Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

i really don't know what happened to that post, Trevor. maybe it's still 
out there... or maybe i just goofed. ;-)

anyway. two important points, supplemental re: nunation:

(1) the prosodic determination is much greater and distorting than i 
imagined. unfortunately, my database had fields for accent and pause 
(y/n), but not end of clause <sheepish grin>: in fact, this is crucial for 
understanding the behaviour of nunation in subordination.... for a good 
example of prosodic determination, see job 13:7-10

(2) negation and mood crucial. using english glosses, found a clear 
threefold distinction:
(i) must, do, imperative; interrog. ha
(ii) can/could, will/would, shall/should/ought
(iii) may(not)/might(not); let(not), have

pattern: (iii) is insensitive to negation; (i) licenses nunation, but its 
negation does *not*; (ii) the mirror image (e.g., no nunation with sense 
"can", but nunation licensed for cannot).

so for example interrogative ha licenses nunation, subject to prosodics, 
halo does not.
curious pattern, but with crosslinguistic connections.

i'll be trying to write this up soon. what i'm trying to do now is see if 
there is a *diachronic* pattern for loss of nunation over time.

sholom,
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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