In a previous post, I (RDH) partially based my analysis of the syntax of Gen 1.1 within the larger structure of Gen 1.1-3 on the existence of examples where a wayyiqtol clause has a Topic-fronted Prepositional Phrase that is located before the wayyiqtol, such as Gen 22.4 (1).

(1) Gen 22:4 בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁ֗י וַיִּשָּׂ֨א אַבְרָהָ֧ם אֶת־עֵינָ֛יו וַיַּ֥רְא אֶת־הַמָּק֖וֹם מֵרָחֹֽק׃
‘On the third day, Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from afar.’

In this post, we follow that description of Gen 1.1-3 with additional supporting data and analysis.

In Gen 22.4, there is no other verb than וישׂא for the initial PP ביום השׁלישׁי to be related to. Thus, unless one proposes that the PP is a complement within a null Subject, null copula clause, e.g., ‘(It) (was) on the third day’, the only alternative (I can think of) is to take the PP as an adjunct of וישׂא that has been fronted as a (scene-setting) Topic. (On the nature of Topic-fronting, see the discussion in Holmstedt 2009, here.)

If we are correct in the fronting analysis of the PP, it leaves the ו on וישׂא in an interesting place—just sitting there between the fronted adjunct and the verb. Some might be tempted to argue that this supports seeing the waw as an integral part of the complex wayyiqtol verb. Such a view of the wayyiqtol has been taken in Hebrew studies.

But we do not find this option compelling. First, all things being equal, it is simpler to take the form at face value: the waw is a waw and the yiqtol is a yiqtol (on the gemination, see Holmstedt 2009:125, n. 32 and sources cited there). Second, we point to other places where the waw sits at phrase edges, e.g., in apposition (2), at the beginning of parentheses (3), after a fronted phrase (4) and between left-dislocated constituents and the clause proper (5).

(2) 1 Sam 17.40 וַיִּקַּח מַקְלוֹ בְּיָדוֹ וַיִּבְחַר־לוֹ חֲמִשָּׁה חַלֻּקֵי־אֲבָנִים מִן־הַנַּחַל וַיָּשֶׂם אֹתָם בִּכְלִי הָרֹעִים אֲשֶׁר־לוֹ וּבַיַּלְקוּט
‘And he took his staff in his hand and he chose for himself five smooth stones from the ravine and he put them in the shepherds’ bag he had, that is, in the pouch’ (see Waltke-O’Connor §39.2.1b #6)

(3) Gen 14.13 ‏וְהוּא שֹׁכֵן בְּאֵלֹנֵי מַמְרֵא הָאֱמֹרִי אֲחִי אֶשְׁכֹּל וַאֲחִי עָנֵר וְהֵם בַּעֲלֵי בְרִית־אַבְרָם
‘he [=Abram] was dwelling at the Oaks of Mamre, the Amorite, brother of ‘Eshkol and brother of ‘Aner (they were covenanters of Abram’s)’

(4) 2 Kgs 16.14 וְאֵת הַמִּזְבַּח הַנְּחֹשֶׁת אֲשֶׁר לִפְנֵי יְהוָה וַיַּקְרֵב מֵאֵת פְּנֵי הַבַּיִת
‘And the bronze altar that was before Yhwh he removed from the front of the Temple … ‘

(5) Gen 17.14  וְעָרֵל זָכָר אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יִמּוֹל אֶת־בְּשַׂר עָרְלָתוֹ וְנִכְרְתָה הַנֶּפֶשׁ הַהִוא מֵעַמֶּיהָ
‘And as for the uncircumcised male whose foreskin is not circumcised—that person shall be cut off from his people’ (see Joüon-Muraoka §176g-l)

These examples point to a broader and deeper generalization than the wayyiqtol=verb option provides. The waw in each of the examples in (2)-(5) does not coordinate two equal constituents, as prototypical coordination does, but marks the “edge” between two constituents. In no case is it syntactically necessary, which is why we suggest it is a pragmatic function of the waw used to facilitate syntactic processing. As such, it falls into a similar (although not identical) use of the waw that C. L. Miller discusses in her 1999 article on the use of waw at the beginning of direct speech.

Let us now turn back to the structure of Gen 1.1-3, specifically the role of the initial PP בראשׁית in the larger structure (vv. 1-3) to which it belongs. I partially rested my analysis on the PP-ויהי structure I mentioned at the outset of this post. Such Topic-fronted PPs serve to situate the following action or event in a specific temporal or locative context. This structure often follows a preceding ויהי that is syntactically unconnected. The first ויהי is the use of ויהי as a discourse marker, often used to signal scene transitions.

Certainly, ויהי can function as a true copular verb, and it also functions (although rarely) as the existential verb. But the ויהי (specifically the 3ms form) may also stand separately and function as a discourse-marker of the temporal location of the following information (this is also true for the irreal-future והיה, but that is for another post). Generally the discourse usage of ויהי will be obvious from the lack of any clear subject or complement.

To find out just how many of these discourse ויהי exist in Genesis, we did a simple search in our syntax module within Accordance. There were 59 hits in Genesis.

Discourse ויהי (search and results)

In the 59 examples, what follows the discourse ויהי is a PP (either with NP complement or Infinitival Phrase complement) [53x], a adjunct כי clause [5x], or one case of an independent clause [15.17]. In all but 15.17, the fronted phrase/clause is an adjunct within a following clause, most of which are wayyiqtol clauses (i.e., PP-wayyiqtol).

To find out what percentage these examples constitute within the book of Genesis, we did a simple morphological search for 3ms “wawConsecutive” (in Accordance parlance) and there were 122 hits. This means that the discourse ויהי accounts for 48.4% of the overall ויהי use in Genesis.

Finally, we searched for all the cases where an adjunct phrase is Topic-fronted and the following verb is a wayyiqtol (actually, we widened the search to look for all waw+verb combinations).

PP-Waw-Verb (search and results)

The results are interesting. They highlight that not only does a fronted PP adjunct occur with wayyiqtol verbs, but also with waw+irrealis qatal (3.5). They also highlighted a few of the cases where והיה (irrealis qatal היה) is used as a discourse marker (9.14, 27.40, 30.41, 47.23). More important for understanding Gen 1.1 are the cases where there is no initial discourse ויהי before the fronted PP (besides 1.1-3, see 3.5, 22.4, 27.34, 28.6, and 37.18).

In conclusion, the data support that validity of the analysis of Gen 1.1-3 (given in the previous post by RDH) with respect to this pattern: Topic-fronted PP (1.1) before a wayyiqtol (1.3). The examples that are particularly strong are those without an initial ויהי. Those examples, together with the discourse ויהי proposal, encourage the identification of many more, i.e., all those that follow a discourse ויהי.

Reference:

* Holmstedt, Robert D. 2009. Word Order and Information Structure in Ruth and Jonah: A Generative-Typological Analysis. Journal of Semitic Studies 54 (1):111-39.

