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Recent analyses of the causative-inchoative alternation, mostly rooted in a Voice theory of argument diathesis (e.g. Alexiadou et. al. 2006 and subsequent work), have analyzed the relationship between the two alternating forms as adirectional, deriving both forms equally from a common-base. This contrasts with more traditional analyses of this alternation, where one form is taken as basic and the other one derived through a rule operating on that form. I provide experimental semantic evidence using a paradigm from Lundquist et. al (2016) that in Modern Hebrew two separate semantic processes underly two different classes of alternating verbs: one class is causativizing (Rappaport Hovav and Levin 1998), and one is reflexivizing (Chierchia 2004, Koontz-Garboden 2009). I show that in order to capture a mixed language as these results indicate, non-directional theories must deviate greatly from their basic principles, while such a mixed language can be neatly captured by directional theories without any major modification.
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