Ulhaq-Bouillet

I Janowska
email: janowskai@unistra.fr

M Lafjah

V Papaefthymiou

S Pronkin

C Ulhaq-Bouillet

Edges fractal approach in graphenedefects density gain

Edges fractal approach in graphene -Defects density gain

their efficient use calls for application dependent tailoring of their chemical/electronic/geometry and are often related to the presence of defects. Different structural defects (Stone-Wales, vacancy, point, linear, edges), oxygen, hydrogen functionalities or doped lattice heteroatoms induce a positive or penalizing effect and are intended to be removed or introduced, consequently. The intentional introduction of defects aims often to improve or even provide the reactivity (i.e. metal-free catalyst), hydrophylicity, (opto) electronic, magnetic or sensing properties among others [START_REF] Shen | Oxygen Reduction Reaction in a Droplet on Graphite: Direct Evidence that the Edge Is More Active than the Basal Plane[END_REF]. The important defects are graphene edges, the linear defects usually introduced by a catalytic etching (cutting) of graphene lattice. Since the etching of graphite is known for dozen of years, its recent revival concerns mostly the hydrogenation etching with transition metal NPs (Ni, Co, Fe) to reach the nanoribbons or dots possessing well defined "arm-chair" or "zig-zag" edges conformation [START_REF] Datta | Crystallographic Etching of Few-Layer Graphene[END_REF][START_REF] Baaziz | Effect of nitriding/ nanostructuration of few layer graphene supported iron-based particles; catalyst in graphene etching and carbon nanofilament growth[END_REF]. The preferential etching direction is determined by graphene lattice crystallography and no matter the direction is, the most reported work focus on straight line channels formation if not bearing in mind the arm-chair" or "zig-zag conformation at atomic level related to sp 2 hybridized C atom geometry.

The synthesized and tailored graphitic materials belong typically to Euclidean geometry (1D tubes or ribbons, 0D fullerens or dots, 2D graphenes, 3D graphites), meanwhile an expanded in 2D space the hexagonal structure in perfect graphene can already be considered as a hierarchical multifractal [START_REF] Zhang | Hierarchical fractal structure of perfect single-layer graphene[END_REF]. Only one group reported at presence the catalytic in-situ fractal etching of CVD-graphene [START_REF] Geng | Fractal Etching of Graphene[END_REF], and it is much worthy to urgently take care for non-integer dimension of graphenes. A defined by Mandelbrot "fractals" are indeed omnipresent in natural matter geometry, physicochemical phenomena, mathematical analysis methods, and fractal design is more and more explored. The scarce reports link to graphene. Very recently, a fractal quantum Hall effect in graphene-BN heterostructure and structure-due tenfold enhancement of photocurrent generation in fractal metasurface graphene designed by e-beam lithography, were observed [START_REF] Dean | Hofstadter's butterfly and the fractal quantum Hall effect in moirésuperlattices[END_REF][START_REF] Fang | Enhanced Graphene Photodetector with Fractal Metasurface[END_REF]. The fractal approach was also applied for the formation of conductive self-assembled fractal branched patterns, with reduced percolation threshold for a given substrate surface [START_REF] Janowska | Evaporation-induced self-assembling of few-layer graphene into a fractal-like conductive makro-network with a reduction of percolation threshold[END_REF].

Here, we highlight the fractal feature of graphene and exemplary possibilities offered by graphene structure in term of its fractal geometry pattering but primary we focus on the patterning of the graphene edges. While the reported etching of graphene mostly looks for straight line channeling, any asymmetry of the etched lines, rarely discussed, is seen by us as benefic for active site density enhancement. We have already observed earlier some partially asymmetric, "step-like", edges in a case of FeN x NPs assisted etching, were the "creep" movement of the faceted active FeN x NP occurred [START_REF] Baaziz | Effect of nitriding/ nanostructuration of few layer graphene supported iron-based particles; catalyst in graphene etching and carbon nanofilament growth[END_REF]. The intended and controlled expansion of the edges through the right experimental approach would be however highly suitable.

At present we show the results of tentative graphene etching, which proceeds in a way to provide the graphene structures without the pronounced channels but with asymmetric, strongly "jagged" edges. For this purpose, few layer graphene (FLG) flakes obtained was submitted to the oxidative treatment with air flow under atmosphere pressure at low temperature (300°C) for 0.5h. Next to this, the temperature was increased to 800°C under Ar and hydrogenation treatment with H 2 /Ar flow was applied. Fig. 2 a shows TEM micrographs of the Fe-based/FLG structures after the performed treatment. For the reason of comparison, the results from the etching running under "standard" hydrogenation conditions at 800°C with the same catalytic system are also presented in fig. 2 b. The difference between the samples submitted to oxygen assisted and purely hydrogen assisted treatments is clear. While in the case of "standard" hydrogenation the straight line channels with the active NPs at their ends are formed in the FLG flakes under well defined angles directions to periphery edges (often perpendicularly) (fig. 2b), the addition of pre-oxidation process results in the flakes sheets with "jaggy" edges and the channels are quasi absent (fig. 2a). At the moment it is difficult to make a final statement about the impact of the atomic oxygen potentially produced from the dissociative chemisorptions of molecular oxygen on NPs surface and of the NPs themselves. It can be found indeed in the literature that in the case of iron oxide, a dissociation and recombination of oxygen can take place at the temperature even lower then oxidation of NPs. The recent work concerning the investigation of oxidation of graphene supported on Ir(111) also claimed the role of atomic oxygen, which production was facilitated by Ir(111) at the graphene edges [START_REF] Schröeder | Etching of graphene on Ir(111) with molecular oxygen[END_REF]. Those oxidized edges were however only slightly "jagged", rather wavy, at lower scale and degree that the ones presented here. Other thing is that we did not observe any oxidative channeling of FLG Fe 3-xO 4 NPs after oxygen treatment at 300°C. We suppose then that the strongly asymmetric "jaggy" edges obtained with O 2 + H 2 /Ar treatments are the effect of both the oxidation through atomic oxygen and hydrogenation process. The lack of numerous visible typical long straight channels after the subsequent hydrogenation can be explained by strongly oxidized edges, excessive coalescence of NPs and rapid etching. All together result in fast etching and sometimes in total gasification of the etched path. If then the NPs are larger than the thickness of FLG, the flakes cut in small pieces can be observed from time to time (TEM, SI). This confirms the general statement of the etching proceeding easier at more defected/oxygen rich carbon, the reason also why the channeling in general initiates at graphene edges. The primary importance is however the fact that most of the herein etching directions are not well oriented by crystallographic lattice of graphene, which is breached, and NPs change often their trajectory adopting the creep movement due to modified interactions with oxidized edges. Contrary then to several works investigating the oxidation of graphene (graphite) as a thermal/air stability drawback; we see the controlled oxidation as support for defect density rich tailoring of graphene planar structures.

Since the edges are "jugged" at various degrees we can consider them as fractal edges, according to description of schema 1, in which the equilateral triangular extension may be replaced by less symmetric or others geometry analogue such as for example trapeze. Apart from the periphery jaggy edges, the etched large holes, also possessing jagged edges have been observed (fig. 3a). They formation is benefic for additional enhancement of the edges-to-plane ratio and so increasing of defects density, as well as for introducing the porosity in the bulk material. Fig. 3b shows representative TEM micrographs of the edges. The fractal edges form part of "surface fractal", where the surface corresponds to "surface of edges" as analog to other surfaces, for instance, the chemically active surface of metal NPs. In this context and from a chemistry point of view, the well crystallized graphene planar sheet are rather a platform for defects active sites, especially in few layer graphene, similarly to bulk of NPs (obviously the mutual interactions across C=C conjugated planar lattice and defects exist). Due to however the much higher accessibility of the graphene plane (monolayer) towards reactants compared to the NPs bulk and the fact that the word "surface "is firmly linked to 2D planar graphene geometry, the formulation "surface fractals" for the "edges" would be misunderstood. We call it then "edge fractal" or more generally "defect fractal".

The significant amount of this "defected" carbon was confirmed by XPS analysis (fig. 4a,b)

while the improved activity nature of the "jaggy edges" rich FLG was shortly investigated by the electrochemical approach in aqueous electrolyte (fig. 4c), both referred to the FLG with straight etched channels. The enhanced contribution of the "non-graphitic" carbon related to the high density of edge defects is reflected by enormous broadening of the C1s XPS peak towards higher binding energies (4a vs. 4b). The full width at half maximum (FWHM) is almost twice (2.8 eV /1.5 eV) with significantly increased contributions from sp 3 carbon and oxygenbound carbon, especially of C-OR and COO type groups (SI).

