Biblical Hebrew Forum

[decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca (Vincent DeCaen)]

dear rodney,

i appreciate your enthusiasm! let me make you a proposal: a 
collaboration to produce a treatment for the nonspecialist... 
what do you think?

in the meantime, let me try this. consider the following examples:
        (1) Word order does make a difference.
        (2) Does word order make a difference?
i see a syntactic difference: word order. i see a semantic difference: in 
(2) there is "value added", a yes/no question. further, it's not random 
where the verb appears; and we must capture some relation between (1) and 
(2). the standard solution: posit construction (3):
        (3) Q word order does make a difference?

so, posit a rule whereby the verb must move to lexicalize the element "Q".  
the "Q" does all the semantic and syntactic work, and we have in effect a 
"verb movement" theory.

goal for biblical hebrew: distribute the semantic elements across the 
hebrew clause, such that verb movement gives the correct syntax and
semantics of the hebrew verb and clause. the model, in essence, will look 
no different that the one just given---in principle.

my problem since 1985 has been to explain the consecutive forms, 
especially weqatal, within this framework. i was suggesting that i have 
found a way to distribute the semantics so that the overall model works. 
two elements of the solution: 
        (i)  treat sequentials in terms of the category mood; 
        (ii) break down the semantics of "and", "if", "then", &c, &c, 
                so that i can distribute them to different places.

shabbat shalom,
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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