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## The meaning of zehu in spoken Israeli Hebrew:

## A corpus-based analysis of its interjectional function

Both authors have contributed equally to this work

Leon Shor Tel Aviv University shor.leon@gmail.com

Anna Inbar Tel Aviv University Inbara9@gmail.com

Abstract: This  paper  focuses  on  a  particular  use  of  the  item zehu 'that's  it' in  spoken  Israeli  Hebrew,  in  which  it  functions  as  a  secondary  interjection that conveys the meanings of 'completion' and 'restriction' . In light of zehu ' s morphological makeup - a fusion of the sgm demonstrative ze 'this' and the 3sgm pronoun hu 'he' - the interjectional use is suggested to have originated in the grammaticalization of the clause ze hu 'That's him/that, ' a clause that is normally used in Israeli Hebrew for the identification of people and objects. Each  of  the  two  interjectional  meanings  conveyed  by zehu is  suggested  to be  conceptually  linked  to  the  meanings  of  'wholeness'  and  'rejection'  meanings that are potentially related to the basic identificational function of the clause ze hu 'That's him/that. ' The interconnection between the meanings of  'completion'/  'restriction'  and  the  meanings  of  'wholeness'/'rejection' is supported by tendencies in semantic change and by patterns of co-speech gestures.

## 1. Introduction

In  the  literature,  interjections  are  defined  as  conventional  lexical  items, characterizable by a bundle of formal and functional features. From a formal perspective, interjections are morphologically invariable particles that do not enter into construction with other word classes, and consequently constitute syntactically  and  prosodically  independent  utterances.  They  can  typically be  regarded  as  one-position  operators,  in  that  they  modify  an  utterance or  an  utterance-complex but do not typically link two discourse segments. Functionally, interjections mainly encode a wide array of pragmatic meanings, while  their  lexical  meaning  is  weak.  Thus,  interjections  implement  modal and interactional  meanings, conveying the speaker's stance with respect to the conveyed message or the recipient, and consequently serve as vehicles for marking agreement, disagreement, and emphasis (Ameka 1992, 2006; Wilkins 1992: 124; Cuenca 2000: 35-37, 2013: 209; Norrick 2011: 250, 2014: 224).

The  aim  of  this  paper  is  to  analyze  one  interjectional  function  of the  phrase zehu 'that's  it'  in  spoken  Israeli  Hebrew.  Morphologically, zehu consists  of  the  masculine  singular  demonstrative  pronoun ze 'this'  and  the enclitic  pronoun hu 'he. '  This  lexical  item,  along  with  its  feminine  ( zohi ) and  plural  ( ele/u  hem , ele/u  hen )  counterparts,  composes  a  paradigm  of (complex)  discourse-deictic  demonstratives.  The  use  of  these  discoursedeictic demonstratives has been documented in Hebrew texts starting from the Rabbinic period, where they were integrated within the structure of the clause, typically as the syntactic subject of a nominal clause, and as such they agreed with the subsequent nominal predicate in gender and number. This use still exists in Israeli Hebrew, albeit only in formal or literary registers, as shown in examples 1 and 2 below: 1

- (1) ˁ al batim  ve-mišpaxot,  horim  ve-yaldehem          on homes and-families, parents and-their.children -

'On homes and families, parents and their children - '

zehu nose         sirto          ha-ti ˁ udi                 šel livyu karmeli this(sgm).he topic(m) his.movie def-documentary of Liviu Karmeli 'This is the topic of Liviu Karmeli's new documentary. ' (haaretzNEWS1003371:3)

- (2) hu kihen  rak ˁ arba šanim ba-senat he served only four   years  in-def-senate 'He only served four years in the Senate, '

ve- yeš      lo          me ˁ at nisayon      benle ˀ umi . and-ext  to.him  little   experience international. 'and he has little international experience. '

zohi hitkadmut           mehira miday this(sgf).she advancement(f) fast      too ' This is too fast an advancement'

be ˁ avur ha-tsibur    haˀ amerika ˀ i. for         def-public def-american 'for the American public. '

(haaretzNEWS1006924:7)

Example  1  describes  the  topic  of  a  new  documentary  movie,  using  an extrapositional sentence with two components: an extra-sentential component -  'On  homes  and  families,  parents  and  their  children'  -  and  a  sentential component,  the  subject  of  which, zehu , points  to the extra-sentential component. Based on the information conveyed by the entire sentence, the intended referent of zehu can roughly be understood as 'anything related to family life. '  Example 2 consists of two sentences: The first sentence describes two facts about Barack Obama's professional life that hint, in the speaker's opinion, at Obama's relative inexperience, while the second sentence, with zohi as its subject, characterizes the referent of zohi as 'too fast an advancement for the American public.' Based on the information conveyed by these two sentences, the intended referent of zohi can approximately be paraphrased as 'becoming president  without  having  a  long  political  record. '  Thus,  in  both  examples, the  discourse-deictic  demonstratives zehu and zohi point  toward  previous discourse segments and require the recipient to create a referent out of them (Cornish 2011: 760-761; 2012: 19). Each of these demonstratives is integrated within the nominal clause as the syntactic subject, and is in agreement with the subsequent nominal predicate in gender and number zehu with nose 'topic(m), ' and zohi with hitkadmut 'advancement(f). '

