Dissertation - Michael Becker

The data in (75) shows that ot-taking accounts for a fairly meager proportion (2.2%) ofthe native nouns that end in vowels other than [o], but almost a third of the nouns that endin [o]. The 146 ot-takers that end in [o] account for 63% of the 230 ot-takers.There are further morpho-phonological regularities that correlate with ot-taking withinthe set of nouns that have [o] in their final syllable. For instance, ot-taking is completelyregular for a class of tri-syllabic masculine nouns that have a stem of the shape [CiCaC–]and the suffix [–on] (e.g. Sikar-on ‘state of drunkenness’). These nouns can be productivelyformed from verbs to mean ‘state of X-ness’, and with this meaning, their plural is alwaysin –ot 6 . Tri-syllabic nouns in [–on] account for 54 of the 146 [o]-final ot-takers in (75). Ofthe remaining 92 [o]-final ot-takers, 49 end in the segments [on], but in many cases, it ishard to determine whether these segments belong to the an affix or to a stem.Having an [o] in the root is well correlated with taking –ot in the plural evenafter allowing for the effect of the suffix [–on].In the lexicon, this can be seen withmonosyllables: Of the 70 monosyllables with [o] in them, 20 are ot-takers (29%), andnone of these ot-takers end in [n]. This rate of ot-taking is comparable to the overall rateof ot-taking.Looking at di-syllabic nouns only 7 , the effect of a root [o] is observed not only locally,but also at a distance. The table in (76) shows that having an [o] in the penultimate syllablecorrelates with a level of ot-taking that is intermediate between roots with a final [o] androots with no [o].6 The etymological data in Bolozky & Becker (2006) confirms the modern productivity of ot-taking for[CiCaC-on] nouns. Of the 230 ot-takers, 216 are attested before modern Hebrew (i.e. Biblical or Mishnaic).Of the remaining 14 ot-takers that were created in modern times, 13 are [CiCaC-on] nouns. The remainingmodern item, dúax ∼ dux-ót ‘report’, is colloquially pronounced dóx ∼ dox-ót, thus making every singlemodern ot-taker a noun with [o] in its stem.7 Bolozky & Becker (2006) list only six native nouns with an [o] in their antepenultimate syllable, andnone with earlier [o]’s. All six are poly-morphemic and take –im. This is hardly surprising, given that fewnative nouns surface more than two syllables long, and all are analyzed as underlyingly disyllabic in Becker(2003).80