* Miller, Cynthia L. 1999. The Pragmatics of Waw as a Discourse Marker in Biblical Hebrew Dialogue. Zeitschrift für Althebraistik 12 (2):165-91.

Introduction 

Genesis 1.1 is one of the most discussed verses in the Hebrew Bible. It is the first verse of the first book, initiates the Hebrews’ grand cosmology, and … contains an apparent grammatical crux. Phooey! You would think that one could get further than one word into the Hebrew Bible without a grammatical problem.

In fact, there is no problem, only a long-term misunderstanding of Hebrew grammar. In a 2008 article appearing in Vetus Testamentum (which revised a sub-section taken from my 2002 thesis), I argued for an analysis of the first verse that is grounded both in my long-term research on the Hebrew relative clause and comparative Semitic grammar. You can find the article linked here.

But recently I was criticized (on a blog), for failing to explain how my analysis of 1.1 fit into an interpretation of 1.1-3. So, although my argument for Gen 1.1 stands ably on its own, I will take the opportunity presented by the recent criticism to summarize my argument for 1.1 and provide my analysis of vv. 1-3.

The Nature of בראשׁית in Gen 1.1

In a nutshell, the interpretation and translation of the first complex word, בְּרֵאשִׁית, in the Masoretic text of the Leningrad Codex as an absolute temporal prepositional phrase, “in the beginning, …” is grammatically indefensible. Period. End of story.

If one wants to ignore the Masoretic vocalization and read the word with an articular vowel with the preposition, i.e., *בָּרֵאשִׁית, “in THE beginning,” as the Samaritan Pentateuch appears to do, fine. But one must not only recognize that such a choice is a departure from the Masoretic text, but also fails to explain the Greek Ἐν ἀρχῇ, which also lack the definite article.

What is the grammatically justified analysis? The noun ראשׁית is bound to an unmarked relative clause, “beginning-of (that/when) God created …”. This construction, which is found in Ge’ez, Old South Arabian, and Akkadian, must be as old as Semitic itself. In other words, the noun-bound-to-clause structure of ראשׁית ברא in Gen 1.1. finds a clear parallel in the Akkadian pattern di:n idi:nu “judgment (that) he judged/rendered” (Lipinski 2001:533-34; also see Deutscher 2001, 2002 for insightful linguistic discussion of origins of the Old Akkadian relative clause).

Here I should also mention the excellent study, Baasten 2007. Baasten covers much the same ground as I do in my 2008 VT article and it is unfortunate that our library did not receive the book until well after my article came out. I recommend reading Baasten’s study alongside mine.

The biggest difference between Baasten’s study, as well as all previous studies of the noun-bound-to-clause construction in Semitic, and my argument (in my thesis and in the 2008 VT article) concerns the semantics of this unmarked relative clause. I argue that using a bound form of the noun serving as the head of the relative clause is one strategy used to mark the relative clause as restrictive. The other strategy used to mark a Hebrew relative as restrictive is to omit the relative word, i.e., an unmarked or asyndetic relative clause. Interestingly, both strategies are used in בראשׁית ברא! That is, Gen 1.1 is doubly-marked as a restrictive relative clause, meaning that this particular ראשׁית cannot be identified without the information given within the relative. It is the particular ראשׁית during which God created the heavens and the earth. It is not an absolute ראשׁית, “THE beginning”, but just one specific ראשׁית that is being referenced in Gen 1.1.

That is the essence of my argument for Gen 1.1.

The Addition of the Preposition ב to בראשׂית

The difference between the basic di:n idi:nu syntax of ראשׁית ברא … and how Gen 1.1. really starts is the addition of the clitic preposition ב. The preposition takes ראשׁית, with its attached relative clause, as its own complement. The lack of the articular vocalization in the Masoretic tradition leaves open the question whether the ראשׁית should be translated as definite in English. Since ראשׁית is “in construct,” it depends on the definiteness of its clitic host to signal its own definiteness. The problem, of course, is that a clause is never marked as definite. So, we are left with some ambiguity: is בראשׁית ברא “in a beginning period that …” or “in the beginning period that …”? I suggest that the referential nature of the nominalized clause grounds the ראשׁית sufficiently to make it definite (specific, identifiable) and so using “the” in English, as long as no comma is inserted after “beginning,” is the legitimate translation.

As a whole, the addition of the ב preposition indicates that the noun ראשׁית and its relative clause have been assigned a role within a larger clause. Fronting a prepositional phrase as a scene-setting Topic before the main verb is a very common narrative strategy in Hebrew. Once need only look for examples like Gen 22.4, בַּיּוֹם הַשְׁלִישִׁי וַיִּשָּׂא אַבְרָהָם … “on the third day Abraham lifted …”. Moreover, once it is recognized that the vast majority a high percentage** of occurrences of וַיְהִי in BH narrative are discourse markers and not the main verb for a following prepositional phrase, the use of Topic PPs fronted before a wayyiqtol (past narrative) verb becomes ubiquitous at scene transitions in narrative. In other words, in Gen 4.3, וַיְהִי מִקֵּץ יָמִים וַיָּבֵא קַיִן…, the initial ויהי is a discourse marker and the PP מקץ ימים is a Topic-fronted temporal modifier for the verb ויבא, “At the end of (so many) days, Cain brought …”.

**According to the study in this new post, the discourse ויהי account for 48.4% of the total ויהי in the book of Genesis.

The Status of Verse 2

The Topic-fronted PP, main wayyiqtol verb pattern of Gen 1.1. is very well-attested in biblical narrative. So what role does verse 2 play, with its shift to a Subject-Verb (qatal/perfective) syntax? The simple answer is that it is a compound parenthesis, consisting of 3 clauses.

Parentheses are constituents (phrases, clauses, or even compound clauses, like Gen 1.2) that interrupt the flow of an ‘argument’, whether the argument is at its core chronological (i.e., a narrative) or logical (i.e., an exposition, as in, e.g., many psalms).

The easiest parenthetical constituents to identify are those that are syntactic interruptions, as in Esth 9.24, וְהִפִּיל פּוּר הוּא הַגּוֹרָל לְהֻמָּם וּלְאַבְּדָם “and one cast a ‘pur’ (it is the lot) to disturb them and destroy them.” In Esth 9.24, the null copula clause הוא הגורל “it is the lot” interrupts the clause within which it sits, separating the core of the main predicate from the adjunct infinitive clauses. Note, though, that parentheses cannot simply be thrown anywhere in its host clause. Rather, they must be placed at word or phrase edges. In other words, one never finds a parenthesis that intervenes between a preposition and its complement, since those two items either form a word (i.e., when the preposition is ב, כ, or ל) or a phrase in which one or both parts cannot stand on their own (i.e., even the preposition is orthographically separate, it still ‘leans’, i.e,. is cliticized, on its complement host). This also applies to collocations of verbs and complements. So, in the case of Esth 9.24, the parenthesis is inserted between the verbal complement and the verbal adjunct. We would not find a parenthesis intervening between the verb and its complement, because those two items combine to form a semantic unit.

