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  • From: David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Alter's translation (Was: Daniel 6:27 (timeindefinite) II)
  • Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 11:30:09 +1000



Karl,
If we do speak in terms of VSO or SVO etc., all that matters is statistics.
Statistically, Hebrew is VSO. It would be perfectly legitimate to
doubt that languages are to be categorised as "VSO", or that
statistics are relevant, but then the entire concept is gone and we
have to take a totally different method of describing syntax.
We could.
What we can *not* do however, is to say that "Hebrew can be both VSO
and SVO" or something like that, given the statistics that are simply
there.

But we could argue that verbal clauses are V-S and verbless clauses are S-Pred. See:

Buth, Randall. "Word Order in the Verbless Clause: A Generative-Functional Approach." Pages 79-108 in The Verbless Clause in Biblical Hebrew: Linguistic Approaches. Edited by Cynthia L. Miller. Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic 1. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1999.

Perhaps the competing motivations of the two different clause types were resolved in the direction of the verbless S-Pred as in later Hebrew. The competition would certainly have become greater as the participle was allowed a position in the verbal paradigm as a present tense.

Nevertheless, although the VS(O) view of the verbal clauses is by far the majority view, others do hold to SV(O) as the unmarked order in the verbal clause:

DeCaen, Vincent. "On the Placement and Interpretation of the Verb in Standard Biblical Hebrew Prose." PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1995.

Givón, T. "The Drift from VSO to SVO in Biblical Hebrew: The Pragmatics of Tense-Aspect." Pages 181-254 in Mechanisms of Syntactic Change. Edited by C. N. Li. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977.

Holmstedt, Robert D. "The Relative Clause in Biblical Hebrew: A Linguistic Analysis." PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2002.

Holmstedt, Robert D. "Word Order and Information Structure in Proverbs." MS, 2003.

Joüon, Paul. Grammaire de l'Hébreu biblique. Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1923.

Now I don't necessarily agree, only that the issue is more complex than simply one of statistics. The view that BH is VS(O) is often simply *assumed* by most (as Holmstedt reveals) rather than argued for.




Of course Hebrew allows for variation, but what we have to look at is
when this variation happens (in prose that is). It doesn't happen at
random. I am convinced that word order in prose is quite relevant to
syntax.
What did of course happen is that in later stages of Hebrew the
language turned into SVO, so that modern Hebrew is SVO.
Best regards,
herman



Regards,
David Kummerow.




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