Rivka€Halevy,€Jerusalem...

The Subject Coreferential l Pronoun in Hebrew

Rivka Halevy, Jerusalem

1. Introduction

It is well known that in Semitic languages the dative case is generally marked by thepreposition l “to”, “for”. It is important to note that in Hebrew this morpheme hasseveral other functions as well. As in many nonhabere languages, it functions as apossessive marker when it appears with the verb haya “be” or with the equivalentverboid form ye , e.g. hayta / ye lerut/lah mekonit “Ruth /she [toher] had /has acar”. Additionally, it also conveys direction towards a goal, and marks the in nitive.These different functions converge on the same morpheme not only in Hebrew, butin many other languages (both Semitic and nonSemitic). The relationship betweenthe functions might therefore be worth investigating, but it is not the concern of thispaper. This study is concerned solely with the meaning and function of theconstruction which involves a verb + the preposition l suf xed by a personalpronoun which agrees with the verbincorporated Subject, as in 1.

(1) vaadayin ya ºa lah ira keºari ona (Agnon Shira 27) andstill sat toher Shira asinthe rst“And Shira was still sitting about as earlier”

Unlike many writers, I do not refer to this pronominal l as a “re exive dativepronoun”.1 My main reason for avoiding this term is the fact that in the relevant

* It is a great honour for me to present this paper to my teacher Prof. Gideon Goldenbergwho opened my eyes and gave me the keys to the garden of linguistics where I am sometimeswandering beyond the realm of syntax.

1 See Borer & Grodzinsky Clitics 185 ff who refer to it for purely morphosyntactic reasonsas a “re exive dative”. Berman Affectee 51ff uses the rather loose term “re exive orcoreferential dative”. Many studies of Biblical Hebrew also use the term “re exive dative”,cf. JöuonMuraoka Grammar 488, König Historisch §35, Waltke & O’Connor Introduction208, Williams Syntax §272, even though Biblical Hebrew has no other paradigm of re exivepronouns which is part of the langue.

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Rivka Halevy2

construction l cannot be replaced by the ordinary unambiguously re exive pronounbased on the noun etsem (“bone”, “thing”), which came into use in postBiblicaltimes. Instead I use the descriptive label “Subject Coreferential Dative” (hereafter:SCD), though I shall argue that this pronoun is best analyzed as a “Caseless Af x”,i.e. as a dative form which does not indicate abstract Dative Case.

It should be noted, rst of all, that unlike the regular re exive pronoun (le atsmoetc.), the SCD can occur with verbs in the re exive, middle and inchoative forms(typically of ni¹ al and hitpa el) and also with intransitive verbs, as will be shownbelow. With verbs of accomplishment and achievement the marked construction withthe SCD and the unmarked construction with the regular re exive personal pronounare in complementary distribution. That is to say, the SCD construction is notequivalent to the explicit re exive construction. Moreover, as will be shown, itsfunction amounts to more than just personal reference.

Like the Romance Ethical Dative (hereafter: ED),2 the SCD is a nonlexicaldative which can only appear as a clitic (i.e. cannot be expressed by a full NP), andcannot be stressed, questioned or separated from the verb.3 This clitic is not anargument of the verb or even an adjunct — it is not triggered by any element in theclause and does not affect the grammatical function of the verb or the thetaroleassigned to the “external” argument. It does not add any new participant role to theevent structure, and its insertion does not affect the relationship between the coreparticipants in the event. From a semantic point of view, it is redundant, since it canbe dropped without affecting the truth conditions of the sentence. The SCD is alsosimilar to the ED in that it cannot be replaced with any other independentpreposition, such as bi ºil “for” (e.g. bi ºilo “for him”). This is true not only forSCDs cooccurring with intransitive verbs, but also for SCDs appearing withtransitive verbs.

The SCD differs from the ED, however, in that it must be coreferential with thesubject, while the ED prototypically refers to someone other than the subject. Thisparameter also distinguishes the SCD from the datives in (2) and (3).

(2) aºarti li / leÂa / leRuti et hayad“I broke my / your / Ruthi’s [lit. tome / toyou / toRuti] hand”

2 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the ethical (or ethic) dative is “used to implythat a person, other than the subject or object, has an interest in the fact stated”. According toB. H. Kennedy, The Revised Latin Primer (London 1962), “a Dative of a Personal Pronoun,called the Ethic Dative, is used, in familiar talk or writing, to mark interest or call attention,e.g. quid mihi Celsus agit? Horace (‘Tell me, what is Celsus about?’), Haec vobis per biduumeorum milita fuit Livy (‘This, mind you, was their style of ghting for two days’)”. The ED iscommon in Modern Romance languages (especially Modern French and Galician), e.g. Frenchles gosses lui ont gribouillé sur tous les murs (lit. the kids herDat have scribbled on all thewalls), example taken from Autier & Reed Datives 295 (for examples from Galician seeÁlvarez, Regueira & Monteagudo Gramática 174–175). This kind of ED (namely the genuineED) is now also common in Contemporary Hebrew and in some other Semitic languages (seesection 5).

3 See Borer & Grodzinsky Clitics 185.

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The Construction of Verb + Subject Repetitive l Pronoun in Hebrew 3

(3) atta xayyaº lesadder leÂa / li / leRuti et hainyanim“You must arrange your / my / Ruthi’s affairs”

In (2) the l pronoun functions as a “dative of inalienable possession (IP)”, markingthe possessor, while in (3) it functions as a “dative of interest” or dativus commodi /incommodi, marking the affectee or benefectee. The examples show that unlike theSCD, these datives do not have to be coreferential with the subject, and they can beexpressed by a full NP. Therefore, they represent a phenomenon distinct from theSCD, and will not be comprehensively discussed in this paper.4

The SCD construction occurs most commonly with intransitive verbs of motion(e.g. halak “go”, qam “get up”, xalap “pass”, histalleq “disappear”, etc.), or withverbs denoting a vertical or horizontal stative position (e.g. amad “stand”, ya aº“sit”, aÂaº “lie” and the like). There are, however, a few additional verb classeswhich can appear in this construction, including transitive verbs, as shown in (12)and (13) below. Thus, it seems that the realization of the construction cannot beaccounted for in terms of the semantic character of the verb.5

The novelty of the present study consists, rst and foremost, in approaching thephenomenon under discussion from the viewpoint of the higher levels of structure,i.e. illocution, pragmatics. The objective of this study is to demonstrate that the coreferential l pronoun is highly context bound and must be characterized in terms ofinference rather than grammar. In other words, this study aims to provide asemanticopragmatic account of the function of this construction in ContemporaryHebrew.

2. Previous treatments of the phenomenon and its occurrences in earlier stagesof Hebrew and in cognate languages

I shall now brie y refer to traditional characterizations of the construction underdiscussion.

In Biblical Hebrew, the SCD is severely restricted in its semantic and syntacticdistribution. Semantically, it is generally con ned to verbs of motion, andsyntactically, it occurs mostly (though not exclusively) with imperatives and rstperson imperfect. Traditional studies which refer to it generally associate it with thedativus commodi / incommodi or with the socalled dativus ethicus. However, thisassociation seems rather dubious, since, as mentioned above, the Semitic SCDconstruction is characterized by coreference between the subject and the pronoun

4 Berman Affectee 55 fn. 13 lumps datives of this type with the SCD, characterizing allthree types as “re exive or coreferential datives” (ibid. 51), saying that they “must becoreferential with the subject of the sentence, and hence must be pronominal”[my emphasis].Examples (2) and (3) above show that this characterization is inaccurate with respect to the IPdative and the dativus commodi .

5 Berman Affectee 55 rightly observes that “it is not easy to provide a uniform account ofthis use of dative marking, for it varies according to the verbs with which it is associated, aswell as the avour which the speaker chooses to attach to his utterance by this extra markingon the action or perpetrator of the action”.

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Rivka Halevy4

suf xed to the preposition, while the dativus commodi/ incommodi and the dativusethicus do not necessarily involve such coreference. Traditional studies alsocharacterize the Biblical SCD as “apparently pleonastic” and “redundant”.6

Gesenius suggests that the function of this pronominal l is “to give emphasis to thesigni cance of the occurrence in question for a particular subject”.7 Other writerscommonly refer to this pronominal as “re exive”.8 Among the characterizationsfound in traditional studies, one of the most plausible is the one given by BDB, whore nes the traditional de nition of the dativus ethicus by describing it as a “dative offeeling”, saying that it is “used re exively, throwing the action back upon thesubject, and expressing with some pathos the interest, or satisfaction, orcompleteness with which it [i.e. the action] is (or is to be) accomplished”.9 In asomewhat similar vein, though from a different perspective, I shall suggest that theSCD construction is a modal marker used by the speaker to express his opinion orattitude towards the proposition that the sentence expresses or towards the situationthat the proposition describes.

A comparison of various English, French and German translations of the OldTestament in Hebrew reveals that the SCD is not translated consistently. WhileEnglish translators sometimes simply omit it, French translators frequently use thepattern s’en aller, or else va t’en, in the case of imperative clauses with the verb ‘togo’, as in (4) and (5).

(4) l‰Â l Âå mearß Âå umimmoladt Âå umibbey¨ åºiÂå ‰l håår‰ß² ‰r ar ‰kkå (Gen. 12:1)

go toyou from yourcountry andfromyourmotherland and fromyourhouse (of) yourfather totheland that Iwillshowyou“Leave your country, your family and your father’s house, for the land I willshow you”“Va t’en hors de ton pays, et de ta parenté, et de la maison de ton père, dans lepays que je te montrerai”“Gehe aus / Ziehe fort aus dienem Vaterland, aus deiner verwandschaft undaus deinem Vaters Hause in ein Land, das ich dir zeigen will”

(5) hass tåw åºår hagg‰‰m åla¹ hålaÂ lo (Song of Songs 2:11) theautumn passed therain passedby went tohim“La pluie a cessé, elle s’en est allée / s’en alla”

In example (6) the French translator (Louis Segond version) uses a personal pronounin the direct object form (‘enfuistoi’) and the German translator (following Luther’sversion) similarly uses the accusative personal form (‘ücte dich’).

(6) qum ra Âå ‰l låºån (Gen. 27:43) andstandup runaway toyou to Laban

6 See GKC 381.7 GKC ibid.8 See fn. 1.9 BDB §515b.

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“(Now, my son, listen to me) go away and take refuge with my brotherLaban”“Lèvetoi, enfuistoi vers Laban”“Mach dich auf und iehe/ üchte dich zu Laban”

In English, the meaning of the construction can be approximated by complex verbalconstructions such as ‘go off’, ‘go away’, ‘be off’ and ‘stand about’ (which can beused as translations of Hebrew halaÂ lo, yatsa lo, histalleq lo and amad lorespectively) or by thematizing expressions like (ba) ² ‰r l, ‘as for X’. However, itis dif cult to characterize the function of this dative marking in a uniform way, for asmentioned above, it is basically context bound, and is often used by the speaker to

avour the utterance in ways that are “not expressible in English”, to quote BDB.10

A construction of verb + Srepetetive l pronoun also occurs in middle Aramaic,Classical Syriac and Mishnaic Hebrew11 but with a different meaning and function.Since space does not permit me to go into much detail here, I refer the reader toJoosten’s extensive study of this construction in classical Syriac, which concludesthat the l pronoun de nes the preceding verbform as “an entering into a terminalstate associated with the verb”.12 That is, it functions in the clausal level as anaspectual marker of the perfective, often denoting the ingressive Aktionsart. Thepostverbal l marked pronoun in Mishnaic Hebrew is often characterized in a similarway.13 For example, in Mishnaic Hebrew (as in middle Aramaic and classicalSyriac), a phrase like halaÂ lo would signify “he went away” (i.e. “he entered into astate of being gone”), in contrast to the simple verb form halaÂ, which signi es “hewalked along”. Similarly, ya aº lo would convey “he sat down” (i.e. “entered into astate of sitting”). In Modern Hebrew, “entered into a state of sitting” is rendered byhitya eº, i.e. by a hitpa el verbform, which denotes the ingressive, while ya aº loconveys “he was sitting leisurely”. In Eastern NeoAramaic, the l marked personalpronoun has also spread into the Subject agreement paradigm, probably via a stativeparticiple form of the verb, and has become an integral part of the verbal system.This is exempli ed by (7), which is taken from the Zakho dialect.

(7) baxta xzela xa góra. woman seentoher one man“The woman saw a man”

10 See BDB ibid.11 The use of this construction in Mishnaic Hebrew is probably in uenced by Aramaic.12 Joosten Dativus 475.13 See Sokolof Bereshit. The underlying idea comes from Prof. H. J. Polotsky.

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Rivka Halevy6

Modern spoken Arabic, on the other hand, has a construction similar in bothstructure and function to the one attested in classical and Contemporary Hebrew, asshown in (8), but apparently its occurrences are limited.14

(8) qa adË lahum oye. theysat tothem alittle“They were sitting about for a short while”

Discussion

3. EGOoriented construction

I maintain that abstract meaning is integrated in syntactic constructions, and that theconstruction template or “construction frame” (to use Construction Grammarterminology), along with its speci c meaning, exists independently of the individualverbs that may occur with it.15

The Hebrew preposition l is in its most basic sense a spatial element. In the SCDconstruction, it expresses two opposite directions of the action, namely movement inand out, owing outwards (from the Sentity) and going back (turning the actionback upon the Sentity). The main effect of the construction is therefore to assignre exivity to the event, in that the event is viewed as re ecting forward from the Snominal to the pronoun and then back from the pronoun to the Snominal. Inaddition, the construction frame superimposes a sense of autonomy, in that the eventis viewed as performed by and for the Sentity. In other words, the realization of thisconstruction frame indicates that the speaker conceptualizes the Sentity asautonomous.16 To quote Glinert,17 a speaker who uses this construction is

14 See Brockelmann Grundr 380, who provides some examples from Syriac Arabic, e.g.nåm lak oßße (“schlaf ein Weilchen”), ribt l¥ nefse (“ich rauchte einige Züge”). For furtherexamples from spoken Arabic, see Piamenta Jerusalem Arabic 217. For a broader typologicalcomparison, it might be worthwhile to investigate parallel constructions (i.e. verb + Srepetitive dative or genitive pronoun) in ChamitoSemitic languages. For African languages,see Noss Lamed 328–330, who provides examples from Jukunoid and Chadic languages. Cf.also Jenni Präposition 48, who mentions a similar pattern in Ancient Egyptian.

15 This “topdown” analysis of constructions is strongly advocated in a recent study byGoldberg (Goldberg CG 1995), but has been part and parcel of functional approaches toconstructions for a long time. See Haas De ning, amongst others.

16 A quite similar effect is conveyed in Vulgar Latin by the re exive (dative) construction,where it greatly extended and later on expanded to other Romance languages. To quoteBourciez Éléments §118c, “On disait déjà dans la langue classique abstinere ou abstinere se,erumpere ou erumpere se [… ] pour indiquer d’une façon plus analitique la part que le sujetprend à l’action; beacoup de verbes se sont ainsi construits, notamment des verbes demouvement: Surrexisse se Deos (Arn. 5, 18); vadent se unusquisque (Peregr. 25, 7)”.

17 See Glinert MHG 224.

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“highlighting that the subject is his ‘own free agent’” capable of acting on his own,and responsible for his own condition, as is illustrated by (9) below.