A test for parenthesis is to ask these questions:

1. Does the clause in question add an event on par with the preceding event? If so, it is not likely a parenthesis.

2. Does the clause in question add information about a specific constituent in the preceding clause and yet does not appear to be a relative clause? Also, does the clause in question overlap with the preceding clause in almost all the constituents but adds, say, one new constituent? If either (or both) is true, the clause is likely a parenthesis. (Note that this condition distinguishes parenthesis from what are often taken as circumstantial clauses, where the overlap is minimal and the clause does not primarily modify a single constituent, but often an entire event or situation).

3. Does the structure of the clause in question differ from the structure of the clause on either side of it and do those two clauses share a similar structure? If so, and if it does not contribute an action or even on par with the preceding and following clauses (per #1), it may be a parenthesis.

With this description of and criteria for identifying parentheses in hand, we can now turn back to Gen 1.2. Syntactically, the compound clause in v. 2 sits between a Topic-fronted adjunct clause, בראשׁית…, and the main verb, ויאמר in v. 3. So far, so good—it sits at an appropriate phrase edge. Does it add an event on par with the preceding event (#1)? In the case of Gen 1.1-3, this criteria is hardly applicable, since the preceding event is also subordinate. But criteria #2 fits perfectly, since Gen 1.2 picks up with הארץ, which was first presented in v. 1, but then adds something more. So there is overlap, but also additional information. And finally, #3 seals the identification: there is clear structural difference in syntax between, on the one hand, v. 2, with its Subject-Verb order and, on the other hand, the noun-bound-to-clause in v. 1 and the wayyiqtol clause in v. 3. Now, v. 1 and v. 3 don’t share the same structure, but that’s because v. 1 a syntactic part of v. 3. Nonetheless, the shift we see in v. 2 is paralleled many times with other parentheses in the Hebrew Bible.

Conclusion

The overall analysis of Gen 1.1-3 given above has a long history in biblical scholarship. It is also the analysis adopted in Baasten 2007, although with the tie-in to relative clause restrictivenes. Here is a basic English translation that would serve as a starting point for working out one that reflects whatever translation theory one adopts:

“In the beginning period that God created the heavens and earth (the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the wind of God was hovering over the surface of the waters), God said, ‘Let light be!’”

Happily, within biblical scholarship, the analysis I have promoted above is being adopted by my peers (e.g., Mark Smith in his Priestly Vision of Genesis 1, and Ellen van Wolde, in her 2009 JSOT article). [John Walton's book was submitted in 2006, too early to have read either Baasten's or my articles.]

More troubling is the attitude exhibited in the critical blog I mentioned at the outset. The owner [RDH: the author requests attribution], Peter Kirk (gentlewisdom.org) presents himself as a representative of was formerly a professional Bible translator but is no longer; he wrote this:

But the traditional understanding of 1:1 has a history going back over 2000 years to LXX. To overturn such a tradition you will always need overwhelming evidence. And neither I nor the majority of professional Bible translators have seen that overwhelming evidence. So for the moment you need to accept that your position is considered one of the possible alternatives …

Beside the mistaken view of the LXX on Gen 1.1 (it does not reflect an article, just like the Masoretic vocalization; see above), what is disturbing about this comment is that professional Bible translators, to my knowledge, rarely have PhDs in biblical studies and are thus not experts in Hebrew grammar or Hebrew exegesis. [RDH: Peter Kirk has clarified what he referred to by professional translators—those who made English translations like the NIV11; this was not how I was taking him; see my comment below.] And yet, this one has clearly set himself up as a greater expert on the grammar, textual tradition, and literary features of Gen 1.1 than me, Martin Baasten, Mark Smith, Ellen van Wolde, and over a century of Semitists who understood the basic grammatical noun-bound-to-clause structure of Gen 1.1.

Disturbing, indeed, and not a good sign for the quality of the interpretation behind Bible translations done by “professionals” with this relationship to Hebrew grammarians.

[RDH: clarification in the comment below. I do not mean to disparage all professional translators, of both types, as I specify in my comment; rather, their respective skill sets indicate that one would think both would look to developments in Hebrew grammatical analysis. Hmm...digging self deeper hole. Oh well.]

References

* Baasten, Martin F. J. 2007. First Things First: The Syntax of Gen 1:1-3 Revisited. Pp. 169-88 in Studies in Hebrew Literature and Jewish Culture Presented to Albert Van Der Heide on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Martin F. J. Baasten, and Reinier Munk. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer.

* Deutscher, Guy. 2001. The Rise and Fall of a Rogue Relative Construction. Studies in Language 25 (3):405-22.

* Deutscher, Guy. 2002. The Akkadian Relative Clauses in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 92:86-105.

* Lipiński, Edward. 2001. Semitic Languages: Outline of a Comparative Grammar. 2nd ed. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 80. Leuven: Peeters Publishers.

* Smith, Mark. S. 2010. The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress.

* Wolde, Ellen J. van. 2009. Why the Verb ברא Does Not Mean ‘to Create’ in Genesis 1.1-2.4a. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 34 (1):3-23.

You may wonder why I am concerned. It’s not because I’ve had poor teaching results. Final exam results and the quality of research projects illustrate that my students are learning about as much as is possible in a term (indeed, they might say is that my “as much as possible” is actually “inhumanly” possible, based on how hard I push them!). Rather, what drives the survey and this post is my own dissatisfaction with how the course unfolds. I become … I hesitate to admit it … bored with my own techniques about half way through the term. There must be a better way (or ways)!

As with my undergraduate Biblical Hebrew courses, I am always looking for better techniques—techniques that are both more effective and more fun. For BH this motivated our second textbook, which recognizes the student interest in learning to “read Bible” but also tries to draw what we reasonable can from modern language techniques. The question is, can we do something similar for the less-commonly-taught ancient NWS languages? Is that even possible, given the nature of the evidence? For example, Ugaritic has a large corpus, but little narrative and very little vocalization. How could it be taught more “communicatively”. And if we could find a way, would the method serve our teaching goals (i.e., would the [mostly graduate] students learn enough of what we want them to learn)? [For a thought-provoking blog discussion of this issue on BH, I suggest starting here and following the various links.]

I wrote the simple survey to probe others who teach NWS languages regarding their goals, curricular structure, and pedagogical style. I received only 8 replies, but they were instructive and represented an interesting distribution (seminary and research university, North America, Europe, and Israel).

I used the survey comments to provoke a discussion at the just-finished MICAH gathering (that is, the Mainz International Colloquium on Ancient Hebrew**). Many commented and below I have summarized both the email survey responses.

