Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

On Thursday 29 May 2003 12:43, Peter Kirk wrote:
> The fact of language is variation in constituent order. Constituent
> movement is a concept which depends on a hypothesis of one of the many
> Chomskys, that there is an underlying deep structure relative to which
> constituents may be moved in the surface structure. This hypothesis has not
> been proved, indeed it is probably unprovable. It may have proved
> productive for the analysis of some languages, but that does not imply that
> it has any cross-linguistic reality and is relevant to all languages.

Okay, how does variation in constituent order within the same language come 
about?  Does a language speaker store a nearly-infinite list of possible 
constituent orders in his or her brain and sift through the whole mess to 
formulate even the simplest of clauses?  Movement accounts for variation in 
constituent order in a much simpler way that corresponds much more closely to 
what we know of how the brain works, and it has not just "proved productive 
for the analysis of some languages," it has proven productive for both 
analysis, explanation and teaching of hundreds of languages, and actually 
fits the way that native speakers of any number of languages describe their 
own processes of forming clauses.  There will always be nay-sayers, but ISTM 
that movement has made a strong case for itself.

> So let's reformulate the question: why does Hebrew position the verb at the
> front when creating a so-called waw-consecutive clause, and why does it
> front the subject when creating a qatal/yiqtol clause? But that has turned
> an oversimplifying yes/no question into a rather more complex one.

Complexity isn't necessarily a bad thing.  So what's your answer to this 
question?

-- 
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur