Exposé Dana Cohen 14 avril 14-16h (In)Definiteness in Hebrew

[Patricia.Cabredo at UNIV-PARIS8.FR]

Le groupe de travail sur les langues avec et sans articles
a le plaisir d'annoncer sa prochaine séance de travail

lundi  14 avril 2008 de 14h00 à 16h00
Université Paris-8, salle D 143

autour d'un exposé de

Dana Cohen

Definiteness and Indefiniteness in Hebrew - Review
(voir résumé ci-dessous)

• Métro: Saint-Denis Université (ligne 13)
• Pour atteindre la salle D 143 : dans le hall d'entrée de
l'université, sortir vers la droite,
suivre l'allée vers la gauche, puis tourner à droite dans l'allée
centrale. Le bâtiment D, assez moderne, se dresse devant vous vers la
droite, derrière une haie. La salle 143 est au 1er étage.

Pour plus d'informations sur le groupe de recherche LSA LAA:
http://www.umr7023.cnrs.fr/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=53

Amicalement,
Patricia Cabredo Hofherr

Résumé

Dana Cohen
Definiteness and Indefiniteness in Hebrew - Review

Abstract:
Definiteness in Hebrew poses interesting problems, descriptively and
theoretically. Indefiniteness is unmarked in Hebrew while definiteness is
signalled by the marker ha-.

Hebrew nominals display definiteness agreement, accordingly, elements in a
definite nominal phrase (nouns, adjectives, demonstratives) are
individually marked by ha-. Central to the discussion of definiteness in
Hebrew is the Construct State, one of two forms of genitive phrases, which
is apparently unique to Semitic languages.

These phenomena raise fundamental questions for the analysis of
definiteness in Hebrew and cross-linguistically. One important issue is
the status of Hebrew indefiniteness: is definiteness a (+/-) feature with
a phonologically null indefinite marker or is indefiniteness an absence of
specification for definiteness?

Another issue is the category of the definite marker itself: is it a as a
clitic or an affix; can it be categorised as a determiner on par with the
definite article of other languages?

Finally, the study of Hebrew definiteness reveals that the presence or
absence of ha- is not necessarily indicative of uniqueness, specificity or
accessibility evoked by the nominal phrases. This mismatch between
morpho-syntactic definiteness and semantico-pragmatic definiteness poses
its own interesting set of problems.

This talk outlines some of the basic problems raised by Hebrew
definiteness and illustrates some of the main approaches to this topic
presented in the linguistic literature.



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