Biblical Hebrew Forum

["C. Stirling Bartholomew" <jacksonpollock AT earthlink.net>]

On 9/28/04 4:26 PM, "David Kummerow" <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com> wrote:

> Consequently, these clauses are best viewed as having a
> detached or pendens phrase; and depending on whose theory you want to run
> with, the phrase is either topicalised, focused or contasted (alternatively
> kontrasted).
> 
> Your examples might then translate into Engish as:
> 
> "As for Esau, he is Edom" and "As for Yahweh, he is God".
> 
> What do you make of this?

David,

Using what was at hand,  I read Waltke/O'Conner (16.3.1-3). What strikes me
about all of this is how incomprehensible it would be to a third year
seminary student. When you start talking about focus or topic/comment you
are activating a cognitive framework which is inaccessible to 95% of
students who might have Waltke/O'Conner as their textbook for second year
Hebrew. 

When you say "focus" to Joe Seminarian he will probably think something like
emphasis, which is hardly an adequate understanding of what "focus" means.
The introduction of linguistics into the study of BH poses a problem which
isn't really solved by attaching a glossary to the grammar. It takes more
than a glossary to unpack the analytical models that give meaning to these
terms.

Joe Seminarian's inability to digest Muraoka,  Waltke/O'Conner, has brought
us *Arnold & Choi (2003), where we find old familiar notions like "emphasis"
and "pleonasm" cropping up in the discussion of verbless clauses and
pronouns. It isn't that the authors don't know better, they cite extensively
from the reference grammars. I suspect this is driven by pragmatic
considerations.

Thanks for all the discussion.


greetings,
Clay Bartholomew 

*A Guide to Biblical Hebrew Syntax  (ISBN:0521533481)
Arnold, Bill T.; Choi, John H. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003