(9) lo xadalti laxlom baseter eegdal [… ] veeleÂ li lihyot kabbay (OzStory 310) not Istopped todream insecret thatI’llgrow up [… ] andwillgo tome

tobe a reman“I haven’t stopped dreaming secretly that I’ll grow up [… ] and become a

reman”

This may be true even when the Snominal represents an inanimate entity, as in (10).

(10) beleº habreÂa pi ape a lah mizraqa xari it (Oz Story 356) Intheheart (of) thepool bubbled toherself afountain silent

“In the middle of the pool, a fountain was bubbling quietly (to itself)”

In a somewhat similar vein, Muraoka describes the construction as “creating a selfcontained little cosmos around the subject, detached from the surrounding world”,18

and therefore characterizes this l pronoun as a “centripetal Lamedh”. And indeed,isolation, loneliness, dissociation, egoism, or frivolity can often be associated withinthis construction.

Additionally, the construction often involves a sense of vagueness andcasualness. In other words, it triggers reduced operativity or attenuation of theactivity or stateofaffairs, as is shown above in (1) and also in (11), where theconstruction clearly creates an effect of aimless and casual activity.

(11) me olam lo ra iti otam [… ] yo ºim lahem leruax haereº alexad miney sa¹salav (Oz Story 59)

never not Isaw them [… ] sitting tothem tobreeze theeveningon one oftwo benchesofit“I have never seen them [… ] sitting leisurely on one of its two benches inthe evening breeze”

In such cases, the most adequate translation of the construction into English wouldprobably involve adverbials like ‘about’ (as in (1) and (15)), ‘somehow’ (as in (16)),‘leisurely’ (as in (11)) and ‘around’ (as in (19) and (20)), or sentenceadverbs like‘for his or her own pleasure’, as in (13), used by the speaker to comment on theactions perpetrated by the Sentity.

With verbs that have a “high degree” of transitivity (according to the parametersestablished by Hopper and Thompson Transitivity), and especially with telic verbs,the construction frame superimposes the meaning of engrossed activity, emphasizingthe Agent’s own involvement, and reducing the degree to which the action istransferred to the patient or the degree to which the patient is affected by the action.

18 See Muraoka DE 497.

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Rivka Halevy8

Consequently, the construction yields a lesser degree of transitivity,19 as shown in(12) and (13) below. Note, however, that it does not necessarily imply a change inthe objective aspectual meaning (Aktionsart) of the verb. For example, it clearly doesnot change the inherently telic meaning of the following verbs kirsem “gnaw” andxa†af “kidnap” in (12) and (13) below.

(12) kim a† kol se¹er eniÂtaº beiºrit [...] – na atsti bo innayimvenissiti leÂarsem li be¹innati (Oz Story 336) almost every book thatwaswritten inHebrew [… ] Istuck init teethandtried tognaw tomyself inmycorner“Almost every book which was written in Hebrew [...]— I stuck myteeth into it and tried to gnaw on it in my corner”

(13) anaq exad meÂ ar, mama mi¹letset [...] haya mitnappel alk¹arim, mi paxot xo†e¹ lo (Sidon Monster) giant one ugly, just amonster [… ] was attackingvillages, families kidnapping tohim“One ugly giant, a real monster [… ] used to attack villages, kidnappingfamilies (for his own pleasure)”

According to Hopper’s and Thompson’s “transitivity hypothesis”, an action can bemore effectively transferred to a patient who is individuated than to one who is not.It is not surprising, therefore, that in (13) above, where a transitive verb (xo†e¹“kidnap”) is “suf xed” by the pronominal l, the Object (mi paxot “families”) is notindividuated.

As shown in (10) above, inanimates are not categorically excluded from the SCDconstruction. When used with inanimate Sentities, the construction often yields ameaning of an uncontrolled or haphazard situation. The Sentity, which represents anunintentional causer, is conceptualized as a living being, and is given a kind ofindividual identity of an autonomous entity capable of acting on its own.Alternatively, the action or event is conceptualized as spontaneous, i.e. as occurringof its own accord, without the control or instigation by an outside agent. Thus, itwould be probably true to state that the SCD construction has the force of ascribing

19 In saying this, I disagree with Berman’s (Affectee 53) somewhat ambiguous claim that theSrepetitive pronominal l functions as an “aspectual marker”. Furthermore, I also disagreewith Borer & Grodzinsky Clitics 187, who posit that “RD [re exive dative] clitics [are] givinga clear imperfective avor to the predicates with which they are associated” [emphasis mine].They claim that Rani abar lo xallonot lahana ato (lit.: Rani broke tohim windows forhispleasure) “does not convey the meaning that Rani was breaking some speci c windows, butrather the meaning that Rani was engaged in windowbreaking as an ongoing activity”. BelowI shall argue that the nonlexical l pronoun in question has an expressive or evaluativefunction, expressing the speaker’s attitude towards the Sentity.

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some kind of animacy to an inanimate Sentity,20 as illustrated in (14) and (15)below.

(14) ani ra iti bemo eynay eyk s¹arim matslixim lehexaº veli qo alahem bexe Âat haaºaq [… ] limtso lahem mistor a¹luli (Oz Story341) I haveseen inmyown eyes how books succeed tohide andtosinktothem indarkness (of) thedust to nd tothem ahiding place dusky“I have seen with my own eyes how books can hide and sink into thedarkness of dust [… ] nding themselves a dusky hiding place”

(15) umi qa¹ayim niyyim [… ] munnaxim lahem bero giº at s¹arim(Oz Story 61). andeyeglasses second [… ] werelying tothem onthetopof hillofbooks“And a second pair of eyeglasses [… ] were lying about on the top of apile of books”

In light of what was said above, it is not surprising that the construction can also berealized with inanimate Snominals in re exive and inchoative structures (usually inhitpa el, ni¹ al or hi¹ il), as shown in (16)–(18).

(16) Mitpattel lo am xu†daq kaze, pagia (Oz Story 13) twisted [re .] tohim there thread thin likethis, vulnerable“A thin little thread twisted there, so vulnerable”

(17) me eºer laulxan hi tappla lah hakeres hame¹unneqet(Yehoshua India 197) beyond tothetable wentlower [REFL] toher thebelly thespoiled“Beyond the table the spoiled belly hung down (to herself)”

(18) leºaso¹ hiºriq lo xiyyuÂ eparats beÂoax atsmo et maxsomey hahitnaggdut (Yehoshua India 173) nally shinedout asmile which burstout by itsownpower OM barriers (of) theresistance“Finally a smile shone out, breaking by its own force the barrier of resistance”

In conclusion, we might say that the SCD construction frame assigns pragmaticsalience to Snominals in terms of their referents’ relative realworld capacity tocontrol situations, or in terms of their resemblance to human participants in the

20 The use of the dative for personi cation has long been recognized in linguistics, forexample in Spanish with regard to the a/ø accusative alternation of some transitive verbs, e.g.Los ácidos atacan metales “the acids corrode the metals”vs. los ácidos atacan a los metales“the acids attack the metals” (see Molho Objet 218).

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Rivka Halevy10

speech event. Therefore, at this stage of the discussion, this construction might bedescribed as EGOoriented, i.e. as presented from the point of view of the Sentity. 21

4. The thematizing function of the dative construction

4.1 Marking the “semantic focus” (of the sentence)

The af nity between the Dative and the Subject has long been recognized inlinguistic literature. One of the semantic similarities between them is that in manylanguages both often express the semantic roles of agent and experiencer (ascommonly mentioned in the literature). Another property which they share is highreferentiality and conceptual autonomy.22 Hopper & Thompson observe that in manylanguages, dative marked nominals typically display “high individuation” properties(i.e. proper, human / animate, concrete, singular, count, referential / de nite).23 TheSCD, then, denotes an entity which exists independently of the situation denoted bythe verb. This property basically corresponds with high thematicity. And in fact,many writers observe that Datives, in many languages, are generally more thematicthan Objects. In other words, they occupy a higher position than accusatives on thetopicality hierarchy.24 This is probably true also for Modern Hebrew, where the postverbal l clitic tends to be adjacent to the verb, unlike the accusative.

