Linguistic and Literary Studies: Volume 2 Descriptive Linguistics 9783110800432, 9789027977274

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LINGUISTIC AND LITERARY STUDIES-II

TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS Studies and Monographs 8 Edited by

WERNER WINTER University of Kiel, Germany

MOUTON PUBLISHERS THE HAGUE · PARIS · NEW YORK

LINGUISTIC AND LITERARY STUDIES In Honor of

Archibald A. Hill Edited by

M O H A M M A D ALI J A Z A Y E R Y E D G A R C. POLOMfi W E R N E R WINTER

II: DESCRIPTIVE L I N G U I S T I C S

MOUTON PUBLISHERS THE HAGUE · PARIS · NEW YORK

Linguistic and Literary Studies ISBN: 90-279-7717-8

(VolumeI)

90-279-7727-5 (Volume II) 90-279-7737-2 (Volume III) 90-279-7747-X (Volume IV) © 1978, Mouton Publishers, The Hague, The Netherlands Printed in Belgium

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS: ENGLISH D W I G H T L. B O L I N G E R

A semantic view of syntax: Some verbs that govern infinitives .

9

J O H N B. C A R R O L L

Continuous/Discrete: A reinterpretation of the mass/count feature of English common nouns

19

GORAN HAMMARSTRÖM

The direct object nexeme in English

31

R O B E R T T. H A R M S

Some nonrules of English

39

M A N T A R O J. H A S H I M O T O

Observations on the passive construction

53

JAMES D. M C C A W L E Y

Two notes on comparatives

67

R A V E N I. M C D A V I D A N D V I R G I N I A G. M C D A V I D

Intuitive rules and factual evidence: /-sp, -st, -sk/ plus [-z] . . .

73

ERNST PULGRAM

The frailty of grammatical concord

91

C A R L O T A S. SMITH

Jespersen's 'Move and Change' class and causative verbs in English

101

6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

HOLGER STEEN S 0 R E N S E N

Squinting grammar and the number of tenses in English . . .

Ill

GEORGE L. T R A G E R

The' barred-i' morphophone in English

117

Ε. M. U H L E N B E C K

A classical case of structural ambiguity or no ambiguity at all

121

DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS: OTHER LANGUAGES PETER F. A B B O U D

The vowel of the imperfect prefix in Najdi Arabic

129

KALI C. B A H L A N D A N J A N I K. S I N H A

Some aspects of the semantic complexity of Karanä conjunct verbs in Hindi

139

AARON BAR-ADON

Developments in the Hebrew verbal system of Israeli children and youth

151

M A D I S O N SCOTT BEELER

Barbareno Chumash text and lexicon

171

KNUT BERGSLAND

Order and reference in Aleut

195

J O H N G. B O R D I E

Kurdish dialects in Eastern Turkey

205

C H A R L E S E. C A I R N S

Universal rules and vocalic devoicing in Southern Paiute . . .

213

H A I G D E R - H O US SI KI A N

The semantic significance of S Ο V sequences in Armenian . .

227

C A R O L Mi E A S T M A N A N D P A U L Κ. A O K I

Phonetic segments of Haida (Hydaburg dialect)

237

TABLE OF CONTENTS

7

B A R B A R A S. EFRAT

The interpretation of glottalized resonants in Straits Salish . .

251

H A R O L D W. F E H D E R A U

The origin and development of Kituba (Lingua Franca Kikongo)

259

T H E O D O R E M. L I G H T N E R

The main stress rule in Turkish

267

E U N I C E V. P I K E A N D T H O M A S I B A C H

The phonology of the Mixtepec dialect of Mixtec

271

LILA W I S T R A N D R O B I N S O N

Some generative solutions to problems in Cashibo phonology

287

HARVEY ROSENBAUM

Constraints in Zapotec questions and relative clauses . . . .

297

W I L L I A M J. S A M A R I N

Inventory and choice in expressive language

313

JOEL F. SHERZER

Cuna numeral classifiers

331

AMAR B A H A D U R S I N G H

Complex verbs in Hindi

339

MARK H. W A T K I N S

Setswana phonemics: Sefokeng dialect

353

D E A N S. W O R T H

Some 'glide shifts' in Russian derivation

359

DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS: ENGLISH

A S E M A N T I C VIEW OF S Y N T A X : SOME VERBS THAT G O V E R N I N F I N I T I V E S DWIGHT BOLINGER

In his excellent article on anaphora, William Orr Dingwall (Dingwall 1971) wonders why it should be postulated "that there must be some feature (presumably semantic) which characterizes all verbs occurring with a given set of complements". He adds, "I see no particular reason to suppose that such a feature would exist any more than I would expect such a feature to characterize all irregular verbs or, for that matter, all verbs beginning with the phoneme /{/. What possible semantic feature can explain why one but not the other member of such seemingly synodesnise nymous pairs as a n d some instances of /'/; morphophone V"/)> I have such items as /jist/ just (adverb), and /Sis/ this (especially in such phrases as this one, like this). The only formulation here that makes sense to me is to set up the separate morphophone \ / i f ; it a always occurs in just (while the adjective has n d in this is a replacement of or substitution for \ / i f . In the speech of those who say children, dinner, sister with /*/, the morphophone \/if must be posited in the same way. With weak stress (phonemes f f and some instances of / 7 ; morphophone v 7 ) . I shall mention first the items in which fif is in morphophonic alternation with other vowels - fmimtf but /minüwt/, /in+finit/ but /fäynäyt/, /mowmint/ but /mo(w)m6ntas/, /väytil/ but /väytselitiy/, and countless others. In many of these, there is variation between phonemic fif and fif or f e f , and there are some rather well-defined distributions - fif after fif {limit), but fif elsewhere {habit), /a/ rather than fif in alternation with /ae/ where the -al is not phonetically 'syllabic Γ (thus final with /a/ as compared with vital). This is not the place for an attempt at a complete statement of these alternations and distributions, but the morphophonic formulation can clearly be that here the fif is a manifestation, in the presence of weak stress, of some other morphophone - s/if, or VW> o r /uw/, etc. - and the morphophone \/if is not present. In instances like roses, landed I have f i f , some speakers (British) have f i f , and some speakers may actually have /5/, though I have not really

THE 'BARRED-I' MORPHOPHONE

119

heard this (or rather, I haven't heard a vowel like [A], which I take as the norm for /a/). There is clear phonemic contrast for me between roses with /I/, and Rosa's with /a/, maces and mesas, and there is morphophonic structural contrast also (occurrence in suffix or in stem). I conclude that -es and -ed have \/ij morphophonically; this has to be a separate morphophone because it is not in alternation with anything else, though phonemically it may be manifested as /if (and /a/?). The argument can be advanced that fif in the instances of -es and -ed need not be any vocalic morphophone, but is simply a necessary vocalic manifestation when the morphemes -\/-z and \/-d occur after certain consonants. This point will be considered further below. The next set of items with phonemic /?/ are those with 'syllabic m, η, I, r\ phonemicized as /Im, in, 11, irj - such as rhythm, soften, gamble, winter. We may contrast rhythm, rhythmic with system, systematic; gamble, gambling with gambol, gamboling; lighten, lightning with soften, softening; winter, wintry with summer, summery. In the first two words of each of these contrasts, fif is present before the nasal or liquid when there is no following vowel, and is absent when there is a vowel following in a postbase; in the second two words of each contrast, /if is always present. The obvious formulation is that the first sets can be said not to contain \/i/, while the second sets do have it {system, systematic actually contain Ve.m/, as in systemic, and hence are not really in point here). This is not a complete statement, however; if summer and winter can be said to have an identical formative element -er, then this element must be stated morphophonically as \/(i).rf, where the parentheses indicate that the vocalic morphophone is not present in some of the items, but is found in others; rather than a rule, a listing is probably necessary here. When we consider the verb winter, with wintering, and center, centering as against central, it is seen that a rule can be stated also. Incidentally, in the last example there is a good reason for the older non-American spelling centre, but then we should also write *wintre (and *wintring, as centring!). The morphophonic writing y/(i)/ for the vocalic of -er in center, winter (and -en in lighten, soften) does not prevent us from writing -\/r.i.ö.m/, and \/g.£e.m.b.l/ for gamble. But gambol must be written \/g.ae.m.b.i.l/. On the other hand, in -es and -ed the rule for the presence of /if is one of addition rather than of omission, so instead of writing (i) we should use another symbolization, perhaps \/[i].zf and VM-d/, with the brackets symbolizing the 'addition' called for by a properly stated rule. It may be, however, that just as we write \/tnf in rhythm, so we should simply

120

GEORGE L. TRAGER

write λ/ζ/ and -y/d/, taking care of the phonemic manifestation of /i/ in roses and landed by rule. The case of the 'second possessive' his (compare his'nl) instead of his's, then calls for listing instead of a rule, as do the possessives like James', Charles', alongside of James's, Charles's. 3. Whatever practises of rule-stating or of listing we may eventually establish for the instances just cited, and whatever writing devices we may set up for some instances of \/i/> the totality of the discussion above shows that we need to establish a morphophone Λ/Ι/, and then describe it adequately to indicate its structural difference from the other vowel morphophones. Southern Methodist University

REFERENCES Smith, Henry Lee, Jr. 1967. The concept of the morphophone. Language 43.306-41 Trager, George L. 1967. A componential morphemic analysis of English personal pronouns. Language 43.372-8. —. 1971. Language and languages. San Francisco: Chandler. Trager, George L., and Henry Lee Smith, Jr. 1951. An outline of English structure. Norman, Oklahoma (3d and following printings: Washington, D.C., American Council of Learned Societies, 1957 [the date was never changed]).

A CLASSICAL CASE OF STRUCTURAL AMBIGUITY OR NO AMBIGUITY AT ALL? Ε. M. UHLENBECK

1. In a recent article G. Lakoff considered: (1) The members of the royal family are visiting dignitaries. as "a classical case of structural ambiguity" (Lakoff 1970:151), presumably because it is similar to well known cases earlier discussed by Chomsky such as: (2)

They are flying planes (Chomsky 1956:118).

and (3)

What disturbed John was being disregarded by everyone. (Chomsky 1967:405).

Likewise Kooij maintains that (4) He hit the man with a stick. is an ambiguous sentence which "clearly has two different interpretations" (Kooij 1971:67). 2. What this article tries to show is a) that far from being classical cases of structural ambiguity (l)-(4) have nothing to do with real structural ambiguity in sentences; b) that the qualification of structural ambiguity is bound up with the incorrect view that (l)-(4) are four (different) sentences; and c) that what the three authors are actually discussing are not sentences, each with two different interpretations, but if they are sentences at all, they are pairs of different sentences, each with its own grammatical structure and its own semantic content. 3. In order to show the error of assuming structural ambiguity in (l)-(4), it is necessary first to look closely into the status of (l)-(4) and to pay attention to the way (l)-(4) are introduced by their respective authors.

