Reassessing the third person pronominal "copula" in spoken Israeli Hebrew

Bibliographic Data

ID4861157
AuthorsLeon Shor (0000-0001-9417-1983, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume58
Issue6
Pages1807-1837
Publication date2020-11-25
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLinguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0024-3949 • E-ISSN: 1613-396X
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/ling-2020-0241
OpenAlexW3107764553
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited24

This paper reassesses the widespread claim in Hebrew linguistics that the medial third person pronoun in the "subject NP + pronoun + predicate" construction in Israeli Hebrew functions either as copula, or as a referential subject in an extrapositional sentence. Based on the examination of this construction in Hebrew conversation, as represented in The Corpus of Spoken Israeli Hebrew (CoSIH), and based on theoretical considerations, the paper argues that the distinction between copular and referential uses of medial third person pronouns is not justified, leading to the conclusion that apparent "copular" third person pronouns are in fact a second realization of the subject referent, and that sentences containing such pronouns are better viewed as cases of subject doubling. This paper positions subject doubling in the context of typology and language acquisition, and argues for the need to analyze it using natural data, focusing on speaker- and listener- oriented motivations

Copula (linguistics) · Definiteness · Deixis · Hebrew · Linguistics · Object pronoun · Personal pronoun · Pronoun · Referent · Sentence · Subject (documents) · Subject pronoun · Computer Science · Multilingual Education and Policy · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

Tools

Open DOI