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b-hebrew - Re: Poetry (was [6]: ex 26 + 36.8ff, (36.29))

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  • From: Peter_Kirk AT SIL.ORG
  • To: b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Poetry (was [6]: ex 26 + 36.8ff, (36.29))
  • Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 11:31:55 -0500 (EST)



Yes, TH (that helps). If the Lord doesn't miraculously raise up a
native speaker, I guess you could do a lot worse than ask someone like
Al Silberman. But, from what I was saying to Dave Washburn, surely we
need to come up not with isolated sentences but whole discourses -
especially to test such things as use of weqatal. Even I :-) fooled
myself that "This morning I write a letter" was ungrammatical, until
someone showed me a context in which it was OK.

Meanwhile, by all means try to come up with a grammar based on poetry.
If it works, great! If it doesn't (as people have said in the past),
then maybe the biblical poets are not so comparable with Shakespeare
after all.

Peter Kirk


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Subject: Poetry (was [6]: ex 26 + 36.8ff, (36.29))
Author: 596547 AT ican.net at internet
Date: 28/01/1999 20:47

<snip>

Peter, I think your suggestion to look for the semantics of the BH verb
forms in direct speech makes sense. In the end, though, we have to look at
all the text we have, partly because we have so little text. We only see
part of a language in the Tanak. One of these days I would like to post to
the b-hebrew for discussion the test sentences I would put before a native
speaker of BH if only the Lord could raise one up so I could sit with him
for an hour and he could label sentences tov o lo tov. I would want around
half of the test sentences to go probing for what is lo tov, right? That
so that we could pin down the limits of this language. What sentences
would you put before him?

HTH
<snip>




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