Biblical Hebrew Forum

[yochanan bitan <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>]

>My question is whether anyone else has written about this temporal use of
>ipps and whether you think this is a valid understanding. If hemmah in 1
Sam
>9.5 does not indicate the temporal clause, what does, and does hemmah
>topicalise in some other way in that case, or is it in fact not
topicalising
>at all?

It's actually a common enough use of the pronoun in BH.

generatively, as a fronted NP, the pronoun is pragmatically marked,
but in a functional sense, it's main function is not 'topicalizing' a noun
phrase at all, if one is allowed to point out that this is a structure that
breaks up or avoids a vav hahippux.

cf. gn 38.25 
(though i list this as a special literary/dramatic use of the "pause"
effect of this structure. see buth in bodine '95 )

for interesting sequences, you might want to study the following
fluctuations:
jud 3.19, 24, 26  (in comparison to the repeated 'ehud' in 3.20, 20, 21,
23, 26)

braxot
randall buth