The verbal gerund in modern Hebrew

Abstract

The Hebrew verbal gerund is a construction used mainly as a temporal adverb. Its surface form consists of the following sequence of elements (where Vinf is an infinitival verb form and XP is a complement of the verb): P - Vinf - Subj - XP. The main claim of this paper is that the verbal gerund is a clausal structure with an INFL node specified as [-Tense]. As a VSO clausal structure, the verbal gerund is an exceptional phenomenon in an otherwise SVO language. This and other idiosyncratic properties of the construction are explained on the basis of some properties of the initial element. It is argued that the initial preposition is a complementizer and that the surface word order of a verbal gerund is derived by two successive applications of head movement, from V to I and from I to C. In addition to word order, the proposed analysis makes possible an explanation of other properties of the verbal gerund, such as the obligatoriness of an overt subject and the impossibility of negation.