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Movima (isolate, Bolivia) has two focus constructions that superficially look very similar. One is a simple clause with a noun in predicate position and a verb placed inside the argument phrase. Its pragmatically marked status stems from the inversion of the prototypical association of lexical and pragmatic categories. In the other construction, the predicative noun is additionally preceded by a free pronoun. This construction is a cleft, the pronoun and noun together constituting an equational matrix clause. The two constructions also differ in function: the simple clause with a nominal predicate is a simple predication, while the cleft is a specificational sentence.

Most Hebraists are familiar with the claim that the “basic meaning” of the Hebrew verb qdš is “to separate.” It was adopted by BDB, and is referred to by HALOT. This paper argues that the claim is unlikely to be correct. In searching for the origins and rationale for this claim, which goes back at least to Reuchlin (1505), I encountered some other views propounded by Hebrew lexica of the past 500 years about the “basic meaning” of the root, including “be clean” (e.g., Gesenius, 1833), “begin” (e.g., Buxtorf, 1615) and (surprisingly) “be unclean” (e.g., Pagninus, 1529). These proposals also will be shown to lack adequate support. I will argue that the verb qdš “be holy” and its derivatives have no underlying meaning apart from their denotation of the deity personally and of what belongs to the deity, such as his temple, his priests, his sabbaths, etc.

Based on the available literature and personal communications with specialists, this paper surveys the rich occurrence of verb extensions in the Nuba mountain languages which mark different grammatical functions such as causative, dative and locative applicatives, comparative, passive, antipassive, reciprocal/reflexive, and associative/instrumental, as well as ventive, itive, habitual, iterative and pluractional marking. Given the diversity of forms among the different groups in the area, a set of guidelines is considered to determine whether specific extensions can be reconstructed or are recent innovations. An extensive table is provided which provides the forms of the reported extensions and compares them with those reconstructed in specific subbranches of Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Afro-Asiatic, and in Khoe.

This article presents a corpus study of complex verb constructions in Old Dutch. A systematic search of the Old Dutch Corpus uncovers a set of fifteen complex verb constructions which all stack two auxiliaries (one finite and one nonfinite) on top of a main verb. The oldest and most frequent complex verb construction in the corpus is a future passive construction combining finite sullan ‘shall’ with nonfinite werthan ‘be’ and a past participle. The article discusses all fifteen complex verb constructions in detail and sketches the wider linguistic context in which they are found.

On the whole, the verb yhb ‘give’ occurs in suppletion with ntn in Pre-Modern Aramaic: the former is found in the perfect, participle, and imperative, and the latter in the imperfect and infinitive. There are exceptions in some corpora. Only yhb, however, has survived into Neo-Aramaic, where it is attested in all varieties of the language. This article traces the use of both roots in the history of Aramaic and focuses on the different Neo-Aramaic reflexes of yhb. An explanation is offered for the development of the various Neo-Aramaic forms.

In this article an overview is given of the verbal valence patterns of the verb ‮נתן‬‎ in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Four patterns are distinguished for this verb: 1. ‮נתן‬‎ + OBJECT to produce; 2. + ‮נתן‬‎ OBJECT + RECIPIENT to give to; 3. ‮נתן‬‎ + OBJECT + LOCATION to place; 4. ‮נתן‬‎ + OBJECT + 2ND OBJECT to make into. All occurrences of the verb in the DSS corpus used, consisting of 1QHa, 1QS, 1QM, and 1QpHab, are discussed and divided into one of these patterns. This study shows that pattern 3 occurs most, followed by pattern 2, and that it can be argued that pattern 1 and 4 also occur in our DSS corpus, though the evidence is scarce. In some cases, translations, differing from the translations in the editions of the texts, are proposed that better reflect the verbal valence patterns used in the clause.

The prevailing internal reconstruction of the Classical Tibetan verbal system accounts for all ablaut phenomena as innovations triggered by erstwhile segmental affixes. The traditional account cannot be correct, because the paradigms of nine verbs show -o- in the present stem without g- and a further three verbs show g- in the present without -o-. 1

In Talmy’s typology of event integration, macro-events are classified into five types (motion, temporal contouring, state change, action correlating, and realization) by the framing event. Examining compound verbs representing macro-events cross-linguistically, this paper argues that macro-events can be classified into two types from the viewpoint of “elaboration” (Langacker 2016): augmentation (motion, state change, and realization) and adaptation (temporal contouring and action correlating). Based on iconicity, compound verbs can be said to be the best candidates for encoding conceptually integrated complex events considering their high lexical integrity. This paper shows that the two types of macro-events in compound verbs are distinct in the order of the framing event and the co-event, the representation of the framing event, and their lexical integrity. These results suggest that the differences in baseline/elaboration organization iconically emerge as explicit differences in linguistic forms, indicating the validity of the “iconicity of structured mapping in compounds”.

