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  • From: "Moon-Ryul Jung" <moon AT computing.soongsil.ac.kr>
  • To: b-hebrew
  • Subject: Re: 'asher with prepositions
  • Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 21:30:47


Peter wrote:

>So BA):A$ER is equivalent to "in that, which", the preposition
> relates to the main clause, whereas ):A$ER... BOW is equivalent to
> "that, in which", with the proposition relating to the subordinate
> clause.

Does the following phrase show these two cases?

BAYIT KA):A$ER HF)IY$ BOW (a house like that the man was in).
..........

>Also we would not expect to find
> combinations like HABBAYIT BA):A$ER HF)IY$, as in the English "the
> house in which the man is" "which" is adjectival in the main clause
> and cannot take a preposition.
>

This explanation is confusing. On what ground do you say that "which" is
adjectival in the above example? Is this the reason why
HABBAYIT BA):A$ER HF)IY$
is not allowed in BH?

I would think it is simply because BH does NOT allow the WH movement to
use
the terminology of transformational grammar. I remember that when I
learned
English, the relative pronoun, especially the construction of prep +
which,
was not easy to understand. My native language Korean does not have it.
Rather the verb in the relative clause has a certain ending to indicate
that the clause is a relative clause. So, languages have different means
to
connect main clauses and relative clauses. I thought that Hebrew :A$ER was
a sort of connecting particle used to make a clause to be an adjectival
clause
or a noun clause. BH is closer to English than to Korean: it has a
separate
word to connect main clauses and relative clauses, while Korean changes the
verb
ending to achieve it.

Moon

Moon-Ryul Jung
Assistant Professor
Dept of Computer Science
Soongsil University,
Seoul, Korea




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