Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

Hi,

word order isn't a problem. If you have multiple word orders you can define
multiple rules. You just define whatever rules the data supports whatever
the language. However, at a higher level of grammar, the discourse level,
word orders are not as arbitrary as they may seem. Word order, in many
languages, expresses what in English is expressed by accenting an emphasised
word or phrase. There may be contextual reasons for producing this kind of
emphasis. Defining a contextual rule set that captures these nuances of a
language would be challenging. You raise a good point. However, this is all
a little too premature. If we've already got to the point where we are
worrying about rules at this level then you already have a pretty darn good
grammar. I foresee many lower level problems is properly defining rules for
smaller chunks of language before we could even dream of being able to boast
we are only left with these high level problems.

James Christian