Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Dear Moon,

I understand your confusion! I know that Korean is said to be 
structurally very similar to Turkish and so very different from both 
English and Hebrew.

You asked:

Does the following phrase show these two cases?

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

Yes, I would say.

Then you commented:

>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?

Sorry for the confusion. What I mean is that in a noun phrase like 
HAB.AYIT ):A$ER HF)IY$ B.OW ["the house in which the man is"], the 
):A$ER clause has the grammatical role of an adjective phrase 
describing the noun. A preposition can be added to this noun phrase, 
giving e.g. LAB.AYIT ):A$ER HF)IY$ B.OW ["to the house in which the 
man is"], but not to the adjective phrase.

A case like KA):A$ER HF)IY$ B.OW, or the same with BA):A$ER, I would 
explain as follows: as in the previous example ):A$ER HF)IY$ B.OW is 
an adjective phrase, but as it does not descibe a noun it has become 
nominalised and so can take a preposition, giving the meaning in 
English "like the one in which the man is", "in the one in which the 
man is". Now the resulting prepositional phrases can be used 
adjectivally, giving BAYIT KA):A$ER HF)IY$ B.OW "a house like the one 
in which the man is", which is not the same house as HAB.AYIT ):A$ER 
HF)IY$ B.OW, just a similar one.

At least, this is how I would expect Biblical Hebrew to work. 
Unfortunately with real languages things are rarely quite so simple. 
So I would not be surprised if someone comes up with cases which do 
not fit this pattern properly. In particular KA):A$ER is used more 
widely than "like the one which": BDB (p.455) lists senses "according 
to that which, according as, as", "in so far as, since", and "when".

I hope that helps,

Peter Kirk