Consequently, the dative has been variously called “alternative subject”(Gegensubjekt),25 “second subject”,26 “counteragent”,27 and in cognitive framework,“subject in disguise”.28 Another relevant fact is that in Hebrew, as in many nonhabere languages, the pronominal l is used with an existential verb or verboid (viz.ye ) as a basic way of introducing the possessor. This too may be regarded as amanifestation of the close af nity between the dative of the possessor and the “logicsubject”.

21 Seiler Possession 14 and 47 uses a similar term, namely “EGOinherent”, in connectionwith the IP dative. He states that this construction, in contrast to the unmarked genitiveconstruction, presents the event from the possessor’s point of view.

22 See Keenan Subject 312 ff.23 Hopper & Thompson Transitivity 252–253. These characteristics of the dative marking

have also been observed speci cally with respect to Hebrew (see Berman Oblique and BermanAffectee).

24 See Givón Topic 160–166, and speci cally Neumann Dative 748 and ManoliuManeaInalienability.

25 See Von Weiss Dativ.26 Following Jespersen’s notion of “second nexus” (Jespersen Analytic 140). That is, in a

second predication the dative, as opposed to the accusative, represents a “second subject”. SeeHerslund Datif 223–224.

27 See Herslund Incorporation 46.28 See Delbecque Transitivity 87.

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In its narrow sense, thematicity is de ned as semantic centrality, that is, asrelatively high saliency based on certain purely semantic properties such as animacyand thematic role. This notion of thematicity, strongly advocated by Barnes,29 isclosely related to Fillmore’s “salient conditions” and his saliency hierarchy of NPswithin a sentence.30 Van der Auwera31 refers to the same notion using the term“semantic focus”, which in my view, is less ambiguous than the term theme, as usedby Barnes. As a matter of fact, Van der Auwera distinguishes between two types offocus: “semantic focus” (SF) and “pragmatic focus” (PF). The SF operates in thephrastic level of the sentence: it refers to the entity which is highest on the thematichierarchy in terms of animacy and thematic role. Van der Auwera adds that “thephrastic is organized from the perspective of either the A [agent] or the P [patient] either the A or the P is SF”. The “pragmatic focus”, on the other hand, functions inthe total speechact: it refers to what is pragmatically presupposed and is presentedas belonging to what the speaker assumes to be shared knowledge or old information.Some of the most common signals for pragmatic presupposition are de nitedescriptions, proper names and pronouns. These are the types of constructions thatare most likely to occur behind PF markers as ‘as for X’ and ‘speaking about X.32

Using Van der Awera’s terminology, we can therefore state that the SCD marksthe Sentity as the “semantic focus” of the sentence. In other words, on the semanticor phrastic level, the difference between the dative constructions and thecorresponding nondative constructions lies in the degree of prominence given tovarious participants in the act. To be more speci c, the SCD construction increasesthe degree of prominence given to the Sentity. This “thematizing” function (i.e. inits semantic sense) is obviously also related to affectedness. To quote Authier andReed: “nonlexical dative clitics [… ] refer to an individual who is understood asbeing concerned in some pragmatically determined way by the event denoted by thewhole sentence”.33 However, in our case, the reporting of the event serves as acommentary on the Sentity who is not only the “semantic focus” of the sentence, butalso the “pragmatic focus” (in a sense that will be explained below). Therefore, thepronominal l marks this individual as affected by the event that he himself initiated.In other words, the Sentity is presented as ful lling both the Actor role and theAffectee role.

Furthermore, as Barnes suggests, nonlexical datives may be regarded asaccomplishing the “thematization” of an entity otherwise represented as only

29 See Barnes Nonlexical. 165–168.30 See Fillmore Case 76–78.31 See Van der Auwera What 73.32 Van Der Auwera’s notion of focus is thus completely different from the linguistic uses of

this term which stem directly or indirectly (through Chomsky 1969) from Halliday (1967),who de nes “information focus” in terms of phonological prominence which serves toforeground the main burden of the message, i.e. the new information. Furthermore, in Van derAuwera’s approach, topic and focus are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as in theChomskyan terminology.

33 See Autier & Reed Syntactic 296.

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Rivka Halevy12

peripherally involved.34 This may be true for some instances of the SCDconstruction, namely instances like (10) and (14)–(18) above, where the pronominall is coindexed with an inanimate Sentity, and has the force of ascribing some kindof animacy and thus affectedness.35 However, when the SCD is coindexed with ananimate Sentity, which naturally possesses a relatively high degree of centrality orsaliency, it seems that the thematizing function of the construction should beaccounted for in terms other than simply increasing the centrality of a peripheralentity. I suggest that the SCD construction has the function of anchoring theproposition to the “here and now” of the ongoing exchange between the speaker andthe hearer, in a speci c way that will be explained below.

4.2 Marking the “pragmatic focus” (of the utterance)

Although there is no necessary relation between the “semantic focus” of a sentence(the lower level of structure, viz. predication, locution) and the “pragmatic focus” ofan utterance (i.e. the higher level of structure, viz. illocution), it should not besurprising that they often coincide, as will be illustrated with regard to the SCD. Iargue that in this construction, the speaker marks the Sentity as the “pragmaticfocus”, and at the same time expresses his attitude towards that individual, who is the“semantic focus” of the sentence.

It should not be surprising, therefore, that the pronominal l in questionfrequently occurs as part of the verbal predicate in extraposition or topicalizing (orfocalizing) constructions, where it often signals contrastive Subject focus,36 asshown for example in (19) and (20) below.

(19) haxalutsim beqibbutsey hagalil yo ºim laylalayla [… ] le ornerot ro adim baruax [… ] az eyÂ tuÂal atta [… ] la eºet leÂa kmorot ild le or nura zoheret [… ]? (Oz Story 25)thepioneers inkibbutzsettlements (of) theGalilee aresitting nightnight [… ] tolight (of) candles trembling inthewind [… ] so how couldyou [… ] tosit toyou like Rothschild tolight (of) lamp shining“Pioneers in settlements in the Galilee are sitting night after night bythe light of ickering candles [… ] so how can you sit around like a richman by the light of a shining lamp”

(20) raq tistakklu al haegoistit hazot, hi yo eºet lah bi(y) iºot vehayeladim hamiskenim ellah [… ] me allmim et melo hamexir

34 See Barnes Nonlexical 167.35 This use of the dative case is well known from many languages, e.g. from the North

America Chinookan lanuage. Mithun (Possession 304) points out that in this language aspeaker who wishes to say “the water began to boil” must put the NP water in the dative case,since it refers to the entity most signi cantly affected by the event.

36 Cf. Noss Lamed 332: “As a feature of discourse, the contrastive focus marker functions tomark shifts in the action. Gen. 12.1 [… ] signals a major thematic development in the story ofAbram and indeed in the story of Israel”.

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(Oz Story 210) just look at theegoist this, she sits toher in sessions andthechildrenthepoor ofher [… ] arepaying OM full theprice“Just look at that sel sh woman, she sits around in meetings while herpoor children pay the full price”

In the terminology of cognitive grammar, the speaker in these examples iscontrasting a “highpro led” NP (coindexed with the pronominal l) and a “lowpro led” NP (in the alternative unmarked construction), and at the same timeexpresses his opinion or attitude towards the action or situation of the topicalized NP.In (19), the topicalized NP refers to the diligent student sitting by the light of ashining lamp, who is contrasted with the pioneers; and in (20), the contrastive subjectfocus is on the sel sh careerwoman who ignores the damage she is causing herchildren. The meaning of the construction, as has been characterized above, is alsoevident in cases where the contrastive focus is on a durative state in which the Sentity is immersed, and which is interrupted by a sudden action,37 as in (21) below.

