Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk" <Peter_Kirk AT sil.org>]

I agree with you on this one. This is what I meant by "complementiser",
which if I remember rightly is the correct technical term for what you are
describing: a "particle" which converts a whole sentence which follows (or
could be what precedes) into a phrase within a sentence - typically a noun
phrase or an adjective phrase, it could be an adverb phrase. (In Hebrew an
adverb phrase would be formed with a preposition attached to the
complementiser i.e. B.A):A$ER, K.A):A$ER etc). This is another way of saying
that the complementiser makes the sentence into a subordinate clause.
English "that" does much the same in a sentence like "I know that you are
right": "you are right" is a sentence on its own, and "that" converts it
into a noun phrase which is the object of "I know". I added the term
"relativiser" as I didn't want to take a position on this point: for ):A$ER
certainly can be a relativiser, as is English "that" in "the book that I am
reading". A relativiser is I think a specific type of complementiser,
converting a sentence to an adjective phrase. In English there is the
difference that the relativiser also fills a slot in the subordinate
sentence, here it is the object of "I am reading". I rather think
that ):A$ER does not generally fill a slot in the subordinate sentence, but
it can introduce an adjective clause, or also a noun clause. (In this it
works in the same way as "ki" in Azerbaijani.)

As for glossing ):A$ER, "that" would be the closest single English gloss,
but it would also be a good idea to leave it unglossed as its function is
syntactic.

Peter Kirk

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Wagner [mailto:dan.wagner AT netzero.net]
Sent: 12 May 2001 07:09
To: Biblical Hebrew
Subject: Re: _)aSHER_ in Ex. 3:14 (was "I AM")

<snip>

See also my other post arguing that _):A$ER_ is not essentially a relative
pronoun nor even a relativiser, but a sign of subordination. Thus, without
intrinsic translatable meaning, just like _)ET_ as a sign of the accusative,
it's function is always and uniquely syntactic, and therefore *all* of our
"translations" of this word are actually only glosses of its syntactic
*implications* for the different structure of the target language. (Most
Hebrew function words have translatable meaning inherent within them, but a
few do not; we are not even glossing such words in our translations, only
their functional equivalents into good English.)

Dan Wagner

<snip>