What determines the meaning of a converted verb? Why do some verbs that have been converted from nouns that refer to artifacts mean making the artifact, and others not? How come some of them, but not others, are connected with motion? And how do speakers’ experiences of the artifacts involved influence the meanings of the verbs? Noun-to-verb conversion has been dealt with at phonological, grammatical and word semantic levels, and explained in terms of metonymic processes and event schema. Yet few studies, if any, have looked into why and how converted verbs acquire the meanings that they do. This article is a corpus linguistic investigation of the converted verbs bridge, tunnel, and tower. Our aim is to find out how speakers’ experiences of the artifacts that the corresponding nouns refer to influence the meanings of the converted verbs.

The historical overview of the indicative finite verb forms of Beja (Cushitic) shows that several reasons may have induced the choice of labels by the linguists who worked on it since the second half of the 19th century. Linguists of Beja can be divided into two groups: descriptivists and comparatists. The former mostly adapted existing terminologies from various linguistic traditions, rarely explicitly, the latter mostly recycled them. Apart from this partition, several factors behind the choice of a label can be inferred, or are sometimes given by the authors. Beyond the lack of in-depth functional and semantic analysis of the verb forms until very recently, there is a clear-cut distinction between temporal and aspectual labels which correlates with the historical development of aspectual theories, and also with the linguistic traditions for Greek, Indo-European and Semitic. But labels are also linked to “national” traditions, in the sense of language areas (corresponding either to the native language of the authors, or to the language in which the grammars were written), namely German, English and French. Grammars written in German are the oldest ones, and their labels conform to the classical philological tradition of their time, even if at times in contradictory ways. In the most recent publication by German-speaking linguists, an aspectual stance is adopted by the authors, but they hesitate between temporal and aspectual labels, a mixture which is also found, to different extent in one French and one Swedish linguists. Descriptions of the three finite verb form by British scholars, and the Swedish typologist Östen Dahl, show competing motivations: the British terminology, the philological tradition, but also the first steps towards a more detailed analysis of the functions of the paradigms based on a theory of aspect. The French linguists on the other hand belong to the most recent layer of specialists of Beja and they were both trained in Semitic languages (for which aspectual analyses predominate) and for aspectual analysis. Nevertheless both of them took up existing labels for one of the forms (the iː-form) from British linguists, from Roper for Morin (“conditional”) and from Appleyard for Vanhove (“aorist”).

This summary presents the main findings of my Ph.D. dissertation (University of Chicago) on verbal morphology and the syntax of the verb in an understudied variety of Greek, namely Cypriot Greek. Allomorphy in the Cypriot verb is explored here by way of investigating the interaction of morphology and syntax.

This article reviews Andreas Willi’s study of the history and prehistory of the Greek and Proto-Indo-European (PIE) verbal system which tries to put the data of one of the ‘classical’ languages of PIE reconstruction back onto the centre stage after much attention has been given to Anatolian (Hittite, etc.) and Tocharian in recent decades. It argues that in the earliest reconstructable phase PIE had ergative alignment and that the switch to nominative-accusative alignment triggered a series of changes leading to the distribution of stem formations found in Greek and other ancient PIE languages (root aorists, reduplicated aorists and presents, thematic aorists and presents, s-aorists and s-futures, etc.). The review tries to show that the study presents a series of thought-provoking and well-argued hypotheses, while with its focus on prehistory its philological analyses tend to rely on a few chosen examples.

It is a well-known fact that in Chadic languages the notion of verbal plurality falls into two categories: agreement plurality, where a plural subject requires a plural verbal form, and pluractionality, a form used to encode the iterativity (i.e. repetitiveness) or multiplicity (i.e. multiple effects on arguments) of an action. Kushi, a West Chadic language spoken in north-eastern Nigeria, presents both types of plural. In this article, I will illustrate the derivational strategies employed to encode verbal plurality in Kushi—suffixation, infixation, and gemination—showing the existing correlation between plural form and root shape (i.e. verb class). Interesting features of Kushi plurals are the existence of two plurality morphemes (one for non-subjunctive TAM paradigms and one for the subjunctive) and the quality of the final vowel in subjunctive plural verbal forms. All the data used in this paper have been collected in the framework of an on-going project of documentation and description of Kushi.