(21) ya aºti li bagina u¹it om ani oma at pitsutsIwassitting tome inthegarden andsuddenly I amhearing an explosion

“I was sitting (casually) in the garden when suddenly I heard an explosion”

5. Deixis in the universeofdiscourse: anchoring the predication to the speakersubject

We are now in a position to introduce the central claim of this paper. As mentionedabove, unlike other lexical and nonlexical pronouns, the l pronoun in question hasno propositional content, but rather lies outside the argument structure of thesentence, where it remains unresolved, and receives an interpretation only at the levelof illocution or universeofdiscourse.

The general assumption here is that nonpropositional personal deixis pronounsanchor the predication either to a speech participant ( rst or second person) or to anentity which is not a speech participant (third person) but is immediately accessibleto the speech participants. That is, their anaphoric reference receives itsinterpretation on the utterance (illocution) level and not on the sentence (locution)level.38 This is clearly the case with the “genuine” (notably Romance) ED which iscoindexed with one of the speech participants, i.e. in the rst person with thespeaker (locutor), and in the second person, with the hearer (interlocutor). Being anonactantial argument, the ED pronoun has the effect of procuring the solidarity orcomplicity (of the hearer) or simply of creating a greater affective closeness between

37 For ample documentation of this function of the pronominal l in Contemporary Hebrewsee Cohen Lamed.

38 Cf. Schön Datif 205: “Le rôle que joue le pronom éthique [… ] est d’opérer la dation del’acte d’énonciation luimême”.

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Rivka Halevy14

the hearer, the message, and the speaker.39 By using this dative personal pronoun, thespeaker invites the hearer to share his feelings about the event or, according toLeclère, “to be a witness (témoin) to the event”.40 This kind of nonlexical dativepronoun is now widely used in colloquial Hebrew as well,41 as shown in (22) below.

(22) atta omea , raq elo tihye lanu xole (Oz Story 12)you hear, just don’t be tous sick

“Listen, just don’t get sick on us”

In this kind of expression, the speaker perceives himself as being the victim of thesituation, and therefore describes it as a situation in which he is affected. A similareffect is achieved in the following example (23), which is a Yiddish inspired slogan(i.e. sei mir gesund).

(23) qax pri isra eli vetihye li bari (advertisement on newspapers 2002) take fruit Israeli and be tome healthy“Take an Israeli fruit and be healthy”

In this example, the speaker expresses with some pathos his personal interest in theful lment of the suggested action or the satisfaction he will derive from itsful lment, even though he has no control over it. In other words, the l pronounconnotes “for my sake”, and implies “I am highly interested in your being healthy”.

To my mind, this expressive meaning of the “genuine” ED is not far removedfrom that of the SCD discussed in this paper. Even though the SCD differs from theED in being coindexed with the grammatical subject of the verb, it is similar to theED in being a nonpropositionsal pronoun which serves to anchor the predication tothe speech participants, even when they are not actually involved in the event orsituation described. To be more concrete, I claim that the ED and the SCD both serveas modal markers, signalling the speaker’s mood.42 Modality is not necessarilycon ned to verbal features. It is marked in many languages also by particles,demonstratives and clitics. In fact, pronominals often signal more than just personal

39 Bally Traité 265–266 described linguistic devices of this kind as “moyen indirectsaffectifs”.

40 See Leclère Datifs 73.41 Its usage is generally attributed to SlavicYiddish in uence. It is attested also in other

modern Semitic languages, e.g. spoken Arabic (cf. Piamenta Jerusalem Studies 217–218) andNeoEthiopian languages.

42 In this paper, the term “modality” will be used in a wide sense, i.e. as referring to all nonpropositional elements of the sentence or concretely, along the lines of Lyons (Semantics 452),as referring to all elements which express the speaker’s attitude or opinion towards the contentof his proposition (For de nition of modality vs. proposition, see Palmer Mood 14–15).

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reference. Their function ranges from merely repeating the speci ed element toencompassing its whole setting.43

Like the ED, then, the SCD is used to express the speaker’s attitude towards theSentity, and towards the entire situation described in the sentence. This is illustratedby (24) below, where the speaker uses the SCD construction to qualify hissubscription to the factuality of the propositional content, and to call the hearer’sattention to the unexpectedness of the event. Note also that the surrounding contextoften offers clues that corroborate the modal meaning of the construction. In thisexample, the modal meaning of the construction is emphasized by the sentenceadverb or discourse marker pa ut, “simply”, “just”:44

(24) vehi qama veazºa yom exad oto veet ney hayeladim [… ]pa ut barxa la (Oz Story 195)andshe stoodup andleft day one him andOM thetwo children [… ] justrunaway toher“And one day she (just) left him and her two children [… ] just ran away”

The SCD differs from the ED in that it does not mark the deixis to the speechparticipants explicitly. In the ED construction, the dative prototypically refers to thespeaker (when in rst person) or the hearer (when in second person). The SCD, onthe other hand, refers to the Sentity, which is generally distinct from the speaker andhearer. In other words, the “coreferentiality” of the SCD to the speech participants isnot re ected in its morphological features.

The involvement of the speech participants explains why these nonpropositionaldatives (namely the ED and the SCD) are typical of spoken, rather than written,language. It also explains why they often appear in exhortative and exclamativespeech acts (e.g. (22) and (23) above, which contain EDs) or in various kinds ofperformatives, such as the following two examples, containing SCDs. In (25) theSCD is part of the formulaic expression da leÂa “I’ll have you know”, and in (26) itis used as part of the formulaic expression titbayye leÂa “shame on you”.

(25) da leka eani lo esbol yoter hitnahagut kazo! know toyou that I shall not suffer behavior such anymore! “I’ll have you know that I’ll not stand once more such a behavior”!

(26) ‘titbayye leÂa, zrubbaºel!’ Hayta omeret pit om (Oz Story 321)

43 Lyons (Semantics 677) draws attention to what he calls “empathetic deixis”, and its rolein anaphoric reference — “when the speaker is personally involved with the entity, situation orplace to which he is referring or is identifying with the attitude or viewpoint of the addressee”.He concludes that “at this point deixis merges with modality”. In this connection consider, forexample, the “empathetic deixis” implied in colloquial Hebrew by using the demonstrative ze,e.g. ze menahel ze!? lit. this (is) amanager this!? (implying “a man like this is not really amanager”); ze maze toº lit. it (is) what it (is) good (“this is really excellent!”).

44 Lyons Semantics 451–452 regards sentenceadverbs like these “which can hardly be saidto modify syntactically anything at all within the sentence, unless it is the rest of the sentence”,as expressing modality. In other words, he includes them among the devices used by thespeaker in order to make his comments about the propositional content.

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Rivka Halevy16

youshouldbeashamed toyou, Zerubabel! shewas saying suddenly“‘Shame on you, Zerubabel!’ she used to say all of a sudden”

It has already been pointed out in various functional approaches, that tense andmodality anchor the proposition to the “here and now” of the speech exchange45 —either by specifying a temporal location relative to the time of speaking or byinvoking the speaker’s or hearer’s judgement with regards to the likelihood orinevitability of the situation described in the proposition. From this functional pointof view, and in the spirit of Lyons, the SCD construction can be regarded as having asubjective epistemic modality, or, alternatively, as representing an empatheticpersondeixis; In Lyons’ words: “subjective epistemic modality can be accountedfor [… ] in terms of the speaker’s quali cation of the Isayso component of theutterance”.46

Before I further clarify this modal function of the SCD construction, let meintroduce Hare’s tripartite distinction between the phrastic, the tropic and the neusticparts of the utterance, which seems to be highly relevant to our purposes.47 In Hare’sterminology, phrastic refers to the propositional (ideational) content of the sentence.The tropic, on the other hand, is that part of the sentence which correlates with thekind of speechact that the sentence performs. In many languages tropic meaning isgrammaticalized in the category of mood. The neustic48 is characterized by Hare asexpressing the speaker’s “subscription” to the speechact that is being performed. InLyons’s words, it can be referred to as “that part of the sentence which expresses thespeaker’s commitment or attitude towards the factuality, desirability, etc., of thepropositional content conveyed by the phrastic”.49 Lyons further posits that, instatements of fact, the tropic can be said to have the meaning “it is so” while theneustic has the meaning “I say so”. In mands the neustic meaning is “so be it”.