The activity of these defects/groups is revealed by enhanced electrochemical surface area (ECSA), times fourteen (3.88 vs 0.28 cm 2 / 1 cm 2 substrate), determined by cyclic voltammetry measurements in aqueous 1M NaOH electrolytes (fig. 4c, SI). For the same mass of deposited material, the double-layer capacitance of "jaggy edges" FLG is thirty times higher (3.3 F/g vs. 0.14 F/g). The obtained values of specific ESCA and capacitance are small due to the π-π stacking of the FLG flakes (and presence of Nafion). The interlayer stacking is a common and well known drawback and might be overpassed by an appropriate formation of 3D structures in the final applications, which is not however the goal of the present work. In turn, the enhancement of ESCA and capacitance in "edges fractal" FLG clearly reveals the presence of active and more hydrophilic carbon, and possibly of the increased porosity. These provide larger interface between FLG and electrolyte, still keeping the charge transport ability through FLG sp 2 C lattice. More than "defect fractal" approach, we would like to herein refer to the fractal nature of graphene it-self and notice that obtained here graphene structures with fractal edges are not far from the model of graphene macro-molecule fractal, which is a benzenoid with rotary symmetry of higher fractal order. The fig. 3c presents such benzenoid with fractal order 4 (n = 4). Let's remind that the fractal configuration will depend on the way the self-similar "circular" units of benzene rings expend in 2D plane. Two different circularly arranged benzenoids structures with a fractal order of 1, 2 and 3 are presented in fig. 5 a, b [START_REF] Zhang | Hierarchical fractal structure of perfect single-layer graphene[END_REF][START_REF] Klein | The fractal family of coro [N] enes[END_REF].

Clearly, the symmetric structures depicted in fig. 5a reflect Koch snow flake, where triangle corner is replaced by trapeze configuration corresponding to the "arm-chair" conformation of C=C. The arrangement of the units in the structure b cause the rotational symmetry with the additional counterclockwise rotating angle of 19.1° each time the fractal order increases [START_REF] Zhang | Hierarchical fractal structure of perfect single-layer graphene[END_REF].

Focalizing however on the edges we underline the fact that they increase exponentially and together with the fractal order similarly to diameter of the structures (faster for symmetric structures), and the edges are mixed. Funnily, if we consider the fractal approach for graphene planar lattice and its related properties, the reasoning of dimension reduction from 2D is right;

in the case of edge fractal, the 1D dimension increases. The "defect fractal" includes also the c holes in the model macromolecules, which are formed by "the luck" of benzenoids units in the plane having as well nonlinearly increasing edges as illustrated in the in fig. 5 and in SI.

The illustrated here schema of benzenoids, coroenenes including (fig. 5), are up to now the theoretical "idealistic" relatively small structures and their preparation through a total organic synthesis would be difficult but easily controlled. Other way to achieve such structures at high scale (omitting a laser or lithography patterning) would be a well controlled catalytic etching.

The latter route seems also be more realistic for the structures with higher size (higher fractal order).

In order to explain the exact process of the edges etching and to well control the final structures, the additional efforts needs to be undertaken and the supporting in-situ TEM and XPS observations are considered for this purpose in future. The process to get "jagged" but still sharp and well defined edges is complex and both, oxygen pretreatment and hydrogen are necessary. At this moment it is difficult to determine the impact of the enhanced oxygenation degree of FLG once the temperature is increased and hydrogen is supplied. Regardless the oxidation with atomic oxygen and assuming that C-metal interactions are important factor, different phenomena can take place during the etching. These are NPs coalescence, splitting, melting, faceting and structure reorganization [START_REF] Baaziz | Effect of nitriding/ nanostructuration of few layer graphene supported iron-based particles; catalyst in graphene etching and carbon nanofilament growth[END_REF][START_REF] Keep | Studies of the nickel-catalyzed hydrogenation of graphite[END_REF][START_REF] Schäffel | Shedding light on the crystallographic etching of multi-layer graphene at the atomic scale[END_REF], which, as chemistry of the NPs-FLG hybrid changes under etching process (iron, iron oxides and carbide phase) [START_REF] Cheng | Fe-catalyzed etching of exfoliated graphite through carbon hydrogenation[END_REF], will depend not only on the etching conditions but also on the preparation and pretreatments of the hybrid. We suggest that the pre-oxidized edges of FLG have increased affinity towards the NPs inducing a possible splitting of the latter and allowing for fine-grained jaggy etching due to the small size NPs (or their quasi-melt phase), while the etching of more defected (active) carbon it-self happens easier. From the other hand, the faceting is expected especially for larger NPs as observed in "post-mortem" catalyst and has an impact on the edges structure in general.

The presented concept of etching to edge fractal structures is different from the one reported for the in-situ CVD synthesized graphene via Cu catalyst, where either hexagonal structures or sharp thin highly etched branched structures were obtained [START_REF] Geng | Fractal Etching of Graphene J[END_REF][START_REF] Geng | Direct Top-Down Fabrication of Large-Area Graphene Arrays by an In Situ Etching Method[END_REF]. In herein approach, the significant area of honeycomb structure remains robust while the edges are highly etched. This leads to the bulk materials with still significant planar surface, related high mechanical resistance and platform for charge transport, but also great density of nonlinearly etched edges active sites. The more controlled etching would entail not only controlled defect density but also surface area and porosity (size, volume, distribution). Such tailoring and activation of large and bulky graphene structures are benefic for many applications including the electrodes (supercapacitors, fuel cells), where enhanced (electro)catalytic activity, appropriate porosity, surface area and electrode-electrolyte interface interactions, but also sufficient conductive platform for efficient charge transport, are reached. Number of other fields would gain from controlled fractal edges tailoring, not to mention the electronic, optical, sensing or magnetic properties, especially in the case of well defined smaller fractal order structures. The efforts for their preparation and theoretical calculations should be then made. The in-situ CVDfractal etching of the individual graphene sheets would seem to be easier way for the etching control that the etching of "bulk" graphene, however, the in-situ CVD-fractal etching over catalytic substrate has similar advantages and drawbacks as CVD synthesis of graphene.

Despite the easier control of the final patterns, the use it for "bulk" applications is strongly scale limited along with the substrate transfer issue, which would be much harder in the case of etched structures.

Autor contributions: I. Janowska: principal author, project investigator and coordinator, writing; M. Lafjah: initial experiment, V. Papaefthymiou: XPS analysis, S. Pronkin: electrochemical analysis, C. Ulhaq-Bouillet: TEM microscopy.

Supplementary Information:

The methods are available

Fig. 1 a

 1 Fig. 1 a) Schema of exemplary fractal expansion of a 1D line, b) optical photo of trees' leaves

  exfoliation method, of lateral size ~3 µm and decorated with Fe 3-xO 4 (SI)

Fig. 2

 2 Fig. 2 TEM micrographs of a) FLG with jagged edges obtained after oxidation, hydrogenation

Fig. 3 a

 3 Fig. 3 a) TEM micrographs of FLG with periphery jagged edges and formed holes, also with

Fig. 4 a

 4 Fig. 4 a,b) Experimental and deconvoluted C1s XPS spectra of (a) FLG with straight etched

Fig. 5 a

 5 Fig. 5 a, b) schemes of benzenoids structures with increasing fractal order with (a) symmetry

  Essentially, we propose a new look on the graphene defects (edges), which can have space expanding fractal dimension (and can have mixed zig-zag and arm-chair conformations at atomic level). We claim that the density of active sites in graphene can be strongly enhanced not only by increasing the edges number but increasing it in nonlinear manner to reach, "jaggy", fractal edges. The concept reflects a known fractal expansion of 1D line in 2D plane, with exemplary illustrated in fig.1a. Such successive expansion (from I to III) increases the length of the line at the distance from point A to B.

	Let's imagine now these lines are the edges of graphene, in other words: active sites. The
	number of active sites does not increase by multiplication (or elongation) of straight edges, as
	it is a case of most of the etched channels, but by increasing their density in 2D plane. To
	achieve the length of edge III (or the same active sites number) by simple elongation of edge I
	the latter needs to be elongated almost twice. The examples of such pattering in nature are
	common including the plants' leaves (fig. 1b).