122

Ε. Μ. UHLENBECK

In each of the four cases the reader (who is of course supposed to understand English) is presented with what variously and interchangeably is called: cases, examples, expressions or - more frequently - sentences, that is linear sequences of what to all appearances are words. They are given in traditional spelling, with a capital used for the first letter of the first word to indicate the beginning and a full stop at the end to mark the end of the sentence. The authors then go on to declare that the sentence under discussion is ambiguous, presenting some additional grammatical evidence or some paraphrases which are intended to serve as a kind of description of the structural ambiguity supposed to exist. Thus, Chomsky (1967:405) comments on (3) in the following way: It is clear, first of all, that this expression has two distinct interpretations. Under one interpretation, it means that John was disturbed by the fact that everyone disregarded him;under the second it means that everyone was disregarding the things that disturb John. Under the first of these interpretations, a certain grammatical relation holds between disregard and John, namely, the same relation, that holds between these items in Everyone disregards John (the 'verbobject' relation). Under the second interpretation neither this nor any other grammatically significant relation holds between disregard and John. On the other hand, if we insert the word our between was and being, the sentence is unambiguous, and no grammatical relation holds between disregard and we (an underlying element of our). Examples of this sort can be elaborated indefinitely. (Chomsky 1967:405-6). In the same way Lakoff observes as to (1) that: The phrase visiting dignitaries can either be a noun phrase consisting of a head noun dignitaries preceded by a modifier visiting, or it can be a verb phrase with the verb visit and the object noun dignitaries (Lakoff 1971:153). As for Kooij, he adds to (4) the following statements: This sentence clearly has two different interpretations. Under the one interpretation, with the stick is an Adjunct in the Noun Phrase the man with the stick, under the other interpretation it is a Complement to the Predicate Phrase hit the man. Or in traditional terminology, under the one interpretation with the stick has an Adjectival function, under the second interpretation it has an Adverbial function. (Kooij 1971:67). Apart from some differences in terminology all three descriptions have in common 1) that a sharp distinction is made between a sentence and the interpretation of a sentence; 2) that a different interpretation which leads to the assumption of a different set of relations between the elements of the sentence, does not affect the identity of the sentence: there is 'clearly' only one sentence, with two different interpretations 1 ; and 3) that the status of the elements which constitute the sentence is not affected by

A CLASSICAL CASE OF STRUCTURAL AMBIGUITY

123

the two different interpretations: dignitaries, for example, remains a plural noun regardless of whether it is the object of the verb visiting or the head of the noun phrase visiting dignitaries. This view on which the qualification of structural ambiguity of (l)-(4) depends, rests on a conception of the sentence as merely a linear sequence or concatenation of forms. This conception is extremely vulnerable, because it lays a disproportionate emphasis on what is basically an accidental feature, namely the phonic sameness of the constituent elements. Neither the melodic features of the sentence as a whole, nor the grammatical organization of the sentence with the intermediate units such as word groups and more complex groupings, nor the meaning of these units and of their elements play a role in this conception. In other words, the structural ambiguity does not refer to actual sentences, nor to surface structures in the familiar sense, but only to sequences without any clear linguistic status. This means that the ambiguity is clearly not a property of the linguistic facts themselves even when seen from the point of view of generative grammar, but a doubtful consequence of the adopted theory. It is as if one would posit the existence in English of an ambiguous item /rait/, which 'under one interpretation' would be write and under another right. In his early asemantic days Chomsky was indeed consistent on this point by calling the comparable case of sun and son a case of referential ambiguity (Chomsky 1957:86), but I take it that at present no linguist would be willing to seriously consider sameness of phonic form as a sufficient reason for assuming identity. Homophony of words is an accidental and marginal phenomenon. It is a universal principle that in a language words generally have different forms, but just because words have in general other linguistic aspects beside a phonic aspect, namely a semantic and a grammatical aspect, homophony may occur within certain limits without endangering identification. Accordingly, it usually comes as a surprise to the native speaker when it is pointed out to him that what for him are unmistakebly two different entities share the same phonemic form. It is remarkable that linguists who attach so great a value to linguistic reactions and intuitions of the native speaker, have chosen to ignore them in this matter. There is another remarkable and even paradoxical fact to be observed. The reader of the four sentences (l)-(4) and the following descriptions of the structural ambiguity, can only be brought to accept this ambiguity after having made use of a conception of sentence which is clearly at variance with the one that is adopted by the authors. What I mean is that the reader in applying his normal reading knowledge of English

124

Ε. Μ. UHLENBECK

knows, for instance, the meaning of the phrase the members of the royal family that applies in this case and the meaning of the word dignitaries as well, because only then is he able to appreciate the fact that visiting can be part of the group are visiting as well as part of the group visiting dignitaries. Or should we say that visiting is part of the group are visiting and that there is another visiting that as a modifier may go together with dignitaries? We will return to this alternative in the next paragraph. For the moment we are content to observe that what the authors actually present to their readers are not sentences which are part of the English language, but artifacts of their own making, that is, a kind of surface structures of sentences minus their melodic features. The readers who are explicitly and misleadingly invited to interpret actual sentences, are not aware of this and they cannot but interpret what is offered to them in the way they have learned to interpret written texts, namely, by assuming that the graphic representations presented to them stand for meaning-bearing elements, organized in syntactic constructions with which they have become familiar. 4. The view that there is one sentence with two distinct interpretations presupposes that the identity of the constituent elements of the sentence is not jeopardized by the two different interpretations. As we have already observed, this is certainly correct for a noun such as dignitaries, which remains a noun under both interpretations. There are, however, other elements which are clearly problematic. Not only do visiting in (1) and flying in (2) pose a problem; but so do are in the same sentences and was in (3), which are alternatively a copula and an auxiliary in a larger verbal complex. If one assumes identity in order to preserve the view of a single sentence with two interpretations, one runs into difficulties because under the copula-interpretation of was in (3) one may reverse the order of the three constitutents as follows: (5) Being disregarded by everyone was what disturbed John. an operation which is not possible under the auxiliary interpretation of was. This difference is a strong argument for distinguishing two different words was. Comparable facts can be established in (4). Only if with a stick in this sentence is part of the complex phrase the man with a stick, one can have: (6)

The man with a stick he hit.

In any case some of the constituent items of what is misleadingly called a

A CLASSICAL CASE OF STRUCTURAL AMBIGUITY

125

sentence, have an unclear status. Historically it is a remnant of the old view that words are mere sound complexes and not bipartite linguistic signs. 5. The term 'structural ambiguity' then is clearly a misnomer. Kooij, who declared that the main subject of his study is "ambiguity as a property of sentences and its consequences for a linguistic description" (Kooij 1971:4), should not have included cases such as (4) in his book, because there is nothing inherently ambiguous about them and nothing structural either. This does not mean that there do not exist real cases of ambiguity which are correctly called structural, because they reside in the structure of the language, as Aristotle already knew, but (l)-(4) are not examples of such ambiguity. Leiden University

NOTE 1

The distinction between sentences and sentoids introduced by Katz and Postal Katz and Postal 1964:24-25) is not of any help. I like little boys and girls is still for them one sentence but two sentoids, with 'sentence' referring to a fixed string of formatives regardless of the structural description it receives.

REFERENCES Chomsky, Noam. 1956. Three models for the description of language, I. R. E. Transactions on Information Theory vol. IT-2. Proceedings of the Symposium on information theory, 113-24. —. 1957. Syntactic structures (Janua Linguarum, s. m. 4). The Hague: Mouton. —. 1967. The formal nature of language. In: Eric H. Lenneberg, Biological foundations of language. New York. Katz, Jerrold J., and Postal, Paul M. 1964. An integrated theory of linguistic descriptions. Cambridge, Mass. Kooij, Jan G. 1971. Ambiguity in natural language. Amsterdam. Lakoff, George. 1970. Linguistics and natural logic. Synthese 22.151-271.

DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS: OTHER LANGUAGES

THE VOWEL OF THE I M P E R F E C T P R E F I X IN N A J D I A R A B I C PETER F. ABBOUD

1. INTRODUCTION

The phenomenon of taltala, that is the occurrence of the high front vowel /if in the prefix of the imperfect in place of Classical Arabic /a/ and fuf, is well-known and has even been reported as predominant among some Arab tribes in classical times. Today it seems to be the rule, characteristically in the dialects of the sedentary population of the Arabic-speaking world, where it applies to all verb forms, simple and derived. This is not the case in the dialects spoken in the Najd in Saudi Arabia, where prefixes without taltala exist (a feature which Najdi shares with Bedouin dialects) and where an examination reveals an underlying structure with remarkably fewer taltala forms. The picture is not altogether uniform in these dialects, of course, and variations do exist. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss the vowel of the prefix in one dialect of Najdi Arabic, the one spoken in Majma'a, a town in al-Qasim district, some 130 miles to the Northwest of Riyadh. The perfect, imperfect, and imperative of sound verbs of Forms I and IV are studied and compared with those of hamza- and wäw-initial verbs in an effort to determine from the surface the underlying forms of the vowel of the prefix, and rules for generating the former from the latter are investigated. These rules are given in an informal notation, one that can be easily followed by Arabists.1

2. SOUND VERBS

2.1 The Perfect Stems The dialect has two patterns for the non-derived verb: CaCaC and CaCiC,2 characterized by the following paradigm: /dxal, dxalat, daxalta/

130

PETER F. ABBOUD

'enter'; /labs, labsat, lbista/ 'dress'. The second stem in each case is the one used with subject markers beginning with a vowel, which are /-at, -aw, and -ann/ for 3f.s., 3m.p. and 3f.p. respectively, while the third is the one used with those that begin with a consonant, i.e. /-ta, -ti, -turn, -tann, -t, -na/ for 2 m.s., 2f.s., 2m.p., 2f.p., Is. and lp. respectively.3 Of the derived verbs, the form that will be of interest in this paper is Form IV, which is very productive in Najdi. It has the shape 9 aCCaC: /?adxal/ 'he brought in'.

2.2 The Imperfect Stems: Ablaut

CaCaC verbs have -CCiC for their imperfect stems: /dxal, yadxil/ 'enter'; /sjan, yasjin/ 'imprison'. When C2 or C3 is a post-velar fricative (L), i.e. /h, e , h/, the stem vowel is /a/: /ftah, yiftah/ 'open'; /jma\ yijmaV 'gather'; /l'ab, yil'ab/ 'play' /nhab, yinhab/ 'loot'. When Ci is a velar or post-velar fricative (F), i.e. /χ, γ, h/, the stem is -FäCiC: /xzan, yixazin/ 'store'; /ymaz, yiyamiz/ 'wink'; /hras, yiharis/ 'guard'; /'raf, yi'arif/ 'know'; /hzam, yihazim/ 'defeat'. CaCiC verbs all have -CCaC for their imperfect stem, no matter whether any of the constants is F or L or not: 4 /labs, yilbas/ 'dress'; /rabh, yirbah/ 'gain'; /sam\ yisma'/ 'hear'; /ta'b, yit'ab/ 'tire'; /xasr, yixsar/ 'lose'. We can generalize the shapes of the perfect and imperfect stems by positing CVCVC as the basic stem for both; a rule will drop the first vowel when there is a prefix: (1) Vowel elision V

0 / CV+C

CVC

where + is a morpheme boundary marker. It seems clear that whenever the (second) vowel of the perfect is low, the stem vowel of the imperfect is high and vice-versa. The rule for this alternation (ablaut) can be stated as:

J ->· j j J / imperfect, or using the

α notation. V (2) Ablaut [ahigh] -»• [— ahigh] / imperfect It will be assumed, without further discussion here, that the vowel of the perfect is the basic vowel.

THE VOWEL OF THE IMPERFECT PREFIX

131

In order to account for the low vowel next to L, we need: (3) L-rule i

a/

/ imperfect / non-derived

which will be made to apply after ablaut. For F-initial verbs, it will be noted that only those of the type CaCaC have a low vowel to the right of the fricative. Derived verbs also show ablaut, but do not undergo the L-rule: / ?adxal, yidxil/ 'bring in'. 2.3 The Imperative

The imperative is derived from the imperfect stem by the deletion of the prefix and the introduction of a prosthetic vowel when the stem starts with CC: (4) Prefix deletion CV -»· 0 / + stem / imperative (5) Prosthesis 0 i/ + CC Thus, /idxil/ 'enter', /iftah/ 'open', /ilbas/ 'dress'. The only exception is Form IV verbs: their imperative is ^aCCiC, not ?iCCiC: ^/adxil/ 'bring in'. It seems clear that when the prefix deletion rule is applied, the stem of IV is -9aCCiC. As will be seen later, the shape of the stem also determines the vowel of the prefix. A later rule deletes /?a-/: (6) ?a-deletion *>a

0 / CV +

+ stem

It is important to note that the imperative of F-initial verbs is iFCVC, without the low vowel after the velar: /ixzin/ 'store', /ihzim/ 'defeat'. 2.4 The Passive

One of the most distinguishing characteristic features of Najdi Arabic is the use of the passive by internal vocalic change.5 The vowels of the perfect stems are /i/, that of the imperfect, /a/: /libis, yilbas/ 'be dressed'; /xizin, yixzan/ 'be stored'; /ribih, yirbah/ 'be gained'; /?ikrim, yikram/ 'be honored'. It will be noted that ablaut applies in the case of the passive. 2.5 The Vowel of the Prefix

(PV)

This vowel is /a/ for -CCiC active stems, jxj with -CCaC and all other

132

PETER F. ABBOUD

stems.6 It will be assumed that the basic vowel of the prefix is /i/. A rule will be needed:7 (7) PV-rule i

a/C

+ CCiC / active

Note that (7) will wrongly assign an /a/ to the PV of Form IV verbs, unless we apply it before the ?a-deletion rule; it must follow the imperfect rules, since it is dependent on their output.

