Adjectival passives and adjectival decausatives in Hebrew

The distinction between adjectival passives and verbal passives is a very well known one. In this paper, I try to define the operation that forms adjectival passives in Hebrew. I claim that a close look at Hebrew adjectival passives reveals that they do not form a homogenous group, but rather two gr...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Aya Meltzer
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: UPV/EHU Press 2007-04-01
Series:Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca "Julio de Urquijo"
Online Access:https://ojs.ehu.eus/index.php/ASJU/article/view/3900
Description
Summary:The distinction between adjectival passives and verbal passives is a very well known one. In this paper, I try to define the operation that forms adjectival passives in Hebrew. I claim that a close look at Hebrew adjectival passives reveals that they do not form a homogenous group, but rather two groups, which behave differently with regard to their interpretation. Adjectives of the first group behave like verbal passives in that they have an implicit Agent in their interpretation; adjectives of the second group behave like unaccusative verbs, in that the external argument of the transitive verb is no longer a part of their semantics. Based on this parallelism, I label the first type of adjectives ('true') adjectival passives and the second —adjectival decausatives. Having established that there are two types of adjectival passives, I claim that they are derived by the same operations which derive the corresponding verb types. Therefore, no additional operations need to be stipulated in order to account for adjectival passive formation.
ISSN:0582-6152
2444-2992