Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

I'd be interested to see that.  Is it still available?

> 
> Hi,
> I took a couple of classes in my graduate student days in
> linguistics at UM with a fellow who studied at 
> MIT with Chomsky and indeed was a Chomsky clone.
> He was of the opinion, and taught, that every language
> was at its base SVO. He had a slew of proofs.
> I wrote a paper taking each one of the proofs of SVO and
> showed that biblical Hebrew was VSO at its core.
> (Someone else showed it for Welsh.)
> 
> Liz
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Dave Washburn [mailto:dwashbur AT nyx.net]
> > Sent: Tue, November 13, 2001 2:21 PM
> > To: Biblical Hebrew
> > Subject: RE: b-hebrew digest: November 12, 2001
> > 
> > 
> > > Hebrew word order is (usually) V-S-O. Verb, subject, object.
> > > Greek word order is (usually) S-O-V, Subject, object, verb. 
> > 
> > Well, maybe and maybe not, particularly for Hebrew.  The main 
> > reason that it is often asserted that Hebrew order is VSO is 
> > because of the predominance of the wayyiqtol form in the Bible.  
> > This does not mean, however, that VSO was the "normal" word 
> > order in conversational classical hebrew was VSO, merely that in 
> > narrative prose that's the order we have preserved most often.  My 
> > own view is that the wayyiqtol is the result of a transformation that 
> > moves the verb to first position from a "base" SVO order.  But 
> > that's just my view.
> > 
> > Dave Washburn
> > http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
> > This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know what 
> > to do with it.
> >                   -Emerson
> > 
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> 


Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know what to do with 
it.
                  -Emerson