Table Of ContentBiblical Hebrew Grammar Visualized
Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic
edited by
M. O’Connor †, Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé, and Jacobus A. Naudé
The series Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic is devoted to the ancient West Semitic lan-
guages, including Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic, and their near congeners. It includes monographs, col-
lections of essays, and text editions informed by the approaches of linguistic science. The material
studied will span from the earliest texts to the rise of Islam.
1. The Verbless Clause in Biblical Hebrew: Linguistic Approaches,
edited by Cynthia L. Miller
2. Phonology and Morphology of Biblical Hebrew: An Introduction,
by Joshua Blau
3. A Manual of Ugaritic, by Pierre Bordreuil and Dennis Pardee
4. Word Order in the Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause: A Syntactic and Pragmatic Analysis of
Preposing, by Adina Moshavi
5. Oath Formulas in Biblical Hebrew, by Blane Conklin
6. Biblical Hebrew Grammar Visualized, by Francis I. Andersen and A. Dean Forbes
7. Time and the Biblical Hebrew Verb: The Expression of Tense, Aspect, and Modality
in Biblical Hebrew, by John A. Cook
Biblical Hebrew
Grammar Visualized
F i. a
rancis ndersen
and
a. d F
ean orbes
Winona Lake, Indiana
eisenbrauns
2012
Copyright © 2012 Francis I. Andersen and A. Dean Forbes
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
www.eisenbrauns.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Andersen, Francis I., 1925–
Biblical Hebrew grammar visualized / Francis I. Andersen and A. Dean Forbes.
p. cm. — (Linguistic studies in Ancient West Semitic ; 6)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-57506-229-7 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Hebrew language—Grammar. I. Forbes, A. Dean. II. Title.
PJ4567.3.A525 2012
492.4′82421—dc23
2012003744
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information
Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1984.†Ê
Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
The Structure of This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv
Global Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
Labels and Grammatical Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi
1. Introduction: What We Mean by “Biblical Hebrew,” “Grammar,”
and “Visualized” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Biblical Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Visualizing Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2. Text Division . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.1 Words, Segments, and Ligatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.2 Chunking the Text into Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.3 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3. Parts of Speech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.1 Approaches to Parts-of-Speech Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.2 The Andersen-Forbes Part-of-Speech System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.3 Part-of-Speech Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.4 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4. Phrase Marker Concepts and Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.1 Phrase Markers Defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.2 Phrase Markers Characterized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4.3 Information Propagation among and within Phrase Markers . . . . . . . . . 45
4.4 The Phrase Marker Creation Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.5 Exercise: A Test Case Phrase Marker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.6 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
5. The Basic Phrase Types of Biblical Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
5.1 The Constituent Hierarchy of Biblical Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
5.2 Basic and Complex Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
5.3 Basic Tightly Joined Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
5.4 Basic Unconjoined Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
5.5 Basic Structurally Defined Conjoined Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
v
vi Contents
5.6 Basic Semantically Defined Conjoined Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
5.7 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
6. Complex Phrases in Biblical Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
6.1 Embedding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
6.2 Complex Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6.3 Complex Tight Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6.4 Complex Unconjoined Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
6.5 Complex Structurally Defined Conjoined Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
6.6 Complex Semantically Defined Conjoined Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
6.7 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
7. Main Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
7.1 The Clause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
7.2 Configurational versus Nonconfigurational Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
7.3 Complements and Adjuncts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
7.4 An Alert regarding “Marginal Analyses” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
7.5 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
8. Embedded Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
8.1 Nominalized Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
8.2 Clausal Complements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
8.3 Adverbial Subordinated Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
8.4 Embedded Clause-Like Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
8.5 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
9. Classifying Clause Immediate Constituents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
9.1 The Clause-Immediate-Constituent Subtype Taxonomy . . . . . . . . . . . 114
9.2 Excursus: The Mixed and Full Approaches to Representation . . . . . . . 114
9.3 Five Types of Clause Immediate Constituent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
9.4 On Recognizing CIC-Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
9.5 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
10. Semantic Role CICs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
10.1 Semantic Role Repertoire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
10.2 Representative Approaches to Semantic Role Organization . . . . . . . . 139
10.3 Semantic Role Classification Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
10.4 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
11. Introduction to Clause Immediate Constituent Composition,
Incidence, and Ordering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
11.1 Clause Immediate Constituent Censuses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
11.2 Clause Immediate Constituent Incidence Contours . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
11.3 Clause Immediate Constituent Ordering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
11.4 An Aside on Valency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
11.5 The Structure of Chapters 12–15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
11.6 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Contents vii
12. The רמא Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
12.1 The Binyan Census . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
12.2 The CIC Subtype Census . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
12.3 Survey of the Non-GF / SR Clause Immediate Constituents . . . . . . . . 170
12.4 Survey of the GF/SR Clause Immediate Constituents . . . . . . . . . . . 173
12.5 Clause Immediate Constituent Incidence across the רמא Corpus. . . . . . .183
12.6 Core Constituent Ordering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
12.7 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
