Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

david katav (note good BH word order)
>However, when it comes to Hebrew, I'm not convinced that we know as
much as we need to about the "basic" syntax of the language to be able
to sift out what are "violations" in poetry. Scholars can't even agree on
such basics as basal component order: VSO or SVO? >

Just because some scholars are not clear on what is happening doesn't
mean that others don't or can't know what is happening. Normally with
language, the understanding of the texts is already in place before
linguistic writeups. Linguistics is normally only a dispute on how best to
write up and describe the rules, not what the language means.


>There are good arguments for both. (I'm in the latter category,
if it matters.)
This is why I have chosen to restrict my own syntactic investigations to
prose. >

Sorry to hear about your trouble with SVO, though starting with prose is
the correct place to begin.
In main sentences in prose you will find good pragmatic reasons for any
Subject in front of the "remaining verbal clausal core". Pragmatic functions
with
Subjects typically include various 'topicalization' functions as well as
Focus.
[[Naturally, that does not apply to nominal/participial sentences, which in
fact
do use a Subject-Participle basic order.
For a fuller explanation of Subject-Participle order, see
http://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/verbless-clause-article/ ]]
Topicalization
functions include setting up a new topic chain, setting up a new unit, and
breaking up the sequentiality structure, typically for marked temporal
overlap
or backreference, but also for simple pause and dramatic effect.

As confirmation,
with finite verbal clauses you will find that when a clause uses a single,
non-Subject pragmatic-fronting order then the following clausal order is
... V-(presupposed)-Subject-Other... ('presupposed' is optional, highly
presupposed, typically pronominal material placed between Verb and
Subject, e.g. vayyomer elav ha-melex "..." where 'elav' is positioned as
highly presupposed). An SVO template would have produced X-S-V-O
after placing a pragmatic item in the "X".

Likewise, in subordinate clauses like ki, asher, im, you will find that if
anything is fronted for pragmatic reasons (and in subordinate clauses the
reasons are typically Focal), the following core is ... V-S-O. A person can
only generate from an underlying SVO template by using an extra ADHOC
rule, and you are aware what stigma attaches to 'adhoc' in linguistics.
That, and the pragmatics really does fit wonderfully tight when generated
from V-S-O. It is very satisfying to read pages and pages of text and
to pick up all of the pragmatic signals from Subjects and non-Subjects in
front of finite verbs.

Your starting with prose is interesting because it is specifically poetry,
not
narrative prose, where SVO and the ensuing pragmatics become more
frequent.

braxot
Randall

-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicallanguagecenter.com
Biblical Language Center
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