Grammatical generalizations and item-specific listing in Hebrew transitivity alternations

What it is about

Hebrew transitivity alternations (for example niDLaK intransitive / hiDLiK transitive from the same root) are marked by a change of verbal template (binyan). The question is whether speakers generalise these alternations by grammar or store each pair. Katz uses nonce verbs built on novel roots in two experiments, one of production and one of acceptability judgement. Speakers systematically avoid producing transitives in the niCCaC and hitCaCeC templates, which are not transitive in Hebrew, so this restriction is grammatical. Speakers also apply the stop–fricative (spirantization) alternation productively in the environments tested, and match the frequency of alternating transitive templates. But their choice of transitive template does not follow from the intransitive one, and it ignores manner-of-articulation faithfulness. The author concludes that pairings are listed per root, under a grammatical constraint on transitivity, and argues against Voice-based accounts of the templates.

Ideas

• I1. A generation constraint in the verb paradigms: a nonce or new root never receives a transitive in niCCaC or hitCaCeC. The constraint is one table entry, and the per-root template pairs go into the lexicon as listed data.
• I2. The stop–fricative alternation as a finite-state rule for generated forms of new roots, with the contexts the paper tests as its first test cases.
• I3. A deterministic nonce-verb test for Mova's morphology: generate forms for invented roots and check that the forbidden transitive templates never appear and that spirantization applies. The test checks the code, not speakers; it is repeated twice before any result is reported.

For Mova

I1 goes into 05b. Verb paradigms: the strong verb in seven binyanim and the weak roots (the constraint) and 8. Lexicon and register (the listed pairs). I2 goes into 3. Phonology. I3 is a test for the Modern Hebrew morphology code.

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.16995/glossa.27491

@article{katz2026grammatical,
  title = {{Grammatical generalizations and item-specific listing in Hebrew transitivity alternations}},
  author = {Katz, Yuval Z.},
  journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.16995/glossa.27491},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.27491}
}

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