מאמר חדש של פרופ' טל סילוני

Syntactic variation in contemporary Hebrew: From participial to tensed relatives

 (פורסם ב- Natural Language & Linguistic Theory)

:תקציר

 
This paper reveals variation emerging in the domain of participial relatives in written contemporary Hebrew. Participial relatives in Hebrew are characterized not only by their verbal form, but also by the morpheme ha- that introduces them. In recent years, they have begun to appear with tensed forms. I argue that homonymy in the verbal system, combined with limited input conditions, has led to late and imperfect acquisition by some speakers. These speakers analyze the participle in these relatives as a tensed form, signaling the emergence of a new relative complementizer. The analysis makes clear predictions: the emerging relatives are expected to exhibit the cluster of properties associated with tensed relatives, in contrast to participial relatives. Moreover, given the observed homonymy, the participle is expected to be reanalyzed as a tensed form in additional constructions. These predictions are borne out, showing that linguistic variation, even when it arises late in the acquisition process, is constrained by UG. The study highlights a case of linguistic variation induced by written language, whereas innovations typically arise in the vernacular, and underscores the importance of investigating linguistic variation synchronically.

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