2.6 Summary of the Rules

The imperfect rules: vowel elision (1), ablaut (2), L-rule (3). The imperative rules: prefix deletion (4), prosthesis (5). Other rules: PV rule (7), ?a-deletion (6). The rules given above can generate all the forms discussed in the previous sections8 with one exception: the imperfect of F-initial verbs of the CaCaC type, which must have a low vowel after the velar. We can handle this by amending the vowel elision rule, so as not to elide the vowel in the case of such verbs. The new vowel elision rule is: (8) V - » 0 / CV+C]

CViC; if Ci = F, then Vi Φ a

Since the imperative is without the low vowel, a rule deleting it should be added to the imperative rules, before prosthesis: (9) velar vowel deletion a -*• 0 / + F

/ imperative

The following table (I) gives the various forms of the verbs discussed (forms with L and F have not been included as they are irrelevant to the discussion that is to follow): TABLE I A (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v)

CaCaC CaCiC CiCiC ?aCCaC ?iCCiC

Β

C

Ca+CCiC Ci+CCaC Ci+CCaC Ci+CCiC Ci+CCaC

iCCiC iCCaC ?aCCiC

As can readily be seen, columns A, B, and C have the perfect, imperfect, and imperative forms respectively; the rows are the two non-derived

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THE VOWEL OF THE IMPERFECT PREFIX

patterns and their passive, Form IV and its passive respectively. The forms represent the basic stems and those generated from them by the rules. 3. VERBS WITH Ci = hamza /?/

The actual ^-initial forms corresponding to Table I are giyen in Table II: TABLE II

(i) (ϋ) (iii) (iv) (v)

A

Β

C

^asar ^amin ?isir ?äman "?ümin

yäsir yäman yüsar yümin yüman

isir iman ?ämin

'imprison' 'be secure' 'be imprisoned' 'believe' 'be believed'

Examples A(iv), B(i), and all forms in C can be neatly accounted for by: (10) glottal elision rule V?

V/

C

which is widely and independently attested in the dialect. Clearly, it is impossible, unless one resorts to completely ad-hoc rules, to account for the other forms in Β and for A(v), without concluding that the underlying PV is not /i/, but (a) /u/ for the imperfect passive (/yüman/), (b) /u/ for the imperfect active of IV (yümin/), (c) /a/ for the imperfect active of non-derived (/yäman/). Furthermore, it is also clear that the next to last vowel of the perfect passive is /u/: /^ümin/.9 With /a/ as the basic vowel, the PV of IV and of the passives is given by (11) new PV rule a ^ u / C

+

(CVCC.VC 10

)

, . (stem/passive imperfect)

The glottal elision rule must follow prosthesis, since the output of the latter may serve as input for it. Furthermore, the ?a-deletion rule, which must follow prosthesis, must precede glottal elision. This is seen from the fact that if it were not so, yu+?a+*?min, the underlying structure for Form IV /yümin/, would give the incorrect form */yu?ämin/. In order to generate the surface forms of PV from the forms given above, we will need the following rule: „„ , . (12) PV-reduction

. . ,'C · •'1

CM

1

1

+ stem / stem Φ —CCiC" '

134

PETER F. ABBOUD

The rules so far discussed will now be in this order: The imperfect rules: new vowel elision (8), ablaut (2), L-rule (3) The imperative rules: prefix deletion (4), velar-vowel deletion (9), prosthesis (5) Others: new PV (11), ?a-deletion (6), glottal deletion (10), PV-reduction (12) As a result, Table 1 should be revised as Table III: TABLE III Β

A

Ca+CCiC Ca+CCaC Cu+CCaC Cu+CCiC Cu+CCaC

CaCaC CaCiC CuCiC ?aCCaC *>uCCiC

(i) (ϋ) (iii) (iv) (v)

C iCCiC iCCaC ?aCCiC

4. VERBS WITH Ci = wäw

The actual forms corresponding to Table III above are given in Table IV: TABLE IV

(0 (ϋ) (iii) (iv) (v)

A

Β

wazan walim wuzin 9 örad ?ürid

yäzin yälam yüzan yürid yürad

C üzin ülam ?

örid

'weigh' 'prepare' 'be weighed' 'water (animals)' 'be watered'

Forms A(v) and B(iii) - (v) can be accounted for by means of: (13) w-assimilation w

u/u

C

This rule will also account for C(i) and (ii) after the following rule has applied: (14) homorganic vowel i -> u /

wC

A(iv) and C(iv) suggest the following rule: (15) diphthong reduction aw -»· ö /

C

THE VOWEL OF THE IMPERFECT PREFIX

135

The application of this rule in the case of B(i) and (ii) will give incorrect results: */yözin/. This suggests: (16)

w-deletion w

a11

0/a

which closely resembles the rule which is needed to generate the hollow verbs from underlying CawaC forms. Further evidence is needed to determine the relative order of this rule; for now, it must be placed prior to the vowel-elision rule. Finally, a late rule of vowel-lengthening is needed: (17)

VV ^ V

As things stand one cannot be sure of the relative order of (14) and (13) with respect to diphthong reduction and glottal deletion. However, the diphthong reduction rules can be stated as: (18)

a -»· ο /

wC

and (19)

w —> ο / ο

C

Rules (18) and (14) are similar and can be collapsed: (20)

"u" / _o_

new homorganic vowel

wC

ν or [+front] [-front] / wC So can rules (19) and (13), which are also similar: (21)

new w-assimilation w

V'/V'

C

The glottal deletion rule can be given as (22)

?->V7V'

C

This can be collapsed with (21) as (23)

w, ^-assimilation

V'/V'

It is clear that (20) and (23) must follow reduction in the rules given in section 3.

9

a-deletion but precede PV

5. CONCLUSIONS

(a) Table V presents a summary of prefix vowels: A gives the surface forms and Β the underlying ones:

136

PETER F. ABBOUD

TABLE V A

Β

Ci+

Cu+ Ca+ Cu+w/?C Ca+ fCa+KT) (Ca+waj

Cü Ca + Cä

(passive and active II-IV) (elsewhere) (passive and active II-IV)

Thus, C u + is the prefix in active II, III, IV verbs and all passives, C a + is the prefix elsewhere. This is remarkably similar to prefix vowels in Classical Arabic. (b) Many of the rules given in the previous sections resemble the rules of Classical Arabic. This is true in the case of ablaut, the L-rule, the imperative rules, and the rules governing Form IV. The main differences include the low vowel to the right of the velar in F-initial verbs, the elision of the glottal stop (a well-known development which is widespread in Arabic dialects), the elision of /w/ with vowel lengthening in all w-initial verbs, and the u -*• i rule, i.e. the absence of u-i contrast at the phonetic level. (c) Peculiarities of the Majma'a dialect in the material covered in this paper are: (i) the 2m.s. perfect subject marker /-ta/, (ii) the dissimilation of the vowel of the prefix with the stem vowel of sound and defective verbs, and (iii) the imperfect stem -FaCiC for FaCaC verbs only. Majma'a shares with Hayil, and the Najdi dialects in general, the following important features: (i) the formation of the passive by internal vocalic change; (ii) the productive role of Form IV, the imperative of which is ^aCCiC; (iii) the elision of /w/ in w-initial verbs, with lengthening of the prefix vowel to /yä-/; (iv) the occurrence of iFCVC as imperative of all F-initial verbs, i.e. without the low vowel that is found in the imperfect stem to the right of F; (v) the stem vowel of imperfect stems of F-initial verbs, which is always /i/; (vi) the peculiar behavior of hollow verbs with -CäC imperfect stems, whose prefix vowel is /a/, and the anomalous forms of the imperative of /nam/ and /xäf/; and (vii) the u i rule, i.e. 12 the absence of u-i contrast at the phonetic level. The University of Texas

THE VOWEL OF THE IMPERFECT PREFIX

137

NOTES 1

Some of these rules appeared in the author's paper on the passive (Abboud 1969), but they have been refined and are more formally presented in this paper which generally follows the framework and notation in M. Brame's thorough-going and valuable study of Classical Arabic phonology, where applicable; in addition to adding rigor to the presentation, this greatly facilitates comparison of the rules of Classical Arabic and the dialects and a discussion of historical phonology. 2 Short vowels in open syllable are reduced to /i/ or 0, depending on the nature of adjacent consonants, the proximity of stress, and the number and shape of successive syllables. This is not relevant to this study and has therefore been ignored. The rules given in this paper apply equally to defective verbs (i.e. where C3 is /wI or /y/), whose surface shapes are CaCa or CaCi. 3 Similar alternations also exist in Hayil, in northern Najd, and elsewhere (cf. Blanc pp. 134-5. The transcription here uses familiar symbols, with the possible exception of /χ, γ, h, c , h, and "'/, which represent the voiceless and voiced velar fricatives, the voiceless and voiced pharyngeal fricatives, the glottal fricative, and the glottal stop respectively. 4 In Hayil, the low vowel tha t follows F appears in the imperfect stems of both CaCaC and CaCiC verbs. This seems to be the case in other areas where the phenomenon exists. 5 Cantineau, like earlier researchers, gives a few isolated examples of the passive but does not seem to realize that the phenomenon could be productive and so does not investigate it further. To my best knowledge, the only works that discuss the internal passive at some length and report them as fully productive are my dissertation and papers. Abboud 1969 discusses all passive stems, while Abboud 1971, among other things, discusses the passive imperfect suffixes. 6 As mentioned above, this also applies to defective verbs: /yabni/ 'build', /yinsa/ 'forget'. The only exception to this rule is a very small number of non-derived hollow verbs whose imperfect stem is -CäC. For them, PV is /a/: /yanäm/ 'sleep', /yaxäf/ 'fear', /yayär/ 'be jealous', /yahäb/ 'fear'. The first two are peculiar in that the imperative forms have the stems /nüm-/, /xüf-/: e.g. /nümay, xüfay/. The situation is identical in Hayil. 7 In Hayil, PV is /a/ for -CCiC and -CCaC (both sound and defective). In Majma c a, there is vowel dissimilation. In the Negev, there is assimilation of PV to the stem vowel (Blanc, p. 136). In the majority of other dialects, of course, there is taltala: PV is /i/. 8 Derivations have been eliminated from the paper to save on space. 9 Another example of this is seen in the passive of /stäjar/ 'rent' (from *sta 9 jar), which is /stüjir/ (from */stu ? jir/). That all vowels but the last are /u/ in the underlying forms is seen in the passive of /itaman/ 'trust' (from */i ?taman/), which is /ütimin/ (from */u 9 timin/). 10 This would make PV = u not only for Form IV, but for Form II, the quadriliterals, and with a slight adaptation, Form III (see Brame, pp. 423ff). For other derived verbs, it will be assumed that PV = a, though direct evidence is not available. 11 Unlike w-initial verbs, y-initial verbs are very rare. The two commonly occurring ones are /ybis, yäbas/ 'become dry, hard', /ytim, yätam/ 'become orphan'. Their imperative forms are /Ibas/, /itam/ respectively. No corresponding Form IV verbs are known. Further, being intransitive, they have no passive. The pertinent rules above can be easily changed to account for y-initial verbs. 12 Cf. Cantineau 1936, 1937, and Blanc.

138

PETER F. ABBOUD

REFERENCES Abboud, P. F. 1964. The syntax of Najdi Arabic. University of Texas Ph.D. dissertation. —. 1969. The internal passive in Najdi Arabic. Paper presented at the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting. Toronto. —. 1971. al-Icläl in Arabic läm-weak verbs. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Oriental Society. Cambridge, Mass. Blanc, H., The Arabic dialect of the Negev Bedouins. Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, IV 7.112-50. Brame, Μ. K. 1970. Arabic phonology: implications for phonological theory and historical Semitic. Μ. I. T. Dissertation. Cantineau, J., 1936-37. Etudes sur quelques parlers de nomades arabes d'Orient. Annales de la Faculte d'Etudes Orientales, Universite d'Alger, II (1936), 1-188; III (1937), 119-217. Johnstone, Τ. Μ. 1967. Aspects of syllabification in the spoken Arabic of 'Anaiza', BSOAS XL. 1-16. Socin, A. 1900-01. Diwan aus Centraiarabien, ed. by Η. Stumme. Leipzig.