In less formal registers, most typically in spontaneous conversation, the aforementioned use is almost nonexistent. In these registers, zehu has different pragmatic-discursive uses, in which it usually constitutes a syntactically and prosodically independent utterance, and it does not have feminine and plural counterparts. Thus, in conversational language, zehu is  a  pragmatic marker, with various discourse and modal marking functions (Bardenstein, Shor & Inbar,  forthcoming).  In  the  present  paper,  we  focus  on  one  interjectional function of zehu ,  in  which it can be regarded as a secondary interjection that is a form that originally belonged to another word class, and which has come to be used as an interjection following a process of syntactic reanalysis and  semantic  change  (Cuenca  2000:  40;  Ameka  2006:  704).  The  use  to  be discussed is related to the meanings of 'completion' and 'restriction' . In such interjectional use, zehu may highlight the completion of some durative state or event, possibly consisting of a series of sub-events. This use is demonstrated in example 3 below:

```
(3) 1 sp1 je∫    laχ      od     k ʦ at    keilu / ext to.you more a.little like / 'Do you still have a little bit more (work left)?' 2 sp2 (0.6) en || (0.6) neg.ext || '(0.6) There is nothing. ' 3 en || neg.ext || 'There is nothing. 4 lo | hajom ze   kvar     haja ha=mivχan  ha=gadol  ha=aχaron || no | today  this already was def=exam    def=big    def=last    || 'No, today was the last major exam. ' 5 zehu || this.he || ' That's it . ' 6 (0.4) hakol          meaχorenu || (0.4) everything behind.us      || '(0.4) Everything is behind us. ' 7 (0.4) ∫eni          ve=revi ˀ i              ze    pinats || (0.4) Monday and=Wednesday this peanuts || '(0.4) Monday and Wednesday are peanuts (=easy).' (Y32_sp2_086, sp1_053-059)
```

In example 3, the speakers have previously been discussing sp2's upcoming trip to Thailand, and sp2 said that she felt as though she had already started her trip. After sp1 reminds sp2 that she still has some work left to complete (line 1), sp2, who works as an exam supervisor, says that her last big exam has  already  taken  place,  and  uses  the  interjection zehu -  produced  as  an independent utterance ending with a falling  terminal  prosodic  boundary - in order to stress that, in her view, her work is definitely complete (lines

2-5). In this case, zehu seems to function as an intensifier that takes under its scope the idea of completion of sp2's period of work, after that idea was independently  communicated.  In  other  words,  the  interjectional zehu can roughly be paraphrased as 'totally/absolutely/definitely complete. ' Note also that the meaning of completion of sp2's work period is further reiterated by her subsequent remarks in which she explicitly says that 'everything is behind us, ' and characterizes the two remaining exams as 'peanuts' (lines 6-7). In sum, the idea of completion in this example is conveyed through several means, of  which  the  interjectional zehu is  only  one,  contributing  to  an  intensified delivery of the entire message.

Additionally, zehu may  have  a  restrictive  interpretation.  Example  4 demonstrates such use:

- (4) 1 sp3 be=jom.∫ i ∫ i | efo       hajiti / in=Friday   | where  I.was / 'On Friday, where was I?'
2. 2 sp1 jom.∫ i ∫ i | ve    ∫abat || Friday  | and Saturday || 'On Friday, and on Saturday. '
3. 3 sp3 nasati   jakum   ve   χazara | (0.3) zehu || I.drove Yakum and back      | (0.3) this.he || 'I drove to Yakum and back, (0.3) that's it . ' (C1141\_1ND\_145-150)

Prior  to  (4),  sp3  expressed  his  amazement  at  the  high  mileage  of  his  car, claiming that he had barely used it during the weekend. He recalls doing a single  ride,  and  immediately  restricts  its  interpretation  by  means  of zehu , which in this case is meant as 'no other ride than the one mentioned' (line 3). In this example, zehu conveys the idea of restriction similarly to the dedicated restrictive particle rak ' only. '

