Hebrew Idioms: The Organization of the Lexical Component

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Abstract

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. Th e fi ndings are straightforwardly accounted for if the lexicon includes actual verbs-words not merely roots-under which verb phrase idioms are stored as sub-entries.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)283-310
Number of pages28
JournalBrill's Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics
Volume1
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 2009

Funding

FundersFunder number
Israel Science Foundation44/05

    Keywords

    • Idiom storage
    • adjectival passives
    • mental lexicon
    • phrasal idioms
    • root
    • unaccusatives
    • verbal passives

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