Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

Eric,
Obviously I can't speak for anybody else, but I could use some examples to 
illustrate what 
you mean.

On 19 Jun 2010 at 6:55, Eric Inman wrote:

> Here's why I think word order can be a problem. It's true that if
> you have
> multiple word orders then you can define multiple rules. If you have
> a unit
> of speech where the next-level components can occur in different
> orders,
> then providing the multiple rules to represent the different orders
> is not a
> problem.
> 
> Where I think there might be a problem is when you have two or more
> units of
> speech whose components are intermingled with each other and can
> be
> intermingled in many different ways. It's true that you can still
> define
> multiple rules to handle this situation, but the problem is that the
> number
> of rules required to represent all of the permutations can get out
> of hand.
> At this point it appears that a generative grammar ceases to be a
> useful
> model for describing the language, and I think there are probably
> other
> models that would be more useful. I think this situation arises in
> Greek but
> I don't know if it would arise in Hebrew.
> 
> I think whether or not this issue is premature would depend on
> whether or
> not this is already known to be a problem in Hebrew. If it is, then
> bringing
> it up now might allow people to avoid repeating steps that have
> already been
> taken and instead move more directly to seeking a better approach
> to
> handling what would be a known problem.
> 
> What do you think?


Dave Washburn

http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur