Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Daniel Wagner" <dan.wagner AT netzero.net>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2001 3:42 PM
Subject: RE: _)aSHER_ in Ex. 3:14 (was "I AM")

> It's easy 
> to say "Because the phrase FUNCTIONS as a nominal, it IS a 
> nominal, but it's another matter to prove it grammatically.  I've 
> already been over this with Peter, and it's clear we're not going to 
> resolve it because we're beginning with two completely different 
> theories of grammar.  My child might use a telephone book as a 
> booster chair, but because it FUNCTIONS as a booster chair does 
> not mean it IS a booster chair. 

It's possible to confuse reference with grammar. Grammatical function and 
referential function are not equivalent.

> If I say "Hand me the sky" it is not 
> a valid sentence simply because I said it.  

Grammatically it is valid, but it's not referential. This is the old thing 
with Chomsky regarding the information of a word vs. the reference of a word. 
Every part of a grammatically legitimate sentence conveys information, but 
its syntactic relationships may negate referentiality in the real world 
because those individual pieces of information do not correspond with each 
other. Thus, "Ambitious books run brightly," is a non-referential sentence 
because the information created by each word does not relate to the 
information of the other parts of the sentence, even though grammatically it 
is flawless.

In regard to our current discussion, the second and third 1CS verbs function 
as a name in a nominal slot, "I-AM," but they can still be referentially 
valid as verbs since we have other examples of such ("Jehovah-Jirah," etc., 
but not really YHWH even if it is based on a verb etymologically), and since 
we can conceive of the idea of a person identifying himself in terms of 
constant activity or the being of something (at least for God). The problem 
thus relates more to the grammatical level, since we don't expect a verb as a 
name. It can certainly happen, though, so maybe we should consider the latter 
two _)EHYEH_'s *referentially* as verbs (in the non-linguistic sphere) but 
*grammatically* as nouns (in the linguistic sphere). Does that help?

Dan Wagner




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