Hebrew, then, employs the SCD to produce emphatic quali cation of the neusticpart of the utterance meaning, both in statements and in mands.50 In statements thespeaker expresses his commitment to the factuality of the content of the proposition.In subjunctive sentences, on the other hand, he expresses his commitment to the

45 See RémiGiraud In nitif 22: “nous dé nirons le mode comme un processusd’actualisation qui situe le procès par rapport à l’act d’énonciation”, and similarly Arrivé &alii Grammaire 391 “les modes personnels permettent de marquer les différents degrésd’actualisation du procès signi é par le verbe”. Cf. also Benveniste Problèmes I ch. XXI (“dela subjectivité dans le langage”).

46 See Lyons Semantics 800.47 See Hare Speech. This threeway distinction is a re nement of his earlier, and perhaps

better known, binary distinction between the phrastic and the neustic, which was introduced inhis book The language of Morals, Oxford 1952.

48 The term neustic comes from Greek , which is a word of assent meaning “yes”,“indeed”.

49 See Lyons Semantics 749.50 Cf. Herslund Datif 279 for a similar de nition of the French ethical dative.

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desirability etc. of the propositional content, as shown in (27), where the SCDconstruction quali es the sobeit component of the utterance meaning.

(27) etistalleq lah haneºela haeme ama, eteleÂ lah mikan!(Yizhar Tsiqlag 216) Thatshewill (may she)depart toher thecontemptible sun there,

go toher fromhere“Away with her, with that contemptible sun there (= she can leave for all Icare)”

In many cases, the pragmatic effect of a sentence realized on the SCD constructionframe is one of informal irony, scorn or criticism, as shown in (28) below.

(28) oteq lo haadon (Agnon Shira 64) keepingsilent tohim themaster“As for the master — he keeps silent”

(Ullendorff Agnon 397 proposes to translate “There you (polite) keep silent”.)

Another such example is (29), which represents a speechact of teasing andmocking (note also the contribution of the rhetorical question device and of thesentenceadverb or discourse marker kaÂa “like”,”sort of”).

(29) ani zoÂeret eanaxnu hayinu kaÂa lo agot axat laniyya [… ] misiddra lah qtsat kaÂa et haxultsa liÂºod antu an? mi sama lah peraxbase arot [… ]? umi [… ] yats a lah le†ayyel barexoº bexatsa it q¹alim[… ] (Oz Story 195) I remember thatwe were likethis teasing one toanother [… ] who

xed toher alittle so OM theshirt inhonor (of) Antoine? Who put tohera ower inthehair [… ]? Andwho wentout toher towalk withskirt (of)folds?“I remember that we were like teasing one another [… ] who xed her shirtlike that for Antoine? Who put a ower in her hair [… ]? And who wentout for a walk wearing a plissé skirt?”

Note the similarity of these examples to the Biblical example in (30), whichrepresents a speechact of chastising:

(30) attå hinne bå†a ta l Âå al mi ‰n‰t haqqån‰ håråßuß hazz‰ al mißrayim (2 Kings 18:21) now here you trust(ed) toyou on thereed thebroken this on Egypt “Just fancy putting your trust in Egypt, that broken reed”

Ullendorff51 compares this example to the parallel verse in Isaiah 36:6, where wend the unmarked construction without the optional pronominal l. He states that the

example from Kings contains a note of ironic informality which is absent from theone in Isaiah, and suggests that this “elusive semantic nuance” of the SCDconstruction should be translated as “fancy”, both in Kings 18:12 and in “all [other]examples of the dativus ethicus [that can be found] in Semitics and elsewhere”.

51 See Ullendorff Dativus 2.

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Rivka Halevy18

One might compare the SCD construction to the optional re exive (dative)pronoun which appears in certain Romance languages such as French,52 asexempli ed in (31)–(33) below.

(31) a. Jean s’est acheté un pull rose b. Jean qana lo sveder varod (32) a. Jeanne s’est mangée trois g teaux b. Jeanne axla lah alo ugot (33) a. Après mon cours, je vais me taper un martini bien sec b. axrei haqurs elli ani holek leharbits li eize mar†ini

yaº

It seems to me that French examples and their Hebrew counterparts have strikinglysimilar inferences, namely “as for x”/ “speaking about x” / “just fancy!”, or “believeme, it is really so” (in statements) and “that is what I am really going to do!” (inmodal declarative sentences).

Another construction which has a very similar expressive function is the IPdative. In Hebrew and probably also in “dative oriented” languages such as Frenchand German this construction has inferences very similar to those generated by theSCD. This is shown, for example, in (34).

(34) kara ti li et hamiÂnasayim Itore tome OM thetrousers

Je me suis déchiré le pantalon Ich habe mir die Hose zerissen

I feel that the IP dative in this example gives rise to inferences such as “just fancy”,“unbelievable” or “I really did it to myself”, indicating that the Agent (viz.possessor) is at the same time also the experiencer. In other words, it indicates thatthe possessor is highly affected or involved in the event. This effect is not generatedby the alternative derelationazing (or partcentred) genitive construction, whichconveys a much lesser degree of involvement or affectedness. In light of this, Isuggest that all three kinds of free datives — namely the ED, SCD and IP datives —are features of discourse basically used to signal the affective involvement of thespeaker. Unfortunately, a comprehensive crosslinguistic comparison of these threetypes is beyond the scope of this paper.

To sum up: it may be concluded that the raison d’être of the nonlexical SCDpronoun is to anchor the proposition to the “here and now” of the speech exchange.Since the content of the event is displayed from the speaker’s perspective, the SCDalso signals a revaluation of the Sentity’s role.53 To use the words of Traugott and

52 See Leclère Datifs 79 ff. The following examples are taken from Leclère, the Hebrewcounterparts are mine.

53 Cf. Jenni Präposition 49 who de nes the function of the pronominal l in Biblical Hebrewas “[… ] eine Revaluation der Person [… ] als ReLokalisation und ReSituierung, kurz alsAktualisation: ‘x [… ] in seiner aktuellen Situation’”.

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Köning, the SCD has the effect of “indexing the speaker’s beliefstate and spellingout of communicative relevance”.54

I further suggest that both the Romance ED and the Semitic SCD (especially theHebrew SCD) have been developed via a process of subjecti cation. In other words,they are both instances of a propositional (phrastic) element which evolved into anonpropositional element in the sentence structure.55 This evolution may be de nedas an instance of grammaticalization.56 In fact, it can be seen as illustrating the threemain stages of grammaticalization suggested by Traugott, namely propositional (>textual) > expressive.57 To quote Traugott and Köing, there is often a “shift [… ]from meanings grounded in more or less objectively identi able extralinguisticsituations to meanings grounded in the speaker’s attitude to or belief about what issaid”.58 Traugott and König point out that this process is unidirectional— “meaningstypically shift from what is said to what is meant, not vice versa”.59

Thus, I suggest that the nonlexical SCD in question is an instance of thedynamic, unidirectional process of grammaticalization whereby lexical items (e.g.lexical datives) that originally function on the lower level of structure (viz.predication) acquire a new status in the synchronic system. In their new status theyno longer function as lexical items, but rather as grammatical, morphosyntacticforms, which encode meanings and relations on the higher level of structure (viz.illocution). By treating the Srepetitive l pronoun as a discourse pronoun which“strengthens the expression of speaker’s involvement”,60 we focus on what wasadded in this process of grammaticalization. My claim, then, is that the SCD in

54 See Traugott & Köning Grammaticalization 213.55 It is probable that the Srepetitive l marked pronoun developed from a re exive

construction (e.g. halak lo “he went for himself, in his own interest”) or functioned originallyas an autobenefactive Sentity, and later evolved into a discourse marker which has additionalmeanings, as suggested here.