SOME ASPECTS OF THE S E M A N T I C C O M P L E X I T Y OF K A R A N A C O N J U N C T VERBS I N H I N D I * KALI C. BAHL AND ANJANT K. SINHA

1. Although linguists interested in Hindi (e.g., Burton-Page 1957; Hacker 1961) recognize two classes of verbs - simple verbs (which are like verbs in English, e.g., sonä 'to sleep', sudhäranä 'to improve'), and conjunct verbs (which are combinations of a substantive, e.g., sayana 'sleep', sudhära 'improvement', or an adjective, e.g., acchä 'good', with a verb, e.g., karanä 'to do'), they have hardly tried to find out the relationship between them. As a result, they are unable to account for the semantic and syntactic relationship between sentences la through lg: (la) John ne Jack se jüte se mära pita ki. 'John hit Jack with shoes / John and Jack hit each other with shoes.' (lb) John ne Jack ko jüte se märä. 'John hit Jack with shoes.' (1 c) John ne Jack ko jutiyäyä. 'John hit Jack with shoes.' (1 d) Jack ne jänabüjhakara John se jüte se mära khäyi. 'Jack got deliberately hit with shoes by John.' (le) Jack ne jänabüjhakara John se jüte khäye. 'Jack got deliberately hit with shoes by John.' (1 f) * Jack jänabüjhakara jutiyäyä gayä. 'Jack was deliberately hit with shoes.'1 (lg) Jack ko jänäbüjhakara jutiyäyä gayä. 'Jack was deliberately hit with shoes.' A semantically based grammar of Hindi should be able not only to account for the relationship between la, lb and lc, but also to show how Id and le are related to them and why If is not possible, lg is a passive of lc which can be easily accounted for. We hold the view that the verb jutiyänä 'to hit with shoes' is derived from jüte se märcam 'to hit with shoes' by a lexical incorporation rule (Gruber 1965) and that mära

140

KALI C. BAHL AND ANJANI K. SINHA

khänä 'to be beaten' (literally 'to receive the beating') is a passive verb2 derived from the active verb märanä 'to beat/hit'. Given these assumptions, we suggest 2 as the underlying form for lb and lc, and 3 for Id and le: (2) [sJohn caused it [ s John hit Jack with shoess]s] (3) [Jack caused it [ s John hit Jack with shoess]s] The same type of relationship exists between 4a and 4b and between 5a and 5b, i.e., 4b and 5b have passive verbs derived from 4a and 5a respectively. (4a)

(4b) Jack ne jänabüjhakara John se läte khäy!. 'Jack got deliberately kicked by John.' thappara se märä' thappara märä ! *thapariyäyä 'John j s l a p p e d I *hit Jack with a slap.') (5b) Jack ne jänabüjhakara John se thappara khäye 'Jack got deliberately slapped by John.' In lc the lexical incorporation rule works in Hindi but not in English, in 4a it works both in English and Hindi and in 5a it works in English but not in Hindi. Moreover, in 4a it is obligatory for English but optional for Hindi. Further investigation is necessary to find out the semantic constraints involved in the application of the rules in these languages. 2. If we take another look at sentences of 1, we find that lb and lc are semantically the same but la is ambiguous with reference to who participated actively in the act of hitting with shoes. The implication is that the semantic domain of lb and lc is covered by la but the semantic domain of la is not fully covered by lb or lc. In other words, mära pifa karanä 'to fight' conveys much more than märanä 'to beat/hit' does, and märanä conveys much more than jutiyänä 'to hit with shoes' or latiyänä 'to kick' does. We find the same pattern of relationship between the conjunct verb sayana karanä 'to rest/sleep' in 6a and the related nonconjunct verb sonä 'to sleep' in 6b:

THE SEMANTIC COMPLEXITY OF KARANÄ CONJUNCT VERBS

141

^ , . , „ ,... , (bulä lügä) (6a) apa thori dera sayan kijiye, mai apa ko dugäj· , ·. „ „ (call you' ) Please rest a while, ΠΙ (wake , you up. ) ν * - , ... , (uthadügä) (6b) apa thori dera so jaiye, mai apa ko ^ _ j· 'Please sleep a while, I'll

U

(call you.

3

P· )

sonä 'to sleep' commits one to sleep whereas sayana karanä 'to rest' may or may not imply such a commitment. It is because of this wider domain of sayana karanä that it can be replaced by verbs like visräma karanä 'to rest' or lefanä 'to lie down', none of which can replace sonä 'to sleep'. The same pattern of relationship is at work between Ιαγαϊ karanä and laranä 'to fight', jhagarä karanä and jhagaranä 'to quarrel', khoja karanä and khojanä 'to find out', and mäga karanä and mäganä 'to demand'. We think that the relationship between the conjunct verbs in question and their nonconjunct counterparts is that of the generic and the specific. The nonconjunct verbs are specific cases of action broadly indicated by generic conjunct verbs. This does not necessarily mean that all conjunct verbs with karanä 'to do' are generic verbs. For example, the generic conjunct verbpraSansä karanä 'to praise' can be related to several specific cases of praise (e.g., baräi, tärifa, sarähanä, bakhäna, stuti etc.) each one of which is a conjunct verb with karanä 'to do' but none of them exactly covers its broad domain.4 Sentences 7 through 10 illustrate this point: (7a) usa ne apane bete ki bar! tärifa ki. 'He praised his son highly.' (7b) use ne apane bete kä guna-gäna kiyä 'He sang his son's praise.' (7c) usa ne apane bete ke gunö kä

(7d) (7e) (7f) The

- I kiyä. ι DaKnana)

'He sang his son's praise.' *usa ne apane bete ke gunö ki tärifa ki '?He praised the qualities of his son.' *usa ne apane bete kä bakhäna kiyä 'He mentioned (?) his son.' *use ne apene bete ki stuti ki '?He praised his son.' noun tärifa implies 'praise' with reference to someone's virtue or

142

KALI C. BAHL AND ANJANI K. SINHA

merits, bakhäna, which does not have the implication which tärlfa has, is praising someone repeatedly. The absence of guna 'merit' (or something like that) makes 7e bad (cf. 7c which has the noun guna) whereas its presence makes 7e odd. Similarly 7f is ungrammatical because the noun stuti (which usually refers to saying religious praises to perform worship) presupposes God or someone of a very high status as the object of praise. The sentences in 7 refer to the speaker praising someone junior or inferior to him; those in 8 presuppose that the object of praise is equal or superior to the speaker: (8a) Julie ne apane dosta ke käma ki sarähanä ki 'Julie

praiSCd J the work of her friend.' (appreciated)

(8b) * Julie ne apane dosta ke käma kä

kiyä I DäKilällä

ι

'Julie praised the work of her friend.' (8c) ??Julie ne apane dosta ke käma ki baräi ki 'Julie praised the work of her friend.' 8a refers to the praise of a specific act. 8b is ungrammatical because guna-gäna (which refers to the act of praising someone with a motive) or bakhäna is not used for specific acts. 8c is odd because baräi karanä implies that the person praised is junior to the speaker (which, according to our presuppositions, is not the case here). (9a) darabäri kavi ne räjä ki

|StUt* J ki.

(prasasti) 'The court poet praised the king.'

(9b) darabäri kavi ne räjä kä | s t a v a n a j jjjyä. (guna-gana) 'The court poet sang in praise of the king.' (9c)

*darabäri kavi ne räjä ki

(barai)

ki.

'The court poet P ra * se< | the king.' (appreciated) 9a and 9b have words which the speaker is expected to use for a king. 9c implies the superiority of the court poet over the king and is ungrammatical here. (10a) jädügara ne aisa khela dikhäyä ki loga väha-väha kara uthe. "The magician displayed such a trick that people cried "bravo, bravo.'"

143

THE SEMANTIC COMPLEXITY OF KARANÄ CONJUNCT VERBS

(10b)

?/*jädügara ne aisa khela dikhäyä ki loga usaki sarähanä karane läge 'The magician displayed such a trick that the people began to praise him.'

(10c)

*jädügara ne aisa khela dikhäyä ki loga usa k! jStUtv

.(karane

f ρΓα SaSll ι

läge '?The magician displayed such a trick that the people began to praise him in reverence.' The sudden expression of praise captured in 10a is not retained in 10b. 10c is ungrammatical because the conjunct verbs stuti karanä and praSasti karanä are not expected to be used for someone of the status of a magician. It is to be noted that the starred sentences in 7 through 10 turn into grammatical sentences if we replace their verbs by prasansä karanä 'to praise'. However, in such cases the sentences will simply mean 'x praised y' and they will not give us any specific information about the relative status of χ or y or about the nature of ζ (i.e., the act of praising). We suggest that the underlying form of all the Hindi sentences which indicate some kind of 'praise' has praSansä karanä in it and each one of them has a specific presupposition which tells us about the type of praise involved. Thus, if we have the semantic structure 'x praised y' and the presupposition that 'x is senior to y', we get χ ne y kl tärlfa kl', if the presupposition suggests that y is of a very high status, we get χ ne y ki stuti ki. If the presupposition indicates that the praise refers to a specific act ζ done by y, we get χ ne ζ ki sarähanä ki. If the expression involves a spontaneous praise of an act done by someone junior to the speaker, we get χ väha-väha kara ufhä. In none of these cases are we willing to accept the role of 'situations' which Fillmore (1971) suggests. He points out that both 'credit' and 'praise' refer to two situations: (a) the situation is good; and (b) the defendant is responsible for the situation. The difference between the two words, according to Fillmore, is that with 'credit' (b) is meaning, and (a) is presupposition, whereas with 'praise' (a) is meaning, and (b) is the presupposition. This works with 11,12 and 13 but not with 14,15 and 16. (11) Chou En Lai praised Nixon for his foreign policy. (12) Nixon credited China with a pragmatic policy. (13) James Reston praised Nixon for Kissinger's quiet diplomacy.

144

KALI C. BAHL AND ANJANI K. SINHA

(14) Sheila praised Our Gang for its satire. (15) Ramarao praised the beauty of the skyline of Chicago. (16) Judy praised the dog for being so disciplined. (17) *He credited the dog with having beautiful ears. (18) *John credited Our Gang with a purposeful satire. 14, 15 and 16 are grammatical sentences even though the 'defendants' are not responsible for the situation. 17 and 18 are ungrammatical because the dog or Our Gang cannot be responsible for situation under consideration. But what about 19 and 20 in terms of Fillmore's analysis? (19) Edward Kennedy credited Nixon with making Bangla Desh anti-American. (20) Kosygin credited Nixon with making Bangla Desh anti-American. If we know who Edward Kennedy and Kosygin are, 19 and 20 mean two different things to us. In 20 the situation is 'good' (from the point of view of Kosygin); in 19, it is bad. 19 can be paraphrased as 21 but 20 cannot be paraphrased that way. (21) Edward Kennedy accused Nixon of making Bangla Desh antiAmerican. 'Good', 'bad' and such other concepts are relational concepts and are an essential part of the presupposition only (in terms of the speaker's attitude towards the addressee/defendant or a situation). Fillmore's framework will create a problem for us in explaining the two uses of sarähanä karanä, 'to praise a specific act' and 'to appreciate a kind gesture', but our broad notion of presupposition will not. 3. So far we have discussed only cases involving generic conjunct verbs and their relation with specific conjunct or nonconjunct verbs. 22 provides us with examples of specific conjunct or nonconjunct verbs which can be related to an abstract5 generic verb only, i.e., to a verb which doesn't exist in its generic sense in the surface structure of a sentence: (22a) mäi Μ. A. ke liye parha rahä hü. „ (studying ) . , I am L 6J for my M. A. (•reading ) (22b) mäi Μ. A. ki parhäi kara rahä hü. Ί am having courses for my M. A.' (22c) mäi Μ. Α. kä adhyayana kara rahä hü. '*I am studying Μ. Α.'

