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  • From: DrJDPrice AT aol.com
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Species of Genitive
  • Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 16:14:35 EDT

Dear Listers:
I rarely post messages to this list, although I regularly monitor the daily
digest. But this topic grabbed my attention. I teach Hebrew syntax by means
of my own text-linguistic model that employs semantic restraints. I agree
that
the so-called genitive categories have little exegetical value. I have come
to the conclusion that all noun phrases are derived from a noun in
deep-structure restrained by a dependent clause.

N|S(N) ==> N(phrase)

This notation means: Noun "N" such that clause "S" is true about "N"; this
deep-structure information is transformed into the surface-structure
"Noun(phrase)." S may be a simple clause, a paragraph, or even a discourse.
Whatever
its content, S is old information contained in the preceding context of the
discourse, or in common knowledge. The author assumed that his readers knew
the
content of S, so he was free to simplify the information to phrase form.

Genitive noun phrases are derived from the following form of the above rule:

N1|S(N1, N2) ==> N1 + N2(gen)

The content of S declares the relationship of N1 and N2, and is what is
exegetically interesting. Sometimes S may lend itself to a category label,
but
often it doesn't, explaining why we have so much trouble with categories. I
teach my students to forget categories and to look for S. This has been quite

successful in getting students past the categories they learned in Greek, and

into semantics of the text.

James D. Price
Prof. of Hebrew and OT
Temple Baptist Seminary
Chattanooga, TN





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