Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Vincent DeCaen <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>]

dear dave, peter, doug, et al,

just to add somewhat to what dave was trying to say...

re criteria on "basic" word order. this is a question that has taxed
my imagination for years. the best i've seen is a book on word order,
etc, by Siewierska 1988, a respected typologist, etc. the definition i
have used is lifted from that book:
obtains in a simple, declarative, matrix/main clause that is
prototypically transitive and contains full vs pronominal
constituents.
in addition the morphological analysis leads to qatal/yiqtol as basic;
also based on distributional matters (no wayyiqtol heading material in
a subordinate clause, etc, etc). 
because of the variation in word order with yiqtol, i would follow
dave without question in using qatal as diagnostic of basic word
order.
based on statistical studies, using the above definition, i obtain SVO
as a basic "surface" word order for the purposes of typological
studies. 
underlying order would be theory-internal, but I argued in my
unpublished dissertation that SVO is also basic. see ch5 especially.
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there is independent descriptive evidence to add to dave's
considerations. consider some of the biggies in the field have noted
independently the business of word order with yiqtol.
Niccacci, Liber Annuus 37 (1987)
Revell, Hebrew Union College Annual 60 (1989)

the observation was the basis of my doctoral work, the basic point
that tends to be obscured in the obsession to deal with aspect. the
observation can be stated with an example.

(1)     lakkohanim yihyu 
(2)     yihyu lakkohanim

according to VSO theory (2) should be unmarked in every way; (1) has 
"emphasis" on priests.
in fact, as has been observed, (1) is basic: they belong to the
priests; (2) is highly marked and modal: let them belong to the
priests.

with such minimal pairs, we must argue that (2) represents a
transformation over (1) to encode mood.

from this it is easy to argue that wayyiqtol, etc, is also derived by
verb movement. what is encoded by movement is an open question: but
i'm talking about the syntax here.

QED
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cheers!
V
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Dr Vincent DeCaen     <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>
c/o Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, 4 Bancroft Ave., 2d floor
University of Toronto, Toronto ON, CANADA, M5S 1A1

Hebrew Syntax Encoding Initiative, www.chass.utoronto.ca/~decaen/hsei/
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