Russian transitive softening as ablaut

A kind of mutation arising from a [Cj] cluster in several environments:

(1) a.

pros-i-l-a → [prosíla] ask TH PAST FSG asked, requested FSG b.

pros-i-ĕn-a → [próšena] ask TH PPP FSG requested . PPP.FSG

The [CiV] sequence turns into [CjV] and the [Cj] cluster mutates: See Bethin 1992 for an analysis of this transformation

Transitive softening

Some sixty verbs (non-productive), the usual example is pisátʲ 'to write' (→ píšet 'writes')

(1) is expected, given the thematic suffix -i-. (2b) is unexpected, given the thematic suffix -a-:

(2) a. Transitive softening with the thematic suffix -a-: (7) [α high] (primarily with underlying yers) a.

[derʲót] 'tear.3SG'

[dralá] 'tore.FSG' b.

[umrʲót] 'will die. (11) a. dospát' 'to finish sleeping PRF ' b.

dosɨpát' 'to finish sleeping IMPRF '

Both verbs in ( 7) surface with the stem [i] in the secondary imperfective, irrespective of where the yer is lowered:

(12) a.

[derʲót] 'tear.3SG'

[dralá] 'tore.FSG' razdirátʲ 'to tear apart IMPRF ' b.

[umrʲót] 'will die. -it would be nicer to have only one trigger and different features, but how? -can the second conjugation -e-also undergo ablaut to yield -i-in the present? -thematic change: the TS-theme is being replaced by the regular -aj-( 4). Can it be the same thematic suffix with and without ablaut?

On the nature of ablaut This one is (also) for Morris Halle Disagreement about how to treat TS-verbs was the reason why he and I have never followed up on developing an account of the Russian verbal inflection. I hope he likes this take where he now is. With undying gratitude.

For a detailed handout and references 

  Intuition: the thematic suffix -a-somehow turns into -i-Halle 1965: [j] is inserted before an [a] followed by a lax vowel, [a] is deleted because vowels are deleted when they appear before another vowel Lightner 1965, Lunt 2001: a tense vowel turns into [j] if followed by a lax one Flier 1972: some vowels turns into glides when followed by some other vowels Coats and Lightner 1975: the underlying form is -aj-, the vowel is deleted by a minor rule Bethin 1992, Boyd 1997: an adjustment rule Rubach and Booij 2001: allomorphy Prior research Non-productive, 26 verbs, most involving one feature value change: (5) [α back]: [mélet] 'grind.3SG' [molóla] 'ground.FSG' (6) [α ATR]: [bjót] 'hit.3SG' [bíla] 'hit.PAST.FSG' The featural change can go in both directions or the trigger can be either [+PAST] or [-PAST]:

  3SG' [umerlá] 'died.FSG' More than one feature can be involved (further evidence from the five verbs with the [o]/[ɨ ] ablaut): (8) [α back] [α ATR] [pojót] 'sing.3SG' [péla] 'sang.FSG' Proposal: the thematic suffix undergoes ablaut Evidence for ablaut triggered by both [+PAST] and [-PAST]: predictable vowel tensing: the back yer [ŭ] turns into [ɨ]:

  3SG' [umerla] 'died.FSG' umirátʲ 'to die IMPRF ' Assuming that the secondary imperfective operates on the underlying representation, both [+PAST] and [-PAST] seem to be capable of triggering ablaut Some verbs involve the difference of more than one feature between present and past, and a more conservative analysis would postulate an intermediate underlying representation There is one verb whose behavior suggests the opposite change in the thematic vowel: suffix -e-in the past this verb belongs to the first conjugation (and does not undergo transitive softening that would be predicted by the prevocalic ē, cf. (9)) Straightforward solution: fronting in the past: underlying -a-to -e-No evidence for the apophonic path (pace Ségéral & Scheer 1998) Further issues:

  bel-í-tʲ 'to whiten, tr.' belʲ-ú 'whiten-1SG' The nitty-gritty The thematic vowel change would involve the same ablaut as (5): fronting (a → e): keep the same thematic suffix -a-and only change one feature Thematic suffixes should determine the conjugation class, and the second conjugation is characterized by the suffixes [e] and [i] Before vowels [e] turns into a glide and yield transitive softening: second conjugation everbs: (10) a. vert e-l-a → [vertéla] spin TH PAST FSG span FSG b. vert-e-ĕn-a → [vérčena] spin TH PPP FSG spun . PPP.FSG The same approach would work for the five verbs with the thematic suffix -o-Summary Thematic vowel change is ablaut. Pro: the process is needed anyway, and its other instantiations can explain other instances of thematic vowel changes Contra: There is no suitable formal account of ablaut that I am aware of. If we want to connect the conjugation class to the thematic suffix and/or have the proper underlying representation for secondary imperfective formation, the direction of ablaut would be determined by different suffixes in function of the lexical stem

a-thematic suffixes that do not do this:

		murlɨk-a-l-	a	→ [murlɨ ḱala]
		purr TH PAST FSG
		purred FSG
	b.	murlɨk-?-ĕ-	t	→ [murlɨ čet]
		purr TH PRES 3SG
		purr 3SG
	c.	na.murlɨk-a-	(ĕ)n-o	→ [namurlɨ ḱano] (this is a nonce word)
		on.purr	TH PPP	NSG
		full of purring NSG
	(3) a.	sos-a-	l-	a	→ [sosála]
		suck TH PAST FSG
		sucked FSG
	b.	sos-a-	ĕ-	t	→ [sosʲót]
		suck TH PRES 3SG
		suck 3SG
	(4) a.	čit-a-	l-	a	→ [čitála]
		read TH PAST FSG
		sucked FSG
	b.	čit -aj-	ĕ-	t	→ [čitájet]
		read TH PRES 3SG
		read 3SG

Issue: there are other


Danny Trom
email: trom@ehess.fr

The Politics of Galut: On the Rabbinical Tradition of the Least Bad Solution

Keywords:

Since exile, the galut, is an outcome of Israel's defeat, the Jewish political tradition rests on the quest of the least bad solution. This contrasts with Greek-Western political theory. Residing in foreign kingdoms, Jews had to accept their domination and invest ways to survive in hostile environments. The article shows how rabbinical literature invented a kind of proto-theory of survival and opens opportunities for Jewish agency. Even the State of Israel, generally seen as a rupture in Jewish history, fits into this traditional political logic of survival in exile.

Introduction

The Western political tradition distinguishes political forms, that is to say the typical modes human beings assemble politically: the ancient Greek city, the Empire, the classical state, the nation-state. In Europe, the nation-state has been shaped as an ideal modern solution. It was considered, from the end of the 18th century onward, when the idea of Empire definitively collapsed, as the form that best fulfills popular sovereignty and ensures a peaceful European order. But the Jewish traditional form of the galut was hardly an ideal. Exile was progressively built as the solution to endure politically after what they perceived was a catastrophic loss, but, at the same time, was a relative and Trom Zutot 19 (2022) 1-13 definitely temporary defeat. The ideal solution, the messianic one, was projected into an indefinite future, with no practical means to attain the goal. Just as the Western political ways to assemble were at first solutions to problems and then morphed into ideals to reach, the galut-form was taken as the least bad solution devised to survive collectively without being assembled and without the basic territorial infrastructure on which any political form rests. Here, the Jewish ideal solution did not need to be defined precisely, the hope of radical liberation and final redemption sufficed. But the least bad solution, the politics of the present, had to be realistic because it was the practical way the Jews endured across history -history understood as the temporal frame of the nations they lived in. This concrete political know-how was not systematized and was not even named, but it was effectively and often efficiently practiced.

The galut-form contrasts with all other political forms in the sense that territorial assembling is no longer thought of as a condition for surviving politically.1 This elicits why most authors conclude that the galut is not political, or unpolitical, and that no such thing as a Jewish political theory or tradition has ever existed.2 It led most scholars to always look 'backwards,' to an epoch when Israel was assembled on a territory, be it as narrow as a city-temple. However, one can clearly distinguish two contemporary currents of reading Scripture in a political perspective: on the one hand, the American one, drawing on the biblical Covenant as a model which, allegedly, is a source of modern Republicanism (which, as a matter a fact, is political Hebraism revisited); on the other hand, the continental one, reading in Israel's ancient political shape an alternative political model to the modern European paradigm of the nationstate, a tendency that might be traced back to German tradition as expressed in Buber's Königtum Gottes.3 Those two radically different endeavors for a proper 'Jewish' political tradition, either as a source of political modernity, or as an alternative to what is perceived as a failure of political modernity, rest both on a renewed reading of Scripture. It has much more affinity with the bibliocentric Christian-Protestant tradition than with the Jewish-rabbinical one. But when today rabbinical tradition is considered politically, it is often used to advocate opposition to any political aim and form -especially to political 1 This has been stressed by Simon Dubnov, 'Diaspora ' [1931], in M. Brenner, et al., eds Zionism, in view of praising a sort of idealized, diasporic, non-territorial, and non-sovereign form, be it in the galut or in the Land of Israel. Such a move is always made at the cost of an ignorance of the problematic structural dimension of the galut-form. Yet it has always been recognized, questioned, and investigated in rabbinical literature, as shall be shown.

When the Jewish dispersed communities as such (and not Israel in its ancient shape) are acknowledged as a peculiar form worthy of consideration, the question of its political quality remains disputed. Most authors will recognize that such a thing as kahal politics exists, traditional Jewish forms of local, communal, self-government.4 Politics is thus here mostly restricted to internal, domestic politics, if not mere policy, i.e., administration relative to the distribution of power and authority in the kehilah, and institutional management of the traditional community. What is, however, poorly acknowledged, with the notable exception of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, is the external facet of kahal politics. The Jews, claims Yerushalmi, ensured their political cohesion and perseveration actively by striking vertical, 'royal' alliances with the supreme ruler of the land they resided in.5 This has been a constant trait of Jewish existence and has to be therefore recognized as a proper Jewish efficient political tradition. Jewish sovereignty was not just a dream or a hope, but an effective, empirical reality. Indeed, the concept of sovereignty conflates two aspects: an internal one, the power to decide the rules or laws regulating a collective body; and an external one, the power to secure and thus ensure the continuity of this body. Sovereignty is somewhat Janus-faced: one directed toward the political order of the collective body, the other looking outside.6 The first refers to what we call today internal politics, the second refers to external politics. When historians evaluate the political dimension of the Jewish communities in the galut, they generally focus on internal kahal politics and neglect the second aspect, the kind of foreign policy the Jews conducted in the direction of the political authority of their host land. As the Jews considered themselves and were also considered as entities authorized to reside in the kingdom, they had to regulate their relationship with the local sovereigns.7 Reading Scripture politically is useless here. One needs the insights of rabbinical literature, because comments, from one generation to another, were dedicated to exploring and understanding the galut-form in order to adjust Israel's form of life to its new condition, to be able to survive politically in exile.

Galut as the Least Bad Solution

At the core of the external facet of the Jewish sovereignty in the galut lies the relationship of the Jews with the foreign king. The way to proceed here is not summarized by the common saying 'the law of the kingdom is the law' (dina demalkhuta dina), but, as we might paraphrase the formula, 'the king of the kingdom is the king.' It does not only mean that the Jews accept the foreign king's authority, that they accept to be subjected politically. As Yerushalmi showed, they actively formed an alliance with the supreme authority in order to obtain its protection from hostile intermediary powers and from the dangerous populace. Vertical alliances were the core of the Jewish foreign policy in the galut.

Here, most researchers focus on shtadlanut, the kind of Jewish diplomacy directed toward foreign authorities when the situation deteriorates. But this political practice was based on a larger proto-theory of authority. Jews mobilize all sorts of traditional sources to orient their political practice,8 including the reading of the Scroll of Esther. Commentaries on the Scroll of Esther were occasions to explore the Jew's situation in the galut, not only because the book belongs to the genre that Biblicists call a 'Diaspora-novel,' but because, Yerushalmi argues, all catastrophic events were framed through the lens of this story as if it were the matrix of all Jewish political experiences to come.

Because of the periodical return of Haman, the figure of radical enmity of the Jews, Purim became a prototype repeatedly actualized in 'secondary purims,'9 events that were apprehended and tackled in quite the same way as told in the book of Esther.

The political form called galut, from its inception, has thus two typical features relative to sovereignty. Although they are closely related, if not always intricated, we must distinguish them analytically. First, the Jews assess there are two laws: their own law, i.e. the eternal law received from God, and the contingent law of the kingdom; they hierarchize them in such a way as to preserve their law inside the allover frame of the foreign kingdom's law. The principle dina de-malkhuta dina regulates the relationship between the Torah, the 8 Y.H. Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle 1982). 9 For a list of secondary or 'little' purims in Jewish history, see P. Goodman, The Purim Anthology (Philadelphia 1988).

- law of Moses, and the law issued by the king in the crown-domain where Jews reside.10 This device, abundantly documented, is referred to as Jewish political autonomy. Second, the Jews assess there are two reigning kings, the king of Israel (God) and the king of the foreign territory where they reside; they hierarchize them in such a way as to obtain effective protection of the foreign king in a potential hostile internal environment, although they maintain the king reigning on all kings (God) as their real king (this is termed shekhina de-galuta in rabbinical literature). They thus submit themselves to the foreign king on the condition that he never usurps the status of God, namely as long as he does not claim absolute allegiance (fidelity). This device is called Jewish political heteronomy. The combination of internal quasi autonomy and external quasi heteronomy characterizes the political form called galut.

As the Jews never wrote any political treatise, they exploited to orient themselves politically with what was at their disposal, what the corpus of legitimate texts made available. Here, the story of Esther appeared to them as a kind of treatise with wisdom, knowledge, and practical advice on how to manage their relationships with the outside world of the nations, and they commented abundantly on all its aspects and acted according to what they extracted from it.11 Historians have indefinitely speculated whether the Scroll of Esther intended to advise the Jews in exile, to criticize their exilic condition, or even if its message suggests they should have a king and a territory of their own. However, it is beyond any doubt that the story contained crucial elements necessary to reframe Israel's new situation of exile in order to survive, and was read in this manner from generation to generation.12 It is therefore unsettling and quite telling that a book called Powers of Diaspora,13 furtively mentions Esther to contrast the feminine power of the Jews with the Roman martial, imperial ethos. And it is no less disturbing to read rabbinical commentaries of Esther as if it contained a series of Machiavellian political lessons, as if it Note that the quest of the least bad solution is a familiar pattern that the rabbis constantly had in mind. The way Israel's kingdom appears in 1 Samuel is typical: the people, frightened by the enemy, requests a king, like all other peoples who have a king to conduct them into war, and it is at that precise moment that God says He is their real king, but nevertheless says to Samuel to appoint a king upon Israel. Although the demand expresses a lack of confidence in God, and as such is a betrayal that was confined to idolatry, the kingdom is presented in the book of Samuel as the least bad solution in that situation. The way rabbinical literature articulates the two kings -God, their king, and the territorial king -in the galut (in the Scroll of Esther), has the same tonality, common to a least bad solution. These solutions are generated by a kind of double-bind: the urgent solution needed, a king leading his people to war, is in fact wrong, but nevertheless it imposes itself. We can contrast here the quest of the least bad solution with its opposite, the messianic quest, which aims at putting an end to Israel's alienation, and that strives to put an end to the galut and to recover an ideal situation where the Jews are under the unique law of the Torah and under the unique protection of God, their king; an ideal situation in which neither the law, nor the king are twofold. That there are two kings summarizes the political condition of exile.

A Rabbinical Political Proto-theory

Rabbinical commentaries have elaborated a proto-theory of survival, a kind of practical, unconceptualized, substitute to what is called politics in Greece.15 This proto-theory is a political theory of survival, of being saved from extreme threats (hatzalah or geʾulah). It contrasts with the messianic tradition of being redeemed (geʾulah shelemah). Its core elements have been explicitly exposed when rabbis comment on the book of Esther, and the core of the rabbinical reading strategy of the Megillah lies in the way that we are invited to understand 'king.' As we know, the book of Esther unfolds like a thriller. The narrative tension is organized in such a way that the reader is in the position to hope that the decision to eradicate the Jews shall be hindered and to search for the agent in the position to intervene, to inactivate the murderous decree before its execution. Esther, the king's new wife, obeying to her tutor Mordecai, seems to be this agent. But rabbinical comments identify a verse in which the salvation of the Jews from destruction is announced and guaranteed much sooner in the story, namely in Esther 6:1: 'On that night the sleep of the king wandered; and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles, and they were read before the king.' I will mainly focus on classical comments on the first part of the verse, although those on the second part are also very instructive. The recurrent question asked in standard comments to the first segment of the verse is 'to whom' the sleep wandered? Megillah 15b seems to oppose two opinions: R. Naḥman bar Isaac said: 'The word [king] is written defectively. "On that night the sleep of the king wandered" (Esther 6:1).' R. Tanḥum said: 'The sleep of the King of the Universe wandered.' The Rabbis say: 'Those above were disturbed and those below were disturbed.' Rava said: 'It literally means "the sleep of king Ahasuerus."' Following this midrash, the sleep from God wandered because 'king' is written defectively (this means: without mentioning his name); and the sleep of King Ahasuerus also wandered. Both are correct. There is no dispute here but the superposition of two correct ways to read the verse: at first sight we read King Ahasuerus, but as 'the king' is written without mentioning his name, one has to read God; but nevertheless the reader knows that the verse is really about King Ahasuerus.16 This splitting of the meaning of 'king' in two is asserted in a more systematic way in Midrash Esther Rabbah upstream from Esther 6:1 when the segment of Esther 1:5 'the king's royal palace' is discussed: R. Yudan and R. Levi in the name of R. Yoḥanan said: 'wherever in the Megillah we find "the king Ahasuerus" the text really is about Ahasuerus; wherever in the Megillah we find just "the king," it might be or this king or God.'