We believe that the study of Hebrew interjectional zehu presents an interesting case for the study of interjections. The path of development from a demonstrative/pronominal element to a secondary interjection is not welldocumented. Secondary interjections are usually thought of as derived from major word classes, most typically nouns (e.g., the English Boy! Man! God! Shit! ),  verbs  (e.g.,  the  English Damn! Fuck! ),  and  phrases  (e.g.,  the  English Goddamn! Holy shit! I'll be damned! ) (Norrick 2014). In contrast, there is little scholarly discussion of secondary interjections that originated in grammatical elements such as demonstratives and pronouns (but see Wilkins 1992, 1995). Related to this is the mechanism through which the meaning of 'completion' or  'restriction'  conveyed  by  the  interjectional zehu might  have  developed. The rise of secondary interjections is usually accounted for by broadening through overinclusion or analogical extension - of the conceptual content of the source lexeme, which results in a new emotional or attitudinal content (Cruz 2017). However, it is far from clear whether broadening can account for the rise of the meanings expressed by the interjectional zehu from its original discourse-deictic  use.  The  reason  for  this  is  that  deictic  elements,  such  as demonstratives and pronouns, are typically regarded as encoding procedural, and not conceptual, information. This raises the question of how a procedural information can give rise to a conceptual one.

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: Section 2 will describe the data utilized in this study; Section 3 will discuss the potential development  of  the  meanings  of  'completion'  and  'restriction'  out  of  a compound demonstrative lexeme, followed by Section 4, which will present further development of the interjectional zehu . Section 5 is a short summary.

## 2. Data

The data for this research were obtained from the Corpus of Spoken Israeli Hebrew  (CoSIH)  database  (<http://cosih.com/english/index.html>). The CoSIH  database  includes  recordings  of  spontaneous  Israeli  Hebrew  conversations that were made in 2001 and 2002. By focusing on naturally occurring conversations,  this  study  takes  a  'usage-based'  perspective  of  language  by examining  how  collaborative  and  situated  interactions  influence  linguistic patterns in everyday conversation. It should be mentioned, however, that the use of recorded data is inherently limited in that it only provides access to the linguistic and para-linguistic dimensions of the interaction, but not to other, no less significant aspects of interaction, such as gaze, gesture, and posture. 2

There are 64 tokens of zehu in the CoSIH database, 20 of which can be related to the meaning of completion and restriction. 3 While most of these tokens (17/20) were found to be prosodically independent, being realized in a separate intonation unit, some of them (3/20) were appended to the clause they modify and were realized in a single intonation unit within that clause.

## 3. Discussion

As was shown in (3), the interjectional zehu may contribute to conveying the idea of completion of durative event or state, in conjunction with utterances that describe the completion explicitly. In such a use, zehu is typically produced as an independent utterance ending with a falling terminal prosodic boundary. A similar instance is demonstrated in example 5 below:

```
(5) 1 sp1 sagarnu    et=ha=nose || we.closed acc=def=topic || 'We closed the topic. ' 2 zehu || this.he || 'That's it . ' 3 nisgar || it.was.closed || 'It was closed. ' 4 ve   al=ha= ʦ ad   ha=tov      be=joter || and on=def=side def=good in=most  || ' And on the best side. ' (Y34_sp1_178-181)
```

In  example  5,  sp1  relates  to  an  unpleasant  discussion  she  had  with  her roommate, and now tells her friend that she and her roommate managed to end the topic. After sp1 explicitly says that they ended the discussion (line 1), she uses the interjectional zehu - produced as an independent utterance ending  with  a  falling  terminal  prosodic  boundary  -  to  stress  that  the discussion is definitely closed (line 2). She then repeats the idea of completion by using the passive verb, nisgar 'it  was closed, ' which is based on the same consonantal root ( s-g-r ) as the verb she used before, sagarnu 'we closed, ' and thus can be seen as modified repetition (line 3). At this point, although sp1's turn  is  possibly  complete,  she  adds  an  'increment'  (Ford  et  al.  2002)  that continues  the  idea  of  completion  by  modifying  the  manner  of  completion conveyed previously by the sentence nisgar ||  'It  was closed, ' in this case 'on the best side' (line 4). We can see that similarly to (3), the idea of completion is intensified through several means, of which the interjectional zehu is one.

Example 6 demonstrates a similar instance:

```
(6) 1 sp1 metim     la ʦ et       ita           odpaam | dying.pl to.go.out with.her again     | 'They're dying to go out with her again,
```

```
2 ve   odpaam | ve    odpaam ze   aval | and again      | and  again     this but   | and again, and again, but' 3 (0.8) en || (0.8) neg.ext || '(0.8) No. ' 4 hi | ata  mevin                         hi | (0.6) hi χoteχet || she | you understanding.sgm she | (0.6) she cutting.sgf || 'She, you understand she, (0.6) She ends (lit. cuts). ' 5 zehu || this.he || ' That's it . ' 6 hi χoteχet || she cutting.sgf || 'She ends. ' 7 ma    ani jeχol laasot || what I     can   to.do   || 'What can I do. ' (P423_2_sp1_ 27 1 -280)
```

