Ditransitive idioms in Hebrew

This paper is a study of 55 ditransitive idioms in Hebrew, to the best of our knowledge, the first of its kind. The examination of these idiomatic constructions reveals asymmetries in their composition, thereby providing us with new insights into their internal structure and the principles governing their formation. In particular, we show that idioms reflect properties of their literal counterparts, explain word order patterns ditransitive idioms exhibit, argue that idioms do not have to be continuous constituents, and investigate the distribution of their free position. In addition, the paper provides support for Rappaport Hovav and Levin’s (2008) “verb sensitive” approach to the dative alternation and Landau’s (1994) seminal observation that Hebrew manifests the alternation, though it fails to mark it morphologically.