Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

Lee wrote:
> Dear Dave and Vince,
> How many qatals are in the HB?
> How many qatals have a named subject?
> How many qatals are preceded by its subject?

All good questions.

> Because the finite verb is inflected, the majority of verbs do not even 
> have a named
> subject.  Therefore, without the necessity of a named subject, it is 
> impossible to
> require SVO as the standard word order.  The best you can do is to say, 
> "When the
> subject is named, the unmarked order is SVO."  However, I do not think you 
> can show
> SVO to be the unmarked order in any type of literature in the HB.  It may 
> be possible
> to show that unmarked word order is variable.

Again, markedness is not the issue.  A "basic" word order, i.e. the 
one from which other word orders are derived by movement, may or 
may not be marked in certain contexts.  That's not the question.  
The question is whether the forms with waw are derived by 
transformation from the forms without it, as well as whether the 
yiqtol forms are derived by transformation from the qatal forms.  
The alternative is for the non-waw forms to be derived by deletion of 
the waw and the qatal forms to be derived by deletion of the yiqtol 
prefix(es).  Along with that is the question of whether the verb-initial 
status of the waw forms is derived by movement from a deep 
structure SVO order, or whether the X-qatal/X-yiqtol order is derived 
by movement from a deep structure VSO order.  The point about 
stated subjects is well taken, but it doesn't change the fact that, 
from deep structure, movement of some sort is taking place 
somewhere among the different word-orders.

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