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  • From: Dr Dale M Wheeler <dalemw AT multnomah.edu>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] VSO vs SVO
  • Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 10:56:11 -0700

Peter Kirk wrote:


I'm confused. I can find no reference to Gross in my electronic copy of this
grammar, except in the acknowledgement and the references. Is my copy
incomplete? Is it missing footnotes in which Gross is referred to?

Here's the footnote in Ch 7 where they refer to Gross..but as I said, they don't give ANY of his data, etc., to help the reader decide if their decision is correct.

**************
58 Many of the views put forward here are based on the results of a major research project on the function of BH word order conducted by Walter Gross at the University of Tübingen. Some of these findings have been published, cf. Gross (1987a, 1987b, 1988, 1991, 1993a, 1993b and 1996). However, this grammar is by no means an exhaustive representation of the views of Gross. It also does not represent an uncritical acceptance of his linguistic terms of reference and research findings, for example, the term fronting is preferred to his term topicalization, His more nuanced distinctions of constituents, referred to as syntagms, are also not used.
***************

The text
as I have it certainly doesn't opt for SVO; it implies VSO, without actually
stating this, by treating as marked and classifying all variations from VSO.

No wonder I have been scratchin' my head trying to figure out what they are saying...you're absolutely correct, for after having (apparently) discarded the prime reasons that grammars have always claimed VSO for Hebrew, they make a passing comment towards the end of the chapter (when speaking about discourse issues), to wit:

*****************
Across languages, utterances with predicate focus are those that are the most unmarked as far as the sequence of clause constituents is concerned, e.g. in English it is the sequence subject-verb-object (SVO) and in BH and Arabic it is verb-subject-object (VSO).
****************

So after beginning with the claim that all other grammars have used the wrong reasons (viz., waw-prefixed verbs and pronounless verbs starting sentences) to come to the VSO conclusion, they then come to *exactly* the same conclusion, but they call it "PreVerbal Field" and "Main (ie., verb + everything else) Field". So what was the point of implying that VSO was wrong, but then following a VSO approach, but just using different terminology?? And linguistics wonder why people get frustrated with their introduction of whole new sets of terminology...

At any rate...thanks Peter...my headache is beginning clear up...


**************************************************************************
Dale M. Wheeler, Ph.D.
Research Prof., Biblical Languages Multnomah Bible College
8435 NE Glisan Street Portland, OR 97220
V: 503-251-6416 F:503-251-6478 E: dalemw AT multnomah.edu
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