56 “Grammaticalization” is not to be understood here only in the diachronic sense. It refersprimarily to the systematic or conventionalized way in which an abstract grammatical functionis attributed in the synchronic system. The dative pronoun is a true “grammatical” operator,since it serves to code semantic and pragmatic relations that were not coded in the same waybefore.

57 See Traugott Propositional. This process is also described in a similar way, though from adifferent perspective, in Halevy Between 184–186.

58 See Traugott & Köing Grammaticalization 189. Cf. also Traugott Epistemic 35: “[… ]meanings tend to become increasingly situated in the speaker’s subjective belief state orattitude toward the proposition”. Obviously, in claiming that pragmatic meanings aregrammaticalized later than nonpragmatic (or propositional) meanings, Traugott and Köing donot mean to imply that there is some synchronic stage in which a language has onlypropositional meanings. They merely mean to say that, given a form X, it is safe to assumethat the pragmatic polysemies associated with it developed later than the propositional ones. Inother words, the pragmatic meanings were probably coded at a later stage.

59 See Traugott & König Grammaticalization 193.60 Idem. ibid. 191.

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Rivka Halevy20

Modern Hebrew shifted from an element associated with the syntactic subject (i.e.coindexed with the external argument of the predication) to an element intimatelyassociated with the speaker subject (i.e. disjoint from any argument in thepredication).61 In other words, the coreferentiality of this nonpropositional dativepronoun lies in the level of illocution, where coparticipation relations operate.

6. Conclusion

At rst glance, the phenomenon of the Srepetitive l pronoun seems to representsome language speci c stylistic or discursive rule performed outside of syntax.However, comparison between various related and unrelated languages shows thatthis phenomenon is not, in fact, language speci c. Furthermore, examination of theSCD reveals that this nonargumental position can syntactically encode relationswhich are not linked to the selectional properties of the verbal clause, namelyrelations existing between participants at a higher level, i.e. the level of illocution.This shows that the syntactic phenomenon of agreement is not related only to caseassignment and to argument position.

Furthermore, it seems that the SCD and the “genuine” ED constitute twomanifestations of a single phenomenon. That is, they are both cases of “empatheticdeixis” or nonpropositional personal anaphoric reference, thus we might perhapsrefer to them as “dialogue pronouns”. One clear instance of this phenomenon isperhaps represented by vocatives.62 Blake argues that the socalled vocative suf xesof Ancient Greek and Latin are only super cially similar to case suf xes, since,unlike genuine case suf xes, they do not mark the relation of dependents to heads,but rather stand outside constructions or are inserted parenthetically. In other words,their claim to being case suf xes is no more than structural. This is quite similar tothe claim I wish to make about nonlexical dative pronouns. Although they clearlydeveloped from dative propositional pronouns, it is probably uninsightful tocharacterize them as dative case markers at the current stage of the language.63 Isuggest that the evolution of both ED and SCD is an instance of subjecti cation, viaa mechanism whereby an element in a lower level of structure (viz. predication,locution, énoncé) is “raised” into a higher level of structure (viz. illocution,énonciation).

It is impossible to determine whether the SCD of Contemporary Hebrewdeveloped directly from the Srepetitive l pronoun of Biblical Hebrew (which is

61 Cf. Benveniste Problèmes I ch. XXI on sujet d’énoncé (subject of the sentence /predication) vs. sujet d’énonciation (subject of the illocution), and also Benveniste ProblèmesII 82: “[… ] le besoin de référer par le discours, et, chez l’autre, la possibilité de coréférerindentiquement, dans le consensus pragmatique qui fait de chaque locuteur un colocuteur. Laréférence est partie intégrante de l’énonciation”.

62 For instance, the second person pronoun in Hebrew examples like atta am, bo henna“You there, come over here”.

63 Cf. Fillmore Case 66, who suggests that when looking at a system of cases, we shoulddistinguish case forms from case uses.

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traditionally referred to as dativus ethicus) or rather represents an extended use of theBiblical l re exive pronoun.64 This pronoun is clearly different in distribution andusage from pronouns in other diachronic stages, such as Biblical and MishnaicHebrew. It is possible, therefore, that the SCD construction is a reinvention ofContemporary Hebrew, which developed in light of the increasingly “dativeorientation” of the language, and is not directly related to any of the earlier pronouns.

Finally, the case of the Srepetitive l pronoun shows that one should not take amorpheme which, under some conditions, is known to have lexical content, andassume, without a thorough investigation of all its uses, that it is meaningless orredundant in certain environments. Linguistic analysis should deal not only with thelower level of sentence structure but also with the higher level of utterance structure.

References

Álvarez, Regueira & Monteagudo Gramática — R. Álvarez, X. L. Regueira, H.Monteagudo, Gramática galega (Vigo 1986).

Arrivé & alii Grammaire — M. Arrivé, F. Gadet, M. Galmiche, La grammaired’aujourd’hui: guide alphabétique de linguistique française (Paris 1986).

Autier & Reed Datives — J. M. Authier & L. Reed, “On the Syntactic Status ofFrench Affected Datives”, The Linguistic Review 9 (1992) 295–311.

Bally Traité — Ch. Bally, Traité de stylistique française I (Genève / Paris 1951).Barnes Nonlexical — B. K. Barnes, “A Functional Explanation of French

Nonlexical Datives”, Studies in Language 9 (1985) 159 195.BDB — F. Brown, S. R. Driver & C. A. Briggs, The New BrownDriverBriggs

Gesenius Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford 1966[1906]).

Benveniste Problèmes I — E. Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale I(Paris 1966).

Benveniste Problèmes II — E. Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale II(Paris 1974).

Berman Oblique — R. Berman, “On the Nature of ‘Oblique’ in BitransitiveConstructions”, Lingua 56 (1982) 387 411.

Berman Affectee — R. Berman, “Dative Marking the Affectee Role: Data fromModern Hebrew”, Hebrew Annual Review 6 (1982) 35 59.

Blake Case — B. J. Blake, Case (Cambridge 1994).Borer & Grodzinsky Clitics — H. Borer & J. Grodzinsky, “Syntactic Cliticization:

the Case of Hebrew Dative Clitics”, Syntax and Semantics 19, edited by HagitBorer (Orlando1986) 175 217.

Bourciez Éléments — E. Bourciez, Éléments de linguistique romane (Paris 1946,fourth edition).

64 In Biblical Hebrew the l personal pronoun also has the interpretation of an ordinaryre exive pronoun. The canonical unambiguous re exive paradigm based on the noun etsem(“bone”, “essence”), which is part and parcel of Hebrew grammar, came into use later, inMishnaic Hebrew.

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Rivka Halevy22

Brockelmann Grundr — C. Brockelmann, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatikder semitischen Sprachen, II, (Hildesheim 1961).

Cohen Lamed — D. Cohen, “The Dative LAMED Filling a syntactical De ciency inDaily Israeli Journalistic”, Proceedings of the 11th World Congress of JewishStudies (Jerusalem 1993) 179–184 [In Hebrew].

Delbecque Transitivity — N. Delbecque, “A Construction Grammar Approach toTransitivity in Spanish”, The Nominative and Accusative and TheirCounterparts, edited by Kristin Davidse & Béatrice Lamiroy (Amsterdam /Philadelphia 2002) 81–130.

