Hebrew nominals do not require functional structure above the NP

Abstract

Ritter (1991) is widely cited as having shown that Hebrew nominals require functional structure like DP and Num(ber)P dominating the lexical NP (see, e.g., Preminger 2020). This paper revisits the arguments for this functional structure, and shows that they do not go through. An endocentric analysis where the maximal projection of the nominal in Hebrew is a projection of the head N is a perfectly viable one. There is no need for functional projections like DP and NumP in Hebrew, and hence no argument from Hebrew for their existence. This demonstration is in line with recent work questioning the motivation for the DP Hypothesis, and arguing that the empirical facts better support a model where the lexical head N is the head of the nominal (Bruening 2009; 2020; Bruening et al. 2018).

Keywords

• nominals
• NP
• Hebrew
• construct state