusatives, transitives and adjectival passives on the one hand and verbal passives one the other…
The Lexicon-Syntax Parameter: Reflexivization and Other Arity Operations
We argue that crosslinguistic variation regarding verbal reflexivization is parametric, reflecting a broader lexicon-syntax parameter: arity operations-operations on θ-roles, which affect the valence of a predicate-can apply in the lexicon or in the syntax. The significant empirical coverage of this parameter supports the view that the lexicon must be an active component of the grammar. The discussion focuses mainly on the formation of reflexive …
Active Lexicon
The theta system, which Reinhart (this volume) views as the central part of the systems of concepts, includes (i) lexical entries, which are coded concepts; (ii) derivational operations, which are operations that apply to concepts to derive related entries; (iii) mapping principles, which instruct the computational system (syntax) with regard to the order of merging of arguments. The central part of the systems of concepts is, in fact, the compon…
Construct states at the PF interface
The paper claims that the Semitic Construct state defines a prosodic domain of Case checking. It has been common lore in generative grammar that the domain of Case checking is a syntactic one. In concert with recent proposals, I argue that Case can also be checked at PF; the domain of Case checking is then defined in prosodic terms. The properties of constructs follow straightforwardly. The treatment extends naturally to nonnominal constructs, wh…
Agrobject is not Agrparticiple
On the basis of empirical data from Romance and Semitic languages, this paper shows that contrary to widespread assumptions, the locus of participle agreement and that of object agreement (accusative Case checking) cannot be identical. Under an Agr-based approach, this means that two distinct agreement projections must be postuled. The paper further argues that the position of Agr o P is contingent upon the diathesis of the participle liable to a…
The minimalist program
On participial relatives and complementizer D0: A case study in Hebrew and French
The Lexicon-Syntax Parameter: Reflexivization and Other Arity Operations
We argue that crosslinguistic variation regarding verbal reflexivization is parametric, reflecting a broader lexicon-syntax parameter: arity operations-operations on θ-roles, which affect the valence of a predicate-can apply in the lexicon or in the syntax. The significant empirical coverage of this parameter supports the view that the lexicon must be an active component of the grammar. The discussion focuses mainly on the formation of reflexive …
Reciprocal verbs and symmetry
Anticausatives: Against reflexivization
Causatives across components
Anticausatives have no Cause(r): A rejoinder to
On participial relatives and complementizer D0: A case study in Hebrew and French
Ditransitive idioms in Hebrew
Idiom storage and the lexicon
Using a new methodology, the paper reports experimental work that sheds light on the organization of the lexicon, the storage technique of phrasal idioms, and the derivation of various diatheses. We conducted an experiment to examine the pattern of distribution of phrasal idioms across several diatheses. Native speakers of Hebrew were taught invented Hebrew idioms inspired by French idioms. The idioms were headed by predicates of three diatheses:…
The Dative Dispositional Construction in Russian
The article sheds new light on the so-called dative dispositional construction in Russian. We revise the characterization of the classes of verbs able to feed the construction, showing that its input is best defined in terms of the Theta System (Reinhart's ( 2002 , 2016 ) approach to thematic relations). To resolve controversies in the literature regarding the licensing conditions of the construction and its possible interpretations, we ran two s…
On participial relatives and complementizer D0: A case study in Hebrew and French
Agrobject is not Agrparticiple
On the basis of empirical data from Romance and Semitic languages, this paper shows that contrary to widespread assumptions, the locus of participle agreement and that of object agreement (accusative Case checking) cannot be identical. Under an Agr-based approach, this means that two distinct agreement projections must be postuled. The paper further argues that the position of Agr o P is contingent upon the diathesis of the participle liable to a…
The minimalist program
Construct states at the PF interface
The paper claims that the Semitic Construct state defines a prosodic domain of Case checking. It has been common lore in generative grammar that the domain of Case checking is a syntactic one. In concert with recent proposals, I argue that Case can also be checked at PF; the domain of Case checking is then defined in prosodic terms. The properties of constructs follow straightforwardly. The treatment extends naturally to nonnominal constructs, wh…
