Cover not available
Part of
Afroasiatic: Data and perspectives
Edited by Mauro Tosco
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 339] 2018
► pp. 235–259

Unipartite clauses

A view from spoken Israeli Hebrew

Within an integrative approach to the structure of spoken language, taking into account prosody, information structure, and syntax, a new model of clause is suggested, viz., a unipartite clause, where the only necessary and sufficient component is the predicate, i.e., with no subject component required. By default, the predicate is viewed as the element carrying the informational load of the clause, the ‘new’ element in the discourse, and the focused component of the clause. The predicate carries the clause modality, where ‘modality’ is viewed in a broad perspective. A preliminary classification of unipartite clauses in Hebrew is also offered.

Keywords: syntax, clause structure, unipartite clause, predicate, context, spoken language, Israeli Hebrew
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Prosody, discourse and syntax
  • 3.What is a unipartite clause?
  • 4.Classification of unipartite clauses
    • 4.1Anchored
      • 4.1.1Intra-discursive anchoring
        • 4.1.1.1Proximate
          • 4.1.1.1.1Structural
          • 4.1.1.1.2Non-structural
        • 4.1.1.2Remote
          • 4.1.1.2.1Structural
          • 4.1.1.2.2Non-structural
        • 4.1.1.3Broad
      • 4.1.2Extra-discursive anchoring
        • 4.1.2.1Intra-origo
        • 4.1.2.2Extra-origo
      • 4.2Unanchored
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 February 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.339.13izr
References
Abraham, Werner
2011 “Traces for Bühler’s Semiotic Legacy in Modern Linguistics”. Theory of Language: The Representational Function of Language, ed. by Karl Bühler, xiii–xliii. Translated by Donald Fraser Goodwin. In collaboration with Achim Eschbach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Benayoun, Jean-Michel
2003 “Sujet zéro, pacte référentiel et thème”. Le sujet: Actes – augmentés de quelques articles – du colloque Le sujet organisé à l’Université de Provence, les 27 ett 28 spetembre 2001, avec le concours du CELA (EA 851) de l’UFR LAG-LEA et de l’Uniersité de Provence (Bibliothèque de Faîts de Langues), ed. by Jean-Marie Merle, 173–182. Paris: Ophrys.Google Scholar
Bally, Charles
1965 Linguistique générale et linguistique française. Quatrième edition revue et corrigée. Berne: Éditions Francke.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad & Edward Finnegan
1999 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Blanche-Benveniste, Claire
2006 “Les énoncés sans verbe en français parlé”. Written version of a lecture given at Naples 23 February 2006.Google Scholar
Borochovsky Bar-Aba, Esther
2010 Issues in Colloquial Hebrew. Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute.Google Scholar
Bühler, Karl
1934 Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Ullstein Taschenbuch, 1159. Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer (1982).Google Scholar
Butler, Christopher S.
2003 Structure and Function: A Guide to Three Major Structural-Functional Theories (Studies in Language Companion Series, 63–64). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Carter, Ronald, & Michael McCarthy
2006 Cambridge Grammar of English: A Comprehensive Guide; Spoken and Written English Grammar and Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chafe, Wallace
1994 Discourse, Consciousness, and Time: The Flow and Displacement of Conscious Experience in Speaking and Writing. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, Eran
2005 “Addenda to Non-Verbal Clauses in Old Babylonian”. Journal of Semitic Studies 50.247–279. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cresti, Emanuela
2005 “Notes on Lexical Strategy, Structural Strategies and Surface Clause Indexes in the C-ORAL-ROM Spoken Corpora”. C-ORAL-ROM: Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages (Studies in Corpus Linguistics 15), ed. by Emanuela Cresti & Massimo Moneglia. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 209–256 (Chapter 6). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cresti, Emanuela, & Massimo Moneglia
(eds.) 2005 C-ORAL-ROM: Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages (Studies in Corpus Linguistics 15). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Daniel, Michael & Andrew Spencer
2009 “The Vocative – an Outlier Case”. The Oxford Handbook of Case, ed. by Andrej Malchukov & Andrew Spencer, 626–634. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dickins, James
2010 “Basic Sentence Structure in Sudanese Arabic”. Journal of Semitic Studies 55.237–261. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foley, William A.
2006 “Topic Chaining Constructions”. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edn. ed. by Keith Brown, 773–777. Oxford: Elsevier. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy
(ed.) 1983 Topic Continuity in Discourse: A Quantitative Cross-Language Study (Typological Studies in Language 3). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1992 “The Grammar of Referential Coherence as Mental Processing Instructions”. Linguistics 30.5–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Glinert, Louis
1989 The Grammar of Modern Hebrew. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goldenberg, Gideon
1998 “On Verbal Structure and the Hebrew Verb”. Studies in Semitic Linguistics: Selected Writings, 138–147. Jerusalem: Magnes.Google Scholar
Hall, Alison