Here, sp1 describes his sister's manner of behavior with which he is not satisfied -  she  tends  to  end  relationships  she  views  as  prospectless  after  a  relatively short period of time, even when her partners want to continue going out with her. In order to emphasize his sister's reluctance to continue her relationships, sp1 metaphorically uses the verb χoteχet ' cuts' to stress the abruptness of the relationship ending (lines 1-4). He then produces the interjectional zehu as an independent utterance ending with a falling terminal prosodic boundary to  stress  that  the  relationship  is  definitely  terminated,  and  repeats  the  verb χoteχet ' cuts'  (lines  5-6).  He  closes  the  sequence  by  expressing  his  inability to  change  his  sister's  behavior,  which  further  stresses  the  determination  of her sister on ending her relationships (line 7). Once again, we can see that the interjectional zehu contributes to the expression of completion or finality, along with additional components.

In some instances, zehu conveys the idea of restriction similarly to the dedicated restrictive particle rak ' only. ' Example 7 demonstrates such a use:

```
(7) 1 sp2 hajinu    χaverim   mehatχala || we.were friends     from.the.beginning || 'We were friends from the beginning. ' 2 aval | lo      ja ʦ anu          harbe || but   | neg we.went.out  a.lot   || 'But we didn't go out a lot. ' 3 mama∫ lo || totally  neg || 'Definitely not. ' 4 ulaj      paam be=χode∫ | ja ʦ anu          le=seret     o  ma∫ehu || maybe once  in=month  | we.went.out  to=movie or something || 'Maybe once a month we went out for a movie or something.' 5 zehu || this.he || ' That's it . ' 6 lo | klum || neg | nothing || 'No, nothing (else). '
```

- (P423aND\_1035-1043)

Prior to (7), sp2 has been talking about his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, stressing that it was important for him that she pass her matriculation exams, and that he help her prepare for the exams. Here, he further emphasizes his description by saying that although they were a couple at the very beginning of their relationship, they did not go out a lot, implying that the main objective at that point was preparing for matriculation exams (lines 1-3). To emphasize the infrequency of their outings, he restricts it to going to see a movie once a month, and further emphasizes it by means of zehu ,  produced as  an  independent utterance ending with a falling terminal prosodic boundary (lines 4-5). The restriction in this case is meant as 'no more than once a month. ' In contrast to  the  dedicated  restrictive  particle rak ' only, '  which  typically  prefaces  the element it modifies, and requires the speaker to express the idea of restriction prior to the restricted element, using zehu as a restrictive marker enables the

## Scandinavian Studies in Language, 10(1), 2019 (131-151)

speaker to add the idea of restriction in retrospection, possibly in a separate utterance. In this example, the restrictive interpretation is also supported by the subsequent negative utterance (line 6). Although this utterance does not explicitly mention what exactly is being negated here, it seems to reject any potential counterclaims that may weaken sp2's overall position, namely of going out more frequently than he had previously admitted (Shor forthcoming).

The preceding examples show that the erstwhile compound lexeme zehu ,  consisting  of  the  demonstrative  pronoun ze 'this'  and  the  enclitic pronoun hu 'he, '  has  come  to  be  used  in  Israeli  Hebrew  conversation  as  a secondary interjection, denoting the completion of a durative or continuous event that possibly consists of a series of sub-events. Additionally, zehu may convey the idea of restriction, indicating that only items uttered are relevant, and not others.  A  question  naturally  arises  touching  upon  the  mechanism through which the meaning of completion or finality, and subsequently that of  restriction  and  exclusivity,  might  have  developed  out  of  a  compound  of two deictic elements, each of which does not encode any conceptual meaning. Such  a  development,  we  believe,  cannot  be  explained  by  the  account  of semantic  broadening  according  to  which  the  original  concept  denoted by the source lexeme is broadened (for expressive means) to a new ad-hoc concept that denotes some emotion, feeling or attitude that is related to, or is the consequence of, what the initial concept denoted (Cruz 2017). Although semantic  broadening  seems  to  be  able  to  account  for  the  development of  secondary  interjections  such  as Fuck! or Hell! from  the  corresponding content words, it is far from clear whether it can account for the rise of the meaning of completion, and of the other derivative meanings, expressed by the interjectional zehu , from its original deictic use.

