Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Bryan Rocine" <596547 AT ican.net>]

Dear Ben and Andrew,

Whether we say "the team is" or "the team are" is regulated in careful
English, I think.  "The team is playing in the championship."  "The team
are getting their boots together for the road trip."  But I'm not
suggesting the rules for reference to such a concept as _ha(am_ "the
people" are the same in BH as in English.  I'm only suggesting rules may
exist in BH.  Maybe the seemingly idiosyncratic variations between plural
and singular references in BH need a close look in a wider playing field,
i.e. discourse.  For instance
Revell(1993[sorry, I don't have the rest of the bibliographic with me right
now] and _The Designation of the Individual_The Netherlands:Kok Pharos,
1996) has suggested the pattern is too consistent to be the result of
chance.  He suggests the singular refernce is the unmarked and plural is
marked for what he calls "immediacy."  As I understand it, "immediacy"
means the proposition is important or central to the purposes of the
speaker/writer(see _Designations_ chapter 16).

btw, thanx, Vince, for pointing me to Revell some time back.

I think of this kind of pattern as a tendency only, a convention.  I think
the functions of such tendencies are enlightening and worth feretting out
or inferring when we can.

Shalom,
Bryan

You wrote:

> 
> On Wed 11 Nov 98 (19:29:02), a.c.smith AT juno.com wrote:
> > The sentences listed above are all part of one speech, given at one
> > time, to the same crowd of people. Why the variations?
> 
>  Dear Andrew:
> 
>  Do you think it at all possible that we have here an example of the
common
>  numerical ambiguity with *collective* nouns?  The God of Israel is "your
>  God, O Israel". Do we say "Israel HAS (singular) a God", or Israel HAVE
>  (plural) a God"?  Israel IS the Chosen Race; or Israel ARE the Chosen
Race?
> 
>  This numerical ambiguity so common in English (This team is a good team
/
>  this team are a good team) would IMHO be sufficient to explain the
numerical
>  bivalency we observe in the Hebrew.
> 
>  ShaLoWM
> 
>  Ben

B. M. Rocine
Associate Pastor
Living Word Church
6101 Court St. Rd.
Syracuse, NY 13208

315-437-6744(w)
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