Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Moon-Ryul Jung" <moon AT computing.soongsil.ac.kr>]

Peter wrote:

>So BA):A$ER is equivalent to "in that, which", the preposition 
> relates to the main clause, whereas ):A$ER... BOW is equivalent to 
> "that, in which", with the proposition relating to the subordinate 
> clause. 

Does the following phrase show these two cases?

BAYIT KA):A$ER HF)IY$ BOW (a house like that the man was in).
..........

>Also we would not expect to find 
> combinations like HABBAYIT BA):A$ER HF)IY$, as in the English "the 
> house in which the man is" "which" is adjectival in the main clause 
> and cannot take a preposition.
> 

This explanation is confusing. On what ground do you say that "which" is
adjectival in the above example? Is this the reason why  
HABBAYIT BA):A$ER HF)IY$
is not allowed in BH?

I would think it is simply because BH does NOT allow the WH movement to 
use
the terminology of transformational grammar. I remember that when I 
learned
English, the relative pronoun, especially the construction of prep + 
which,
was not easy to understand. My native language Korean does not have it. 
Rather the verb in the relative clause has a certain ending to indicate
that the clause is a relative clause. So, languages have different means 
to
connect main clauses and relative clauses. I thought that Hebrew :A$ER was
a sort of connecting particle used to make a clause to be an adjectival 
clause
or a noun clause. BH is closer to English than to Korean: it has a 
separate
word to connect main clauses and relative clauses, while Korean changes the 
verb
ending to achieve it. 

Moon

Moon-Ryul Jung
Assistant Professor
Dept of Computer Science
Soongsil University,
Seoul, Korea