Biblical Hebrew Forum

[yochanan bitan <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>]

shalom david,

some of the resolution between autonomous syntax and discourse studies can
be found in an article I mentioned to you:

1995    Buth,  "Functional Grammar, Hebrew and Aramaic: an Integrated,
Textlinguistic Approach to Syntax," in Walter R. Bodine, ed., Discourse
Analysis of Biblical Literature, What It Is and What It Offers  Atlanta:
Scholars' Press, 77-102.

The article does not use the complex notational protocols of Functional
Grammar (therefore is user friendly) but it does show how a generative
grammar must define and label pragmatic rules within its clause- generating
template/s if it is going to realistically generate acceptable output.
psychological adequacy and pragmatic adequacy are two additional tests that
Functional Grammar accepts on itself. 
However, it is still close to the 'autonomy' principle because the grammar
can only label where a pragmatic rule has been invoked, or what structural
change it causes, it does not interpret the rule or rely on pragmatic
information, nor can it do so. It can point out a pragmatic placement rule
-- for the decoder to interpret.

So it  integrates aspects of textlinguistics into a generative grammar, and
does so in a way that a biblical interpreter can be helped in unscrambling
texts and identifying more precisely what is going on at any one point and
what needs to be interpreted.

you will also find some help on your question:
>"What is there about these forms that makes them able to produce
well-formed clauses in these 
>sorts of contexts?" 
some of the answer comes from an iconic principle played off of the
sequential system and paralleled in verbless clause patterns. 
see, 1994  Buth, "Contextualizing Constituent as Topic, Non-sequential
Background and Dramatic Pause:  Hebrew and Aramaic Evidence" in Function
and Expression in Functional Grammar, ed. Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen,
Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen, and Lone Schack Rasmussen. Berlin: de Gruyter,
215-231.
also, 1999 Buth, Word Order in the Verbless Clause: A Generative-Functional
Approach" in Cynthia Miller, ed., Verbless Clause in Biblical Hebrew.
Eisenbraun's, 75-104.

blessings
randall buth