We explore valency and transitivity patterns in Cameroon Pidgin English (cpe) from a language contact perspective, with particular focus on (a) lexical and (b) constructional phenomena. With respect to (a), many verbs of English origin surface in cpe with additional senses and valency properties to those they display in the lexifier, illustrating the drive towards polysemy in a language with a relatively small lexicon. We also describe category change, whereby English non-verbal expressions (typically adjectives) emerge as verbs in cpe. In terms of (b), verbs undergo valency changes as a consequence of participation in productive serial verb constructions. These constructions are built around a small set of high-frequency verbs, some of which also occur in the light verb construction, which represents another strategy for the creation of complex predicates. We review the evidence for constructional substrate influence. The data under discussion are drawn from two small corpora of spoken cpe.

This study investigates the criteria for form selection in the formation of new verbs in Modern Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic. The verbal systems of these languages consist of templatic forms (binyanim, sg. binyan), where every verb that enters the language must conform to one of them. Some binyanim are not used at all for the formation of new verbs, while others are used quite rarely. The paper is based on productions of new verbs that have been collected during the past six years. It is shown that the interaction of thematic-semantic and morpho-phonological criteria dictates the selection of binyan for new verbs and explains why certain binyanim are favored over others. Morpho-phonological criteria involve the properties of the base from which the verb is derived. Thematic-semantic criteria relate to the distinction between basic and derived entries in the lexicon as well as semantic resemblance to existing words. Verb innovation provides direct access to the process of word formation and shows how different types of criteria and constraints are taken into consideration.

This essay examines qur’anic “exhortation” and “legal paraenesis” in light of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and late antique biblical traditions. It analyzes the verb waʿaẓa and related forms in narrative and legal/legislative sections of suras that can be assigned to different chronological stages of the Qur’an’s textual genesis. Qur’anic exhortations initially occur in narratives about messengers sent to unbelieving peoples. The word mawʿiẓa then becomes part of the self-referential vocabulary of the Qur’an and is used to characterize the contents of Moses’ Tablets. This linguistic development anticipates a process of legal and regulatory actualization, specification, and exposition: in the Medinan period, legal discourse is framed with the verb waʿaẓa. The emerging Medinan legal paraenesis puts emphasis on social applicability, but it is neither parochial nor does it break with Meccan ethics. Instead, it connects the communication and implementation of laws, rulings, and commands to human volition in a specific social context.

Verb clusters are a linguistic phenomenon where two or more verbs align in adjacent order. This paper discusses the structure of a certain type of verb cluster, namely modal infinitivo pro participio (IPP) structures, in main clauses of a moribund heritage variety of German, Moundridge Schweitzer German (MSG), spoken in Kansas. An acceptability judgment task was conducted with twelve participants to investigate two aspects of verb clusters in MSG. The first question concerned the integration of non-verbal elements, here the direct object (DO) and the negation particle (neg), in the verbal complex. The second question investigates whether MSG modal IPPs show variability in verb order, which is an essential characteristic of this type of verb cluster in other verb-cluster languages. The results show that modal IPP constructions in MSG have a fixed 2–3 verb order but allow object scrambling to some degree. Thus, while the ordering of verbs lacks syntactic variability, flexibility and variation are attested in the placement of the non-verbal constituents within the verbal complex. This is interpreted as the retention of an archaic dialectal trait.

Gerard Manley Hopkins distinguished and approved “sequences of feeling and phrase” in his friend Robert Bridges’s sonnets. A close reading of “The Windhover” reveals Hopkins’s own use of these sequences with a remarkable shift between the octave, developed by a series of adverbial and adjectival participial and prepositional phrases, and the sestet which proceeds as a series of declarative-exclamatory statements. The first half of the sonnet follows the kestrel’s flight as it “hovers” (hence its name) into a fixed position either by beating its wings (“hurl”) or by sitting still (“gliding”). This act of hovering is then transferred from the bird “there” to the poet’s own heart “here” by the verb “Buckle,” with its meaning of joining, bending, putting on, and holding back. This shift in action occurs also in place and time, from past to present, outdoors to an indoor chapel where the poet attended Mass each May morning. The action itself incorporates inscape as catching sight of the pattern of the kestrel’s flight in the morning of Christ’s created light and instress as the heart’s response in thought and being to Christ’s uplifting grace in the fire of redemption. “As kingfishers catch fire” reverses the sequences of feeling and phrase in “The Windhover” as it too moves from the physical (“each mortal thing”) to the supernatural as the “just man” becomes an after-Christ.

