Reconsidering the construct state in Modern Hebrew

In this paper, I reconsider the Hebrew construct state from a semantic point of view. I show that construct states have a variety of different interpretations, beyond the modificational/referential contrast discussed in Borer (2009). I shall argue that (almost) all nominally headed construct states have predicate NP complements, even those that look 'referential', and that this allows the NP to be interpreted in one of a number of ways: as an incorporated predicate, as a nominal modifier or as the semantic 'head' of the construct state. I will further show that the account given extends to construct states headed by non-nominal constituents, in particular adjectives and numerical expressions.