Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Numberup AT worldnet.att.net]

Nice exercise, Peter.  And if that's the way the Almighty put  it to Moses, 
it may
explain his reluctance to go to the elders of Israel and to Pharaoh:  "Now 
listen
here!  I've got this neat grammar lesson for you....."   It might also be why 
Pharaoh
declared, "I don't know this YHWH at all! And don't even think about taking 
my slaves
anywhere!"

(Said tongue-in-cheek, of course.)    :)

Solomon Landers

Peter Kirk wrote:

> Dave, I don't want to get into further argument between prescriptive grammar
> (this is right, this is wrong) and descriptive grammar (the language is what
> people actually speak, not what the teachers say they should speak) as that
> is irrelevant to the main point. (However, I do object to your arrogant
> defence of a debatable position in the words "the fact - yes it is a
> fact -". I was just reading on another list of someone who disliked
> generative grammar because its proponents are seen as arrogant. This would
> seem to confirm that prejudice.) I am not trying to argue that the grammar
> here is anything outside the common Hebrew usage, though perhaps Dan is.
>
> So let me try to explain my view in terms which at least approximate to the
> generative grammar which you approve of. The following tree is designed to
> work with a fixed space font. This is how I would
> parse )EH:YEH ):A$ER )EH:YEH according to Dan's understanding of )EH:YEH as
> a name:
>
>         S
>        / \
>       / Complement
>      /   /     \
>     /   /       NP
>    /   /       /  \
>   /   /       /    S
>  /   /       /    / \
> P   V       C    P   V
> |   |       |    |   |
> 0 )EH:YEH ):A$ER 0 )EH:YEH
> I     am  named "I   am"
>
> (Note: the gloss "am" is for simplicity and not intended to indicate my
> position on the present-past-future debate.)
>
> Actually the tree looks just the same on the more traditional "I am that I
> am" understanding, it is just the English glossing and the meaning which is
> different. The name is (at least arguably) not just the verb )EH:YEH but the
> whole sentence consisting of this verb form and the elided pronoun. As I
> understand it (though without reading all of this correspondence in detail)
> Dan is taking ):A$ER, normally a complementiser or relativiser (C), as some
> kind of indicator that what follows is a name. Even if there were no ):A$ER
> and no elided pronoun, I would still parse something like:
>
>    NP
>    |
>    V
>    |
> )EH:YEH
>
> i.e. )EH:YEH is a verb at a lower level, but functions as a noun phrase at a
> higher level.
>
> Now how does that pass for generative grammar?
>