The goal of this study is to build on the Cognitive Grammar analysis of full-verb inversion (FVI) and existential structures proposed by Chen (2003, 2011 and 2013). Close attention will be given to two characteristics of these constructions not discussed by this author – lack of subject-verb agreement and the type of pronominal forms that occur in them – and their consequences for FVI’s cognitive structure will be worked out. Further parallels between FVI and the existential there-construction will be brought to light concerning the type of verbal predicate allowed, negation, transitivity, agreement patterns, presentational function, pronominal forms and heaviness of postverbal NPs. The cognitive structure of FVI with lack of S-V concord is argued to be: (1) ground-setter, (2) verb heralding presence/appearance of a generic third-person figure in the ground, (3) nominal identifying the generic figure. Chen’s Invertability Hypothesis is shown to generate false predictions with fronted adjectives and adverbials, and the claim that the preverbal element is in focus is shown to be problematic in the light of its usual status as given information. FVI is argued to be a construction in Goldberg’s (2006) sense of the term, although it does not constitute a meaning-form pairing which is completely independent of the lexical items that instantiate it.

Modality can be expressed through a variety of different linguistic means within and across languages, of which one manifestation is through noncanonical case marking of the subject. In Ancient Greek several predicates show a systematic alternation between constructions with nominative and oblique subjects, which coincides with a difference in meaning, yielding a modal meaning in the latter case. We show how this modal meaning cannot be derived from the meaning of the individual parts of the construction, neither from the lexical material nor from the relevant grammatical elements. Instead, the data call for a constructional analysis of a modal subconstruction of the oblique subject construction, for which the modality must be attributed to the construction itself. We argue that this can be viewed through the lens of subjectification in the sense of Traugott (2003), here demonstrating that the semantic relation holding between the subject referent and the oblique case marking selected by the verb has been extended to the empathic relation holding between the speaker and his/her attitude towards the proposition uttered (Barðdal 2004). This, we believe, is how the concept of modality came to be associated with oblique case marking of subjects.

In Aristotle’s Politics VIII 7, 1341b 38–40, there is a reference to some books peri poietikes in which katharsis will be explained more clearly. The future tense of the verb is important and may be the sign of the aristotelian origin of the reference; it would prove in an indisputable way that, when writing Pol. VII – VIII , Aristotle thought of a Poetics as the obvious sequel for the discussion about educational problems. So, the logical connection of the argument in Politics and Poetics is in agreement with (and is confirmed by) the famous definition of tragedy in Poet . 6, 1449b 24–28: here Aristotle says that the various items of the definition must be obtained from “the things already said”, but the reference is not fully satisfied by Poetics 1–5: in these chapters no mention is made of katharsis , pity and fear. For these items the reference is satisfied only by the text of Politics VIII 7, and the two references, Pol. VIII 7 to a Poetics, Poet. 6 (by implication) to Pol. VIII 7, agree about the sequel of the books and strengthen each other. But the topics of katharsis and education never are fully clarified, neither in the Politics , nor in the Poetics .

Discourse markers are lexical items that play the role of conveying the speaker’s attitude towards the topic of conversation. Although discourse markers have this function, they have little semantic content, yet their importance for understanding (oral) discourse can hardly be overestimated. As such, they have been widely studied in English. While the Qurʾān has a number of these discourse markers, none of them seem to have been properly noticed, let alone studied, by Arabic linguists and Qurʾān commentators. This article introduces what I believe to be the most frequent of these in the Qurʾān:araʾaytum(literally: “have you seen?”) in its various morphological manifestations. This article uses concepts from historical linguistics, pragmatics, and corpus linguistics – and in particular lexical co-occurrences – to examine the development of this form from a sense verb that simply means “to see” to a pragmatic attitudinal marker that is semantically vacuous and whose main function is to express the speaker’s dissatisfaction with, resentment at, or disapproval of the topic of conversation. While the analysis provided in this article is mainly linguistic, the findings will affect the way we read the Arabic-Islamic heritage, especially as regards the authenticity of what are known as the Satanic Verses, also known as the episode of the High-Flying Cranes(Qiṣṣat al-ġarānīq).This article also provides suggestions for the translation of this discourse marker.

