CARRYING ONES HEAD HIGH: HEAD MOVEMENT IN HEBREW NOMINALS Asya Pereltsvaig (Yale University) ABSTRACT for University

of Connecticut LUNCH TALK Head Movement has a long history in the study of Hebrew (and more generally Semitic) nominals; see Ritter 1988, 1991, Siloni 1994, Hazout 1990, Borer 1996, 2004, Shlonsky 1991, inter alia. However, recently it has been proposed that the postnominal placement and the inverse ordering of adjectives, demonstratives, cardinals (e.g., rabim/rabot many) and ordinals is derived via XP-movement rather than N-movement; see Cinque (2000), Sichel (2002, 2003), Shlonsky (2004). (1) ha-rabanim ha-fanatiim ha-rabim DEF-Rabbis DEF-fanatical DEF-many these many fanatical Rabbis ha-ele DEF-these

The goals of this talk are: (i) to rehabilitate the Head Movement (henceforth, HM) approach to Hebrew nominals by providing empirical arguments for its superiority over the Phrasal Movement (henceforth, PhM) approach; and (ii) by doing so, to strengthen the status of HM in syntactic theory (contra Chomsky 2000, Koopman & Szabolcsi 2000, and Mahajan 2000, 2001). In this talk, I develop an alternative to snowballing Phrasal Movement approach, namely a snowballing Head Movement approach. The main argument in favor of the Head Movement approach comes from the fact that it makes two correct empirical predictions: (i) with respect to heavy adjectives, and (ii) with respect to complements of N. Furthermore, the Head Movement approach allows us to account without further complications for the observed correlation between robust agreement and postnominal position, on the one hand, and the lack of robust agreement and prenominal position, on the other hand. Finally, I provide a novel argument for Silonis (2003) idea that construct state nominals are formed postsyntactically (i.e., at PF) based on the lack construct counterpart for the N el N construction: (2) a. 'eyze buba el tinoqet! what doll of baby-girl What a cute baby girl! b. 'eyze bubat tinoqet! what doll.CS baby-girl # What a cute baby-girl!

Thus, I show that the Head Movement approach provides a uniform and elegant solution to a wide range of both familiar and newly discovered facts involving Hebrew nominals. References: Borer, H. (1996) The construct in review. In Lecarme et al. (eds.) Studies in Afroasiatic Grammar. The Hague: HAG. Pp. 30-61. Borer, H. (2004) Structuring Sense. An Exo-Skeletal Trilogy. OUP. Cinque, G. (2000) On Greenbergs universal 20 and the Semitic DP. Paper presented at the Antisymmetry Conference, Cortona. Hazout, I. (1990) Verbal nouns: Theta-Theoretic Studies in Hebrew and Arabic. Ph.D. dissertation, UMass. Ritter, E. (1988) A Head-movement Approach to Construct State Noun Phrases. Linguistics 26:909-929. Ritter, E. (1991) Two Functional Categories in Noun Phrases: Evidence from Modern Hebrew. In Rothstein (ed.) Syntax and Semantics 25. New York: Academic Press. Pp. 37-62. Shlonsky, U. (1991) Hebrew construct state nominals, Arabic verb-initial clauses and the Head Movement Constraint. Ms., Universit du Qubec Montral. Shlonsky, U. (2003) The form of Semitic noun phrases. Lingua. Sichel, I. (2002) Phrasal movement in Hebrew adjectives and possessives. In Alexiadou et al. (eds.) Remnant Movement, Feature Movement and the T-Model. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sichel, I. (2003) Phrasal Movement in Hebrew DPs. In Lecarme (ed.) Research in Afroasiatic Grammar II. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pp. 447-479. Siloni, T. (1994) Noun Phrases and Nominalizations. Ph.D. diss., Universit de Genve. Siloni, T. (2003) Prosodic Case Checking Domain: The Case of Constructs. In Lecarme (ed.) Research in Afroasiatic Grammar II. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pp. 481-510.