Biblical Hebrew Forum

["K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Dear James:

I hate to sound almost trite, but for me it is a combination of formal
attributes and contextual clues.

Unless a sentence is a verbal response in a conversation where missing
parts are taken from the context, all sentences have at least a
subject and a verb, usually an object as well as well as other parts
of the sentence. Usually it is obvious which is which, in which case
the sentence can be read right off. Sometimes two, rarely three, words
have the formal characteristics that they could be either a verb or a
noun or another part of speech, in which cases the context almost
always answers which is which part of speech. Usually, as one is
reading along, he has the context in mind that predisposes what to
expect in idea communicated, hence he will choose which words will
provide which functions to make a continuation of the idea
communicated by the context. However, there are plenty of times that
as I read a verse, I stop, then go back to the beginning and change my
understanding of a word or words based on context and formal
characteristics of words. In order to do this, one needs to recognize
all forms and do so accurately, in spite of the often fluid spelling
employed by authors of that time.

As for pronouns, they are almost always explicit (if not always) with
the only question being which are being used in a sentence. But then
my understanding of explicit includes that the personal pronoun is
included in the form of the verb when there is no other subject. The
context, which can often be several verses away, has the identity who
or what is referred to.

Does this help?

Karl W. Randolph.

On 9/8/07, biblical hebrew <jcr.bhebrew AT gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I have a question for everybody which I would greatly appreciate _any_ help
> or suggestions on. One of the problems in any translation exercise is the
> resolution of pronouns (he/she/it/they) either explicit or implied (by verb
> forms). So the question I want to ask is the following. What techniques do
> you use to resolve who or what implicit and explicit pronouns are referring
> to in any given biblical Hebrew text?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------------------------------------------
>
> James Christian Read - BSc Computer Science
> http://www.lamie.org/hebrew       -  thesis1: concept driven machine
> translation using the Aleppo codex
> http://www.lamie.org/lad-sim.doc  -  thesis2: language acquisition 
> simulation