Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ian Hutchesson" <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

>You have made indications like this in other posts on this subject, and each
>time I was away from my host account for this list.  Why is it that you see
>SV(0) sentences as free range or dependent?  I admit that they generally
>slow down the forward movement of the discussion or story, but they are
>indeed full independent clauses from everything that I have studied.  Could
>you explain you basis for appearing to think otherwise?

Again, Paul, I'm trying to deal with a linguistic 
phenomenon in my naive way in a linguistic context, 
which indicates that VSO is the normal word order 
and that SVO needs ulterior explanation. 

Part of that context is the text which starts the 
creation with God saying "Let there be light". 

My thought may be that it is part of a discourse, 
though not a subordinate clause, but not something 
that stands outside the discourse.

I'm not wedded to the idea and I may simply be 
wrong.


>Also, because I'm not sure that you are still at the same position that you
>were when you restarted this thread (I'm sure you realize that this is a
>perenniel discussion), 

My original post contained the word "encore"!

>could you give us a suggested translation of Gen
>1:1-3?  Sometimes this American doesn't seem to think like you Australians!

This is obviously not a literal translation as often 
they cannot render the idea in the target language:

At the beginning of God's creating the heavens and the 
earth, when the earth was without form and empty, and 
darkness over the deep, and as the wind of God hovered 
on the waters, God said, "Let there be light"...

or 

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the 
earth, when the earth was without form and empty, and 
darkness over the deep, and as the wind of God hovered 
on the waters, God said, "Let there be light"...

These contain different glues for the one English 
representation.


Ian