2009 “Subsentential Utterances, Ellipsis, and Pragmatic Enrichment”. Pragmatics & Cognition 17.222–250. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K.
2004 An Introduction to Functional Grammar. 3rd edition revised by Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Harnish, Robert M.
2009 “The Problem of Fragments: Two Interpretative Strategies”. Pragmatics & Cognition 17.251–282. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Izre’el, Shlomo
2005 “Intonation Units and the Structure of Spontaneous Spoken Language: A View from Hebrew”. Proceedings of the IDP05 International Symposium on Discourse-Prosody Interfaces, ed. by Cyril Auran, Roxanne Bertrand, Catherine Chanet, Annie colas, Albert Di Cristo, Cristel Portes, Alain Reynier & Monique Vion. [URL]
2012 “Basic Sentence Structures: A View from Spoken Israeli Hebrew”. Penser les langues avec Claire Blanche-Benveniste ed. by Sandrine Caddéo, Marie-Noëlle Roubaud, Magali Rouquier & Frédéric Sabio, 215–227. Aix-en-Provence: Presses Universitaires de Provence. Corrected version can be downloaded at [URL]
Forthcoming. “The Basic Unit of spoken Language and the Interface Between Prosody, Discourse and Syntax: A View from spontaneous Spoken Hebrew.”.
Izre’el, Shlomo & Amina Mettouchi
2015 “Representation of Speech in CorpAfroAs: Transcriptional Strategies and Prosodic Units”. Corpus-based Studies of Lesser-described Languages: The CorpAfroAs Corpus of Spoken AfroAsiatic Languages, ed. by Amina Mettouchi, Martine Vanhove & Dominique Caubet, 13–41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Izre’el, Shlomo, & Vered Silber-Varod
2009 “OMER LENATEAX LENATEAX: Perception of Prosodic Groups in Spoken Hebrew”. Hebrew Linguistics 63–64.13–33.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto
1924 The Philosophy of Grammar. London: George Allen & Unwin (1951).Google Scholar
Johansson, Marjut, & Eija Suomela-Sahni
2011 “ Énonciation: French Pragmatic Approache(s)”. Discursive Pragmatics: Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights, vol. 8 ed. by Jan Zienkowski, Jan-Ola Östman & Jef Verschueren, 71–101. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kibrik, Andrej A.
2011 “Reference in Discourse”. Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lambrecht, Knut
1994 Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus, and the Mental Representation of Discourse Referents (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 71). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lefeuvre, Florence
1999 “La phrase averbale en français”. Collection Langue & Parole, Recherches en Sciences du Langage. Paris: L’Harmattan.Google Scholar
Le Goffic, Pierre
1993 Grammaire de la Phrase Française. Collection Hachette Université: Langue française. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
Martin, Philippe
2009 Intonation du français. Collection U, Linguistique. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar
Mettouchi, Amina, Anne Lacheret-Dujour, Vered Silber-Varod & Shlomo Izre’el
2007 “Only Prosody? Perception of Speech Segmentation”. Nouveaux cahiers de linguistique française 28 : Intefaces discours – prosodie: actes du 2ème Symposium international & Colloque Charles Bally, 207–218.Google Scholar
Nariyama, Shigeko
2007 “Ellipsis and Markedness: Examining the Meaning of Ellipsis”. 6th International Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution Colloquia 2007 Proceedings, 97–102. Porto: Centro de Linguistica da Universidade do Porto.Google Scholar
Palmer, F. R.
2001 Mood and Modality (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics), 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rubinstein. Eliezer
1968 The Nominal Sentence: A Study in the Syntax of Contemporary Hebrew. Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad.Google Scholar
Sadka, Isaac
1991 “The Unipartite Utterance”. Shay le-Chaim Rabin: Studies on Hebrew and Other Semitic Languages Presented to Professor Chaim Rabin on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday. Jerusalem: Akademon. 295–310. (= Isaac Sadka. 1997. Studies in Hebrew Syntax and Semantics, ed. by Moshe Goshen-Gottstein, Shlomo Morag & Simha Kogut, 1012–115. Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University Press.)Google Scholar
Schwarzwald, Ora R.
2001 Modern Hebrew (Languages of the World/Materials 127). München: LINCOM Europa.Google Scholar
Segel, Esben
2008 “Re-evaluating Zero: When Nothing Makes Sense”. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics 5:2.1–20.Google Scholar
Sinclair, John
2002 Review of Biber et al. 1999. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 6.339–359. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tao, Hongyin
1996 Units in Mandarin Conversation: Prosody, Discourse, and Grammar (Studies in Discourse and Grammar 5). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tesnière, Lucien
1966 Éléments de syntaxe structurale, Deuxième édition revue et corrigée. Paris: Klincksiek.Google Scholar
Vion, Robert
2001 “Modalités, modalisations et activités langagières”. Marges Linguistiques 2.209–231.Google Scholar
Winkler, S
2006 “Ellipsis”. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, ed. by Keith Brown, 2nd edn. Oxford: Elsevier. 109–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ziv, Yael, & Barbara Grosz
1994 “Right Dislocation and Attentional State”. The Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics: Proceedings of the 9th Annual Conference and Workshop on Discourse, ed. by Anita Mittwoch and Rhonna Buchalla, 184–199. Jerusalem: Akademon.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 8 other publications