Fillmore Case — C. Fillmore, “The Case for Case Reopened”, Syntax andSemantics 8, edited by Peter Cole & Jerrold M. Sadock (New York / SanFrancisco / London 1977) 59–81.

GKC — W. Gesenius & E. Kautzsch, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, translated by A.E. Cowley (Oxford 1910).

Givón Topic — T. Givón, “Topic, Pronoun, and Grammatical Agreements”,Subject and Topic, edited by Charles N. Li (New York 1976), 149–188.

Glinert MHG — L. Glinert, The Grammar of Modern Hebrew (Cambridge 1989).Goldberg CG — Constructions A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument

Structure (Chicago 1995).Haas De ning — W. Haas, “On De ning Linguistic Units”, Transactions of the

Philological Society (1954) 54–84.Halevy Between — R. HalevyNemirovsky, Between Syntax and Lexicon (Jerusalem

1998) [in Hebrew].Halevy Function — R. Halevy, “‘Šoteq lo ha’adon’: The Function of the

Construction ‘Verb + l + Personal Re exive Pronoun’ in ContemporaryHebrew”, Leshonenu 65 (20032004) 113–143 [In Hebrew].

Halliday Notes — M. A. K. Halliday, “Notes on Transitivity and Theme in English”,Journal of Linguistics 3 (1967) 37–81.

Hare Speech — R. M. Hare, “Meaning and Speech Acts”, Philosophical Review 79(1970) 3–24 [reprinted in R. M. Hare, Practical Inferences (London 1971) 74–93].

Herslund Datif — M. Herslund, Le datif en français (Louvain / Paris 1988).Herslund Incorporation — M. Herslund, “Incorporation et transitivité dans les

langues romanes”, Verbum XXI (1999) 37–47.Hopper & Thompson Transitivity — P. Hopper & S. A. Thompson, “Transitivity in

Grammar and Discourse”, Language 56 (1980) 251–299.Jenni Präposition — E. Jenni, Die hebräische Präpositionen, band 3: Die

Präposition Lamed (Stuttgart / Berlin / Köln 2000) 48 53.Jespersen Analytic — O. Jespersen , Analytic Syntax (Copenhagen 1937).Joosten Dativus — J. Joosten, “The function of the socalled Dativus Ethicus in

classical Syriac”, Orientalia 58 [new series] (1989) 473–492.JoüonMuraoka Grammar — P. JoüonT. Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew,

2 vols. (Roma 1996).Keenan Towards — E. L. Keenan, “Towards a Universal De nition of ‘Subject’”,

Subject and Topic, edited by Charles N. Li (New York 1976) 303–333.

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König Historisch — E. König, Historischkomparative Syntax der hebräischenSprache (Leipzig 1897).

Langacker Foundations R. W. Langacker, Foundations of Cognitive Grammar,Vol II – Descriptive Application (Stanford CA 1991).

Leclère Datifs — C. Leclère, “Datifs syntaxiques et datif éthique”, Méthodes engrammaire française, edited by JeanClaude Chevalier & Maurice Gross (Paris1976) 73–96.

Lyons Semantics — J. Lyons, Semantics II (Cambridge 1977).ManoliuManea Inalienability — M. ManoliuManea, “Inalienability and Topicality

in Romanian”, The Grammar of Inalienability, edited by Hilary Chappell &William McGregor (Berlin / New York 1996) 711–743.

Mithun Possession — M. Mithun, “The Difference a Category Makes in theExpression of Possession and Inalienability”, Dimensions of Possession, editedby Irène Baron, Michael Herslund & Finn Sørensen (Amsterdam / Philadelphia2001) 285–310.

Molho Objet — M. Molho, “Sur la grammaire de l’objet en espagnol”, Travaux delinguistique et de litterature XVIII, 1 (1980) 213–225.

Muraoka DE — T. Muraoka, “On the Socalled Dativus Ethicus in Hebrew”, JTS 29(1978) 495–498.

Neumann Dative — D. Neumann, “The Dative and the Grammar of Body Parts inGerman”, The Grammar of Inalienability, edited by Hilary Chappell & WilliamMcGregor (Berlin / New York 1996) 745–779.

Noss Lamed — P.A. Noss, “The Hebrew PostVerbal Lamed Preposition PlusPronoun”, The Bible Translator 46.5 (1995) 326–335.

Palmer Mood — F. R. Palmer, Mood and Modality (Cambridge 1986).Piamenta Jerusalem Arabic — M. Piamenta, “Selected Syntactic Phenomena of

Jerusalem Arabic Narrative Style in 1900”, Studies in Judaism and Islam (inhonour of S. D. Goitein), edited by Shlomo Morag, Issachar BenAmi, NormanA. Stillman (Jerusalem 1981) 203–230.

RémiGiraud In nitif — S. RémiGiraud, “Les grilles de procuste descriptioncomparée de l’in nitif en français, grec ancien, allemand, anglais et arabe”,L’in nitif, edited by Sylvianne RémiGiraud (Lyon 1988) 11–68.

Schön Datif — J. Schön, “De ce qui, dans le dialogue, dé e la grammaire: l’exempledu datif éthique”, Dialogue Analysis: Units, Relations and Strategies beyond theSentence (Contributions in Honour of Sorin Stati’s 65th Birthday), edited by EddaWeigand (Tübingen 1997) 195–206.

Sokolof Bereshit — M. Sokolof, “The Hebrew of Bereshit Rabba According toVatican 30 Ms.”, šonénu 33 (1968–1969) 270–279 [in Hebrew].

Traugott Propositional — E. C. Traugott, “From Propositional to Textual andExpressive Meaning: Some Semanticpragmatic aspects of Grammaticalization”,Perspectives on Historical Linguistics, edited by Winfred P. Lehmann & YakovMalkiel (Amsterdam / Philadelphia 1982) 245–271.

Traugott Epistemic — E. C. Traugott, “On the Rise of Epistemic Meanings inEnglish: an Example of Subjecti cation in Semantic Change”, Language 65(1989) 31–55.

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Rivka Halevy24

Traugott & König Grammaticalization — E. C. Traugott & E. König, “TheSemanticsPragmatics of Grammaticalization Revised”, Approaches toGrammaticalization, I, edited by Elizabeth C. Traugott & Bernd Heine(Amsterdam / Philadelphia 1991) 189–217.

Ullendorff Agnon — E. Ullendorff, “Along the Margins of Agnon’s Novel Shirah”,Mélanges Maxime Rodinson, edited by Charles Robin (Paris 1985) 393–400.

Ullendorff Dativus — E. Ullendorff, “Some Observations on the Dativus Ethicus inSemitics and Elsewhere”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 15 (1992) 1–9.

Van der Auwera What — J. Van der Auwera, What Do We Talk About When WeTalk? (Amsterdam 1981).

Von Weiss Dativ — A. von Weiss, “Dativ und Genitiv”, Wirkendes Wort,Sammelband I: Sprachwissenschaft (Düsseldorf 1962).

259–263Waltke & O'cconor — B. K. Waltke & M. O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical

Hebrew Syntax (Indiana 1990).Williams Syntax — R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax: An Outline (Toronto 1976,

second edition).

Sources from Modern Hebrew Literature

Agnon Shira — Sh. Y. Agnon, Shira (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv 1971).Yehoshua India — A. B. Yehoshua, The Return from India (TelAviv 1994).Oz Story — A. Oz, A Story of Love and Darkness (Jerusalem 2002).Sidon Monster — E. Sidon, “The Monster Giant”, Bad Songs for Good Children

Jerusalem 1991).Yizhar Tsiqlag — S. Yizhar, The Days of Tsiqlag I, (Tel Aviv 1970).

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