Verbless Predicates in Hebrew

Abstract

In the study of grammar, much attention has focused on verbs because of t h e i r r o l e as the pivotal constituent i n the predicate of a sentence. Not a l l sentences have a verb i n their predicate, however. The present work deals with sentences whose predicate has a noun or an adjective as the main constituent; the only role of a verb, i f it appears at a l l i n such predicates, is that of copula. This dissertation is i n part a study of the syntax of contemporary Hebrew, a language where sentence predicates need not contain a verb. It focuses on two constructions of Hebrew that exhibit verbless predicates: the so-called nominal and the existential, exemplified i n (1) and (2) respectively.