Before we motivate this type of change, it is worth mentioning that the path of development whereby demonstratives evolve into interjections has rarely been documented in the cross-linguistic literature on demonstratives. Diessel (1999: 154), for example, only briefly mentions that interjections and discourse markers may evolve from deictics, and Heine & Kuteva (2002: 319320)  do  not  mention  interjections  as  a  potential  grammaticalization  target of  demonstratives.  The  most  explicit  suggestion  regarding  the  relationship between deictics and interjections was put forward by Wilkins (1992, 1995), who proposed to view interjections as a subtype of deictic elements, alongside the more standard members, such as pronouns and demonstratives. One of the arguments for such a view is the observation that various deictic forms may be the source of interjections, or may be used on their own as interjections. For example, the English There! is roughly paraphrased by Wilkins as 'See, I told you so' or 'Just as I expected, ' and That's that! is said to be used to terminate any further discussion of a particular matter, or to indicate that some particular matter or event is settled and has come to its natural conclusion (Wilkins 1995: 370). This subgroup of secondary interjections that evolved from deictics or

## Scandinavian Studies in Language, 10(1), 2019 (131-151)

demonstratives might be termed 'demonstrative interjections, ' to borrow a term used by Wang & Cao (2014) in their description of a group of demonstratives with  interjectional  functions  that  are  used  in  several  dialects  of  Mandarin Chinese. The demonstrative interjections described by these authors are used as a response to a preceding utterance, signaling the location of an object in the immediate speech context, and they may convey an overtone of impatience or hurriedness on the part of the speaker. The analysis presented by the authors suggests that these demonstratives acquired their interjectional status through the grammaticalization and lexicalization of the elliptical forms of rhetorical questions containing the demonstratives. The authors go on to suggest that demonstrative  interjections  might  constitute  a  new  type  of  demonstratives in human languages, resulting in the need to revise existing classifications of demonstratives.

In  the  case  of zehu ,  we  suggest  it  is  the  grammaticalization  of  the minimal clause ze  hu 'That's  him/That's  that'  that  possibly  gave  rise  to  the meanings of completion and restriction. This minimal clause is an instantiation of the identificational construction ze+NP , a construction that serves as the basic resource available in Israeli Hebrew for naming people, objects, states, and  events.  It  is  usually  accompanied  by  a  pointing  gesture,  as  well  as  by prosodic  prominence  of  the  NP .  In  using  this  construction,  a  speaker  can direct the recipient's attention to a previously non-attended person or object that the speaker considers to be of relevance for the recipient, and designate it by means of the NP. The NP may be realized by a proper name, a description, or - as is the case of ze hu - by a pronoun.

Crucial to our argument is the connection between the function of identification, through deictic pointing and nominal designation (henceforth identification), and two related conversational implications - construing the  pointed-to  referent  as  a  unified  whole  (henceforth  wholeness)  and rejection  of  other  alternatives  (henceforth  rejection). 4 The  link  between identification  and  rejection  can  be  motivated  by  the  assumption  that identification of an unfamiliar person or object can be conceptually treated as the rejection of other potential referents in the speech situation, as well as of other potential names for that particular referent. So, in uttering ze hu 'That's him/That's that' in relation to a person, the speaker may be heard as saying, 'That's him and not others. ' In addition, the link between identification and wholeness can be motivated by the assumption that identifying a referent construes it as a single whole, and not as a multitude of sub-components of which it may consist. What is more, there seems to be a conceptual link between rejection and wholeness - construing a referent as a unified whole can be envisioned as rejecting elements that do not belong to that whole. If we are correct in our assumption that identification can imply wholeness and/or rejection, then it is plausible to assume that the two interjectional meanings conveyed by zehu - completion and restriction - have developed precisely out of these inferences/meanings.

In the following two subsections we provide evidence to support our proposal, according to which rejection and/or wholeness can be linked to  the  meaning  of  restriction  (Section  3.1)  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  the meaning of completion (Section 3.2) on the other.

## 3.1  Restriction as rejection and/or wholeness

That restriction is linked to rejection and/or wholeness is reflected in the  cross-linguistically  common  sources  of  exclusive/restrictive  particles, comparable to the English only -  the  numeral  'one, '  privative  notions,  and restrictive  negative  constructions  (König  1991:  159;  Heine  &  Kuteva  2002: 333). Whole is reflected, for example, in the English only , alone ,  Germam einzig, allein, erst , Latvian viens, viena ' only, one, ' and Y oruba kàn ' only' (cf. kan ' one'). Rejection is reflected in restricted negation constructions, such as the French ne … que , the Italian non … che , the German nur , and the Dutch maar . Privation, or an absence of some quality or attribute, may also give rise to exclusive/restrictive particles - the English merely (< Latin merus 'unmixed'), the  Hawaiian wale ' alone,  only,  without  payment/cause, '  and  Modern  High German echt (< Old High German eckerodo 'poor, deficient').