THE SEMANTIC COMPLEXITY OF KARANÄ CONJUNCT VERBS

(23)

145

parik§ä pari§ada in dinö Μ. A. ke syllabus kä adhyayana kara rahi hai. 'The examination board is

stu

n ^ ® j (examining)

the M. A. syllabus these

days.' (24)

usa ne do säla taka bhäsä vigyäna ί ? ! / ^ , . J lekina (ka adhyayana kiya) usa ne sikhä kucha nah!. 'He studied linguistics for two years but learnt nothing.' (25) usa ne do säla taka bhä§ä vigyäna ki parhäi ki lekina adhyayana kucha nahl kiyä. 'He took courses in linguistics for two years but studied nothing.' In (22a) pafhana is as ambiguous in Hindi as to study is in American English (it may imply 'reading' in the sense of 'having regular courses' or 'studying' in the sense of 'reading something to know and understand it'), parhäi karanä (as in 22b) and adhyayana karanä (as in 24) are not ambiguous that way. Besides, adhyayana karanä may convey something (e.g., 'to investigate', 'to examine carefully' as in 23) which is not conveyed by parhanä or parhäi karanä. As none of these verbs covers the semantic domain of all the three verbs, we suggest an abstract generic verb ADHYAYANA KARANÄ [READ]7 in the underlying semantic structure from which all the three verbs will be derived. We need a similar abstract verb PRAYOGA KARANÄ [USE] from which upayoga karanä 'to make use of', prayoga karanä 'to utilize', and istemäla karanä 'to use something concrete' will be derived. 26, 27 and 28 show why we need this abstract verb. (26) vaha avasare dekhakara Hindi me bhi angarezl ke sabdö kä (prayoga \ !*upayoga| kara let! hai. [*istemala) O n appropriate occasions she uses English words in Hindi as well.' upayoga \ *prayoga> karate *istemäla) häi. 'Big nations fully exploit the resources of smaller nations.' istemäla \ *upayoga> kijiye. ?prayoga) 'Take vitamin C as a safeguard against cold.'

ί

I

146

KALI C. BAHL AND ANJANI K. SINHA

upayoga karanä 'to make use of' implies putting a thing to a given purpose so as to accomplish an end. When used for a person (or a nation) it implies that the person (or the nation) is regarded as something passive (as in 27). istemäla karanä 'to use something concrete' implies putting something to a practical or profitable use (as in 28) whereas prayoga karanä can be used in a more abstract way. 4. Α karanä conjunct verb could be related not only to a nonconjunct verb or to another karanä conjunct verb but also to conjunct verbs with the same substantive but different verb roots. 29, 30 and 31 are cases of this type. (kiyä ι laffäva (29) usa ne andäza < / } ki sabhä me koi cära sau loga the ^rakhä) 'He estimated that there were nearly 400 people in the meeting'. rakhatä *karatä (30) vaha isa bäta kä andäza *lagätä hai ki sabji me kitanä namaka *letä kara letä dälanä cähiye 'He calculates h o w (figures out)

much

salt to put in the vegetable.'

/?kiyä

\

(31) usa ne isa bäta ka andäza γ ! ^ , , _ > ki mäi ghara me hä yä nah! j *rakha ( \ *lagäyäj 'He tried to guess whether I was at home or not.' andäza karanä 'to calculate' is more objective and accurate than andäza lenä 'to guess' or andäza lagäna 'to estimate'; it implies some mathematical determination of amount, quantity, etc., or at least some accurate knowledge of the issue involved. Both andäza lagäna and andäza lenä imply personal opinion or judgement but andäza lenä also implies that the judgement was formed without enough factual or actual knowledge, andäza karanä can be used in the sense of andäza lenä (as in 29) but in its more specific sense it means 'to evaluate' (i.e., in that sense it aims at a more exact judgement). In all these sentences the substantive is the same (i.e., andäza 'guess,

THE SEMANTIC COMPLEXITY OF KARANÄ CONJUNCT VERBS

147

estimate') but the verbs which follow it are different (e.g., karanä, lagänä, lenä, rakhanä). We suggest that here also we have an abstract generic verb ANDÄZA KARANÄ from which we derive these specific cases depending upon the difference in their presuppositions. 5. The framework we propose here for the prelexical syntax of Hindi verb can be applied to other languages as well in order to explain the relationship between the generic verbs and their specific realizations. The sentences with specific verbs will have an additional embedded sentence in their underlying form which will include the presupposition and/or the specific modifiers which narrow down the broad domain of the generic verb. The predicate raising rule (McCawley 1968, 1970a, 1970b) will raise the predicate of the embedded sentence to the higher sentence with the generic verb, and the lexical incorporation rule will incorporate the specific information (presuppositions, adverbials, etc.) into the generic verb which may give us a single lexical item (i.e., the specific verb) if the incorporation rule does not violate any universal or language specific constraint. McCawley (1971) has shown that prelexical transformations include not only transformations which combine semantic materials into possible lexical items but also perfectly ordinary transformations (such as 'equi-NP deletion', and 'there insertion' in English). We find support for this claim in the kind of relationship we have discovered earlier between active verbs in la, lb, lc and passive verbs in Id, le (e.g., between märanä and mära khäna). The analysis given here supports the claim of Sadock 1969 that a hyper-sentence exists in the deep structure of every sentence. One of the arguments Bruce Fraser (1971) gives against Ross's (1970) analysis of declarative sentence is with reference to the conjoining of two performatives. The "entire single performative verb claim" must be abandoned for sentences with "force-multiplicity", he argues. Even if we treat higher performatives the way Fraser does, 'force-multiplicity' is not a problem if the verbs are two specific realizations of the same generic verb. For example in 32a, 32b (32a) mai äpa ke käma ki sarähanä aura äpa ki ban baräi karatä hu (32b) mäi äpa ke käma ki sarähanä jk a r a * e ^Ue> äpa ki bari baräi (karake ) karatä hü Ί appreciate your work and praise you a lot.' though sarähanä karanä and baräi karanä don't have exactly the same

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force (and in that sense they present force-multiplicity) in the underlying form they have the same dominating verb prasansä karanä which is what Ross would expect.8 We would like to claim that the force-multiplicity constraint about which Fraser talks so much doesn't apply to the verbs of this category. The University of Chicago

NOTES * This paper is a slightly revised version of the original read at the summer 1972 meeting of the Linguistic Society of America held at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 1 The English sentence is the translation of (lg) rather than of (If) because 'deliberately' (here) is used with reference to John who hit Jack but not with reference to Jack. 2 A passive verb is a verb which is oriented towards the patient rather than the agent of the sentence, e.g., märanä 'to hit' is an active verb but mära khänä 'to receive the beating* is a passive verb. Both active and passive verbs undergo the passive transformation (e.g., märägayä 'was beaten', mära khäylgoyi 'got beaten'). 3 In English 'call you' may imply 'call you on the phone' 'to wake you up' or 'to yell and wake you up', but buläna in Hindi does not have such implications. 4 For an exhaustive treatment of the synonyms of praSansä 'praise' and some other conjunct verbs discussed here see Kali C. Bahl, Studies in the semantic structure of Hindi (forthcoming, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, India). 5 This abstract verb is like the verb CAUSE suggested by McCawley (1971), Postal (1971), and other generative semanticists. 6 'Reading' is admissible in British English but not in American English. 7 These abstract verbs [ADHYAYANA KARANÄ, PRAYOGA KARANÄ] are not the synonyms of lexical items adhyayana karanä, and prayoga karanä. 8 We prefer Sadock's analysis of hyper-sentences to Ross's, in which case the objections raised by Fraser don't hold good at all. As all hyper-sentences are obligatorily deleted in the process of surface derivation, there is no theoretical difficulty in having even two conjoined hyper-sentences with a super-hyper-sentence as its dominating sentence.

REFERENCES Burton-Page, J. 1957. Compound and conjunct verbs in Hindi. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, The University of London, 19.469-78. Fillmore, Charles. 1971. Verbs of judging: An exercise in semantic description. Studies in linguistic semantics, ed. by C. J. Fillmore and D. T. Langendon, 273-89. New York: Holt, Rinerart and Winston. Fraser, Bruce. 1971. An examination of the performative analysis. Indiana Linguistic Club (mimeographed). Gruber, Jeffrey. 1965. Studies in lexical relations. MIT dissertation. Indiana Linguistic Club, 1970. Hacker, Paul. 1961. On the problem of a method for treating the compound and conjunct verbs in Hindi. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

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24.484-516. McCawley, James. 1968. Lexical insertion of a transformational grammar without deep structure. Proceedings of the Fourth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago. McCawley, James. 1970a. Semantic representations. Cognition: A multiple view, ed. by P. Sarvin. New York: Spartan Books. McCawley, James. 1970b. Syntactic and semantic arguments for semantic structure, (to appear in Proceedings of the Fifth International Seminar on Theoretical Linguistics, Tokyo: The TEC Corporation). McCawley, James. 1971. Prelexical syntax. Report of the twenty-second annual meeting on linguistics and language studies, ed. by Richard J. O'Brien, 19-33. Washington, D. C.: Georgetown University Press (Monograph Series on Languages and linguistics, No. 24).

DEVELOPMENTS IN THE HEBREW VERBAL SYSTEM OF I S R A E L I C H I L D R E N A N D Y O U T H AARON BAR-ADON

It is now common knowledge that modern Hebrew is a newly revived language, and that unlike other attempts at reviving ancient languages, or at restoring certain languages which fell into disuse (e.g., Irish), the revival of Hebrew has been successful. For a variety of reasons - cultural, social, political, demographic, psychological - Hebrew has been successfully restored to normal life, oral as well as written, after seventeen centuries of dormancy. During that long period, from the third century C.E. to the latter quarter of the nineteenth century, Hebrew was confined to what may be called 'bookish' existence, mainly for (written) religious and literary purposes, in liturgy, and the like. For all practical purposes, it may be said to have ceased to be spoken in normal every-day communication after the second century. It was used only occasionally, in sporadic speech events, here and there, now and then, but not on any regular basis. The initial impetus for this unique linguistic (or sociolinguistic) phenomenon of revival was extra-linguistic. Internal developments in Jewish life and society, in Hebrew culture and letters, during the preceding century or two, and certain related developments in the external, non-Jewish surrounding, paved the way for the emergence of a new Jewish consciousness, for a new Hebrew nationalism.1 In a way, given those conditions, the emergence of a modern Jewish nationalism, with the revival of the historical national language, Hebrew, as part and parcel of it (indeed, as a stimulating factor in it), was an almost inevitable process. Hebrew revival started in the 1880's with the efforts of certain devoted pioneers, men of vision, provocative in 'planning' and urging and zealous in performance. Most of the credit is traditionally given to Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who became famous for his zealous devotion to this ideal. In popular writings he is usually referred to as 'The Reviver of Hebrew Speech', to the fierce objection of some of his contemporaries,

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among them the greatest modern Hebrew 'national' poet, Η. N. Bialik (deceased in 1934) and the Israeli 1966 Nobel Prize Winner in Literature, S. Y. Agnon (deceased in 1970).2 Others would conceive of Ben-Yehuda merely as the symbol of Hebrew revival, leaving ample room for credit for others, e.g., the first teachers and school children, the workers of the Second SAliyah (the Second Influx), etc. It is not our intention to deal here with those historical aspects of the revival of Hebrew. I will only state briefly that my recent investigations in Israel (primarily on the basis of oral evidence recorded from the mouths of the oldtimers) show quite convincingly that the first teachers and the first children (at the beginning - the grade-school children!) did play the most crucial role in the actual revival of modern Hebrew, and thus have the lion's share in the responsibility for its success. Moreover, the very process of 'nativization' of Hebrew, i.e., turning it from 'nobody's real native language' to almost 'everybody's native language', was (and by definition could be) carried out only by the first 'generations' of native or near-native Hebrew speaking children.3 Only those who were born into this new language, or acquired it at a young age as their sole or major language for oral communication, could 'nativize' it at that stage.4 Some of the early teachers even went so far as to declare that "the real creators of the [new] language were mainly the children". Within a relatively short period there was barely a child that could not speak Hebrew, and for the vast majority it soon became the primary language, whereas for the bilingual or multilingual adults it still remained for quite a while a second or secondary language. The following anecdote will illustrate this point quite vividly. Mr. I. Berkman, a teacher from Eastern Europe, visited Palestine around 1910, and in 1911 he published in his travel diary, a report about a visit in the 'School for Girls' in Jaffa-Tel-Aviv: "In one of the lower grades I listened to a teacher explaining the Pentateuch to seven-eight year old girls. When he reached the verse 'and one language to all', a little girl got up and asked: 'What language were people speaking then?', upon which the teacher answered: 'the Holy Language [Hebrew]'. - 'Indeed', the girl rejoiced. Then she asked once more: 'and the language of the oldsters - what was it?'." And the writer comments: "Whoever is not acquainted with the state of affairs in Palestine will not understand how right this innocent girl was in her question ... only the younger generation speaks Hebrew there, whereas the oldsters almost all speak Yiddish ..." (Berkman 1911:31).

