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b-hebrew - [b-hebrew] Re: Species of Genitive (James D. Price)

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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Re: Species of Genitive (James D. Price)
  • Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 09:33:43 -0500

Dear Jim,

Perhaps I misunderstand you, because I find it hard to follow some of what you say. First of all, not all information in genitive constructs is "old information." It can be new information. And what you are suggesting, that a clause element has dropped out, has to be proved, not simply asserted. In English I can say that a fluffy cat played in the puddle. "Fluffy" is new information but represents what a genitive construct may accomplish in Hebrew. I can also say, "A cat is fluffy." But saying "a fluffy cat" is not a reduction of "a cat is fluffy." Rather, "fluffy" is an adjective that can modify a noun in this way. If one wants to change an attributive adjective into a predicate adjective and add a verb, that is fine, but it does not alter the original sentence structure or imply that the clause created was part of the original sentence. Or if it does, it seems a truism to say that an adjective predicates something about a noun.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard

The theory is not merely semantic analysis, but transformational grammar at
the text level with semantic restraints. It assumes that the genitive noun
phrase (N2) that modifies the head noun (N1) is the remnant of a dependent
clause (S) about N1 and N2 that defines the semantic relationship between the
two.

The rule needs to be expanded to include an understood deletion/substitution
transformation T(ds) that deletes all unnecessarily redundant old
information from the dependent clause, or otherwise substitutes pronouns; redundant old
information is retained only to avoid ambiguity.

N1|S(N1, N2) * T(ds) ==> N1 + N2(gen)

Linguistic analysis then consists of the reverse process:

[N1 + N2(gen)] * B(ds) ==> N1|S(N1, N2)

where B(ds) is the back transformation equivalent of T(ds) which restores the content of the dependent clause (S). The author assumed that his readers intuitively would be able to know the content of S. Students should be taught to
find that information as well.

Jim Price



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