Word Order in the Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause

224 Pages·2010·2.46 MB·English

by  Adina Moshavi

Word Order in the
Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause
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Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic
edited by
M. O’Connor† and Cynthia L. Miller
The series Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic is devoted to the ancient
West Semitic languages, including Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic, and their near
congeners. It includes monographs, collections of essays, and text editions in-
formed 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
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Word Order in the
Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause
A Syntactic and Pragmatic Analysis of Preposing
A M
DINA OSHAVI
Winona Lake, Indiana
EISENBRAUNS
2010
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Copyright © 2010 Eisenbrauns
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
www.eisenbrauns.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moshavi, A. Mosak (Adina Mosak)
Word order in the biblical Hebrew finite clause : a syntactic and
pragmatic analysis of preposing / Adina Moshavi.
p. cm. — (Linguistic studies in ancient West Semitic ; 4)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 978-1-57506-191-7 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Hebrew language—Clauses. 2. Hebrew language—Word
order. 3. Bible. O.T.—Language, style. I. Title.
PJ4717.M67 2010
492.4′5—dc22
2010013367
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
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To my parents,
Dr. Richard and Orah Mosak
and to my husband,
Shimon
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Contents
List of Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii
Technical Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv
Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1. The pragmatics of preposing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2. The corpus for the study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3. Overview of the chapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2. Word-Order Markedness in Biblical Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1. Basic word order: Typological and generative perspectives . . 7
2.2. Basic word order in Biblical Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.1. The statistical dominance of VSO in Biblical
Hebrew 11
2.2.2. Word order in the basic sentence 13
2.2.3. The generative perspective on basic word order in
Biblical Hebrew 16
2.2.4. Word order and discourse type 17
2.2.5. Word order in the nonverbal and the participial
clause 17
2.3. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3. Previous Studies of the Functions of Preposing in
Biblical Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.1. The emphasis-centered model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.1.1. Contrast and contrastive structures 19
3.1.2. Circumstantiality, anteriority, and simultaneity 20
3.1.3. Narrative-unit demarcation 24
3.1.4. Attraction 25
3.1.5. Miscellaneous factors 26
3.1.6. Preposing in direct speech 26
3.1.7. Conclusion 26
3.2. The backgrounding and temporal-sequencing models . . . . . 27
vii
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viii Contents
3.3. The information-structure model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.3.1. Introduction to information-structure concepts 32
3.3.1.1. Theme-rheme/topic-comment 32
3.3.1.2. Topicalization 33
3.3.1.3. Focus and focusing 35
3.3.2. Bendavid: Psychological subject and predicate 36
3.3.3. Bandstra 37
3.3.4. Revell 37
3.3.5. Buth: A synthesis of information structure and
foreground-background 38
3.3.6. Gross: A focus-centered model 40
3.3.7. Heimerdinger, van der Merwe, and Shimasaki 41
3.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4. The Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause and Its Constituents . . . . . . . . . 48
4.1. The clause and the sentence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.2. Finite and nonfi nite clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.3. Subordinate and nonsubordinate clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.3.1. The relative clause 51
4.3.2. The adjunct clause 51
4.3.2.1. The conditional adjunct clause 52
4.3.2.2. The causal adjunct clause 53
4.3.2.3. The temporal adjunct clause 53
4.3.2.4. The purpose adjunct clause 54
4.3.3. The content clause 54
4.3.3.1. Complement of verb 55
4.3.3.2. Complement of preposition 55
4.4. Diffi cult issues in defi ning subordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.4.1. The conjunction ו: Coordinator and
subordinator? 56
4.4.2. The יהיו construction 57
4.4.3. Direct and indirect speech 59
4.5. Syntactic classifi cation of the constituents of the clause . . . . 61
5. The Syntax of Preposing and Other Word-Order Constructions . . . 64
5.1. Preposing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.2. Nonpreposed preverbal constituents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.2.1. Clausal adverbs 68
5.2.2. Negative particles: אל and םרט 76
5.2.3. Preverbal adjunct clauses 76
5.3. Unmarked preposed constituents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
5.3.1. Interrogative pro-forms 78
5.3.2. Clause-initial time adverbs and the demonstrative
adverb הכ 79
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Contents ix
5.4. Complex variants of the preposing construction . . . . . . . . . . 80
5.4.1. Preposing with a focusing adverb 80
5.4.2. Double preposing 81
5.5. Other marked word-order constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.5.1. Left-dislocation 81
5.5.2. The preverbal constituent connected to its clause with
a conjunction 84
5.6. A statistical analysis of word-order constructions
in Genesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.7. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
6. Focusing and Topicalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
6.1. Focusing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
6.1.1. Constituent, predicate, and sentence focus 90
6.1.2. Types of givenness: Pragmatic presupposition and
activation 92
6.1.3. Activation in a model of text comprehension 94
6.1.4. Focusing in Biblical Hebrew 96
6.2. Topicalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
6.2.1. Prince’s and Birner and Ward’s characterization of
topicalization 97
6.2.1.1. Marking a partially ordered set relation
pertaining to the preposed element 98
6.2.1.2. Marking a focus in relation to a given
proposition 99
6.2.2. Topicalization in Biblical Hebrew: A discourse-
connective device 101
7. The Pragmatics of Preposing: A Statistical Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
7.1. Focusing and topicalization in preposed clauses . . . . . . . . . 104
7.2. Focusing and topicalization in
complement/adjunct-preposed clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
7.2.1. The residue: Possible instances of focusing 107
7.2.2. The residue: Fixed expressions with preposed word
order 109
7.3. Topicalization and focusing in subject-preposing
constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
7.3.1. The residue of subject-preposed narrative
clauses 112
7.3.1.1. Anteriority 112
7.3.1.2. Simultaneity 113
7.3.1.3. Background information 114
7.3.1.4. New narrative unit or new scene within the
narrative 115
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