** What a blast this event was! The level of expertise, and thus papers, on Hebrew and Semitic languages represented by the participants was impressive and inspiring. So much to learn …

I am indebted to the organizer, Dr. Reinhard Lehmann for inviting me to speak and participate in the panel discussion. I will also take this chance to thank publicly those who organized the event with Dr. Lehmann: Dr. Johannes Diehl, Dr. Anna Zarnacke, Kwang Cheol Park, Anna Schneider, Karoline Ehinger, and Editha Lefebre. Vielen Dank!

Summary of Survey Responses

Q #1: What languages do you teach? Which textbooks do you use (if any)?

- Ugaritic (Bordreuil-Pardee), Akkadian (using Huehnergard)

- Ugaritic, Phoenician, Canaano-Akkadian (= Amarna). No textbooks, per se—I write my own materials for each class that I distribute to my students, but mainly require the use of published grammar books and dictionaries.

- Hebrew (and very occasionally Greek)

- Ugaritic

- Mostly Sumerian, Akkadian, but within West Semitic only Amarna Akkadian. I will now use Tropper and Vita’s Das Kanaano-Akkadische der Amarnazeit.

- Introductory Syriac (Coakley, Robinson’s Paradigms and Exercises); Ugaritic (Bordreuil and Pardee’s Manual; Huehnergard’s unpublished Grammar; Aramaic (Rosenthal’s Grammar of Biblical Aramaic)

- Hebrew, Akkadian, Ugaritic, and sometimes Aramaic. For example, with Ugaritic I use (1) Huehnergard’s Outline, (2) Sivan’s Grammar, and (3) Pardee and Bordreuil’s Manual.

- Classical Arabic and Biblical Aramaic. For the Classical Arabic, I use Wheeler Thackston’s Introduction. For the Biblical Aramaic, no textbook.

Q #2: What is your pedagogical goal when you teach ancient NWS languages?

- I have two constituencies: (1) doctoral students in Hebrew Bible; (2) MA students wanting to go to NELC-style doctoral programs.

- How to study lesser documented languages out of their own scant data, limited (or complex) writing system, and comparative Semitics.

- For the intro level, the ability to read script and parse verbs

- To gain the rudiments of the language and to be able to negotiate an Ugaritic text together with the available tools.

- Syntactic and idiomatic parallels between Amarna Akkadian and better known NWS languages such as Biblical Hebrew.

- Emphasis on the linguistic and philological analysis of the texts as well as on issues of script and epigraphy. At the end of a course, students should be able to read, vocalize, and translate a text; parse all forms; and comment intelligently on questions of grammar and interpretation.

- To engage any piece of scholarship and produce philologically sound scholarship.

- To prepare students to be scholars of the language rather than fluent speakers of the language. For this reason, while most other languages in my department (including Modern Standard Arabic) are taught using a communicative method, my teaching focuses heavily upon grammar and translation.

Question #3: Is a foundation in a more well-known Semitic language (e.g., Hebrew, Arabic, Akkadian) a practical requirement for studying the lesser-taught NWS languages?

- Yes.

- I teach speakers of Israeli Hebrew, but they attend my Introduction to Semitic Linguistics beforehand.

- Yes, we teach Hebrew before Syriac, etc.

- I assume a knowledge of some Hebrew, or Arabic/comparative Semitic. Too much of our reconstruction of Ugaritic grammar and philology is founded on what we know of comparative Semitic, especially Hebrew and Arabic.

- All our students are required to have one or two years of Akkadian before they can take anything else. But only the students who have had Hebrew or Arabic (or substantial linguistics) do well with the Amarna Letters, due to the West Semitic morphosyntax. Students who have only had Akkadian require a lot of outside help, particularly with the verbal system and word-order issues.

- I require knowledge of a Semitic language (not necessarily Hebrew) for Ugaritic and Aramaic. Syriac has no prerequisite. Next time I offer Aramaic, I am considering having no prerequisite.

- Yes.

- A solid foundation in one of the more commonly taught Semitic languages is important. Similarly, students in my Classical Arabic course must spend a year learning MSA.

Question #4: Assuming some knowledge of Hebrew (or Akkadian), what would be (or is) your curricular strategy?

- I have not yet re-worked my Ugaritic syllabus in light of the Bordreuil-Pardee Manual, but in the past I used some homemade exercises while covering grammar for five weeks, and then spent the next quarter-and-a-half translating and discussing cultural and comparative issues.

- It depends on the language and on the time allocated for the course. In a yearly Ugaritic course, I tend to cover the grammar first (including reading some letters), and then have each student present a mythological text. For Phoenician, Ancient Aramaic and Amarna, we start from the very beginning to read texts.

- I teach the fundamentals of the language and poetics by combining grammatical presentation with reading text. I use primarily my own handouts and read mostly from the Kirta epic. … Teaching Ugaritic grammar is an engagement in theorizing and hypothesis-testing, and that, for me at least, is a good part of the fun.

- Topic-by-topic survey of the grammar (approx. 30 minutes per meeting) and then 1 1/2 hours for readings prepared by the students. Because Amarna is built on Akkadian word-stems, their grammatical discussions are usually contrastive: in Old Babylonian the form would be x, but to do the same thing in Amarna Akkadian, you do y. I like to stick to the Gubla letters, and then at the end of the course contrast them with a proper Middle Babylonian letter from Babylon itself.

- For Aramaic and Ugaritic, I usually give an overview of the grammar for several class periods and then jump into an inductive study of the texts. For Aramaic, I also give weekly quizzes for the first 5-6 weeks that cover vocabulary and paradigms (this is to encourage students to memorize forms in a more systematic way). For Ugaritic, we work through by genre. For Aramaic, we work by dialect moving chronologically (for the most part): Biblical Aramaic, Old Aramaic inscriptions, ‘Imperial’ Aramaic, Middle Aramaic (Targum Onqelos, DSS, Nabataean, Palmyrene, Old Syriac), Late Aramaic (JPA, Samaritan, CPA, JBA, Mandaic).

- A basic introduction to the Ugaritic grammar for a few weeks, which gives us the basic foundation to start inductively going through texts. We begin with letters and then do legal texts, after which we turn to mythological texts. The students must vocalize the texts and be prepared to explain why they vocalized as they did. All of this is with the caveat that vocalization is just a heuristic exercise that allows to analyze the text in more depth, and we cannot be sure that this is how any of this material would have been pronounced.

- I usually incorporate some of the more well-tread readings into the grammar (for Biblical Aramaic, sections of the Aramaic portions of Ezra and Daniel; for Classical Arabic, the Qur’an). After the first year, the focus shifts to a close reading of the texts with a review of grammatical points as needed.

Question #5: Assuming NO knowledge of Hebrew (or Akkadian), what would be (or is) your curricular strategy?

- Hard to say. I would surely have to de-emphasize vocalization of Ugaritic, which would make the course simpler in some ways. As it is, I tend to emphasize comparative Semitics in that class.

- I have never done that.

- Send students to introductory Hebrew first.

- Not done.

- Probably not possible.

- For Syriac, which has no prerequisite, we follow a textbook with graded lessons. If I decide to teach Aramaic without a prerequisite, I will do the same.

