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b-hebrew - Re[4]: 1 Kgs 1:40

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  • From: Peter_Kirk AT sil.org
  • To: b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re[4]: 1 Kgs 1:40
  • Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 11:59 -0500 (EST)


I still see a problem with $MX here that we are trying to force this
verb/adjective into categories taken from traditional grammar of
Indo-European languages, i.e. transitive or intransitive, as well as
verb/participle or adjective. Instead we need to look at the whole
issue of "valency" of this and other verbs in a more general way, and
distinguish between grammatical cases and semantic roles. Now I am not
an expert at this, so perhaps someone can correct me. But as I
understand it the "valency" of a verb is a description of which nouns
or noun phrases can be associated with it, which grammatical cases
and/or prepositions/postpositions are used with these noun phrases,
and what semantic roles these noun phrases play. In some languages
these valency rules are quite strict. In others, including b-hebrew,
they seem to be quite flexible, although there may be subtle rules not
immediately obvious. Also in b-hebrew there are no true grammatical
cases, and so this part of the rule is irrelevant.

On the basis of this model I see $MX (in the Qal - the valency rules
differ in different stems) as a stative verb, with a participle form
$FM"AX acting as an adjective. The valency of this verb is apparently
that it requires a (semantic) agent (subject) with no preposition, and
there is an optional (semantic) patient (or ??) with the preposition
b- or `al. Additionally, at least in 1 Kings 1:40, there seems to be a
further optional semantic role describing the quality of the action,
in which the noun has no preposition. Is this a reasonable desrciption
of the situation?

Peter Kirk







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