While Lady Wisdom, Zion and Jerusalem, for example, are well-known and frequently analyzed personifications in the Old Testament, the study of personifications in the book of psalms is a research desideratum. After presenting the theoretical background of the term personification with special focus on the function of the verb, I will present the results of verb personifications in the psalter followed by a textual analysis of the personified virtues of steadfast love, truth, justice and peace in Ps 85:11. One example of the encounter between justice and peace in the form of a kiss, from Christian reception history, forms the last part of the article. The paper aims to contribute to the broad and intense discussion of metaphor analysis in psalms research on the three levels of theory, of textual analysis of the whole book of psalms and of Ps 85,11 and the reception history of metaphors.

The first complete Bible translations in Westerlauwers Frisian only date from 1943 (“Wumkes”) and 1978 (“Nije Fryske Bibeloersetting”). Both of them employ specifically Frisian vocabulary, such as in the semantic field of gathering and harvesting crops. The Frisian incorporating verb iersiikje/iersykje corresponds to Dutch aren lezen and German Ähren lesen (literally ‘to gather ears’), whereas the notion of ‘harvesting’ is usually represented by rispje. The latter descends from an Old Germanic strong verb with initial hr- that meant ‘to tear’, which restricted its meaning to ‘reap’ and is continued in OE hrespan ‘to reap’ and Early OHG hrespen ‘to pluck, pinch’. The resulting MoWF weak verb rispje is at the same time the product of semantic widening. Its popularity is also shown by its usage in a number of formulae in which it competes with sichtsje (denominal to sichte ‘small scythe’), rarely with meane ‘to mow’. This must have been accompanied for semantic reasons by “paronymic attraction” between original hr- and r-forms. The latter are found in OE rípan/MoE reap, as well as in the weak verb OE rýpan ‘to pillage’ = Gothic raupjan and German (aus)raufen ‘to tear out’. Die ersten Vollbibel-Übersetzungen ins Westfriesische (Westerlauwersk Frysk) datieren erst von 1943 (“Wumkes”) und 1978 (“Nije Fryske Bibeloersetting”). Beiden ist gemeinsam, dass sie dem Friesischen ganz eigene Wörter verwenden, wie etwa im Wortfeld des Lesens und Erntens von Feldfrüchten. So entspricht dem ndl. aren lezen bzw. dem dt. Ähren lesen das Inkorporationskompositum iersiikje/iersykje, während der Begriff ‘ernten’ in der Regel von rispje vertreten wird. Letzteres erweist sich als Nachkomme eines noch in nordaltenglisch hrespan ‘ernten’ und frühahd. dito ‘(aus)rupfen’ vorliegenden, altwgm. starken, mit hr- anlautenden Verbs mit Grundbedeutung ‘reißen’, die sich zu ‘ernten’ verengt hat. Im Neuwestfriesischen ist das daraus resultierende schwache rispje auch Produkt einer Bedeutungsausweitung. Auf seine Beliebtheit weist auch seine Verwendung in manchen Formeln hin, in denen es konkurriert mit sichtsje (denominal zu sichte ‘kleine Sense’), nur selten mit meane ‘mähen’. Damit muss eine durch die semantische Nähe bedingte “paronymische Attraktion” zwischen ursprünglichen hr- und r-Formen einhergegangen sein. Letztere liegen vor in ae. rípan / ne. reap ‘ernten’, sowie im schwachen Verb ae. rýpan ‘plündern’ = gotisch raupjan und dt. (aus)raufen ‘ausreißen’. This article is in German.

Frisian features an embeddedv-First construction, which is semantically equivalent to an infinitival clause. The construction comes in two varieties. The coordinated variety involves a clause functioning as a second clause of a coordination in the scope of a modal verb. It used to feature an infinitival verb until it started to appear in the 18th century with (unambiguously) imperative verbs. The subordinated variety involves a clause functioning as a verbal argument. It developed out of the coordinated variety in the 18th century. The grammatical properties of both varieties of this construction in present-day Frisian are presented and understood as a result of their origin and subsequent development out of a coordinate construction in Old Frisian. To the extent that the analysis is successful, it provides support for the notion ‘construction’ and for examining the origin and evolution of constructions, as is customary in construction grammar (Goldberg 2006, Givon 2009).