16
The sequence is here a good illustration of rabbinical reading strategy where derash never abolishes the obvious sense of a verse (eyn miqra ʾ yotze midei peshuto).

- This general reading device of the scroll is also applied in Esther Rabbah on Esther 7:10: 'So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the king's wrath was assuage.' The midrash comments: 'As it is written defectively the king, it is the king of kings (melekh ha-melakhim, ha-kadosh barukh hu).'

With that in mind, let us go back to Esther 6:1 'On that night the sleep of the king wandered.' In Midrash Esther Rabbah the insomnia is firstly the one of God. This immediately raises the question if God is subject to sleep. The answer is extracted from Psalms 121:4: 'Behold, the guardian of Israel neither sleep nor slumber': God might sleep but he will not. Otherwise, the midrash explains, one would not understand Psalms 44:24: 'Awake, why do you sleep, Lord?' The midrash then concludes: 'God sleeps when Israel is in distress.' But when the king is really Ahasuerus, his insomnia is directly related by the comments to his concrete worries, namely that Haman wants to kill him and that Esther may be unfaithful to him. The Midrash Aba Gurion and Esther Rabbah both explain King Ahasuerus could not sleep because he dreamed that Haman intends to kill him [as is written in Esther 6:4 when King Ahasuerus asks, 'who is in the yard?']; tractate Megillah and Midrash Panim aḥerim both say Ahasuerus could not sleep because he suspected Haman and Esther conspire to kill him.

Midrash Panim aḥerim B on Esther 6:1 goes a step further:

It's not written the sleep of Ahasuerus but the sleep of the king. The sleep of the king, of the king of all kings (melekh kol ha-melakhim). But is there a sleep above? When Israel sins, then he sleeps one might say (ki-veyakhol) but when Israel respects God's will God does not sleep.

Psalms 121:4

The expression ki-veyakhol indicates that God's sleep is a way to talk, a way to say that Israel is in distress. The midrash concludes: 'God does not leave Israel in distress; when Israel is afraid (anxious, tzarah) and calls God, what does he do? He disturbs Ahasuerus's sleep.' We thus have here two assertions: there is an insomnia of Ahasuerus caused by his concrete political worries, and an insomnia of God, which is a way to talk of Israel's distress. Now, the Targum rishon on Esther 6:1 goes another step further: 'That night the sleep of ha-kadosh barukh hu in the height of heaven wandered.' And a bit further:

God forgives, because for him there is no sleep: when the house of Israel sinned, he did as if (ke-ilu) he was asleep. But when they obey to his will, The Targum explains: 'God is making himself as if he is asleep' (ʿosseh ʿatzmo ke-ilu); he feigns he is asleep. Targum rishon and sheni both come to the same conclusion extracted from Psalms 121:4, and then expand on the complaint of the Jews to God, reminding him of all his previous deeds in favor of Israel, especially their liberation from Egypt, and imploring 'adon ha-ʿamim' not to abandon his people, because this time Israel will not just be sold out like a slave, but eradicated, 'erased from the earth.' Here, the motive of the feigned sleep of God means that God threatens to abandon his people, and his awakening from the feigned sleep means that he finally saves his people. The motive comes regularly in midrashic literature: it is reiterated in the Yalqut Shimʿoni on Esther 6:1 and, vice versa, when the Yalkut Shimʿoni comes to comment on the sleep in Psalms, the midrash convenes Esther 6:1 to attest that the sleep of the guardian is always feigned. Esther 6:1 and Psalms 121:4 are thus bonded, they call each other, they always stick together in midrashic literature, one clarifying the other, as we can also verify in the Mekhilta de Rabbi Yishmael (Massekhta de-shirata) on Psalms. Now, let us go back to the Midrash Panim aḥerim B on Esther 6:1: 'When Israel is afraid and calls God, what does he do? He disturbs Ahasuerus's sleep.' Note that the same midrash adds a bit further on that the angels in heaven hear the cry of Israel and send one of them to awaken Ahasuerus. Nevertheless, the midrash says here clearly that 'God disturbs Ahasuerus's sleep.' We thus stand very close to the Greek translation of Esther 6:1 transmitted in the Christian tradition: 'But the Lord [Kurios, the Master, adon] kept sleep from the king [Basileos, melekh].' One sees easily why there is great suspicion that the Masoretic verse was replaced here by a piece of rabbinical explanation in the process of transliteration.

-
Note that in the Greek Esther the division of melekh has vanished in Esther 6:1 because the first entity, the king of kings, God, who is called here the Lord (Kurios, adon), acts directly on King Ahasuerus; he 'kept sleep form the king.' In the Septuagint version of Esther 6:1, God and king appear thus clearly as two distinct entities in the text. But in the Hebrew text 'the sleep of the king wandered,' sleep is active and the king passive, leading to the rabbinical question to whom it happens and who is active. Even if the comment of the Midrash Panim aḥerim on Esther 6:1 is equivalent to the Greek translation of Esther 6:1, it has a very different meaning because it is here the that commentator performs, from a position outside of the text, from the position of the reader, the division of king in two distinct entities. In the Greek version, the two entities are divided in the text, which therefore is a new text, a new story of Esther, while in the midrash the same word in the text is divided in two from outside the text.

Regarding the extreme prevention against idolatry in Scripture and rabbinical Judaism, one can at first glance be astonished the rabbis never hesitate to put God and the king in such a dangerous proximity. If 'king' can be either Ahasuerus or God, do we not risk confusing them? Let us put the question differently: Is the Septuagint version of Esther 6:1 that transposes a rabbinical conclusion in Greek about the meaning of Esther 6:1 more 'Jewish' than the midrash? It is surely more Christian, more modern, but, precisely moving away from Jewish political knowledge. To show this we need to have a better insight into the rabbinical reading strategy relating to Esther 6:1.

We have seen that the midrash recommends reading 'King Ahasuerus,' as this king was really mentioned in the Megillah, and to read 'king' defectively either as God, or as this king. When we come to read 'king' in the Megillah, we thus need to oscillate; the word indeed has a double significance, but to extract the two (king and god) we have to switch actively; we have to perform two distinct interpretations successively, one after the other. One cannot read the two simultaneously. The two entities are as distant as possible since they exclude each other; one has to vanish in order to let the other emerge. Reading melekh as God and reading it as King Ahasuerus, exclude one another. Although the same word, melekh, is readable as 'King of Kings' and as 'King of flesh and blood,' its significance remains in the midrash completely separate and distinct.

