Lexical Decomposition and Lexical Unity in Hebrew (Afroasiatic Linguistics)

The study examines the difference between lexicalized forms of certain predicate-types in Modern Hebrew as manifested through the binyan system of verb- morphology, on the one hand, and their more analytical or "decomposedcounterparts-with specific reference to expressions of Causation, as in hama'ase hexli oti 'the+deed sickened me vs. hama'ase asa oti xole 'the+deed made me sick'; of Inchoative, as in hu hexvir he paled' hu nihya xiver 'he grew pale'; and of Reflexive, as in hu hitgaleax 'he shaved vs. hu gileax et acmo ' he shaved OBJ himself '. It is suggested that the latter forms which may in some instances be attributed to foreign influence , today constitute the more productive devices for expressing such notions in Hebrewand as such they manifest a quite general trend of the language towards increasingly analytic forms of expression. In each case, the formal distinction between morphologi cally lexicalized causatives, inchoatives, and reflexives and their de composed or analytic counterparts is shown to express a semantic contrast in terms of the way the event under discussion is perceived by speakers.