Additional  evidence  for  the  connection  between  restriction  and rejection comes from the study of gestures accompanying Hebrew speech. Hebrew speakers were found to accompany the restrictive particle rak ' only' with gestures that were usually associated with negation (Inbar & Shor 2017; Inbar & Shor forthcoming). 5 Two such instances are shown in (8) and (9), prior to which the speaker described how, after being raised in a strict religious community, she realized the things she had been told were not necessarily true, leading her to find her own way of believing in god:

- (8) 1 sp1 je ∫ rak elohim | ve je ∫   kod    mesujam | ext only god      | and ext code  specific   | 'There is only
2. 2 kaχa ʦ ariχ   lehitlabe∫ | asur la∫evet lejad  banim | thus should to.dress     | forbidden to.sit    near   boys   | that is how you should dress, it is forbidden to sit near boys. '
- (9) 1 sp1 ha=elohim   ha=χada∫  hu  elohim  ohev    | 'The new god is a loving god, '

```
god, and there is a specific code, ' def=god     def=new    he  god       loving  |
```

```
2 zot rak ahava | this.sgf only love    | 'this is only love. '
```

In (8), the speaker describes a series of axioms she was told while growing up, the first of which is that 'there is only god. ' This utterance is accompanied by a headshake gesture, realized as multiple swings of the head. Headshakes are usually coordinated with negation and rejection, and in the example discussed may invoke the interpretation 'There is only god, and nothing else. ' Shortly after the excerpt presented in (8), the same speaker produces the utterance in (9), in which she says that in contrast to the image of a god that dominated her religious upbringing, one that rewards the good and punishes the bad, she now chooses to believe in a loving god. The loving character of her newfound god is further highlighted by means of the restrictive utterance zot rak ahava 'This is only love, ' which is accompanied by a headshake gesture, realized as multiple swings of the head. As in (8), this gestures makes visible the 'and nothing else' interpretation, an interpretation that is only implied on the first utterance.  These  two  examples,  we  suggest,  indicate  the  close  conceptual affinity that exists between the domains of restriction and rejection.

## 3.2 Completion as rejection and/or wholeness

Evidence for a conceptual link between completion and rejection comes from diverse sources. On an intuitive level, a completed event typically implies that it is not in progress anymore, or that no additional actions are required in order to terminate it. Accordingly, one would expect that the domain of completion in language would overlap with the domain of rejection. As in the case of restriction, a more concrete evidence for the link between the two domains comes from gestural behavior. In spoken Hebrew, lexemes denoting  completion  may  be  accompanied  by  various  co-speech  gestures that are typically associated with negation (Inbar & Shor 2017; Inbar & Shor forthcoming):

- (10) sp1 lehafsik laasot  sratim / to.stop to.do    movies / ' Stop making movies?'
- (11) sp1 ve    im paam hajita      ozev               et=ha=avoda gamarnu || and  if  once   you.were leaving.sgm acc=def=job we.finished || ' And if in the past you used to leave your job, we're done . '

In (10), the speaker moves his left hand from the center of his body to the periphery co-expressively with uttering lehafsik 'to stop. ' In (11), the speaker lifts both of his hands up, with the palms vertically oriented, co-expressively with uttering gamarnu 'we finished. ' Since both of these gestures are typically associated  with  utterances  that  include  grammatical  negation,  it  seems plausible to assume that there is some conceptual affinity between the domains of completion and rejection.

At the same time, there also seems to exist a conceptual link between the  domains  of  completion  and  wholeness.  A  terminated  event  can  be conceptualized as a completed whole. The internal composition of that event is  backgrounded, whereas its outer boundaries are foregrounded. It should come as no surprise that the domains of completion and wholeness indeed intersect on various linguistic levels.

One  manifestation  of  wholeness  in  the  grammatical  systems  of languages is universal quantification, expressed by collective quantifiers (e.g., the  English all ) and  distributive  quantifiers  (e.g.,  the  English every ) . This connection is most conspicuously manifested in the fact that, at least in IndoEuropean  languages,  collective  quantifiers  generally  originate  in  adjectives meaning  'whole'  (Haspelmath  1995).  In  turn,  universal  quantification  has been  linked  by  various  scholars  to  aspectual  notions  of  completion  and completeness.  Huber  &  Schapper  (2014),  for  example,  show  that  in  three related  Papuan  languages  -  Bunaq,  Kamang,  and  Makalero  -  universal quantification and aspectual notions of completion and completeness show various  degrees  of  overlap.  This  overlap  is  reflected  in  deploying  a  single morpheme  for  expressing  universal  quantification  on  the  one  hand,  and aspectual distinctions on the other. In Bunaq, for example, the same lexical item, aˀal 'be finished, ' may be used to denote the termination of an event, the high degree of a state, or be used as a collective universal quantifier.

Moreover,  from  a  pragmatic  perspective,  collective  quantifiers  in various languages are frequently used with the intent to stop some course of action or to describe the end of an action. These include, for example, the English that's all , the Russian всё , the French c' est tout , and the Estonian kõik . Consequently, if every single one of the sub-actions comprising a specific event has been performed, that event can be regarded as concluded or terminated (cf. Pajusalu 2008: 1957).

