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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Deut. 4:10 )$r
  • Date: Fri, 8 Oct 2004 09:05:07 -0500

Dear Clay,

I read the "Headlessness and Extraposition" paper and was not convinced. Holmstedt's results seemed poorer than the normal view of the clauses. There is less intelligence expressed by his alternatives. One discussion he had, where he preferred "when" to "if," seems empty since "when" and "if" can be functional substitutes. The 1 Kings 3:12 example seemed particularly odd (God already viewed Solomon as unique). The better solution seems to be to regard )$R as a linking word that is open to a number of functions depending on the context. Yes, I like the final/result interpretation of )$R in Deut 4:10.

The leftward shift versus rightward shift distinction is new to me and did not seem to mean much. What difference does it make which direction one sees the phrases shifting? A person conceives a sentence in his mind to keep words near other related words. Couldn't one might shift words either direction? The leftward versus rightward concept seems to build on the notion of a set grammatical sentence skeleton, but I am not sure that there is such a thing. Take this example

We met a man on the street who was wearing a yellow suit.

The argument was that this is really leftward movement of "on the street" rather than rightward movement of "who was wearing a yellow suit." What skeleton demands that the movement be leftward or rightward? To have "on the street" at the end would create ambiguity. The point is certainly not to say that "a man was wearing a yellow suit on the street." I guess the distinction was not even necessary to Holmstedt's concept of extraposition in Hebrew. But the shifts he shows in Hebrew actually seem to be rightward from an English perspective:

And to Joseph were born two sons before the years of famine came, who Asenath bore to him.

The relative clause at the end of the sentence seems to have been moved rightward, rather than "before the years of famine came" being moved leftward. And the issue is that "before the famine came" modifies "were born" rather than "bore." The words might seem to modify "bore" if they were at the end of the sentence. But really nothing seems to have been moved rightward or leftward, since the information about Asenath is extra data that doesn't fit into the structure of the main clause.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard



R. Holmstedt* argues that )$r does not introduce final/result clauses contra
Waltke/O'Conner #38.3b.1. How would you read the function of )$r in:

Deut. 4:10 w)$m(M )t-dbry )$r ylmdwN lyr)h )ty

What do you folks think of this?

Holmstedt papers are available here:
http://www.uwm.edu/%7Erdholmst/CV.htm

While I have no more sympathy for minimalism after reading four of
Holmstedt's papers than I had previously, I will say that they are well
written and worth reading and certainly some response from the linguists on
this list concerning his main thesis in "Headlessness and Extraposition"
would beneficial for the rest of us.

* 2001. " Headlessness and Extraposition: Another Look at the Syntax of
[asher]." Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 27(1):1-16.





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