The Biblical Hebrew transitivity alternation in cognitive linguistic perspective

That there exists a group of biblical Hebrew verbs which appear in both transitive and intransitive grammatical constructions has long been recognized. However, explanations of this phenomenon among modern BH grammarians, especially regarding the grammatical status of the Object, have been unsatisfactorily vague. Many issues relevant to the BH transitivity alternation (e.g. valency, transitivity, lability, verb classes, and constructional semantics) have received sustained treatment in the broader linguistic community. The purpose of this dissertation is to offer an extended treatment of the BH transitivity alternation utilizing the theory and methods of Cognitive Grammar and the related (sub)discipline Construction Grammar. This investigation explains the relationship of these BH verbs to their associated nouns with reference to the prototypical and schematic transitive event. Many BH verbs which permit the transitivity alternation exhibit significant semantic overlap allowing them to be categorized and analyzed as "verb classes." The benefit of analyzing verbs by class is that it increases the amount of data (an important feature when working with a dead language) and, more impor