Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Matthew Anstey" <manstey AT portal.ca>]

Gday all,

I have some questions regarding yachdaw "together."

Does anyone disagree with the classification of yachdaw as a Manner
Adverb (e.g. Waltke & O'Connor's p.659)? Typically Manner Adverbs can
be paraphrased "in a X manner," e.g. "in a *togethered / united
manner," but this seems intuitively odd to me.(Although perhaps this
option is suggested morphologically be the derivation of yachdaw from
yachad, "unitedness").

My question arises because of 2 Sam 12.3, "The lamb grew up with him
and his children together." The problem with the Manner Adverb
interpretation, is that it does not seem to be modifying the verbal
predicate in any way (*The lamb grew up in a united manner with him
and his children). It does not seem to tell us more about the
situation of how the lamb grew up, but rather it modifies the locative
prepositional phrase.

Put another way, if I said, "How did the lamb grow up?" one could not
answer "It grew up in a -yachdaw- manner". But if one said, "Where did
the lamb grow up? one could answer, "with him and his children
together." But since one could also just say, "with him and his
children." it suggests that it may not even be a locative adjunct, but
an extra-clausal / peripheral / tail constituent.

Such constituents can add further semantic specification to the
situation, and typically come after the clause, so this looks like the
best option to me. But I am interested in what others think.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

With regards,
Matthew Anstey