- I probably would not accept such students into the class. If I were in a position to teach a whole class of students with no knowledge of Hebrew, I would do it the same way, except that I would go through the introductory phase of the grammar, using Huehnergard’s Outline, more slowly and systematically.

- The focus would shift exclusively to grammar, with a review of the state of the field in Comparative Semitics. Because students are likely to encounter serious problems with certain aspects of the morphology and syntax of Semitic languages (such as case markers in Arabic and Akkadian, ablaut plurals in Arabic and Geez, or the TAM system in just about any Semitic language), I feel that it is sometimes useful to give a bird’s eye view of how these phenomena function throughout the family.

This ends the survey responses. After walking through them at MICAH, I asked the audience the following summary questions to promote a good discussion:

1. What is your context? (E.g.., do all of your students already know Hebrew, Arabic, or Akkadian?)

2. What are your goals for the NWS language course? Comparative Semitics or ANE/Mediterranean history, etc.?

3. How do we teach these languages so that the texts are read sensitively (i.e., not as Hebrew-in-another-script?)

Perhaps these will help you also to sort through the issues as you prepare your courses. Although the discussion at MICAH was thoughtful, for my concerns a comment that hit the nail (or one of them) on the head was by Dr. Regine Hunziker-Rodewald. She indicated that she struggles with the balance of grammar and literary analysis, since her goals are not comparative Semitic or grammatical, per se, but for her students to be able to use the texts intelligently in historical reconstruction. I also feel this challenge acutely, but from the opposite direction. While I do have literary, historical, and religious/ritual interests in the texts (yes, it’s true), my research interests are primarily linguistic (as is my facility with the ever-increasing body of secondary literature).

I now open the discussion to other instructors as well as those who may not have taught NWS languages (yet) but have studied them formally. I look forward to a discussion in the comments.

In our first post we provided links to our two articles (Cook’s, Holmstedt’s), which are forthcoming in a volume titled Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew (edited by Ziony Zevit and Cynthia Naudé-Miller; Eisenbrauns). These articles are revisions of papers given at the 2009 NAPH meeting at the annual SBL meeting. The keynote speaker at the meeting was the linguist B. Elan Dresher (University of Toronto), who masterfully discussed methodological issues in working with the linguistic features of “old” texts. Elan is a colleague of mine at Toronto and has graciously allowed us to post his revised paper (which will also be included in the Diachrony volume).

The decision to post this paper comes on the heals of a rather energetic exchange between Ronald Hendel and Rezetko, Young, and Ehrensvärd at the Bible and Interpretation site: see here for Hendel’s criticism and here for Rezetko et al’s response. Note also the vigorous and often pointed exchange in the comment sections of both posts!

As I (RDH) indicated in my comments (##4, 12) on Rezetko’s response at the B&I site, it is deeply troubling that Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd are following up their first work, which contains methodological flaws and a tremendous amount of circular chop logic, with a second volume that will supposedly focus on language. (They repeatedly claim that their first volume was focused only on texts, not language, but the very fact that they propose to replace the ancient-standard-late BH chronological model with a concurrent dialects model indicates very clearly that they make just as large claims about language as they do about texts).

YRE’s responses to the linguists and Hebraists who have interacted with their Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts show that rather than take the opportunity to learn from those who have been trained in linguistics, they are merely adding a linguistic sheen to their rhetoric and repeating the same claims.

Hence, the addition of Dresher’s article to our part of the exchange. Click here for the PDF.

The direct link to the PDF article is here.

In brief, I argue that Biblical Hebrew can and should be classified as a Subject-Verb language from a cross-lingusitic typological perspective. Moreover, I challenge those who hold the traditional Verb-Subject analysis to defend their position with linguistic arguments. Recently I heard the issue of BH word order characterized as follows: “Everyone believes that Hebrew is VS except for this one fellow Holmstedt.”  This is depressing but not surprising. Though no one has actually argued the VS position from a linguistic perspective (of any sort), the tradition holds for those unwilling to have what they were taught in introductory Hebrew turned on its head.

It is the essence of scholarship to question previous positions using newer analytical frameworks. To remain stubbornly attached to the 18th-century views of Gesenius, as brilliant as he was, is the type of attitude that so often makes Biblical Hebrew studies an embarrassment to those of us who do interdisciplinary scholarship. “I’ll keep thinking Hebrew is VS because … that’s what I was taught” or “… that’s what it seems to me when I read texts” are not acceptable scholarly responses. It is incumbent upon those who think my SV argument is wrong to make the argument using the tools of modern linguistics. Tradition is not an argument (at least not in scholarship).

In my previous word order studies I took a softer rhetorical approach, hoping to woo both senior and junior scholars by the linguistic and aesthetic appeal of my analysis. No more soft wooing. I am coming to the realization that I am probably not going to get through to those who stubbornly hold to the VS position despite sound linguistic arguments to the contrary. So now I am waiting for scholars who are willing to engage linguistics as it is currently formulated. Whoever you are, I invite you to embrace my analysis, contribute to its perfection, or dismantle it. Regardless what you do, if you make a good linguistic argument, I will applaud you. Indeed, I look forward to it!

I have thrown down the gauntlet. Will someone accept the challenge?

Therefore we are happy to announce that we are now releasing the grammar in pdf form for use beyond the test group.

BHII Lessons

BHII Readings

We are releasing the 2-volume BHII (Lessons and Readings) now and will follow them up later this summer with the completed instructor’s manual and also a draft of the intermediate Reader, tentatively titled Biblical Hebrew: An Illustrated Reader (BHIR), which will include the Elijah and Elisha stories in Kings.

At the same time, the manuscript will be going to the publisher shortly so that we can provide a professionally typeset, bound version, along with (we hope) many other supporting materials such as an epub version, hi-resolution pdfs of the illustrations for electronic presentation use, and professionally recorded audio to use along with the materials.

Note that the PDF files posted above have been optimized due to size concerns. Those who sign up at our forum for BHII (bhii.proboards.com) will have access this year to the full size files, which maintain a higher resolution for course printing and electronic presentation. (Please contact us at bibhebii-[at]-gmail-[dot]-com for access to the forum.)

Our previously completed grammar, Biblical Hebrew: A Student Grammar (BHSG), remains freely available in pdf form. Thanks to some sharp-eyed users it has gone through another pass of corrections this summer.

This is the last post in my 6-part series on basic word order in Biblical Hebrew. My posts have focused on a good linguistic methodology for determining basic word order and the data have been taken only from the book of Genesis. My posts (and the article that they have come from) are simply the beginning. This sort of analysis should be applied to every biblical book (I’m getting there!).

Although at the end of the last post I indicated I would provide ‘my story’ of how to account of the word order variation in Hebrew, typologically and diachronically, I decided that adding this component did not fit the methodological focus of the series. I will add a future post that summarizes my own views on Hebrew word order. Indeed, since I’m giving a paper in the Fall in Germany on this issue, I’ll probably want to use this blog as a sounding board.