This paper deals with the study of ten foundation inscriptions on the Ottoman monuments in Tripoli, Lebanon. The inscriptions found in eight monuments, such as Awayseya Mosque (940 AH/1534), Madrassa al-Mahmoudiyah (995 AH/1587), Tawbah Mosque (1021 AH/1612) and Mahmoud al-Sangak Minaret (1295 AH/1878). The foundation inscriptions contains five basic elements, the Basmala or pious invocation to God, a verb indicating what was done, the object of the work, the name of the patron and the date of construction. The paper is a comparative analysis in Ottoman foundation inscriptions in Tripoli, Lebanon.

The article deals with the analysis of phenomena of language contact between Spanish and Quechua, found in the Doctrina Christiana y Catecismo para instruccion de los Indios (1584). These phenomena include primarily loanwords, loan blends, shifts of meaning and morphosyntactic calques, encountered throughout the Quechua version of the Doctrina Christiana y Catecismo, a profound ecclesiastical work, which influenced greatly the process of evangelization of the Andes. In addition, the article concerns other issues, like the early adaptation of Quechua to writing and phonological conundrum associated with this process, origins of the verb iñiy and the use of Quechua evidential markers in dcc . The analysis is intended to understand better the influence of evangelization on Quechua language, both in terms of diachronic linguistics and corpus planning.

Although most recent editions printferunt, this paper argues forseruntas the correct reading in Statius,Theb.8.26. After discussingferuntas a vague and colourless contribution to the description of Dis’ hellish court, I analyzeseruntas a product of the poet’s lexical inventiveness: while he is the first to apply the verb to weaving, Statius connectsserotoseriesand provides aThebanrepresentation of the Parcae as spinners. Lexical enrichment guides the appropriation of myth. Secondly, I deal with two quotations ofTheb. 8.26 in later readers of Statius. I suggest that Claudian’s encrypted reference to Statius’ passage inDe Raptu Proserpina1.52 echoes Statius’ stoicizing presentation of the spinning Fates. In Lactantius’ quotation, on the other hand,seruntis interpreted as a reference to reincarnation, in the context of a philosophical reading ofTheb.8.91-93. While supporting the authenticity ofserunt, the two later references toTheb.8.26 attest different interpretations of Statius’ unique (and debated?) usage of the verb.

Multiple recurrent phrases have been identified in the so-called Deuteronomistic History describing Israel’s obedience/disobedience with respect to the Sinaitic covenant. One major set of phrases utilizes verbs of motion to construe Israel’s covenant relationship with Yhwh. The conceptual metaphor theory of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson provides the theoretical tools necessary to understand these deuteronomic phrases as instantiations of a single conceptual metaphor wherein Israel understood and experienced their relationship with Yhwh as a journey. This article examines and coordinates these recurrent phrases through the lens provided by Lakoff and Johnson’s theory, detailing how the spatial configurations of each verb and its construct are mapped onto a relational reality. This article closes with the brief suggestion that the resonance of this particular conceptual metaphor may have taken hold due to the significance of the exodus event in Israel’s historical consciousness.

A corpus-based semantic analysis of verbal forms of the roots ʼwh and ḥmd indicates that, although the original distinction between the roots may have become somewhat blurred, a fairly consistent pattern is still discernible; it suggests that the verb form of the lexical root ʼwh refers to a desire that arises from basic human needs (hunger, thirst, etc.), whereas the verb form of the lexical root ḥmd denotes a desire that stems from greed.

In this paper I argue that the unembedded Accusativus cum Infinitivo in Ancient Greek is a case of hearer-induced grammaticalization. AcI embedded under verba dicendi or δοκεῖν in deontic contexts are ambiguous: while the speaker intends the deontic reading as a side meaning of the embedding verb, it can also be attributed to the AcI. If the hearer opts for the latter analysis, a new function of the AcI emerges, which ultimately leads to its de-embedding. I show that this grammaticalization process is parallel to similar reanalyses in sound change. In a short outlook the analysis is extended to the emergence of absolute constructions.

