Biblical Hebrew Forum

[c stirling bartholomew <cc.constantine AT worldnet.att.net>]

on 5/28/03 11:21 AM, Dr Dale M Wheeler wrote:


> 3.b. And I seriously question whether a language without the need for
> pronouns, nevertheless reserves a phantom slot for them.  This *certainly*
> is not true for Koine Greek!  But if the prefixed Waw is occupying a "slot"
> and the pronoun is occupying the second "phantom" slot, doesn't that mean
> that the verb is normally in the *third* slot??

I agree. This is a mistaken notion which plagues a lot of discussions of
Hellenistic Greek. If a constituent isn't required to make a well formed
clause then it is wrong headed to reserve a slot for that constituent when
it is absent. 

And like others who have contributed to this thread, I am suspicious of the
whole notion of "fronting" because it presupposes a standard constituent
order. The whole SVO/VSO  kind of discussion proceeds as if there is a
default constituent order and we just need to determine what it is. Might be
more useful to drop the assumption that Hebrew has a standard word order and
find a different way of forming the question.


on 5/28/03 3:30 PM, Liz Fried wrote:

>> 
>> (3) Liz: you don't know **anyone** who does Hebrew and Chomsky ... ?? ;-)
>> 
>> 
> IT's *very* Chomskyian.
> 
> Liz

And it is middle or late Chomsky, not Chomsky '59,'65 which a lot of vintage
generative syntax theory is based on. I read Liz's paper and concluded that
I don't understand Chomsky very well.


greetings,

Clay


 

--  
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062