13. The היה Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
13.1 Binyan Census . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
13.2 Single Predicators in Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
13.3 היה Verbs as Discourse Transition Markers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
13.4 Periphrastics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
13.5 Clause Immediate Constituent Incidence Contours . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
13.6 Core Constituent Ordering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
13.7 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
14. The השׂע Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
14.1 The Binyan Census . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
14.2 The CIC Subtype Census . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
14.3 Survey of the Non-GF / SR Clause Immediate Constituents . . . . . . . . 196
14.4 Survey of the GF / SR Clause Immediate Constituents . . . . . . . . . . . 197
14.5 Clause Immediate Constituent Incidence Contours . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
14.6 Core Constituent Ordering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
14.7 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
15. The ןתנ Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
15.1 The Binyan Census . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
15.2 The CIC Subtype Census . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
15.3 Survey of the Non-GF / SR Clause Immediate Constituents . . . . . . . . 207
15.4 Survey of the GF / SR Clause Immediate Constituents . . . . . . . . . . . 209
15.5 Clause Immediate Constituent Incidence Contours . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
15.6 Core Constituents and Their Ordering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
15.7 Verb Corpora Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
15.8 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
16. Makeup of Clause Immediate Constituent Subtypes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
16.1 The Impermanent CIC Subtype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
16.2 The Syntactic Isolate CIC Subtype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
16.3 The Predicator CIC Subtype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
16.4 The Operator CIC Subtype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
16.5 The Grammatical Function CIC Subtype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
16.6 The Semantic Role CIC Subtype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
16.7 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
viii Contents
17. Computing the Distances between Verb Corpora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
17.1 The Hierarchical Lexicon, Verb Classes, and Inter-Clause Distance . . . 232
17.2 Inter-Clause Clustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
17.3 Affinities for Two Large Collections of Verb Corpora . . . . . . . . . . . 238
17.4 Affinities for Corpora Based on Single Binyanim, Etc. . . . . . . . . . . 244
17.5 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
18. The Five Quasiverbals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
18.1 Standard Biblical Hebrew References on the Five Lexemes . . . . . . . . 251
18.2 Existentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
18.3 דוֹע . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
18.4 הֵנּהִ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
18.5 הֵיּאַ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
18.6 Affinities among the Five Lexemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
18.7 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
19. Verbless Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
19.1 Verbless / Nominal Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
19.2 The Layered Structure of Verbless Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
19.3 Elliptic Verbal Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
19.4 Dealing with Rare CICs and Syntactic Isolates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
19.5 Atypical Subjects and Subject Complements in Verbless Clauses . . . . . 268
19.6 Operators and the Lead Zone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
19.7 Embedding and Verbless Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
19.8 Indeterminacy in CIC Enumeration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
19.9 One-CIC Verbless Structures and Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
19.10 Two-CIC Verbless Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
19.11 Three-CIC Verbless Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
19.12 Multi-CIC Verbless Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
19.13 Insufficiently Investigated Problems in Verbless Structures . . . . . . . 291
19.14 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
20. Non-Tree Phrase Markers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
20.1 Tangled Edges: Discontinuity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
20.2 Multiple Mothers: Construct Participles, Distributed Apposition,
and Ellipsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
20.3 Multiple Roots: Ambiguity and Multiple Parses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
20.4 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
21. Discourse Analysis and Supra-Clausal Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
21.1 Introduction to Our Perspectives on Discourse Analysis . . . . . . . . . . 312
21.2 Our Phrase Markers as a “Work in Progress” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
21.3 Supra-Clausal Constituents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
21.4 Paradoxical Intra-Clausal Discourse Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
21.5 Brief Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
Contents ix
Appendix 1. Text Choice, Corrections, and Reductions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
A1.1 The Choice of a Manuscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
A1.2 Correcting “Obvious Errors” in L . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
A1.3 Reducing the Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
Appendix 2. Our Approach to Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
A2.1 Traditional Approaches to the Syntax of Biblical Hebrew . . . . . . . . 334
A2.2 Phrase-Structure Grammars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
A2.3 The Autonomy of Syntax—Not . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Appendix 3. Alternate Approaches to Positional Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
A3.1 The Linearization Approach to Positional Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
A3.2 The Argument Structure Approach to Positional Syntax . . . . . . . . . 341
A3.3 Factors That Determine or Affect CIC Position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
Appendix 4. Indirect Object Alternation in the רמא Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
A4.1 Indirect Object Alternation as Explained by Jenni and by Malessa . . . . 344
A4.2 The Jenni and Malessa Explanations: Counterexamples . . . . . . . . . 344
Appendix 5. Compositional Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
A5.1 Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
A5.2 Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
A5.3 Practicalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
Appendix 6. Two-CIC VLCs as Novel Sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Appendix 7. Enhancements to Our Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
A7.1 Our Glosses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
A7.2 Source Ascription . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
A7.3 Text Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
Index of Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
Index of Scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
Index of Topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
