Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

david,

sorry, i'm moving my office, so i don't have palmer in front of me:
it's entitled "mood and modality", i believe, in the cambridge
textbooks in linguistics, late 1980s (1986?). should be section 5.5 or
thereabouts: coordination and mood.

basic facts in my survey, following up on suggestion in my thesis (the
part that everyone loves to hate), ch 9?

at least one language in each major family in africa (hebrew and
egyptian for afroasiatic) with consecutives.

1. always *two* consecutive/sequential forms.
2. two forms sensitive to realis/irrealis distinction (mood)
3. consecutive forms can be used without regular-tense head
4. morphologically part of modal system (looks like subjunctives, etc)
5. syntax patterns with modality if difference (hebrew major ex.)
6. can't be used with negation (in hebrew, still have syntax)
7. realis of pair basic "narrative tense"

pretty darn suggestive. my paper will bring together data from zulu,
swahili, fula and others if i can complete the survey by then.
conclusion, whatever else we want to say, crosslinguistic data
confirms palmers suggestion and my general approach, though still lots
to do. in good ol' fashioned government-binding, would be a feature of
COMP that forces the verb to raise (move-alpha).

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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The mind takes to a new idea the way the body takes to microbe:
It rejects it.  --P.D. Medawar