Case in Semitic: Roles, Relations, and Reconstruction (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics)

This book sets out a new reconstruction for the Semitic case system. It is based on a detailed analysis of the expression of grammatical roles and relations in the attested Semitic languages and, for the first time, brings typological methods to bear in the study of these features in Semitic languages and their reconstruction for proto-Semitic. Professor Hasselbach supports her argument with detailed analyses of a wide range of data and presents it in a way that will be accessible to both Semitists and typologists. The volume is divided into seven chapters: the first discusses basic methodologies used in Semitic linguistics and the limitations thereof. The second presents the evidence for morphological case-marking in the individual Semitic languages, the conventional reconstruction of Proto-Semitic, and the evidence which conflicts with it. The third introduces typological concepts and methods and their deployment in Semitic. Chapter 4 considers the case alignment of early Semitic. Chapter 5 presents a detailed study of marking structures and patterns and considers what these reveal about the nature of the original case system. Chapter 6 looks at the functions of case markers, considers the light they cast on the nominal system, and shows that the reconstruction of early Semitic as ergative is implausible. In the final chapter the author argues that early Semitic had a different nominal system from that of the later Semitic languages. She shows that the course of its development has parallels in other Afroasiatic languages, including Berber and Cushitic. Her book sheds important new light on the history of the Semitic languages and on the early development of the Afro-Asiatic language family as a whole. This book investigates the case system and the marking of grammatical roles and relations in Semitic languages. It further attempts to provide an explanation for “unusual” usages of cases, especially the accusative, that seem to violate the traditional interpretation of Semitic as exhibiting nominative/accusative alignment from a diachronic perspective. The basic methodologies applied for the diachronic reconstruction are those of historical and comparative linguistics. These methodologies, however, face severe limitations based on the lack of sufficient data for the earliest historically attested periods of Semitic (~ 2500-1800 BC). It is argued that these limitations can be mitigated by employing linguistic typology, which is a linguistic discipline that has not found wide reception among scholars working on Semitic languages so far. Based on both the comparative method and typological principles, the book investigates the alignment and marking of grammatical roles, basic word order patterns connected to the marking of roles, head- and dependent-marking patterns, and the function of the individual cases across Semitic. It concludes that although the alignment of historically attested Semitic languages is nominative/accusative, both morphologically and syntactically, they exhibit vestiges of a more archaic system that reflects a marked-nominative system. In this archaic system, the accusative functioned as the unmarked and default form of the noun that was used as citation form, for nominal predicates, the vocative, and for direct objects of transitive verbs. The nominative on the other hand, was the morphologically and syntactically marked form that solely functioned to mark nominal subjects Cover Contents Series preface List of tables List of abbreviations Bibliographical abbreviations Other abbreviations 1 Introduction 1.1 Methodological considerations 2 The Semitic case system: basic evidence and traditional reconstruction 2.1 Semitic evidence 2.2 Conflicting evidence 2.3 Alternative reconstructions 2.4 Evidence for case systems in non-Semitic branches of Afro-Asiatic 2.5 Summary 3 Linguistic typology 3.1 Typological hierarchies and the concept of markedness 3.2 Grammatical roles and relations 3.3 Head- and dependent-marking 3.4 Case 3.5 Word order and typological universals 3.6 Typology and historical reconstruction 3.7 Summary 4 Grammatical roles and the alignment of Semitic 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Verbal indexation of S, A, and P 4.3 Nominal marking of S, A, and P 4.4 The marking of grammatical roles following certain particles such as ’inna and hinnē 4.5 Syntactic pivots in coordination and relativization 4.6 Passivization and the use of ’et- in Hebrew 4.7 Word order 4.8 Summary 5 Head- and dependent-marking in Semitic 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Evidence 5.3 Historical reconstruction 5.4 Summary 6 The function of case markers in Semitic 6.1 The “Nominative” –u 6.2 The “Genitive” –i 6.3 The “Accusative” –a 6.4 The “Absolute” ending –Ø 6.5 Reconstruction of the Semitic basic cases 7 Conclusions Bibliography Index A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P R S T U V W Z This book considers linguistic and mental representations of time. Prominent linguists and philosophers from all over the world examine and report on recent work on the representation of temporal reference; the interaction of the temporal information from tense, aspect, modality, temporal adverbials, and context; and the representation of the temporal relations between events and states, as well as between facts, propositions, sentences, and utterances. They link this to current research on the cognitive processing of temporal reference, linguistic and philosophical semantics, psychology, and anthropology. The book is divided into three parts: Time, Tense, and Temporal Reference in Discourse; Time and Modality; and Cognition and Metaphysics of Time. It will interest scholars and advanced students of time and temporal reference in linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and cognitive science. This book reconstructs the Semitic case system, based on a detailed analysis of the expression of grammatical roles and relations in the attested Semitic languages. It brings typological methods to bear on the study of comparative Semitics and includes detailed analyses of a wide range of data. The book will interest Semiticists and typologists.