Abstract
This article investigates the internal structure of the Hebrew particle gam (“also”) from the perspective of construction grammar. Hebrew gam seems to exhibit meanings of both addition and concession, as a single particle and through compounds such as ma gam (“all the more so”), gam kaxa (“as it is”) and gam im (“even”). The findings reveal that the interpretation of the various meanings realized by the construction result from the interaction of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic factors which in turn lead to a form-meaning pairing associated with conventional meanings. The article argues that gam functions as a partly– schematic construction which displays non-discrete meanings ranging from addition at one end of a continuum through polysemous cases which display both addition and concession to concession at the other end of the continuum.
Highlights
It has long been acknowledged that a traditional classification of language into discrete categories often cannot account for a growing body of phenomena which point to an overwhelming prevalence of a non-discrete continuous structure of language3
In line with construction grammar, we describe how these meanings arise as a result of an interaction between semantic, syntactic and pragmatic characteristics thereby creating a form-meaning pairing which constitutes part of the speaker’s linguistic knowledge
At the concessive stage of the continuum, we find cases which demonstrate the meaning of concession only, i.e. the additive meaning is eliminated
Summary
It has long been acknowledged that a traditional classification of language into discrete categories often cannot account for a growing body of phenomena which point to an overwhelming prevalence of a non-discrete continuous structure of language. Construction grammar (Goldberg, 2006; 2013), grammaticalization (Traugott, 2010; Traugott & Trousdale, 2013) and subjectivity and subjectification (Athanasiadou, 2007; Narrog, 2017), all of which agree on a scalar, gradual and continuous view of the structure of language. Along these lines, the goal of this paper is to investigate the Hebrew particle gam () from the perspective of functional construction grammar (Noel, 2007; Goldberg, 2013; Croft & Cruse, 2004) aiming to broaden the view that language forms a continuum. We argue that the interpretation of the different variants results from an interaction of semantic, syntactic and pragmatic factors and that this interaction constitutes part of the linguistic knowledge of speakers of Hebrew
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