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b-hebrew - 'asher with prepositions

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  • From: "Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: 'asher with prepositions
  • Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 23:29:18 -0700


Lately I've been looking into the phenomenon of "resumptive"
pronouns in 'asher clauses, the kind of the form
"Noun - 'asher clause - preposition with pronoun whose antecedent
is the Noun before 'asher"
e.g. HaBaYiT )a$eR Ha)iY$ BoW, "the house which the man is in
(it)"

At first it would be easy to say Hebrew does this because the
preposition needs something to attach to; however, there are
profuse occurrences of combinations such as Ba)a$eR, La)a$eR,
Me)a$eR, and of course the ubiquitous Ka)a$eR. So I'm wondering
why an author would sometimes choose to move the preposition
with the 'asher, and sometimes choose not to and put the
preposition with an anaphor instead. Has anybody looked into this
question? Perhaps I should mention that I'm assuming 'asher
clauses are derived by transformation (specifically what is called in
English WH-movement), and am looking at the "resumptive"
pronouns from the POV of their effect (if any) on the question of
transformational grammar's trace theory. Has anything been done
on usage of these two structures?

Thanks,
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
A Bible that's falling apart means a life that isn't.




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