This paper characterizes Medieval Hebrew and Aramaic as literary languages and seeks to explain how a 'literary language' namely a language used mainly in literary contexts arises, while utilizing three types of research: comparative philological research, which compares different languages and texts in terms of their vocabulary and grammar; sociolinguistic research, which examines the social functions of language use; and psycholinguistic research, which (in this particular case) examines issues of language acquisition. The paper builds on philological studies of literary languages to explain how the grammar of these languages evolves. It assumes that the acquisition of such languages is similar to second-language acquisition, while taking into account that these languages are both acquired and used in a strictly literary context. The main argument of the paper is that literary languages should be studied the same way as other languages, because ultimately after making some adjustments motivated by their particular functions they are compatible with the standard models of second-language acquisition.
Causal Selection is a widely discussed topic in philosophy and the cognitive sciences, concerned with characterizing the choice of “the cause” among the many individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions on which any effect depends on. In this paper, we argue for an additional selection process underlying causal state-ments: Causative-Construction Selection, which pertains to the choice of linguistic constructions used to express causal relations. By exploring this phenomenon, we aim to answer the following question: given that a speaker wishes to describe the relation between one of the conditions and the effect, which linguistic constructions are avail-able? We take CC-selection to be more crucial than causal selection, since the latter is in fact restricted by the linguistic options resulting from the former. Based on a series of experiments, we demonstrate that factors taken previously as contributing to causal selection should, in fact, be considered as the parameters that license the various lin-guistic constructions under given circumstances, based on previous knowledge about the causal structure of the world (the causal model). These factors are therefore part of the meaning of the causative expressions.
Causative constructions come in lexical and periphrastic variants, exemplified in English by Sam killed Lee and Sam caused Lee to die. While use of the former, the lexical causative, entails the truth of the latter, an entailment in the other direction does not hold. The source of this asymmetry is commonly ascribed to the lexical causative having an additional prerequisite of “direct causation", such that the causative relation holds between a contiguous cause and effect (Fodor 1970, Katz 1970). However, this explanation encounters both empirical and theoretical problems (Nelleman & van der Koot 2012). To explain the source of the directness inferences (as well as other longstanding puzzles), we propose a formal analysis based on the framework of Structural Equation Models (SEMs) (Pearl 2000) which provides the necessary background for licensing causal inferences. Specifically, we provide a formalization of a 'sufficient set of conditions' within a model and demonstrate its role in the selectional parameters of causative descriptions. We argue that “causal sufficiency” is not a property of singular conditions, but rather sets of conditions, which are individually necessary but only sufficient when taken together (a view originally motivated in the philosophical literature by Mackie 1965). We further introduce the notion of a “completion event” of a sufficient set, which is critical to explain the particular inferential profile of lexical causatives.
This book explores relationships and maps out intersections between discussions on causation in three scientific disciplines: linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. The book is organized in five thematic parts, investigating connections between philosophical and linguistic studies of causation; presenting novel methodologies for studying the representation of causation; tackling central issues in syntactic and semantic representation of causal relations; and introducing recent advances in philosophical thinking on causation.
Beyond its thematic organization, readers will find several recurring topics throughout this book, such as the attempt to reduce causality to other non-causal terms; causal pluralism vs. one all-encompassing account for causation; causal relations pertaining to the mental as opposed to the physical realm, and more.
This collection also lays the foundation for questioning whether it is possible to evaluate available philosophical approaches to causation against the variety of linguistic phenomena ranging across diverse lexical and grammatical items, such as bound morphemes, prepositions, connectives, and verbs. Above all, it lays the groundwork for considering whether the fruits of the psychological-cognitive study of the perception of causal relations may contribute to linguistic and philosophical studies, and whether insights from linguistics can benefit the other two disciplines.
This paper examines reciprocal connections between the discussions on causation in philosophy and in linguistics. Philosophers occasionally seek insights from the linguistic literature on certain expressions, and linguists often rely on philosophers’ analyses of causation, and assume that the relevant linguistic expressions denote philosophical concepts related to causation. Through the study of various semantic aspects of causative constructions, mainly targeting the nature of the dependency encoded in various linguistic constructions and the nature of the relata, this paper explores interfaces between the discussions in the two disciplines, and at the same time points to significant differences in their objects of investigation, in their methods and in their goals. Finally, the paper attempts to observe whether the disciplinary line is maintained, i.e. whether or not it is the case that metaphysical questions are examined as linguistic ones and vice versa.
This paper proposes a formal definition of reanalysis, while emphasizing the importance of the distinction between two different kinds of reanalysis: those in which the change is confined to the grammatical level, and those in which it is confined to the semantic level. After tracing the history of a negative counterfactual conditional marker in Hebrew and Aramaic which underwent both syntactic and semantic reanalyses, the paper assesses the concept of reanalysis with focus on the following questions: Is reanalysis a single, clearly-defined phenomenon, and if so, what is its nature? Is it merely a descriptive label for a certain observable state of affairs, or does it explain diachronic changes? Alternatively, perhaps it is a theoretical constraint, a theoretical requirement that linguistic change must be associated with specific environments where reanalysis can take place? A detailed analysis of the marker and its evolution yields the following broad hypothesis: Reanalysis of a linguistic form does not change the truth conditions of the proposition that contains it, regardless of whether the reanalysis is on the grammatical level or on the semantic level.