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The revival of the language was slow and hesitant at the beginning, from the 1880's until the middle of the first decade of this century, and we have abundant reliable evidence, written and oral, to this effect. It picked up some momentum in 1904/05 when the workers of the Second SAliyah (Influx) started arriving in Palestine, at which time also the first native speakers of Hebrew reached adulthood. Within three decades from that point (in spite of the meager beginning, the small numbers involved and the setbacks of World War I, owing to the exile of part of the Jewish population by the Turks, emigration of many others, etc.) Hebrew was re-established as a full-fledged modern living language, adequate for all the needs of modern man in a modern society - colloquial, literary and scientific. However, one important aspect has often been overlooked or underestimated: the rise and crystallization of what may be called 'younger Hebrew' speech, consisting of special speech patterns prevailing, at least since the 1920's, among the younger generation in Israel (formerly Palestine), with the age limit growing higher from year to year - from grade-school age in the 1930's to high-school age and beyond at present.5 In fact, this younger generation constitutes the major block of speakers in Israel whose only or primary language - 'mother tongue' or 'childhood tongue' - is Hebrew. Their parents, who in most cases came as immigrants to Palestine, or later to Israel, learned Hebrew only as a second language. An examination reveals that the younger speakers have developed a language which differs from Classical, or Historical (formal/normative) Hebrew in numerous respects - lexical and derivative, syntactic, phonological and morphological. It is most consistent and persistent in the area under consideration - the morphology of the verb. During its long history, Hebrew has undergone many processes of change. For example, Mishnaic Hebrew differs considerably from the preceding stage or layer, Biblical Hebrew, and in some cases it 'anticipated' various grammatical developments in modern Hebrew two thousand years later, which lends support to the thesis that Mishnaic Hebrew did not emerge as an artificial literary language around the beginning of the Christian Era, but was, on the contrary, related io a living speech tradition. Yet, even its verbal system, which was the locus of many significant changes, compared with Biblical Hebrew, may not have been exposed to such radical changes in inflection and derivation as was the Hebrew verbal system in this century in the speech of the native younger Hebrew speakers, in Palestine, and later (since 1948) in Israel.

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The new native speakers have introduced changes in the patterns and uses of the seven binyanim (verb forms, or conjugations, which are usually labeled as pafal, nif?al, pi?el, pu?al, hif?il, hof?al, and hitpafel -using the letters pe, ?ayin, lamed to represent the common Hebrew threeradical root) and their setting, in the distribution of the gazarot (root classes, e.g., roots with an initial n, referred to as pe nun, i.e., 'first radical nun\ or medial w - ?ayin waw), in the tenses, moods, and paradigms - almost a 'total reorganization' of the Hebrew verbal system. Naturally, it is impossible to cover all of it exhaustively in a brief paper. The present paper will therefore point out only some of the phenomena and processes, mainly in order to draw attention to this interesting process of change, which is actually still going on. The study of revived Hebrew provides us not only with synchronic linguistic data, but also shows us a Hebrew in the making which may give us better understanding of some earlier processes in historical Hebrew, such as the intriguing passage or shift from Biblical Hebrew to Mishnaic Hebrew mentioned above, or the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and letters from the latter period, etc., provided we learn how to apply the proper analogies and comparisons. We shall start with the binyanim, the verb conjugations. Their number in younger Hebrew is actually five, instead of the formal seven, corresponding to the traditional paSal(kal) (CaCaC),6 nif?al (niCCaC), pi?el (CiCeC), hitpaTel (hitCaCeC), and hif?il (hiCCiC). The use of the historical passive forms of pu?al (CuCaC) and huf?al (huCCaC) had already diminished considerably in Mishnaic Hebrew, and is not too frequent even in contemporary formal Hebrew. But the language of the younger generation has virtually eliminated them, except for their present tense forms, or participles, mafifial (msCuCaC) and muf-'al or mof?al (muCCaC/moCCaC). These no longer represent complete distinct binyanim, but are being 'attached' to pi?el and hif?il, respectively, as passive or past participles. They may serve in other binyanim, too, as past (or passive) participles, thus resembling the case in paFal, where we have the patterns po?el (CoCeC) and pa?ul (CaCuC), corresponding to the present and past participles. Active (Present) Participle Pa?al: Pi?el: Hif?il:

CoCeC maCaCeC maCCiC

Passive (Past) Participle CaCuC maCuCaC muCCaC

This division will leave the conjugations nif?al, which thus emerges as

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the main full passive conjugation (although historically also, or essentially, a reciprocal conjugation), and hitpaFel (reflexive and reciprocal, but also, perhaps originally, passive) as separate entities, at least for the time being. As we will see below, there is a tendency among young children to introduce in the nif^al conjugation, a present form miCaCeC which may be considered as a kind of 'dynamic (imperfect) present' in the context of intransitive (e.g., miSa'er 'remaining', mikanes 'entering') or passive verbs (mizaher 'being careful'). This will thus contrast with the regular nif^al present form niCCaC (i.e., rtifar, nixnas, nizhar in the above verbs) which, then, may have the connotation of a 'static (perfective) present'. This distinction is somewhat speculative, and it will be interesting to see whether this process which is so far limited to the preschool ages, will consistently penetrate into the subsequent ages, both morphologically and semantically. It certainly deserves attention in this paper. So much for the present forms. As for the past or future of a passive action 'related' to an active verb in pi?el or causative hif^il, it is usually expressed by one of the following means: (1) By using the verb in nif^al or hit pa?el, or both, interchangeably, e.g., the passive of hex(e)riv (or (h)ixriv1) 'he destroyed' is nexrav (or nixrav) and hitxarev, rather than formal huhrav; the passive of hidbik 'he glued together' is usually nidbak and hi(t)dabek; the passive of kibel 'he received' is hitkabel, and the like. (2) By a compound form, consisting of the above-mentioned passive or past participles (maCuCaC and muCCaC), plus the auxiliary verb h-y-h 'to be' (mainly as a tense indicator or marker) in the proper tense, as in haya msdubar 'it was said', 'it was spoken' for the formal dub(b)ar; haya mssupar 'it was told, it was related' for sup(p)ar. Such a compound structure serves also as a periphrastic passive inflection for nif^al. It should be pointed out that similar processes do appear in Mishnaic Hebrew. (3) Probably the most accepted practice in the speech of both children and young native adult speakers is the indirect passive, expressed by impersonalizing the corresponding active or causative form: for instance, the formal hulbas 'he was dressed up' becomes hilbisu oto 'they dressed him up'; hu?or 'he was left' becomes his'iru oto 'they left him'; minu oti 'they appointed me', for mune(y)ti8 Ί was appointed'. 9 Also, for the passive nif^al form ne'emar 'it was said' the impersonal active form 'amru will often be used in the meaning 'they said'. In a way, one may say that there is no real exclusive passive binyan (conjugation) in younger Hebrew, since nif^al and hitpa?el serve only

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partly as passives, alongside their use as reflexives and reciprocals, and as intransitives, and for expressing impersonal action, etc. But, as mentioned above, nif^al may be considered a full passive conjugation in younger Hebrew and in contemporary colloquial Hebrew, as a whole. On the other hand, one may discover some 'buds' of a hitpuFalmitptfial (hitCuCaC-mitCuCaC) as a combination of hitpa^el and pu?al or its present form mafifal. I recorded from young children mdsturak 'combed' and mistarek 'combing (oneself)'; hitkusaft 'you (fem. sing.) were enchanted (bewitched)' which is a combination of ku(s)saft 'you (fem. sing.) were enchanted (bewitched)' and hitka(s)saft 'you (fem. sing.) enchanted yourself - you (fem. sing.) were bewitched by yourself'; hitkulklu 'they were spoiled' a combination of the same kind. These were spontaneous formations by children. By the way, such formations are also used quite productively in the speech of contemporary adults, chiefly in a humorous or sarcastic sense, especially in verbs like hitputar 'he resigned upon request' ..., a combination of putar (puttar) 'he was fired', and hitpater (hitpatter) 'he quit', hitnudav 'he volunteered himself (under pressure)', hitguyas 'he enlisted (under pressure)'. They may develop into a new full binyan, as a sort of a passive of the (mainly) reflexive hit pa? el conjugation. nit pa?el (nitCaCeC) is rare in younger Hebrew, although it is in frequent use in formal Hebrew, and to some extent also in the informal speech of adults. Sometimes one has the impression that the speakers conceive of nitpafel (which was originally a variant of hitpcfel, under the impact of Aramaic, since the time of Mishnaic Hebrew) as a 'combination' of nif^al and hit pa?el, as if to enhance the passivity of hitpa?el (which, as mentioned above, is now taken to be mainly a reflexive and reciprocal binyan, while originally it did have the passive meaning!). Thus, in hitka(b)bed 'he honored himself; he had the honor; he was honored', some speakers perceive more the first one or two meanings, while in nitka(b)bed they will perceive more exclusively the last connotation, 'he was honored', in the passive. At any rate, nitpcfel has so far been rare in younger Hebrew. One would expect some productivity in that area too. The same applies to saf^'el (originally the Aramaic causative). In spite of its popularity in Modern Literary Hebrew and in formal speech, where it has become quite productive, in younger Hebrew it is not productive at all. An interesting 'reshuffling' or 're-organization' is apparent also in the distribution of gdzarot, the root classes, or categories. Here we find

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transfers from one historical gizra (root-class) to another, partial merger or unification of gdzarot, etc. And while some of the developments are confined to the younger ages, others are common in the higher age groups as well. In the first place, as one might expect, there is an apparent tendency for imposing the majority patterns prevalent in the so-called shdlemim ('sound verb') root-class - wherein all radicals remain without change (by deletion, assimilation, substitution, or compensation) throughout the conjugations - on the minority root classes, whether in full or in part. For instance, younger speakers will often say (h)irim 'he lifted' for herim, of the r-w-m root (of the '•'ayin waw root-class), partially unifying it with the shdlemim root-class, where the i is characteristic in the initial prefixed syllable. One may view it as a process of simplification in Hebrew verb morphology (due in part to certain developments in Hebrew phonology). More examples—below. But similar processes of attraction and unification may take place also between minority classes or sub-classes. Thus, verbs of the historical root-classes pe nun (i.e., roots with the first, 'pe', radical /n/, such as n-k-r 'recognize, know', n-p-l 'fall' causative 'drop', n-s-g 'reach', n-b-t 'see'), and pe yod (i.e., roots with first radical /y/) when followed by /c/, historically /§/ (e.g., y-c-g 'present, introduce, stage') behave in hif^'il in the speech of most young people very much like ^ayin waw and ?ayin yod roots (i.e., like verbs with the second, ayin', radical w or y), e.g., ani ma(k)kir -*• ani mekir Ί (masc.) recognize' hem ma(k)kirim -*• hem makirim 'they (masc.) recognize' hi ma(s)siga ->· hi masiga 'she reaches' hen ma(c)cigot -> hen macigot 'they (fem.) present' This includes some stem alternations ofpafal-hif^il, as it occurs especially with the ?ayin yod roots.10 What triggered this morphological (morphophonemic) development is, as usual, some related processes in phonology, especially the loss of gemination, but we cannot go into further detail here. Historical lämed ?ayin roots, i.e., roots whose third radical is /*?/, have merged with lamed 9älef and lämed yod (often called lamed he), i.e., roots whose third, 'lämed', radical is / ? / or /y/, respectively, forming together a 'group' of what may be called 'open stems'. The merger of the first two classes (of third radical /Ύ and of third radical /y/) is already common in Mishnaic Hebrew and in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but the young native Israelis added to it roots with third radical /S/, e.g., hifre(y)ti

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for hifrtfti Ί disturbed', hicbeyti for hicbtfti Ί pointed (my finger), I voted'. This morphological (morphophonemic) phenomenon is also apparently due to a related process in the phonology: the merger of /?/ and /S/ in general Israeli Hebrew (but not in the Oriental Israeli Hebrew), and their common realization as 0: /V -> IV