A Rabbinical Political Inquiry

The twofold status of 'king' in the midrash thus follows a structural logic. It is the function, the protective function in itself, associated to the title 'king' that is the very entity that rabbinic literature divides. What is first is the shomer yisra ʾel -the guardian or watchman of Israel -and the anxious belief that he will effectively never sleep, that vigilance will be constant, uninterrupted. Then comes the question to whom it falls to perform the function. It falls firstly to melekh malkhei ha-melakhim, the ideal king (God). He is ideal not only in the sense that He is almighty, not only in the sense that He is the entity that promised his people they will exist forever, but because this entity is an equivalent for the idea of absolute protection, an equivalent for Israel's eternity, for Israel's practical survival. And, secondly, the function falls to extensional kings, on empirical exemplars of incarnated kings, the melekh basar ve-dam (the king of flesh and blood), as he is named in most midrashim; it falls to this empirical exemplar of king that disposes of a relative power to protect, depending on his reign and on the circumstances. Rabbinical comments on Esther clearly state that when an incarnated king reigns, as Ahasuerus does, on the whole surface of the earth, he verges on being the ideal king. Obviously, he is not the ideational king but because of this extensive territorial reign, he has affinity with melekh malkhei ha-melakhim, he is similar to God considering his protective power. This deep affinity is strictly established in the midrash regarding the function of the shomer: they can be compared relatively to the factuality of protection that they both are able to provide. The embodied king can potentially ensure the most complete protection as if (ke-ilu) he were the ideal king. They fulfill the same function. They thus form a pair, a functional pair. Given that this function of preservation called the shomer is split in two parts, a triad arises: the Jews, the King, The King of Kings. This rabbinical political proto-theory has thus all the traits of a quest of the least bad solution. It is a quest, as it rests on a question 'who is the king?,' the constant watchman or the empirical, territorial, watchman. The rabbinical reasoning is here neither allegorical nor metaphorical but analogical: as melekh always connotes the power of protection, this power, in the galut, has to be split into two. In the Scroll of Esther (in the galut), the name of God is not mentioned. One main explanation for this anomalous and disturbing absence in rabbinical tradition is that God hides His face in the galut (the rabbis ask where the name of Esther is mentioned in Scripture besides in the scroll, and answer 've-anokhi haster astir panay' [And I will surely hide my face; Deut. 31:18]). On the other hand, we have seen that God is named in the Scroll when melekh is written defectively; this is another way for him to be present in the galut. The answer to the question who is the guardian of Israel, is that both are, melekh malkhei ha-melakhim and melekh basar ve-dam, God and the incarnated king. How they relate, is then the crucial problem. The midrash does not provide such a clear-cut answer, but explains that protective power is a matter of quest; reading the Megillah and commenting upon Esther is precisely exploring the world, producing knowledge about the political environment the Jews live in. The function of protection is always present, active, no matter what is happening in the world, whatever empirical experience. One has to presume it is the actual king of flesh and blood who will instantiate the function. Comments on Esther thus articulate an axiom and a hypothesis in a dynamic way, in order to open a political investigation, an inquiry in all present critical situations. King defectively and King Ahasuerus form here a dialectical pair. And it is the function that both entities fulfill potentially which confers its impulse to the dialectics between the two poles. God is indeed the shomer yisra ʾel, but in the galut the Jews need to find the least bad solution, they need to find substitutes for His protection. To find the effective shomer in order to survive in history, in the temporal milieu of the nations they reside in, is the least bad solution for Israel in the galut. Rabbinical comments invite the reader into exploring the concrete dialectics of fiction (God is the protective king) and presumption (the territorial king is the protector) in all present situations, in all concrete political crises, since crises, the awakening of enmity (Haman), are the only sort of political events that occur regularly in the galut.

-

Conclusion

The rabbinical political proto-theory of Jewish survival is functional. Political power is a tool. Israel in exile explores the least bad political solution to surmount even ultimate threats, as in the story of Esther. Israel's protection is at once the history of Israel's survival in an ever changing and threatening environment. This brings us to the crucial question: what is the actual Jewish State, whose name is the State of Israel, in a world of nation-states?17 Does it imitate the best solution of the Western nation-state, or is it the first step towards total redemption? In both cases, we would face a revolution in Jewish history.

However, another answer is proposed here: this State remains immersed in the Jewish pragmatic tradition of the quest of the least bad solution. The Jewish State is neither the nation-state of the Jews, nor the fulfillment of the messianic promise, but the actual form of the guardian of Israel, as the foreign king, one might argue. This was precisely Herzl's position. The underlying diagnosis of Herzl's Judenstaat is:18 nation-states emancipated Jews altogether; popular sovereignty blocked the traditional device of splitting the king into two, so that passing alliances with the king are now impossible. And yet the Jews are still threatened. Jews are therefore pushed toward a variation of the least bad solution: build a sovereign and project it out of Europe in order to find protection in its shade. The Shoah, which is like a 'failed Purim,' confirmed Herzl's diagnosis: the Jews know that the king is not only capable of deciding to kill them, but of actually carrying out this decision. A State for the Jews was therefore actively searched and finally granted, authorized from outside, by the powerful

  Realpolitik of some sort.14 What the rabbinical commentaries extract from the book of Esther is neither a passive art of resistance, nor warfare, but a kind of practical knowledge leaning on a proto-theory of Jewish sovereignty in the diaspora. It was sustained by an effective, empirical, practical Jewish-political tradition guided by the quest of the least bad solution.

	10 11 12 13 constituted a manual of See also the introduction of chapter IX 'The Gentile State,' in M. Walzer, M. Lorberbaum and N. Zohar, eds., Jewish Political Tradition, vol. I, Authority (New Haven 2000) 431-435; S.-A. Goldberg, 'The Common Law and Jewish Law: The Diasporic Principle of dina de-malkuta dina,' Behemoth: Journal of Civilization 2 (2008) 39-53. This began very early on but became obvious from the Middle Ages. See B.D. Walfisch, Esther in Medieval Garb: Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Esther in the Middle Ages (Albany, NY 1993). See T.S. Laniak, 'Esther's "Volkcentrism" and the Reframing of the Post-Exilic Judaism,' in L. Greenspoon and S.W. Crawford, eds., The Book of Esther in Modern Research (London 2003) 77-90. Trom D. -1X 0 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40X 1X
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and J. Boyarin, Powers of Diaspora

(Minneapolis, MN 2002)

.

Please provide ORCID if you have one

  17On the multi-layered 'hopes' of the Jews, see Y.H. Yerushalmi, 'Vers une histoire de l'espoir juif,' Esprit 8-9 (1985) 21-38. 18 T. Herzl, Der Judenstaat (Leipzig, Vienna 1896). which is a donation process in accordance with the tradition.19 The State for the Jews is thus an ersatz of the territorial king whose protective function in Europe is no longer fulfilled. Building a state meant that the Jews were striving to have, for themselves, a king of flesh and blood, a foreign power in order to be protected in its shade. If so, the State of Israel, today's least bad solution regarding the situation, remains an integral part of the Jewish traditional strategy of survival in the galut. 19 Y. Shavit and B. Harshav, 'Cyrus King of Persia and the Return to Zion: A Case of a Neglected Memory,' History and Memory 2, no. 1 (1990) 51-83.

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AQ:

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Hagit's personality, her drive, her curiosity, her interest and daring to be different and to be herself have inspired generations of students no less than her theories and her feminism, and this work on gender is

ON THE SEMANTICS OF INANIMATE GENDER

RUSSIAN GENDER: AN OVERVIEW

The Russian gender system is a mixed one [START_REF] Crockett | Agreement in Contemporary Standard Russian[END_REF][START_REF] Corbett | Gender. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics[END_REF], Doleschal 1996, etc.) combining semantic (male/female) and formal (declension class) criteria for gender assignment:

(1) Russian gender assignment rules a. nouns denoting males are masculine b.

nouns denoting females are feminine c.

declinable nouns of the declension class -ĭ-are masculine d.

declinable nouns of the declension classes -a-and -ĭ-are feminine e.

declinable nouns of the declension class -o-are neuter f.

animate indeclinable nouns are masculine (with some exceptions) g.

inanimate indeclinable nouns are neuter (again, with some exceptions) h.

the gender of indeclinable initialisms (not acronyms) is determined by the gender of the head There is nothing special about such a system: for gender-differentiated individuals semantic gender trumps formal criteria and otherwise gender is determined by the declension class.

There are exceptions here and there: for instance animate class -a-nouns can be underlyingly formally feminine or masculine without being specified as female or male in their semantics [START_REF] Iomdin | O russkix suščestvitel'nyx tak nazyvaemogo obščego roda[END_REF], and human-denoting NPs may trigger agreement based not on their formal gender, but on that of their denotatum (so-called semantic agreement, [START_REF] Corbett | The agreement hierarchy[END_REF]. Another class of exceptions that I would like to focus here is the gender of inanimate indeclinables. I will argue that their gender assignment can be based on semantic analogy offering evidence for semantic interpretability of formal gender and for computation of gender on the fly, with gender regarded as a syntactic property on the probe rather than the goal. It turns out (see [START_REF] Doleschal | Gender assignment revisited[END_REF][START_REF] Murphy | The gender of inanimate indeclinable common nouns in Modern Russian[END_REF][START_REF] Wang | Gender assignment of Russian indeclinable nouns[END_REF] for recent discussions in English) that indeclinable nouns are assigned gender by semantic criteria, and exceptions to these criteria are themselves semantically motivated. Starting with the general rules detailed in (1), animate indeclinables are assigned feminine or masculine gender, the latter being the default. Thus the noun šimpanze 'chimpanzee' can be in principle masculine or feminine, but the NP containing it in (2a) denotes a female chimpanzee so the feminine agreement can be viewed On the semantics of inanimate gender as semantic. 1 Inanimate indeclinables would appear to be assigned inherent non-interpretable gender. While most indeclinable nouns are neuter, ivasi 'South American pilchard (Sardinops sagax)' in (2b) is feminine (cf., e.g., Graudina, Ickovič and Katlinskaja 1976:78 (henceforth, GIK) and Doleschal 1996:122), although some variation is possible. Such variation is even more prominent for masculine indeclinables, which are far more likely than feminine ones to also agree in the neuter (cf. GIK:79-82):

THE GENDER OF RUSSIAN INDECLINABLE NOUNS

(2) a.