Modern South Arabian (MSA) imperfect ikōtəb is superficially analogous to Akkadian imperfect iparras and Ethiopic imperfect yənaggər, as opposed to all the other Semitic languages’ imperfects, where the first and second radical consonants are adjacent, e.g. Arabic yaqtulu. On the basis of this partial resemblance, a proto-Semitic imperfect *yaqattal was carelessly invented without seriously exploring other explanations. It flourished so well that scholars yielded to the temptation of seeing it in all the branches of Semitic. As far as MSA is concerned, David Cohen developed several times the hypothesis of a phonetic derivation (*yvktubu > ikōtəb), that also accounts for most of the other peculiarities of the MSA verb. The present paper, after presenting some aspects of this historical situation, aims at supporting Cohen’s hypothesis, at tackling Gideon Goldenberg’s objections to it, and at adding new arguments against an MSA *yaqattal.

This paper deals with the Mycenaean representatives of three IE verbal roots: *terk u̯ - ‘twist’, *trep- ‘turn’ and *streg u̯h - ‘turn, rotate’. Mycenaean data show that the derivatives of *terk u̯ - were still differentiated before the loss of labiovelar stops in post-Mycenaean times and that the verb στρέφω ‘turn, twist, rotate’ stems from *streg u̯h -. Semantic interference among these roots is already underway in the Mycenaean period, anticipating the convergence of *terk u̯ - with *trep- and *streg u̯h - in the first millennium.

In Cypriot Greek, the negated future is marked by the element tha, which appears instead of the expected present tense copula and a selected subordinating element. This paper documents the distribution of this item for the first time, and presents an analysis in Distributed Morphology that analyzes tha as a portmanteau morpheme realizing two heads in the context of negation. This analysis requires that spans (or targets of Fusion) can include a verb and the head of its C complement.

We propose revisiting Wellhausen’s restoration of the Hebrew text of 2 Sam 4:6 on the basis of the Septuagint and revising his Qal סֹקְלָה to Piel מְסַקְלָה out of consideration of the syntagmatic patterns of the verb.

Preface General Introduction The Questionnaires Representation of Data on the Maps and Commentaries Former Research in the Area Abbreviations Index of Arabic-speaking Localities in the Area, Information about Them and Data Collected There 000 General Map of the Area 001 Denominations 002 Bedouin Tribes of the Area Linguistic Maps and Commentaries I. Phonology 1 Vowels 1.1 Short Vowels 1.2 Long Vowels and Diphthongs 1.3 Consonants 1.4 Conclusion Consonantism II. Morphology 2 Pronouns and Pronominal Suffixes 2.1 Independent Personal Pronouns 2.2 Pronominal Suffixes 2.3 Relative Pronoun 2.4 Demonstrative Pronouns 2.5 Demonstrative Adverbs and Presentatives 2.6 Other Adverbs 2.7 Interrogatives 2.8 Prepositions, Conjunctions 2.9 Numerals 2.10 Existential Particle 2.11 Nominal Forms 2.12 Genitive Exponent 2.13 The Verb III. Lexicon 3 Nouns 3.1 Body Parts 3.2 Animals 3.3 Fruit and Vegetables 3.4 Various 3.5 Adjectives 3.6 Verbs 4 Isoglosses and Dialect Groups 4.1 Salient phonological isoglosses sedentary dialects 4.2 Salient morphological isoglosses sedentary dialects 4.3 Salient lexical isoglosses sedentary dialects 4.4 The Sedentary Dialect Groups 4.5 The Bedouin Dialect Groups 4.6 Dialectometrical Approach to the Dialects of the Area: Identity Tests Appendices Bibliography General Index

In his edition of 4QLam in djd xvi, F. M. Cross found a significant and otherwise unattested variant for a much-discussed crux, reading הוגירני יהוה, “YHWH frightened me (√יגר),” instead of הוגה יהוה “YHWH has afflicted (√יגה)”. However, close inspection of the manuscript indicates that the verb should actually be read הוגיאני; Cross incorrectly identified an ʾalef as a resh. Furthermore, I argue that the reading in 4QLam attests to the more primitive reading הוגיעני יהוה, from which the others developed, though this reading is not actually found in any extant manuscript. This means that instead of a text that originally read, “YHWH afflicted (me),” as many previous translations have concluded, or “YHWH frightened me,” as Cross suggested, one finds a text that said, “YHWH wearied me.”

In this article, I argue that puzzling apostolic interpretations of some Old Testament messages as fulfilled in specific New Testament contexts, to which the Old Testa-ment messages do not apparently refer, are actually applications of the Old Testament messages to apostolic times. These applications are informed by a view of God, distinctively manifest in prophecy, which understands him to speak in ways commensurate with his foreknowledge and purposes, with the result that what he has said has multiple references beyond the single initial one. This view of God is presupposed by the apostles’ use of the verb πληρωθῇ through its close association with prophecy, hence their use of the verb for “applies to”.