Halevy, Rivka
2020. Chapter 15. Impersonal and pseudo-impersonal constructions. In Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew [Studies in Language Companion Series, 210], ► pp. 539 ff. DOI logo
Halevy, Rivka
2023. Non-subject oriented existential, possessive and dative-experiencer constructions in Modern Hebrew – a cross-linguistic typological approach. STUF - Language Typology and Universals 76:4 ► pp. 545 ff. DOI logo
Izre'el, Shlomo
2020. Chapter 3. Applying criteria of spontaneous Hebrew speech segmentation to English. In In Search of Basic Units of Spoken Language [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 94], ► pp. 337 ff. DOI logo
Izre'el, Shlomo
2020. Chapter 2. The basic unit of spoken language and the interfaces between prosody, discourse and syntax. In In Search of Basic Units of Spoken Language [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 94], ► pp. 77 ff. DOI logo
Izre'el, Shlomo
2022. The syntax of existential constructions. Journal of Speech Sciences 11 ► pp. e022001 ff. DOI logo
Manfredi, Stefano & Slavomír Čéplö
2023. A corpus-driven description ofoin Naijá (Nigerian Pidgin). Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 38:2 ► pp. 290 ff. DOI logo
Ozerov, Pavel
2023. From sentential syntax to syntax of interaction. Journal of Speech Sciences 12 ► pp. e023001 ff. DOI logo
Tao, Hongyin
2020. Chapter 11. NP clustering in Mandarin conversational interaction. In The ‘Noun Phrase’ across Languages [Typological Studies in Language, 128], ► pp. 272 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.