0, or j^J - 0

On the other hand, one may hear forms like ani mocea for moce (/moce?/) Ί find', himci(9)a for himci (/himci?/) 'he invented, made available', macmi(?)a for macmi (/macmi ?/) 'making thirsty', as if the third radical were originally an ?ayin /S/ which according to the traditional rules necessitates the so-called 'furtive a' (or 'furtive patah') in the environment of word boundary # . Here the unification of paradigms (or 'analogy') went in the opposite direction, i.e., from the Idmed ?ayin pattern to the leaned ?alef one. The historical pe 9alef (first radical /?/), pe ?ayin (first radical /S/), ?ayin ?alef (second radical /Ύ), ?ayin he' (second radical /h/), ayin waw/yod (second radical /w/ or /y/), the geminate ( = kdfulim), pe nun (first radical /n/), pe yod (first radical /y/) - all are partially unified, for instance, in the hif^il conjugation, into a kind of collect group of presumably 'bi-consonantal' verbs, rather than the predominant, triconsonantal root. The inflection in the future and present is closest to that of the ?ayin waw/yod (in the future aCiC, taCiC, ..., and in the present meCiC -> maCiC ...). According to this, the historical roots of ?-S-r 'make rich', n-S-r 'drop', y-s-r 'straighten', 'leave', S-y-r 'sing', might sound now very much alike, especially in rapid speech, as in the present ~ masir, for maFaSir, masSir (from * man Sir), me(y)Sir, maPir and me Sir, respectively; or in the past ~ hiSir, for he?e Sir, hiSSir, he(y)Sir, hiS?ir, he sir, respectively. In other words: maFaSir he? e Sir masSir hiSSir me(y)Sir • -*• maSir he(y)Sir hiS9ir massir he sir me Sir The first case (maFaSir -> masir) was triggered by the realization of the j y no longer as [S], but as [?], which anyway ended up as 0. This resulted in a concatenation of aa, which in turn was reduced to a: mafaSir -* (maPaSir -*) maaSir -> maSir

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I should, however, point out here that there might be an intonation difference between masir (-> maasir maFasir) and plain masir, but 11 this requires further study. The case of masir 'singing' which appears in the speech of younger children is of special interest. It illustrates two processes: (1) its main use is in the paFal conjugation: sdrta 'you (masc. sing.) sang', ata sar 'you (masc. sing.) are singing', tasir 'you (masc. sing.) will sing', sir 'sing (masc. sing.)!'. However, since the future tense of this root-class in the pa?al is identical to that in the hif^il, where this form 'aCic, taCiC, yaCiC ... is anyway more characteristic (especially as the exclusive form for the related group of roots with second radical w), it (tasir, etc.) was construed as hif?il, and consequently produced a present tense in the hif^il, where the pattern is meCiC, etc.; (2) formally, that present should be mesir, but as part of the above mentioned process of unification, the e in the first syllable (the prefix) changed to the dominant a, yielding masir. Owing to the 'blurred' pronunciation of the historical ? h ? where /Ύ 0, /S/ (/?/ -»•) 0, and quite typically for many Sabra's ( = native Israelis), also /h/ -»· 0 - the number of homophones in modern Hebrew has grown larger, thus obscuring meanings in a number of cases. This is being solved by reducing the number of similar roots and forms which differ from each other only in historical ? h Similar verbs which survived that reduction will often undergo a differentiation in the distribution of conjugations. The same applies to other related sounds h[x, kfk (kjq), tjt: because /h/ -> [x] in general Israeli Hebrew (it is retained only in Oriental Israeli Hebrew), it became identical to the fricative allophone of /k/ which is [x]; because of the disappearance of emphatics, both /k/ and /k/ (or /q/) are realized as [k], and both /t/ and /t/ are realized as [t], which resulted in an even greater increase in the number of homophones, which had to be taken care of one way or another (Bar-Adon 1958:1). Derivatives and denominatives have become a most productive formation to the extent that there is hardly a commonly used noun, original or borrowed, without a verb derived from it, and this productive process is being carried out even by the younger children who often add new derivatives to the language, e.g., hxazen 'to cantor / to chant, to sing as cantor', from xazan 'cantor'; fonager 'to carpent / to work as a carpenter' from nagar 'carpenter'; and some children have, independently of each other, come up with the request ima, tasmixi oti 'Mother, blanket me (cover me with a blanket)', from smixa 'blanket'...

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With regard to the problem of native versus foreign elements, we have scarcely come across any distinct reservation on the part of younger speakers which might hint to the 'foreignness' of verbs, such as fohasvic 'to sweat, i.e., to show excessive enthusiasm, to show off' (borrowed from Yiddish svic), hfasfes 'to miss', hhitgalec 'to skid', Isnadnedl fonages 'to bother', and even hfargen 'to wish well (without being jealous)!'. Expansion of the inventory of phonemes and changes in the phonological system, as compared with historical Hebrew, are among the factors which brought about this phenomenon. Consequently, in the manner of a chain-reaction, new phonological-morphophonemic rules evolved, especially regarding the complementary distribution of the six non-emphatic stops b g d k ρ t and their fricative allophones, whose application is now actually limited to b k ρ : ν jc / , with certain reservations as well. The noun in contemporary native Israeli Hebrew has almost completely lost the paradigmatic possessive inflection, using instead the non-inflected noun plus the 'preposition' sei 'belonging to' which is in turn inflected for the appropriate person-gender-number. Borrowed nouns will often retain foreign patterns, and features, and thus reveal their 'foreignness'. However, the verb was retained as a dynamic system, which assimilates all that it takes in, by means of its paradigms. Thus the verb may be characterized by its concealment of the origin of its roots, most of which are still triliteral. The case of the 4- and 5-consonant roots deserves some attention. More than fifty such roots were introduced by the younger speakers themselves, by straight (primary or secondary) derivation from 4-5 consonant nouns, by reduplication of onomatopoetic syllables and bi-consonantal nouns, by contamination (not too rarely euphemistic) which sometimes involves combining two, or even three languages, mostly Hebrew, Arabic, and Yiddish, as [in 'slang'] in xirben 'he caused failure; (-• he defeated)' (Hebrew and Arabic), fisfes 'he failed, missed' (Hebrew, Arabic and Yiddish?), pindrek 'he pampered, spoiled someone' (Hebrew and Yiddish), itxasmek 'he desired' (Hebrew and Yiddish), etc. An interesting feature of the emerging native speech is that such 4-5 radical roots may appear not only in pilpel (CiCCeC) and hitpalpel (hitCaCCeC) patterns (which correspond to pi?el and hitpcfel of the triliterals), but also in a pattern corresponding to hif^il, as in hhaspric' to sprinkle'.12 Such slangish forms are very common in colloquial Hebrew (Bar-Adon, 1958.1). We find there also a pattern polpel-hitpolpel as a combination of the geminate and ?ayin-wawjyod and quadriliterals, as gileljgolelfgilgel/

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go Igel 'he rolled', basically a combination of gilgel and golel; ni(?)e(?)al no(?)alni(?)ne(?)alno(?)ne(?)a 'he shook', basically a combination of nfine^a and no^e^a; nifnefjnofnef... 'he waved', a combination of nifnef and nofef; and also bokses/hitbokses 'he boxed/he boxed with', from the English 'boxing'. After these remarks, a short survey of the tenses may be useful: unlike Biblical Hebrew which had basically two 'tenses', or rather aspects, perfect and imperfect, plus a participle, contemporary Hebrew has in effect a three-tense system, with the historical present (active) participle serving as a full present, as ani kotev Ί write, I am writing'. This is common to all speakers of Hebrew. To some extent, this process too was already anticipated by Mishnaic Hebrew. As for the 'past (passive) participle', see the discussion above. The personal pronoun may now precede almost all the verbs, e.g., ani raciti Ί wanted', where, formally, raciti Ί wanted' makes by itself the addition of ani Τ redundant and 'improper', unless emphasis is required. On the other hand, it is sometimes omitted by native speakers for the first person in the present: lo roce Ί don't want', whereas here formal Hebrew requires the addition of the pronoun, ani T . The forms for the feminine second person plural of the past tense, and the feminine second and third persons plural of the future tense, where the feminine plural forms are longer than the others (e.g., tismorna 'you (fem. pi.) I they (fem. pi.) will watch', or takomna 'you (fem. pi.) / they (fem. pi.) will get up') are replaced by the shorter masculine plural forms tismaru 'you will watch', yismaru 'they will watch', takumu 'you (pi.) will get up', yakümu 'they will get up'. Again, one will find a similar process in Mishnaic Hebrew, which was more consistent in this respect than some contemporary formal speakers who hate to give up part of the Biblical Hebrew paradigm, in spite of the fact that the Hebrew Language Committee has approved of the use of the future tense second and third person plural masculine forms for the feminine as well. Thus, only young native speakers are consistent about it, as in the case of Mishnaic Hebrew. Similarly, in the past tense, the -em masculine plural suffix may replace the -en in the corresponding feminine form, e.g., kdmten-kamtem 'you (pi.) got up'. When we address ourselves to the paradigms, we are immediately impressed with the general tendency toward normalization and uniformization, or simplification, of patterns and paradigms (what is traditionally meant by 'analogy', including the so-called 'false analogy'), trying to make the most usual into the all-embracing rule, which permits no

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irregularities any more. Thus we find samdrtem (with penultimate stress and a also in the first syllable) for samartem 'you(pi.) watched', by analogy to the other forms which use the same base CaCäC ..., without change, and follow the pattern samdrti Ί watched', samdrta 'you (masc. sing.) watched', samdrnu 'we watched', etc.; hivdnti, for hevdnti, Ίunderstood', following the pattern in the 'sound' verbs (see above) with the base hiCCaC ..., with i in the first syllable (like in hisbdrti Ί explained'); yasan for yasen 'he slept' (CaCeC -*• CaCaC), since the predominant pattern for the third person masc. sing, in the past of the ptfal conjugation is CaCaC; and in the present yosen for yasen 'asleep' (CaCeC ->• CoCeC), again, because the dominant pattern of the masc. sing, of the present in that conjugation is CoCeC. Similarly, in the present of the hif^il conjugation of the ?ayin waw (second radical w), there is a tendency to normalize it according to the "sound" verb pattern maCCiC, i.e., with a in the initial syllable, e.g., maxin for mexin 'preparing' (meCiC maCiC). Speaking of uniformizations and simplifications (analogies), we should mention: (1) That the language itself is a challenge to such processes, in view of its general 'inconsistencies' and especially in view of the fact that the newly revived language of the adults is not completely crystallized. (2) As I have pointed out elsewhere, these processes of uniformization ('analogies') may be divided into: (a) Primary, which start in infancy and disappear after a certain relatively young age (mostly by 6-7 years of age), as in the present of nif^al, where miCaCeC tends to replace historical niCCaC, by analogy to the other non-past forms, as niCaCeC for first person plural in the future tense, IshiCaCeC, for infinitive, etc. For example, mikanes 'entering', for the regular present (of the nif^al) nixnas; mizaher 'being careful', for the regular present nizhar. These forms are definitely innovations of young children (see discussion below). (b) Secondary, 'learned' ones which appear mainly at school age, when children start to learn the hated 'grammar' (dikduk) and become quite confused, e.g., mekir 'knowing, recognizing' for mak(k)ir, and in the plural mdkirim for mak(k)irim 'knowing, recognizing', mepil for map(p)il 'knocking down', somdxat for somexet 'relying (fem. sing.)'. Like the last example, which is of course a hyper-correction (as if the χ were originally /h/), the former may, at least in part, also be considered as expressions of hyper-correction, where a minority pattern was 'erroneously" imposed on the majority.

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(c) Persistent phenomena, which exist from infancy to adulthood, such as haCCeC! haCCiC!, i.e., changing the formal pattern haCCeC for the imperative of the hif^il conjugation to haCCiC, evidently to conform with the rest of the non-past forms, where the vowel of the second syllable (or the second vowel in the stem) is i (iy), e.g., halbis for halbes 'dress (causative)!'; or the case of meCiC -»· maCiC, i.e., of c ayin wawjyod (or medial w/y) verbs in the present tense of hif^il, where their idiosyncratic initial e assumes the a of the majority patterns, e.g., mariax for meriax 'smelling'; or the imperative of the nif^al in, for instance, kanes 'enter!' for hi(k)kanes, where the prefix hi- was deleted, evidently under the assumption that the construction rule for the imperative is something like: second person future minus prefix equals imperative, or: Imp = Fut - Pref This may be true for most imperatives, but it is not universal (Bar-Adon 1964).