As for this series, I welcome any methodological challenges, whether you see holes in my argument or have an alternative model drawn from general linguistics. Comment about it. Post it on your blog and let me know. There has never been (as far I can see) an extended, linguistically informed discussion of word order issues in ancient Hebrew and it’s high time we begin!

 On the VSO Language Type and Biblical Hebrew

According to Carnie and Guilfoyle, in their preface to a volume dedicated to Verb-initial (VSO and VOS) languages, these languages “make up about 10% of the world’s languages” (2000:3). Yet, the Verb-initial group has generated a good deal of linguistic literature (mostly non-generative until the collected articles in Carnie and Guilfoyle 2000 and the follow-up studies in Carnie, Harley, and Dooley 2005). Even in Greenberg’ s 1963 study he isolates the VSO type as a primary class by centering many of his universals around features of VSO languages: for example, Greenberg’s Universal 3 states that “Languages with dominant VSO order are always prepositional” (78) and Universal 6 states that “All languages with dominant VSO order have SVO as an alternative or as the only alternative basic order” (79). In fact, throughout Greenberg’s forty-five Universals, the only one that occurs in VSO but not in SVO is Universal 9, which concerns the position of question particles: initial particles occur in prepositional languages and final particles occur in postpositional languages. Greenberg’s corpus of thirty languages included no SVO type that used initial particles. This, though, simply points to the inadequacy of Greenberg’s small corpus, which typological studies have since tried to rectify. Carnie and Guilfoyle list nine features—listed in (13)—as previously noted correlates of VSO order, which as a group distinguish VSO from SVO and SOV languages.

(13) VSO correlates

a. head initiality

b. prepositional

c. post-nominal adjectives

d. preverbal tense, mood/aspect, question, and negation particles

e. inflected prepositions

f. left-conjunct agreement

g. Lack of a verb “have”

h. copular constructions without verbs

i. “verbal noun” infinitives

Biblical Hebrew certainly contains most of these features: it is primarily head-initial (a) and prepositional (b), adjectives follow the nouns they modify (c), question and negation function words precede the Verb (d), it lacks a “have” verb, and the “verbless” clause (h) is common. Hebrew does often use “verbal nouns” (i), but not always (finite verbs are allowed in the same contexts) and not quite in the way that this feature is discussed Myhill 1985 (the source of this correlation). And while there are some apparent examples of left-conjunct agreement in Biblical Hebrew (Doron 2000), I have argued that these examples are not properly left-conjunct agreement and thus do not reflect this VSO correlate (Holmstedt 2009).

Although the list in (13) appears impressive, one of the goals of the articles collected in Carnie and Guilfoyle 2000, which became a challenge to those who contributed to Carnie, Harley, and Dooley 2005, was to determine whether these features (or any others) accurately reflect common properties of all VSO languages. The conclusion that the editors drew, after the arguments and data in all sixteen articles on a wide variety of languages were presented, was that no distinctive, universal properties of Verb-initial languages have yet been identified (2005:2).

One property of some Verb-initial languages that has been discussed, even for Biblical Hebrew, is a diachronic shift to SVO. Aldridge (2010) traces just such a shift in Seediq, a VOS Atayalic language spoken in Taiwan. She argues that the basic mechanism for the VOS-to-SVO shift in Seediq is the reanalysis of a fronted Topic Subject to a non-fronted (argument-position) Subject. Similarly, Givón (1977) argues that Biblical Hebrew experienced a VS-to-SV shift from what he calls “early” (Genesis, Joshua, Judges) to “late” (Esther, Lamentations, Qoheleth, and Song of Songs) Hebrew.

Syntactic shifts like that in Seediq and, as argued by Givón, in Biblical Hebrew must be analyzed within a change-and-diffusion framework of language change (see Hale 2007 for an introduction; see Holmstedt forthcoming b for an application of this approach to Biblical Hebrew). Briefly, this means that changes occur due to the imperfect transmission of linguistic structures during the first-language acquisition process. The changes that survive by diffusions spread to others through acquisition or adult feature adoption and thus become part of the language’s record that is used to describe its grammar. Languages that witness a VS-to-SV shift via the reanalysis of a fronted Subject to a non-fronted Subject may also be influenced by another feature of the acquisition process: Verb-initial (VSO, VOS) languages may be more difficult to acquire than the Subject-initial (SVO, SOV) languages (Grüning 2002). If so, then it may be that first language learners in VSO contexts are hardwired for a predisposition to analyze a fronted Subjects as the normal Subject position.

Whatever continued research on the nature of Verb-initial languages determines—whether or not they share a set of features pointing to a common derivation, any VS language that experiences a diachronic shift to SV will almost certainly continue to exhibit Verb-initial features (other than the basic position of the Subject). If Biblical Hebrew, then, has experience a VS-to-SV shift, as Givón (1977) argues, both the VS and SV stages of the language will exhibit Verb-initial features.

Why is the typological classification of Biblical Hebrew word order important? Aside from simple accuracy in a description of the language’s syntax, the implications for assessing the pragmatic structure of ‘simple’ SV and VS clauses—and thus being able to interpret such clauses in a contextually sensitive way—is at stake. If Biblical Hebrew is a VS language (and SV is not a free alternative order), then all SV clauses must reflect the fronting of the Subject for clear reason, such as Topic or Focus-marking. On the flip side, if SV is the basic order, then 1) not all SV clauses need reflect a pragmatic role for the Subject, and 2) unless VS is a free alternative, then the few simple VS clauses that exist must either reflect Focus-marking on the Verb or some other reason motivating the Verb-fronting.

Well, that’s all folks. For the task of setting the study of biblical Hebrew word order on sound linguistic footing, I hope this series has been provocative and perhaps inspiring.

References

Aldridge, Edith. 2010. Directionality in Word Order Change in Austronesian Languages. Pp. 169-80 in Continuity and Change in Grammar, ed. A. Breitbarth, et al. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Carnie, Andrew, and Eithne Guilfoyle, eds. 2000. The Syntax of Verb Initial Languages. Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Carnie, Andrew, Heidi Harley, and Sheila Ann Dooley, eds. 2005. Verb First: On the Syntax of Verb-Initial Languages 73. Linguistik Aktuell / Linguistics Today. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Doron, Edit. 2000. VSO and Left-Conjunct Agreement: Biblical Hebrew vs. Modern Hebrew. Pp. 75-95 in The Syntax of Verb-Initial Language, ed. Andrew Carnie and Eithne Guilfoyle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Givón, Talmy. 1977. The Drift from VSO to SVO in Biblical Hebrew: the Pragmatics of Tense-Aspect. Pp. 184-254 in Mechanisms of Syntactic Change, ed. Charles N. Li. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Grüning, André. 2002. Why Verb-Initial Languages are Not So Frequent. Paper presented at the International Summer School in Cognitive Science. Sofia, Bulgaria, May 31.