Active Lexicon
The theta system, which Reinhart (this volume) views as the central part of the systems of concepts, includes (i) lexical entries, which are coded concepts; (ii) derivational operations, which are operations that apply to concepts to derive related entries; (iii) mapping principles, which instruct the computational system (syntax) with regard to the order of merging of arguments. The central part of the systems of concepts is, in fact, the compon…
The Lexicon-Syntax Parameter: Reflexivization and Other Arity Operations
We argue that crosslinguistic variation regarding verbal reflexivization is parametric, reflecting a broader lexicon-syntax parameter: arity operations-operations on θ-roles, which affect the valence of a predicate-can apply in the lexicon or in the syntax. The significant empirical coverage of this parameter supports the view that the lexicon must be an active component of the grammar. The discussion focuses mainly on the formation of reflexive …
Hebrew Idioms: The Organization of the Lexical Component
The paper argues that the empirical domain of idioms can shed light on the architecture of the mental lexicon and the nature of its building blocks whether roots or words. A corpus-based study of the distribution of various diatheses in verb phrase idioms in Hebrew was conducted. Its results reveal an intriguing discrepancy between the behavior of unaccusatives, transitives and adjectival passives on the one hand and verbal passives one the other…
Causatives across components
Anticausatives: Against reflexivization
Reciprocal verbs and symmetry
Anticausatives have no Cause(r): A rejoinder to
Ditransitive idioms in Hebrew
Idiom storage and the lexicon
Using a new methodology, the paper reports experimental work that sheds light on the organization of the lexicon, the storage technique of phrasal idioms, and the derivation of various diatheses. We conducted an experiment to examine the pattern of distribution of phrasal idioms across several diatheses. Native speakers of Hebrew were taught invented Hebrew idioms inspired by French idioms. The idioms were headed by predicates of three diatheses:…
Idioms: The type-sensitive storage model
Idiom surveys conducted on both English and Hebrew motivate a distinction between phrasal idioms, which are headed by a lexical head, and clausal idioms, which involve sentential functional material. The surveys show that these two types of idioms have different patterns of distribution across diathesis alternations. A verbal passive phrasal idiom necessarily shares its idiomatic meaning with the corresponding transitive, while the unaccusative, …
The Dative Dispositional Construction in Russian
The article sheds new light on the so-called dative dispositional construction in Russian. We revise the characterization of the classes of verbs able to feed the construction, showing that its input is best defined in terms of the Theta System (Reinhart's ( 2002 , 2016 ) approach to thematic relations). To resolve controversies in the literature regarding the licensing conditions of the construction and its possible interpretations, we ran two s…
The Relevance of Unaccusativity to Possessive Datives
The possessive dative construction has been widely adopted as an unaccusativity diagnostic (Borer and Grodzinsky 1986). Gafter (2014) casts doubt on the relevance of unaccusativity to the acceptability of the construction. We conducted a series of acceptability judgment experiments to investigate the validity of the possessive dative construction as an unaccusativity diagnostic, controlling for possible confounds such as animacy, definiteness, pl…
Decomposability and the syntactic flexibility of Hebrew idioms
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.Idioms seem to be restricted in their syntactic flexibility (i.e., their ability to undergo syntactic operations, such as pronominalization, fronting, etc.) compared to literal phrases, but at the same time they also differ from one another along this metric. One of the most prominent accounts of this phenomenon is provided by Nunberg et al. (1994), who suggest that it …
Subject to change: Agreement and Case
In contemporary colloquial Hebrew, unaccusative verbs may fail to exhibit φ-agreement with their subject when the latter appears postverbally, but not when it appears preverbally. To resolve disagreements regarding the role that intervention may play in licensing this lack of agreement, we conducted two acceptability judgment experiments, whose design and results we report. The findings indicate that intervention is not the factor licensing lack …
Syntactic variation in contemporary Hebrew: From participial to tensed relatives
Linguistics (16 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (13 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Mathematics (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (6 works) · Natural language processing (6 works) · Grammar (5 works) · Lexicon (5 works)