This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the syntax and semantics of a single linguistic phenomenon – the NP-strategy for expressing reciprocity – in synchronic, diachronic, and typological perspectives. It challenges the assumption common in the typological, syntactic, and semantic literature, namely that so-called reciprocal constructions encode symmetric relations. Instead, they are analyzed as constructions encoding unspecified relations. In effect, it provides a new proposal for the truth-conditional semantics of these constructions. More broadly, this book introduces new ways of bringing together historical linguistics and formal semantics, demonstrating how, on the one hand, the inclusion of historical data concerning the sources of reciprocal constructions enriches their synchronic analysis; and how, on the other hand, an analysis of the syntax and the semantics of these constructions serves as a key for understanding their historical origins.
Few studies have focused on the Aramaic of the Zohar, and to this day, only one of these presents a completed grammatical analysis. Scholars have dealt at large, however, with the question of whether the Aramaic of the Zohar is artificial or not. I briefly review the history of the literature around this question, then propose my own criteria to examine whether a language of a given text is indeed artificial. Finally, I put this methodology into practice, as I investigate the nature of Zoharic Aramaic by examining specific linguistic phenomena in the relevant corpus.
Given that causative linguistic constructions are divisible into three parts: i) a cause (c); ii) an effect (e); and iii) the dependency (D) between (c) and (e), in studying the nature of (D), one should examine whether a one, all-encompassing, causative meaning component underlying the diverse linguistic phenomena is a justifiable position, or rather different ones should be distinguished for the various causative constructions. Only recently several philosophers argued in favor of theories of causal pluralism, allowing the co-existence of different notions of causation; some cognitive studies also indicate that people have a pluralistic conception of causation, similarly it has been proposed that the semantic content of (D) is different in various constructions, tracing whether the main verb encodes a necessary or a sufficient condition. This paper expands on this latter line of thought by focusing on the types of dependencies encoded within three verbal constructions in Hebrew, considering crucially whether these dependencies are asserted and/or presupposed. It argues, therefore, in favor of a non-unified semantic analysis for (D) denoted by the three verbal causative constructions to be passed under review here: overt causatives, verbs of change of state and caused activity verbs. According to the current proposal: Overt causatives assert necessary conditions; change of states causatives assert necessary conditions and presuppose potential sufficient conditions; and Caused activities only presuppose potential sufficient conditions.
The biblical corpus features a number of verses in which interrogative pronouns appear in non-interrogative contexts. The same phenomenon is observed in many other languages and gives rise to the question known in the linguistic literature as “the interrogative-indefinite puzzle,” namely, what is the natural connection between the interrogative and indefinite functions. This paper seeks to explore how this question should be examined in the context of the Biblical Hebrew data. It will be argued that a consideration of typological observations can yield important insights into this question. Subsequently, it proposes a formal semantic analysis of the indefinite pronouns in question and shows how the proposed approach can help explain their distribution.
This chapter discusses the syntax and the semantics of the negator lāw in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (henceforth JBA) through the lens of the diachronic emergence of this negator. The new negator lāw is a sentential external negator, whose syntactic and semantic properties is discussed alongside a diachronic study concerning its origin. Syntactically, we propose that lāw, like negative DPs/PPs in English (Haegeman 2000) and Sicilian neca (Cruschina 2010; Garzonio and Poletto 2015) is merged in SpecFocP in the extended CP-domain from where it takes wide scope. Semantically, lāw takes propositional scope and expresses the meaning of external negation, equivalent to the independent clause: ‘it is not the case’. Diachronically, lāw, as a single-morpheme external negation, developed from a cleft whose matrix clause negates the content of the embedded clause. Following work by Bar-Asher Siegal (2015b), we argue that the syntactic reanalysis of lāw is triggered by a phonological process of univerbation between the regular negator lā in clefts with the agreement clitic. This syntactic reanalysis involves a morphological univerbation of lāw (Andersen 1987). The main claim of this chapter is that the syntactic and the semantic characteristics of this negator can be better understood in the light of its historical origin. Moreover, this is an interesting example of how a similar semantic interpretation can be associated with two different syntactic structures, thus allowing a syntactic reanalysis. This type of development is not part of the Jespersen Cycle or Croft’s cycle, but constitutes the development of a non-standard negator next to the standard negator. It is demonstrated that a similar development can be observed for the Sicilian negator neca as well (cf. Garzonio and Poletto 2015).
The classic model of conversation based on the Common Ground (CG), introduced by Karttunen (1974), Lewis (1979) and Stalnaker (1978), was shown to be insufficient for accounting for various conversational phenomena (inter alia Portner 2004, 2007, Farkas & Bruce 2009, Murray 2014). This paper further strengthens this line by analyzing a type of non-truth conditional non-core dative termed the Discursive Dative (DD) as a discourse management device (Krifka 2008, Repp 2013). The DD signals that the asserted proposition p constitutes an exception to a normative generalization believed by the speaker to be shared by the speech event participants. In order to capture the notion of exception we propose to divide the CG into two sets of worlds, those consistent with previous assertions and their presuppositions (CGA) and those consistent with generalizations (CGG). The DD signals a non-inclusion relation between the asserted proposition and the CGG. This enables us to distinguish between different types of mirativity effects, by drawing a distinction between adding a proposition p that was not previously in the speaker’s expectation-set (inter alia DeLancey 1997, 2001, Rett 2009, Peterson 2013, Rett & Murray 2013) and the present case of the DD, where p can very well be in the speaker’s expectation-set, but objectively expected that ~p.