A set of properties is proposed as characteristic of main verbs, able to identify a particular constituent in a sentence as its main verb. These properties are in turn applied to the framing typology of Talmy (2000b), in which languages fall into two categories based on whether they characteristically express the Path component of a Motion event in the verb (verb-framed languages) or in the satellite and/or preposition (satellite-framed languages). Slobin (2004) later held that certain languages do not fall neatly into either category of this typology, either because the lexical category of the Path constituent is unclear, or because the Path and coevent constituents are both verbs or both satellites. He classed such languages together as being “equipollently framed”, exhibiting a third category of the typology. We dispute most of these claims of equipollent framing, demonstrating how these languages are actually either verb-framed or satellite-framed.

The verb ἔχω has two future formations, ἕξω and σχήσω. Opinion is divided, however, as to whether there is any semantic difference between them. In the view of some, ἕξω shows imperfective aspect (‘will have, keep’), σχήσω perfective aspect (‘will hold back, prevent’). Others deny that any such aspectual distinction can be drawn, pointing to passages where the supposedly aoristic σχήσω is clearly durative. Examination of the evidence from seven authors reveals that, despite the decline of the (-)σχησ- future, the two forms are nearly always used in distinct ways, which can often be characterized as aspectual. First, the (-)σχησ- future is used more often of telic events. Second, it is preferred when the verb has the meaning ‘prevent’, especially when it has a prepositional prefix; as this sense shows higher transitivity than the ‘have’ semantics of the (-)ἑξ- future, it is reasonable to associate it with the perfective aspect.

1 Samuel 7:8 records a request made by the people of Israel to Samuel, asking him to pray to God for them. Although the aim of their request is made clear from the context, some aspects of the Hebrew syntax and word meanings do not easily fit the contextually understood meaning and are therefore often disregarded in the process of translation. The Hiphil verb חרשׁ, for example, which normally means ‘be silent’, is often translated as ‘cease’ and sometimes as ‘be deaf’. In addition, the preposition מן, ‘from’, is often translated as ‘for’ and is understood to indicate the beneficiary of the verb it precedes rather than function as the prepositional object of the verb it follows, as would be expected. I suggest that a very simple adjustment to the interpretation of this preposition may allow for a more straightforward reading and translation of the verse.

The paper analyses a hitherto ignored case of contact-induced grammaticalization, which consists in the creation of new verb particles expressing the path of motion in a regional variant of Romanian, under the influence of neighbour language Hungarian. The grammaticalization of two particles out of nouns meaning ‘wheel’ and ‘thread’ challenges previous theories concerning the classes of lexical sources for grams, and raises the question of contact reinforcing latent unproductive categories.

The Taunton Fragment is an eleventh-century bilingual (Latin-Old English) collection of expositions of gospel pericopes. In addition to contributing to understanding of pastoral care in Anglo-Saxon England, it provides invaluable information about linguistic innovations that take place during the transition period from Late Old to Early Middle English. The present article focuses on one such development—the form ðrowian. Taken at its face value, that is, as a ii class weak verb meaning ‘to suffer; torment’, it causes discrepancy between the syntactic structure and the lexical meaning in the Old English text, on the one hand, and lack of correspondence between the Latin and Old English rendition, on the other. A close examination of this form in the Old English corpus suggests that it might be the earliest recorded example of the verb throw in the sense ‘to hurl’. The present article proposes that this semantic development originates in the glosses and Latin-influenced texts. Among the major causes of this innovation are polysemy and homonymy resulting from phonological and morphological changes as well as linguistic creativity of the Anglo-Saxon translators, glossators, and scribes.

Manner-of-Speaking verb research has stemmed from the need to verify the elaboration of Manner in verb roots in the conceptual frame of speaking. Manner is expressed differently depending on the typology of the language, when considering a satellite-framed language like English, much research has been dedicated to the frame of Motion, and less to that of Speaking. This paper proposes to verify entrenchment of Manner components in Manner-of-Speaking verbs for native English speakers. The verification process is conducted through a series of online questionnaires that ask respondents to identify Manner components for a series of Speaking verbs. The objective is to analyze a group of randomized verbs to confirm the psychological reality of Manner for each verb entry, to compare the results to our previous hypothesis, and to corroborate the clustering of the distinguishing components according to respondent judgment and agreement.