## 3.3 Interim summary and discussion

Subsections 3.1 and 3.2 provided evidence to support our proposal, according to  which  rejection  and/or  wholeness  can  be  linked  to  the  meaning  of restriction on the one hand, and to the meaning of completion on the other. The proposed path of development is schematically illustrated in Figure 1 below:

## Leon Shor & Anna Inbar Scandinavian Studies in Language, 10(1), 2019 (131-151)

## Identification

<!-- image -->

È

- Å

Rejection

<!-- image -->

- Å wholeness
- restriction
- restriction

Figure 1

Having  established  the  conceptual  link  between  rejection  and/ or wholeness to the meaning of restriction on the one hand and to the meaning  of  completion  on  the  other,  we  propose  that  restriction  and completion have been semanticized as a stable component of zehu ' s  meaning, accompanied  by  several  morphosyntactic  and  semantic  changes  that  are typically  attributed  to  grammaticalization.  These  changes,  as  summarized by  Brinton  (2007:  62),  include  decategorialization,  change  from  major (open) to minor (closed) word class, freezing of form, desemanticization or semantic  'attrition, '  shift  from  referential  (propositional)  to  non-referential (pragmatic or procedural) meaning, conventionalization of invited inferences, subjectification, divergence, layerin, and persistence (see also Hopper 1991; Lehmann  1995;  Traugott  1995a,  1995b;  Hopper  &  Traugott  2003).  The components  of  the  pragmatic  particle zehu 'That's  it'  -  the  demonstrative pronoun ze 'this' and the enclitic pronoun hu 'he' - are decategorialized, losing their characteristics such as their ability to be inflected according to number and gender. Thus, the particle zehu is frozen in the masculine singular form, and reflects both morphological bonding and phonological attrition, tending to be reduced to zeu . Moreover, as a pragmatic particle zehu is desemanticized, it loses its original identificational meaning and assumes a less concrete and subjective meaning of completion and restriction. At the same time, zehu exhibits 'divergence' in that the utterance ze hu continues to be used as a free syntactic resource for directing the recipient's attention to a previously nonattended person or object that the speaker considers to be of relevance for the recipient.

## 4. Lexicalization of zehu

In this section, we wish to present an additional use of zehu that represents a further development of the interjectional zehu . In this use, zehu seems to have lexicalized into a lexeme with the meanings of 'enough, done, complete' and ' only, merely, ' and it accordingly participates in the clausal structure, typically as a predicate. In example 12, zehu is in embedded position, as a complement of  a  speech  verb  -  a  position  that  is  said  to  be  disfavored  for  interjections (Wharton 2003).

- Æ Completion
- Æ Completion

- (12) sp1 aval ulaj     tagidi            le=ima        ∫elaχ ∫e | zehu / but   maybe you.will.say to=mother  your  that | this.he / 'But maybe you will tell your mother that that's it ?' (C842\_sp1\_005-006)

In (12), sp1 addresses his girlfriend regarding her mother's prohibition that they sleep in the same bed. He suggests that maybe it is time to tell her mother that  'that's  it, '  meaning  that  it  is  time  to  end  this  prohibition.  In  this  case, zehu doesn't modify any utterance but rather contributes to the propositional content of the utterance. Here, zehu is  following the particle ∫ e 'that, '  which means that it has its own predicative value (Inbar 2016).

In examples 13 and 14, zehu participates in the syntactic structure of coordination.

- (13) 1 sp2 (0.6) aval ani maamina         ∫e   ani epage∫        ita | (0.6) but   I     believing.sgf that I     I.will.meet with.her | '(0.6) But I believe that I will meet her, '
2. 2 aval kama jamim e || ve zehu || but  few    days   uh || and this.he || but for a couple of days, uh. And that's it . ' (Y32\_sp2\_ 22 7-229)
- (14) 1 sp1 aval ma    hu asa     kol ha = | jamim haele || but   what he he.did all def=| days   these  || 'But what did he do all these days?'
4. 2 ∫aχav b=a=bajit      ve zehu / he.lay.down in=def=home and this.he / 'Lay down at home and that's it ?' (Y33\_sp1\_174-176)

In (13), sp2 says that she intends to meet a particular friend during her trip in  Thailand,  but  then  restricts  the  scope  of  her  intention  to  several  days. The restriction is expressed by zehu ,  produced as an independent utterance following the particle ve 'and. ' The restriction in this case is meant as 'no more than three days. ' In (14), zehu is not even prosodically independent, but the entire  coordination  construction  is  produced  in  the  same  intonation  unit. Here, sp1 asks about her recipient's father's daily routine while he was suffering from back pain. She provides a candidate activity, lying down at home, but immediately restricts its interpretation by means of zehu , which in this case is meant as 'no activity other than lying down at home. '

In (15), the lexicalized nature of zehu as an indication of completion is made even more prominent.

```
(15) 1 sp2 ani kvar | zehu || I     already | this.he || 'I'm already done . ' 2 motek | lo     toremet | ∫nija    l=a=avoda  hazot || honey | neg contributing.sgf| second to=def=job this   || 'Honey, I am not contributing, a second to this job. ' (OCD_1_sp2_064-068)
```