[…] umerla estestvennoj smert'ju legendarnaja šimpanze Uošo.

RNC died.FSG natural death legendary.FSG chimpanzee Washoe The legendary chimpanzee Washoe died a natural death… b.

Čelovek -[…] ne besslovesnaja ivasi v korotkix štanax.

RNC human NEG dumb pilchard in short pants Homo sapiens is not some dumb pilchard in short pants.

These inherent gender specifications are usually claimed to be motivated by the hypernyms of the indeclinable nouns in question. Thus ivasi in (2b) is a kind of sel'd' 'pilchard', which is feminine (declension class -ĭ-). Likewise, aven'u 'avenue' is a kind of ulica 'street', which is feminine (declension class -a-), kol'rabi 'kohlrabi' is a kind of kapusta 'cabbage' (declension class -a-), etc., and most (not all) indeclinable dance names are or can be masculine because the word tanec 'dance' is masculine.2 This type of gender assignment is subject to variation as noted in [START_REF] Unbegaun | Les substantifs indéclinables en russe[END_REF][START_REF] Doleschal | Gender assignment revisited[END_REF][START_REF] Murphy | The gender of inanimate indeclinable common nouns in Modern Russian[END_REF][START_REF] Wang | Gender assignment of Russian indeclinable nouns[END_REF] and Baranova 2016, among many others.

The question arises of the status of such semantically based generalizations. Because they are non-systematic, they can be claimed to result from social rather than linguistic factors. After all, formal gender can be a stored lexical property of a noun and the fact that there are some semantic generalizations about exceptions may reveal nothing about language itself. Far more telling are indeclinable toponyms, which, as we will now see, are productively assigned gender based on their semantics.

INDECLINABLE PROPER NAMES

While most Russian toponyms are declinable and, like common nouns, are assigned gender in function of their declension class, this route is closed for indeclinable toponyms, which are systematically assigned gender by semantic analogy. The algorithm is well-known and can be found in GIK, Doleschal 1996, Rozental, Džandžakova andKabanova 1998 (henceforth, RDK), Murphy 2000, etc.): indeclinable toponyms are assigned the gender of their associated sortal. Thus cities are masculine (because the noun gorod 'city, town' is masculine by virtue of its declension class), states (gosudarstvo) or lakes (ozero) are neuter and mountains (gora) and rivers (reka) are feminine:

(3) a. solnečnyj [gorod] Tbilisi RDK204 sunny-MSG city.M Tbilisi the sunny city of Tbilisi 1 Semantic agreement is subject to the Agreement Hierarchy (Corbett 1979 and later work), making it possible for a semantically agreeing noun to also trigger formal agreement on a closer target, as in (i). For animaldenoting nouns such mixed agreement seems impossible.

(i) Because of this semantically driven gender assignment, one and the same proper name may be assigned different genders. Thus Somali may be assigned feminine if regarded as a country (strana, a feminine noun) or neuter if treated as a state (gosudarstvo, a neuter noun), as in (4), from Rozental, Džandžakova and Kabanova 1998, see also [START_REF] Crockett | Agreement in Contemporary Standard Russian[END_REF]. This apparent optionality may, however, be an illusion caused by the fact that states and countries are usually felt to be co-extensional. Perhaps we are dealing with two different entities here, as in ( 5), where the state of Congo and the Congo River happen to share the same name:3 (4) a.

Somali prinjala s blagodarnost'ju gumanitarnuju pomošč'.

RDK

Somali accepted-FSG with gratitude humanitarian aid (The country of) Somali accepted the humanitarian aid with gratitude.

b.

V period krizisa Somali stradalo ot nexvatki prodovol'stvija. in period crisis-GEN Somali suffered-NSG from lack victuals-GEN During the crisis (the state of) Somali suffered from the lack of food.

(5) a. gde katit svoi vody širokaja i polnovodnaja Kongo. In other words, the gender of an indeclinable Russian toponym depends on what it denotes. The double-barreled question arises of the precise status of this generalization from the point of view of its localization both in cognition and in syntax.

Is the gender of indeclinable nouns linguistic?

The question of the gender of a given toponym, even such quite well-known ones as Tbilisi or Somali, is a frequent one and the general issue is discussed in many Russian grammars. If the semantic generalization above were inherent, would it also not be internalized? Can it be merely a prescriptivist rule with no standing in the language itself, like that of the collective nouns used for different animals in English? I have run some searches online and in the Russian National Corpus (ruscorpora.ru) and asked informal questions of some five Russian speakers about gender agreement with indeclinable toponyms. The results that I got mostly coincide with the semantically motivated generalization above, but variation is also attested. Thus the city of Great Zimbabwe can agree as both the expected masculine (6a) (gorod 'city' is masculine) and the unexpected neuter (6b)), the opposite is true for the sunny Peru, which appears with masculine agreement On the semantics of inanimate gender as well as with the expected neuter of gosudarstvo 'state') and for Somali, which appears in RNC only with masculine and neuter adjectives (contrary to RDK).

(6) a.

Bol'šoj Zimbabve (Velikij Zimbabve) big.MSG Zimbabwe great.MSG Zimbabwe b.

Bol'šoe Zimbabve big.NSG Zimbabwe Great Zimbabwe

For indeclinable river names I have found only the expected feminine agreement, though two of my informants when asked about the Alazani River conceded that maybe other options are possible and one actually preferred masculine. The generalization is therefore strong where it comes to rivers, but less so for states. Similar variability is observed for semantic agreement with human-denoting nouns: they do not allow agreement by the gender of the denotatum all to the same extent. Importantly, the alternative pattern (neuter for inanimates) is semantic as well, although it does not seem to be available as a default (or else no hesitations would be expected).

My tentative conclusion is therefore that the sortal-determined gender of indeclinables is linguistic to the same extent as semantic agreement is in general.

The syntax of gender features

Known toponyms like Peru are easily used by any competent speaker of Russian in a context that does not require gender agreement, though some of these speakers would falter when gender agreement is required (cf. Doleschal 1996:125). Yet any usual take on the syntax of nouns (and proper names) is that gender is a core lexical property of nouns that is available from the lexicon and merely used in syntax. Even if we concede that unknown nouns are not in the lexicon of a given speaker and thus their gender may also be unknown, we do not expect a difference in behavior in function of overt agreement, especially in approaches that locate gender on the N itself and even more so, on n [START_REF] Kihm | Noun class, gender, and the lexicon-syntax-morphology interfaces: a comparative study of Niger-Congo and Romance languages[END_REF], Lowenstamm 2007[START_REF] Percus | Gender features and interpretation: a case study[END_REF][START_REF] Kramer | Gender in Amharic: a morphosyntactic approach to natural and grammatical gender[END_REF][START_REF] Kramer | The Morphosyntax of Gender[END_REF], 2016, etc.). Indeed, if gender or noun class is part of what defines a noun in languages that have gender, we expect no differences between environments where gender agreement occurs and those where it does not.

It could be objected that these toponyms are not nouns sensu stricto. Indeed, the consensus is that proper names are DPs, and it could be hypothesized that indeclinable proper names are deficient syntactic objects like book or movie titles (see [START_REF] Testelets | Case deficient elements and the direct case condition in Russian[END_REF][START_REF] Kholodilova | Свойства вершины у элементов названий в русском языке [Head properties in elements of names in Russian[END_REF][START_REF] Trubitsina | Согласование в конструкциях с названиями в русском языке [Agreement in constructions with names in Russian]. Труды Института русского языка им. В. В[END_REF] for their behavior with respect to agreement and case-marking). There are, however, two objections to this approach. Firstly, book or movie titles that are nominal (and not coordinate structures) do not exhibit any special behavior with respect to agreement, nor do declinable unfamiliar toponyms, and so the special nature of indeclinable toponyms stems from their morphology. Secondly, the same agreement issues arise with indeclinable common nouns, even if the denotation is known. Thus the indeclinable kolibri 'hummingbird' has been attested with both the expected masculine (for animates) and the unexpected feminine (for the feminine hypernym ptica 'bird') agreement. Likewise, suluguni (a type of Georgian cheese, syr 'cheese' is masculine) can be used productively with full understanding in non-agreement contexts and may result in hesitation or in masculine or neuter in agreement contexts; other examples are too numerous to list.