Hale, Mark. 2007. Historical Linguistics: Theory and Method. Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics 21. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Holmstedt, Robert D. 2009. So-Called ‘First-Conjunct Agreement’ in Biblical Hebrew. Pp. 105-29 in Afroasiatic Studies in Memory of Robert Hetzron: Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics (NACAL 35), ed. Charles Häberl. Newcastle on Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars.

Myhill, John. 1985. Pragmatic and Categorial Correlates of VS Word Order. Lingua 66: 177-200.

I have been a bit slower putting up this post since I wanted to check and re-check my data, questioning my judgments as I went in order to produce the best possible results. My eyeballs now hurt more than ever. But, I still hope to finish off the last section by the end of the weekend. From my two or so readers, I covet input.

The Criterion of Pragmatics

The third, and final, criterion by which the raw frequency data is filtered concerns ‘pragmatic markedness’. Attention to the pragmatic features of a clauses is particularly significant for so-called ‘free-order’ languages like Hebrew, that is, languages exhibiting a great deal of word order variation. At the core of this approach is the recognition that the majority of language data contains pragmatically ‘marked’, or ‘non-neutral’, clauses. Even for languages that have a more rigid word order, such as English, pragmatics can produce extreme but grammatically acceptable examples, as with Into the room walked the Prime Minister, a VS clause with a fronted locative PP—certainly not basic order in English.

The operative pragmatic notions for Hebrew are Topic and Focus, both of which motivate the fronting of constituents, which in turn appears to motivate VS order (see Holmstedt 2009 for my model of information structure). In brief, Topic draws a constituent to the front of the clause to either 1) orient the reader/listener to which among previously established entities will now act or experience an event, or 2) set the scene with time or place adjunts (e.g., a temporal PP). Focus similarly draws a constituent to the front of a clause, but for a different reason: it is to contrast the fronted entity with other known or assumed (based on shared knowledge) entities with which it forms a contextually or logically established set. Importantly, whether or not a particularly entity has been previously established (and thus can be a Topic or makes sense as a Focus) is sensitive to the embedded discourse worlds (i.e., conversations) within the larger text. So, for instance, the fact that some person has been mentioned in the narrative does not necessarily establish that entity as available for Topic-status within a conversation embedded within the narrative.

(8) Distinguishing Discourse ‘Worlds’ within a Layered Text

Gen 38.22 ‫וְגַם אַנְשֵׁי הַמָּקוֹם אָמְרוּ לֹא־הָיְתָה בָזֶה קְדֵשָׁה

In (8), the SV clause does not present any Topic or Focus on the Subject. Although the entity אַנְשֵׁי הַמָּקוֹם has been invoked previously the larger discourse (v. 21), there it was invoked by the narrator, whereas here in v. 22 (8) the entity is used within a conversation between Judah and his servant cannot necessarily be taken as an established entity (and thus, available to carry Topic marking). Some entities are assumed as a part of general knowledge (at least, between the narrator/speaker and reader/listener) and so carry Topic marking from the first use. This is not the case with אַנְשֵׁי הַמָּקוֹם in Gen 38.22, since the phrase is new to Judah and cannot be assumed. In light of such complexity, the linguist filtering the word order data by the pragmatic criterion must be sensitive to numerous strategies by which the information structure of a text unfolds.

I have previously separated out clauses with fronted constituents, as I did in Post #3 in example (2), where I separated out qatal and yiqtol clauses that have fronted Adjuncts (2b, 3b) or fronted Complements (2d, 3d). Similarly I pointed out that pronominal Subjects (as in (4b)) are not appropriate for basic word order clauses since such Subjects in Hebrew signal Topic or Focus marking. Using those examples will illustrate how Topic and Focus work as well as how these pragmatic features affect clausal word order, thereby rendering their clauses poor candidates for basic word order. Consider the examples in (9).

(9) Constituent Fronting

a. Adjunct-fronting: Gen 29:34 ‫ עַתָּה הַפַּעַם יִלָּוֶה אִישִׁי אֵלַי

b. Complement-fronting: Gen 31:42 ‎‫אֶת־עָנְיִי וְאֶת־יְגִיעַ כַּפַּי רָאָה אֱלֹהִים

c. Subject-fronting: Gen 23:6 ‎‫אִישׁ מִמֶּנּוּ אֶת־קִבְרוֹ לֹא־יִכְלֶה מִמְּךָ

In (9a), there are two fronted adjuncts, the temporal adverb עַתָּה ‘now’ and the adverbial NP הַפַּעַם ‘this time’. The first is fronted as a scene-setting (temporal) Topic, the second as a contrastive Focus: Leah thinks that this, third son, will finally endear Jacob to her, whereas apparently the first two sons did not gain her the favor she desired. The Topic-Focus order in (9a) illustrates that even the pragmatic functions have an order in Hebrew: Hebrew exhibits multiple Topics, multiple Foci, but when both a Topic and Focus are present, the order is always Topic-Focus.

Like הַפַּעַם in (9a), the fronted Complement in (9b) carries Focus marking. In Gen 31:42, Jacob finishes his blistering charge against Laban, which culminates in our example and the short clause that follows it, וַיּוֹכַח אָמֶשׁ‎ ‘and he rebuked (you) last night!’. It is not clear if the NPs עֳנִי‎ and יְגִיעַ  כַּפַּיִם‎ constitute the contrastive constituents or the 1cs pronouns attached to the NPs. Is Jacob asserting that his experience has been one of pain and suffering (presumably in contrast to how Laban would characterize it) or is he simply contrasting who God has favored: him (not Laban)? Both options are contextually felicitious and both may be intended, which is possible since the scope of the Focus is over the entire compound constituent.In any case, this fronting of the Complement communicates something like the following: Though you (Laban) have continually treated me unfairly, my oppression and my toil caught God’s attention.

Finally, two features in (9c) indicate that it is an unambiguous example of Subject-fronting. First, the Verb is negated, which I have suggested above is a feature associated with VS order. Thus, any constituent in front of the Verb can only be there due to a pragmatically-motivated fronting. Also, the presence of the Complement אֶת־קִבְרוֹ before the Verb is unarguably a case of Topic or Focus fronting. This necessarily points to the Subject that precedes the fronted Complement as a case of fronting as well. So, what pragmatic roles to the fronted Subject and Complement fill? In the context, taking the Subject אִישׁ מִמֶּנּוּ ‘a man from us’ as the Topic makes good sense, since the Hittite speaker(s) is orienting Abraham to the previously mentioned entities (whom Abraham had referenced as ‘you’ in the preceding verse) would act. Another way to think of this is as a choice that the Hittite speaker made in the response: among the obvious choices, rather than starting with ‘you, Abraham, …’, he started with ‘a man among us’. The key to understanding the force of the Focus-fonted Complement is understanding that the while the scope of the Focus lies over the entire NP, it can also be associated with one constituent within the phrase; in the case of אֶת־קִבְרוֹ the Focus is on the 3ms suffix, indicating that the force is ‘his (own) grave’. Thus, a paraphrastic translation of (9c) that highlights the pragmatics is ‘no man among us would withhold his own grave from you’.