In (15), sp2 expresses discontent with her workplace, saying that she no longer wishes to put an effort into her job. She begins her complaint with the clause ani kvar | zehu || 'I'm already done, ' in which zehu functions as the predicate, indicating  that  sp2  has  finished  or  completed  some  activity.  The  ensuing utterance  clarifies  the  nature  of  that  activity,  which  can  be  paraphrased  as 'sp2's ongoing readiness to put an effort into her work. '

## 5. Summary and prospects

The corpus-based analysis conducted in this paper has shown that in spoken Israeli  Hebrew,  the  phrase zehu 'that's  it'  often  functions  as  an  interjection that conveys the meanings of completion and restriction, in conjunction with other elements in its neighboring context. In light of the morphological makeup of zehu - a fusion of the masculine singular demonstrative pronoun ze 'this'  and  the  enclitic  pronoun hu 'he'  -  it  was  suggested  that  in  these occurrences zehu constitutes  a  secondary  interjection  that  has  potentially originated  in  the  grammaticalization  of  the  minimal  clause ze  hu 'That's him/that. ' It was argued, however, that the emergence of these interjectional functions cannot be attributed to the broadening of the conceptual content of  the  source  lexemes,  since  the  source  lexemes  are,  in  the  case  of zehu ,  a demonstrative and a pronoun - forms that originally encode procedural, and not conceptual, information.

Instead, the paper proposed that each of the two interjectional meanings conveyed  by zehu -  completion  and  restriction  -  can  conceptually  be traced to the meanings of wholeness and rejection, meanings that were suggested to be related to the basic identificational function of the minimal clause ze hu 'That's him/that. ' Consequently, it was argued that the meanings of restriction and completion have been semanticized as stable components of zehu ' s  meaning, accompanied by morphosyntactic and semantic changes. Furthermore, it was shown that the procedural meanings of the interjectional zehu have been lexicalized, and, as such, can participate in the clausal structure, typically as a predicate.

To  conclude,  the  development  path  described  in  this  paper  -  from a  demonstrative/pronominal  element  to  a  secondary  interjection  and  to  a lexeme encoding the procedural meaning of the interjection - is not welldocumented in the existing literature (but see Wilkins 1992, 1995). Therefore, we believe it would be particularly advantageous to examine if, and how, this path is manifested cross-linguistically. Such an examination might include, among  others,  a  survey  of  interjectional  meanings  that  might  arise  from demonstrative/pronominal  elements.  Yet  another  area  for  future  research could  be  the  examination  of  co-speech  gestures  that  accompany  various interjections. According to Wilkins (1992: 134), for instance, deictic gestures may be built into, or may accompany, interjections. In this respect, it would be beneficial to examine what types of co-speech gestures may accompany interjections, and how the meaning of a particular interjection interacts with that  of  its  accompanying  gesture.  Taken  together,  these  potential  lines  of research will undoubtedly contribute to a better understanding of interjections.

## Notes

- 1 These examples were extracted from The Haaretz Corpus, which contains articles from the Haaretz daily newspaper from 2008. The corpus is available at <http:// hebrewcorpus.nmelrc.org>.
- 2 In  fact,  gestural  behavior  can  often  provide  support  for  a  particular  linguistic analysis. This issue is touched upon in Section 3.
- 3 Other tokens of zehu function as textual discourse markers that mark the end of a  discourse  segment,  or  as  interpersonal  discourse  markers  that  index  various stances. These uses will not be discussed in the present paper. See Bardenstein, Shor & Inbar (forthcoming).
- 4 We follow the convention in Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) and Lexical Typology (Vanhove 2008) to use small capitals for indicating abstract conceptual domains.
- 5 The examples were taken from a corpus of TV interviews on various topics. See Inbar & Shor 2017 and Inbar & Shor forthcoming.

## Appendix - Transcription and glossing conventions

1. Transcription is usually broad phonetic, with some attention to the phonological system. Phonological input is added mainly in the representation of /h/, which is omitted in most environments in contemporary spoken Hebrew, and in the representation of some of occurrences of /j/, which may also elide in certain environments. For typographic and reading convenience, the rhotic phoneme, which in standard Israeli Hebrew is uvular, is represented as r ;  the  mid vowels are represented as e and o , although their prototypical respective pronunciations are lower.
2. Glossing  follows,  mutatis  mutandis,  the  Leipzig  Glossing  Rules  (available  from http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php).
3. Transcription follows the system used in CoSIH , as summarized below:

| |       | minor boundary                    |
|--------------|-----------------------------------|
| || | major boundary                    |
| /            | major boundary with 'appeal' tone |
| --           | fragmentary (truncated)           |
| -            | truncated word                    |
| (0.5)        | pause (measures in seconds)       |
| <non-verbal> | non-verbal sounds                 |

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