Moreover, the issue is not limited to Russian. The gender of city names in French is no less thorny a question and grammars diverge on it wildly, as do individual speakers or texts. Two major empirical explorations of the matter, [START_REF] Hasselrot | Le genre des noms de villes en français[END_REF][START_REF] Hasselrot | Le genre des noms de villes en français[END_REF][START_REF] Edwardsson | Le genre des noms de villes en français[END_REF], note a high degree of confusion and optionality in gender resolution for city names, with the same city name potentially yielding both feminine and masculine agreement within the same Some empirical generalizations are attested. Thus for the quantifier tout 'all' and adjectives vieux 'old' (in the sense of the older part of the city), petit 'small' and grand 'big' only masculine agreement is possible [START_REF] Hasselrot | Le genre des noms de villes en français[END_REF][START_REF] Hasselrot | Le genre des noms de villes en français[END_REF]:215, Edwardsson 1968). Conversely, the definite postnominal epithet (e.g., Alger la blanche 'Algiers the White') is claimed to permit feminine adjectives only, while elsewhere feminine agreement is preferred [START_REF] Edwardsson | Le genre des noms de villes en français[END_REF]), rationalized to the feminine sortal ville 'city, town' (9). Indeed, [START_REF] Hasselrot | Le genre des noms de villes en français[END_REF][START_REF] Hasselrot | Le genre des noms de villes en français[END_REF] indicates (with no actual numbers) that for villages (a masculine noun in French) masculine is preferred. Indefinite article [START_REF] Hasselrot | Le genre des noms de villes en français[END_REF](Hasselrot /1944: masculine preferred) : masculine preferred) No corpus indicated (90): masculine 60 (66%), feminine 30 (33%)

It is important to emphasize that in French the issue is not limited to a subset of toponyms, all city names exhibit this behavior, so the sortal-oriented agreement that we have observed in Russian for a morphologically defined group of inanimate proper names, in French is attested for the entire lexical-semantic class of city and village names, with no problems arising in non-agreement contexts.

Once again, it could be suggested that proper names do not form part of the lexicon. This argument, however, is very weak. Firstly, under most approaches they end up as DPs, so the issue is just postponed. Secondly, this assumption does not explain why agreement contexts should be different from non-agreement ones if the same syntactic object is eventually built.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

We have shown that inanimate proper names can be underspecified for gender, which can then be computed from their denotation. Russian indeclinable toponyms are assigned gender based on their hypernym (sortal), though sometimes neuter or even masculine can surface in violation of this generalization. French city and village names, on the other hand, suffer from the competition between the general masculine for inanimates and semantic gender based on On the semantics of inanimate gender their sortal, which means that they are mostly avoided altogether in agreement contexts. This suggests that gender is not an obligatory property of proper names, and this conclusion is also supported by the behavior of Russian indeclinable common nouns.

These data can be taken as evidence for the purely syntactic computation of gender: it is not part of either N or n but is instead computed on the head that enters into gender agreement with the relevant (extended) NP. This view has several advantages. Firstly, it can be extended to gender agreement with coordinated NPs, which are assigned gender on the basis of mixed formal and semantic criteria (see As the contrast in (10) shows, a masculine proper name appears in the default nominative case when preceded by the feminine sortal ulica 'street', while a feminine proper name also has the option of agreeing in case with the sortal. Assuming that case-agreement is parasitic on agreement in gender [START_REF] Matushansky | Die Stadt Leipzig and other fun places in Russian[END_REF] requires the assumption that proper names can enter syntactic computation without specified gender features.

A separate issue is that of what semantically determined inanimate gender tells us about the semantics of gender features in general. The fact that a formal feature of the sortal is used in semantic analogy strongly indicates that it is not as semantically neutral as usually assumed.

Summarizing, gender-deficient proper names, both in Russian and in French, cast doubt on the standard perception of gender as a property of a noun given in the lexicon or established for n: if such were the case, we would see no difference in behavior in agreement and nonagreement contexts. Syntactic computation of gender might, on the other hand, offer support for an exoskeletal model, like that argued for in Borer 2005a, b.

Adamson

  www where rolls self's waters wide.FSG and full-flowing.FSG Congo where the wide and full-flowing Congo rolls its waters. b. Kongo stalo bel'gijskoj koloniej v načale 20-go veka. Congo became.NSG Belgian colony in beginning 20 th century.GEN Congo became a Belgian colony in the beginning of the 20th century.

  (including depictives and appositives): Grand Larousse Encyclopédique (661): masculine 130 (20%), feminine 531 (80%) Grand Larousse (2158): masculine 885 (41%), feminine 1273 (59%) b. Predicate adjectives (including those in apposition): No corpus indicated (90): masculine 18 (20%), feminine 72 (80%). c. Nonrestrictive adjectives (épithets de nature): No corpus indicated (44): masculine 13 (30%), feminine 31 (70%) d.

  On the semantics of inanimate gender sentence, as in (7), from Edwardsson 1968:271. Informal observations, both my own and discussed on the Internet, indicate that French speakers mostly try to avoid gender agreement altogether for city names.

	(7) Fondée	en 1869, Kemi est devenu	un centre industriel important.	E271
	founded.FSG in 1869, Kemi is become.MSG a center industrial important
	Founded in 1869, Kemi became an important industrial center.
	Even proper names that have an integrated gender-marked definite article may show gender
	disagreement (8):
	(8) a.	le	Caire, nostalgique et orgueilleuse	E279
		the.MSG Cairo, nostalgic	and proud.FSG
		Cairo, nostalgic and proud
	b.	Le	La	Rochelle de mon enfance	a disparu.

Internet

the.MSG the.FSG Rochelle of my childhood has disappeared The La Rochelle of my childhood has disappeared.

  [START_REF] Lyskawa | Coordination without Grammar-Internal Feature Resolution[END_REF] for an overview and references) and can also show ineffability in agreement contexts (see, e.g., Adamson and Anagnostopoulou 2021 in addition to Lyskawa 2021:275). Secondly, syntactic computation of gender for the purposes of agreement is essential for treating semantic agreement, which is triggered by semantic rather than formal properties of an NP and can target different levels of an NP (cf. (i) in fn. 1, which illustrates NP-internal mixed agreement). While it could be hypothesized that proper names should not be treated the same as common nouns, evidence from coordinated NPs and semantic agreement with animate nouns suggest that the issue is not limited to proper names.Thirdly, the hypothesis that nouns and specifically proper names may enter syntax underunspecified for phi-features and gender is computed during syntactic derivation might pave the way for analyzing the role that phi-congruence plays in case-assignment to proper names introduced by a sortal[START_REF] Matushansky | Die Stadt Leipzig and other fun places in Russian[END_REF]):

	(10) a.	na ulice	Jakimanka/Jakimanke	✓phi-congruent
		in street.FSG.LOC Yakimanka.FSG.NOM/LOC
		on the Yakimanka street
	b.	na ulice	Balčug/*Balčuge	phi-congruent
		in street.FSG.LOC Balčug.MSG.NOM/LOC
		on the Balčug street

  , Luke, and Elena Anagnostopoulou. 2021. Interpretability and gender features in coordination: Evidence from Greek. Paper presented at Agreement in multivaluation constructions, Frankfurt University (Online), May 19-20, 2021. Baranova, Anna S. 2016. Отражение вариативности родовой характеристики несклоняемых существительных в современных словарях [Variation in gender characteristics of indeclinable nouns in contemporary dictionaries]. Вестник Санкт-Петербургского Университета. Язык и литература [Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Language and Literature] 13, 45-57.

Indeclinable ethnicity nouns (e.g., komi 'Komi') are probably underlyingly indeclinable adjectives, which are masculine as linguonyms (cf. the masculine russkij 'Russian') and are assigned semantic gender as ethnonyms.

Gender assignment by semantic analogy is frequent in languages that have no declension classes or where the declension class does not determine the gender (see[START_REF] Herschensohn | Deep and surface nominalized adjectives in French[END_REF] on French deadjectival nouns, Fraurud 1999 on toponyms in Swedish, Hickey 1999 on the gender of names of hotels, cinemas and cars in German; De Clercq 2008 on the gender of common nouns derived from proper names. Also tree-denoting nouns are feminine in Latin, irrespective of the declension class. I will not attempt to address these cases here.