In the past of the pa^al-kal conjugation, the first a is retained, as mentioned above, in the whole paradigm, including the second person plural, as in samdrtem for formal samartem, and with the penultimate stress throughout. As a general morphophonemic rule, all suffixes that constitute a full syllable beginning with a consonant, as -ta, -tern, are always enclitic (unstressed) in contemporary Hebrew speech, whereas in formal Hebrew the second person plural suffixes for both masculine and feminine in the past tense, -tem and -ten are stressed. The prevailing pattern in the past of paFal is katälti... katal or CaCäCti ... CaCaC (for first person singular ... third person masc. sing.). Historical (minor) past tense patterns katel (CaCeC) and katol (CaCoC), for instance, disappeared in younger Hebrew: yasan is always used for yasen 'he slept', and yaxal very often (especially in the pre-high-school level) replaces yaxol 'he could', since yaxol is reserved for 'can (present tense)'. In other words, for the past tense CaCeC, CaCoC

CaCaC

The geminate verbs are inflected as regular or 'sound' verbs in the past tense of pFel: CioC2eC2 —• CiiC2eC2 such as sivev for sovev 'he turned something around'. 13 The 'dages forte', i.e., doubling length of consonants in pronunciation,

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has completely disappeared, as well as the compensatory lengthening of the vowel preceding the so-called 'gutturals' (pharyngeals) h, h, and of r in pfiel, hitpcfel, etc. Thus, a unified pattern of CiCeC is prevailing: silem for sillem 'he paid', sirek for serek/serak 'he combed', bPer for be?er/be?ar 'he explained'. In the (causative conjugation) hif^il the prevalent i of the prefixed morpheme hi- is often used by children also instead of the other required variants in historical Hebrew, even with pe yod and ^ayin wawjyod, as hinted above, e.g., (h)ivdnti for hevdnti Ί understood'; (h)isiv for both hesiv 'he gave back, answered' and hosiv 'he seated'; hilida for holida 'she gave birth', etc.14 In hitpafel, we find a less frequent (but not surprising at all) alternative, on the pattern of tCaCäCti, etc., for hitCaCäCti... (i.e., with the deletion of the prefix hi-), e.g., traxdcti (Jhitraxdctij) Ί washed (myself)', stakdlti (fhistakdltif) Ί looked'. Again, a phonological process, the non-realization of /h/, has apparently contributed to this morphophonemic development. The same applies to the imperative histakel stake I 'look!', histalek -*• stalek 'scram!', as we will see in a moment. An outstanding feature in the future tense is the prefixing of a y (yod) in the first person singular for the historical ^alef, as ani lo yavo for ctni lo ?avo Ί will not come', even with a positive emphatic morpheme such as ken 'yes', kvar 'already', as in ani ken yavo (for ?avo) Ί will come indeed', or in ani kvar yare hxa (for ?ar?e laxa), literally Ί will already show you!'. There are some phonetic and psychological reasons for these phenomena which were explained elsewhere (Bar-Adon 1958:2. 150-62). As for the imperative, its formation is very consistent in younger Hebrew. As mentioned above, it follows a simple formula trying to iron out or eliminate irregularities: second person future minus prefixes produces the imperative, (or Fut — Pref = Imp). Thus, if takum kum 'you (masc. sing.) will get up - get up!', tigmor -• gmor 'you (masc. sing.) will finish - finish!', then also tabit -> abit 'you will look - look!' (for ha(b)bet), taazvi -> azvi 'leave! (fem. sing.)' (for ?izvi), tigmaru gmsru 'finish! (pi.)' (for gimru), tivraxi -» vraxi 'escape! (fem. sing.)' (for /birhiyl [birxi]), toxol -*• xal 'eat! (masc. sing.)' (for ?exol), and many other derivations which are common among the younger speakers, although they are considered erroneous and are rejected by purists and more formal adult speakers, xal 'eat!' may not be used, even by many high school speakers, but azvi 'leave! (fem. sing.)' and (h)abit (for ha(b)bet), etc. are prevailing in the speech of the native Israeli

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speakers, including young adults, and it will be interesting to see how far these forms will penetrate. In the process of separating the prefix from the stem in the imperative, in some cases the vowel in between may be related to the stem, in others to the prefix. We find a free alternation between vowel/zero mostly in hif^il and hitpaFel and also nif^al: tistalek 'you (masc. sing.) will scram' - stalekj(h)istalek 'scram! (masc. sing.)', tistaklu 'you (pi.) will look' staklu/(h)istaklu 'look! (pi.)', titraxec - traxecj(h)itraxec 'you will wash yourself - wash yourself! (masc. sing.)', tikanes - kanes\(h)ikanes 'you will enter - enter! (masc. sing.)', and one will sometimes even hear tasiv - (h)asivjsiv 'you will return - return! (masc. sing.)', i.e., even siv for hasev.15 A most interesting use is that of s- plus future form as a jussive or imperative, as stikaver bakever hasaxorl '(let you) be buried in the black grave!'. In these cases it is not a subjunctive or an elliptic subordinate clause, but an independent (main) sentence, a jussive form with a special flavor of optative. It may be compared with the Arabic li + jussive apocope (e.g., liyaktub), except that in this native Hebrew the general indicative is used instead (Bar-Adon 1966). Infinitives in younger Hebrew adhere strongly to the principle underlying most forms, i.e., that the pattern is related to that of the imperative, and to the future, or to the general base of what I have called the non-past forms, which includes also the present, except for the binyanim of pa?al and nif^al. In verb classes and patterns in which there existed a structural correlation between the infinitive and the (masc. sing.) imperative, or the future (or the non-past forms in general), younger Hebrew followed suit, e.g., nigmor 'we will finish', gmor 'finish! (masc. sing.)' ligmor 'to finish'; nitlabeS 'we will dress ourselves', hitlabes 'dress yourself (masc. sing.)' hhitlabes 'to dress oneself, yigamer 'it will be finished', (h)igamer 'be finished!' bhigamer 'to be finished'. But wherever the traditional language deviates from such a relationship, the younger children tend to 'analogize' either to the major stem pattern of the nonpast in that binyan, or to that of the imperative (whichever one is closer structurally and thus requires less changes), e.g., lirkov, rather than lirkav, 'to ride', lesev for the common lasevet 'to sit', and the like. It should be noted that constructions like lesev which are now common (only) among the younger children, and are abolished somewhat later, were standard forms in Mishnaic Hebrew. Will this form develop further in modern Hebrew, too? We will conclude with another word about the present tense. In

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pcfial, the prevailing pattern is hotel. The minor historical patterns katal, katel, katil, katol, etc., have become exclusively nouns and adjectives, i.e., 'sterilized' for verb use, unless transferred to the kotel pattern, as: yosen 'sleeping', for yasen; godel 'growing', for gadel. The present in nif^al mentioned above is a peculiar topic, because of: (1) Its special relation in traditional Hebrew to past niktal, unlike the present in other binyanim, excluding paFal, which is related to the other non-past forms; (2) The similarity between its singular niktal and the third person masculine singular in the past, niktal. The younger Hebrew speakers follow to some extent the partial solution accepted by the older speakers - i.e., differentiation between past and present by changing the form of the past on the pattern of, e.g., nixtav -> haya nixtav 'written was written', parallel to yaxol -» haya yaxol 'can ->• could', gar -» haya gar 'dwells -> dwelt', in the paFal conjugation. However, the preschool children have a different way. They came up with an original way for solving this problem. They differentiate between what may be called a 'static present' (perfective), which is expressed by niktal (also katul), and a 'dynamic present' (imperfect) for which they introduced a special alternant, on the pattern of the other non-past forms, as is the case in other conjugations, i.e., the pattern mikatel-mikateletmikatlim-mikatlot, used in about 20 roots, as tizaher 'be careful!' -> ani mizaher Ί am careful', tikanes -» ani mikanes 'enter! -> I enter', (see above). This 'solution' also has an interesting by-product: through it the nif^al was 'normalized' to conform with all the other non-pa^al binyanim, where the present tense has the same stem as all the other non-past forms, so that only the ραϊαΐ retains a separate status in contrast to all the other (so-called 'derived') binyanim. This is, in a way, a far-reaching morphological systematization which stems from the competence, the theory of Hebrew grammar as conceived by the new native speakers of the newly revived Hebrew language. The purists, or normative grammarians, claim that this is a 'grammar of mistakes', but this spoken, native language is now a fact, which so far as we can see, is growing stronger from year to year. In regard to the youngsters, a year corresponds almost to a 'generation' (and those 'generations' are rather 'dense' at that stage), and therefore their uses have quite rapidly become deep rooted. As we have noted before, the above mentioned developments are not uniform, or evenly distributed across age levels, verb classes, conjuga-

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tions, etc., but one can clearly see an all-embracing rapid process of development and change in contemporary Hebrew, which is by no means completed, and one should look forward to interesting crystallizations in the general colloquial language in the near future. The University of Texas

NOTES 1

For details, cf. Saddan 1970:150-52; Bar-Α don (1973a, 1974: chap. 2). Cf. also Fishman 1974; Rabin 1958, 1971. An abstract of this paper was presented at the 171st Meeting of the American Oriental Society, Philadelphia, Maich 1961. 2 For details on this problem in the history of the revival of modern Hebrew, cf. Bar-Adon 1967, 1973, In press (a), In press (b). 3 As I have stated in other studies, one may speak not only of 'generations' of adults, but also of 'generations' of children. However, whereas a generation in the world of adults is considered to be a period of 20-25-30 years, a child's 'generation' may correspond to something like a school year. 4 Cf. Bar-Adon 1967, 1971. This process of 'nativization' in Hebrew reminds one of the corresponding process which actually takes place in the transition from a 'pidgin', which is usually described as nobody's native language, to a Creole, or creolized language, which is becoming native to a speech community where children are brought up on it from infancy. Those children, like their Israeli counterpart, are those who actually establish it as a native language! 5 In the 1930's, the use of the children's special forms and constructions, particularly in the verbal system, was limited to grade school children. Owing to constant use thereof among children and youth, the growth of an independent Hebrew youth culture (or the struggle for such independence) with a grain of rebellion and 'despiteness', and similar sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic factors, these forms became engrained, constantly pushing the age limit upward, so that by now many of those special forms have become deep-seated speech habits carried through high-school age (18) and even beyond it, especially into the military service (ages 18-21), etc. Naturally, if, for one reason or another, one gets used to certain speech patterns up to the age of 18 or 21, chances are that he will retain them in full or in part later on, unless he goes to academic life or the like, where speech is more formal. Otherwise, there is no reason why at least some of the special 'deviant' forms which were cultivated during childhood and youth and early adulthood will not continue to be used later on. Indeed, not only the age range has been growing, but also the range of forms retained and the size of the population using it. In order to be on the safe side, we will often quote most conservative figures concerning the age limits. Cf. Bar-Adon 1958:1, 1965, 1967. 6 Only the penultimate primary stress (mil?el) will be marked. Where stress is on the ultimate syllable (milrait will not be marked. Capital C stands for a 'Consonant' vaiiable. 7 The /h/ is often realized as zero /0/ by the younger speakers. In this case it is followed by jij for the normative /e/ (the latter being due to the pharyngeal /h/), by analogy to the regular pattern hiCCiC, since the /h/ is now realized as [x], i.e., /hI -*• [x] in the prevalent general 'Ashkenazied' Israeli Hebrew. 8 The /y/ of this diphthong is often realized as zero 0 by contemporary speakers, e.g., beti instead of beyti 'my house'.

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9

In this verb, a hitpaform may sometimes be used: hitmane(y)ti Ί was appointed', as a passive, not as a reflexive (which would then mean Ί appointed myself'). 10 A rather comprehensive merger of this sort is limited at this point to the younger children, who may even use gid 'say!' alongside tagidjhagid 'you will say/say!'. In other words, the form tagid (in the future tense of the hif^il conjugation!) 'you (masc. sing.) will say', whose root is n-g-d, of the pe nun root class (i.e., roots with initial /n/), was construed as a form of a 1 ayin yod root (i.e., with second radical /y/ in the pa^al conjugation), whose future tense in such roots is the same as in the causative hif^il conjugation (in this case: masc. sing. taCiC), which led to 'deriving' an imperative gid 'say (masc. sing.)!', as is normally the case with roots like s-y-m 'put' (tasim 'you will put'; sim 'put!'), etc. [In some cases both pa