Not all diatheses are created equal: Evidence from semantic drifts

Abstract

This paper examines the distribution of Modern Hebrew semantic drifts across four diatheses (voices): transitives, unaccusatives (anticausatives), adjectival (stative) passives, and verbal (eventive) passives. A quantitative survey of dictionaries reveals a discrepancy between these diatheses: Only transitives, unaccusatives, and adjectival passives can give rise to unique semantic drifts, unshared with their related root counterparts, while verbal passives cannot. A corpus- based study shows that frequency is unable to account for this finding; nor can approaches demarcating a syntactic domain for special meanings. I propose that semantic drifts are stored as subentries of the entries from which they evolved, as long as the drift’s frequency remains smaller than or equal to that of the original entry. Once the drift’s frequency greatly surpasses that of the original entry, it is stored as an independent lexical entry. In light of that, I suggest that predicates giving rise to unique semantic drifts have to constitute lexical entries. It thus follows that transitives, unaccusatives, and adjectival passives are formed and listed in the lexicon, while verbal passives are not. Consequently, the lexicon is argued to function as an active (operational) component of the grammar, contra syntacticocentric approaches.

Keywords

• semantic drift
• lexicon
• transitive
• unaccusative
• adjectival passive
• verbal passive