Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 28/09/2004 17:41, C. Stirling Bartholomew wrote:

> ...
>
> What, therefore, does one say about "pleonastic" pronouns are they
> pleonastic?
>
> Gen. 36:8 ... (&w hw) )dwM
>
> 1Kings 18:39 ... yhwh hw) h)lhyM
>
> If we reduce these to English SVO propositions then the pronoun looks like
> it serves no syntactical purpose. I think calling these "pleonastic"
> probably reveals a weakness in the analysis/methodology.
>  

Well, (&W )DWM and YHWH H)LHYM would also be grammatical sentences, so 
the added HW) is syntactically unnecessary here, just like the added HW) 
or other pronoun in a sentence with a finite verb but no explicit 
subject. The syntactic analogy of course does not necessarily imply 
similar semantics.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/