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Roots and Correspondence: Denominal Verbs in Modern Hebrew

Modern Hebrew exhibits a derivational process known as Denominai Verb Formation (DVF) whereby a base form, usually a noun, may become a verb. This process has been analyzed by several researchers (Bat-El 1994, Gafos 1995, Sharvit 1994) but to date a comprehensive, principled account has not been proposed. In this paper, it is my aim to present such a principled account of DVF, within Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993). This account crucially relies on the consonantal root, arguing against the proposal of Bat-El (1994) that the root plays no role in DVF. In addition, I propose to capture the well known effects of left-to-right spreading attested throughout Semitic (McCarthy 1979, 1981, et seq.) using a new form of Anchor constraints. These new Anchor constraints will be useful in accounting for cases of consonant doubling, which is attested in a subset of Modern Hebrew denominai verbs. Finally, I show that Bat-El's (1994) arguments against the consonantal root can be recast as reasons to adopt a separate dimension of correspondence relations in the analysis: namely, the dimension of Output-Output Correspondence, following work of, e.g., Benua (1995, 1997) and Burzio (1996).

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/227293
Date January 1998
CreatorsUssishkin, Adam
ContributorsMaye, Jessica, Miyashita, Mizuki, University of California, Santa Cruz
PublisherDepartment of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ)
Source SetsUniversity of Arizona
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeArticle
RelationProceedings of the 4th Annual Southwest Workshop on Optimality Theory, Coyote Papers, Proceedings of SWOT IV, Arizona Phonology Conference Vol. 6

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