SOAS Research Online

Abstract

We apply generative techniques to Modern Hebrew peripheral categories - a term more accurate, to our mind, than the traditional "adverbial". We focus on three aspects that we consider particularly- suited to three descriptive devices forming part of a uniform theory of syntax; base rules, transformations and rules of semantic interpretation. First we attempt to state the expansions of peripheral categories in the base, within an interpretive framework as in Jackendoff (1972), testing and modifying the Lexicalist Hypothesis of Chomsky (1970a) so as to assess the similarities of the major nodes. We then examine the deep structure of the traditional "adverbial clause". Using the interpretive transformationalist technique of, e.g., Hasegawa (1972), we derive certain such clauses from relative structure; and in seeking semantic motivation, we reanalyse derivations proposed for English "adverbial clauses" by Ross (1967a), Huddleston (1968) and Geis (1970), arguing for the existence of 'false ambiguities' of the kind criticised by Stockwell et al.(1973). Finally, we evaluate rival transformational and pure semantic accounts of some elliptical peripheral structures in Hebrew, tentatively formulating a rule of semantic interpretation for 'before' and 'after' expressions and relating this to interpretive rules for Comparative and Coordinative structures.