There is, to my knowledge, complete agreement that examples like (9a) and (9b) illustrate the Topic- or Focus-fronting of a constituent that is normally positioned after the Verb. The numbers in (10) demonstrate that a fronted constituent is much more often followed by VS order than SV order. But given the complicating factor of the fronting itself, neither ‘X-VS’ or ‘X-SV’ (where ‘X’ means a fronted constistuent) can be used to isolate the basic order.

(10) Constituent Fronting

a. Adjunct-fronting: VS (101x) vs. SV (6x)

b. Complement-fronting: VS (25x) vs. SV (0x)

c. Subject-fronting: 192x

The Subject-fronting illustrated in (9c) and quantified in (10c), though, lies at the heart of the basic word order discussion. It is clear that many SV clauses are best understood in the context as non-basic, whether the Subject is a pronoun (which, in a null Subject language like Hebrew, always signals Topic or Focus) or is positioned before another fronted constituent, as in (9c). The SV order in such clauses reflects either a Topic or Focus-marked Subject. The same cannot be said, though, for a number of examples like (11).

(11) SV without Topic or Focus-marked Subject (47x)

‎Gen 37:20 ‫חַיָּה רָעָה אֲכָלָתְהוּ

There is nothing in the discourse context of the example in (11) that even weakly suggests a Topic or Focus reading of the Subject. The plan by Joseph’s brothers to pass off Joseph’s disappearance as a wild animal attack does not build on any previously established or generally presumable discourse entity. As a newly introduced entity, חַיָּה רָעָה cannot be a Topic; moreover, a contrast created by Focus-marking on חַיָּה רָעָה makes no contextual sense—with what would the imaginary wild animal be contrasted?

Although the majority of main, indicative SV clauses reflect Topic or Focus marking on the Subject (9c, 10c), the existence of some SV clauses (11) that are in main, indicative clauses with no Topic or Focus marking—and so arguably basic—challenges the traditional VS classification of Biblical Hebrew. To add to this, if Biblical Hebrew were a strong VS language (Longacre 1995), then even with the omission of wayyiqtol clauses, we would expect to see numerous main, indicative VS clauses. But we do not: qualifying SV clauses (11) number almost twice as many as qualifying VS clauses (12).

(12) VS ‘basic word order’ (28x)

Gen 16:2 ‎‫הִנֵּה־נָא עֲצָרַנִי יְהוָה מִלֶּדֶת

How do we deal with the paucity of simple VS clauses in Genesis? How can we account for the strong tendency towards VS order in subordinate clauses, modal clauses, and any clause with a fronted constituent (other than a fronted Subject)?

In the 6th (and last) post, I will briefly summarize the issues from the methodological perspective that I have been so strongly pushing (since the methodological component has been inexusably absent in previous discussions of Biblical Hebrew word order. I will also provide my ‘story’—how I account for the various word order facts in Biblical Hebrew.

References

Holmstedt, Robert D. 2009. Word Order and Information Structure in Ruth and Jonah: A Generative-Typological Analysis. Journal of Semitic Studies 54/1: 111-39.

Longacre, Robert E. 1995. Left Shifts in Strongly VSO Languages. Pp. 331-54 in Word Order in Discourse, ed. Pamela Downing and Michael Noonan. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

In the last two posts I introduced and discussed the criteria of frequency and distribution. In this post I will add the criterion of clause type as yet another important filter for the raw word order data.

The Criterion of Clause Type

The second criterion used to filter raw frequency results concerns ‘clause type’. This criterion is predicated on the observation that languages often exhibit different word order patterns in different clause types; in such cases, not all clause types present the language’s basic word order. Consider English interrogative clauses, such as When did Noah leave? This clause type in English has the inflected Verb, did, before the Subject, in contrast to the declarative counterpart, Noah left yesterday. On this basis, we would exclude interrogative clauses as a source for basic word order in English. Moreover, although interrogatives are typically a minority clause type in English texts and so their exclusion would not normally affect the frequency results, we can imagine a text that consists predominantly of questions, resulting in a highly skewed frequency-based analysis for English word order.

Such observations—that one must consider whether the language in question exhibits word order variation according to clause type—have influenced the typological analysis of basic word order from its beginnings (see Greenberg 1963:80). The result is that basic word order is most often identified as the the word order present in “stylistically neutral, independent, indicative clauses with full nouns phrase (NP) participants, where the subject is definite, agentive and human, the object is a definite semantic patient, and the verb represents an action, not a state or an event” (Siewierska 1988:8; see also Mallinson and Blake 1981:125). Notably, Siewierska also indicates that the basic word order of a language need not be identical to the “dominant linearization pattern” (i.e., statistically prevalent word order) in that language (1988:8). She suggests that this may be the result of the vagaries of human communication, in which diverse structures are utilized, or it may be due to a genre convention (1988:11-12). Genre convention is certainly operative in Hebrew with regard to the restricted distribution of wayyiqtol clauses, which I discussed above. The wayyiqtol form is used as the narrative Verb and, unlike the qatal and yiqtol Verbs, is confined to indicative semantics and a past temporal context.

Another implication for Biblical Hebrew that follows from Siewierska’s basic clause definition concerns the presence of overt Subjects. Hebrew, like many languages (Spanish and Italian, for example) allows the syntactic Subject to be omitted. Such languages are often referred to as null Subject or ‘pro-drop’ languages (see Holmstedt f.c.a for an overview). Null Subject languages often exhibit word order differences between clauses with an overt Noun Phrase as the Subject and clauses without an overt Subject (Siewerska 1988:11); similarly, clauses with overt pronominal Subjects often exhibit word order differences from clauses with lexical Noun Phrase Subjects (Dryer 2007:80). Since Biblical Hebrew allows overt Subject to be omitted (4a) and arguably uses overt Subject pronouns for Topic or Focus marking (4b), any discussion of basic word order must draw primarily on clauses that have overt lexical Noun Phrase Subjects (4c).

(4) Types of Subjects in Biblical Hebrew

a. Null: Gen 9:6 ‎‫בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים עָשָׂה __ אֶת־הָאָדָם

b. Pronominal: Gen 27:31 ‎‫וַיַּעַשׂ גַּם־הוּא מַטְעַמִּים

c. Lexical Noun Phrase: Gen 3:1 ‎‫כֹּל חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים

That clauses with lexical Noun Phrase Subjects are less common in null Subject languages like Hebrew, Spanish, and Italian makes it more difficult but not impossible to identify basic word order clauses in a text. It simply highlights the necessity of using all the criteria together in the investigation of basic word order.

The clause criterion holds a number of additional implications for the careful study of basic word order in Biblical Hebrew. First, it has long been noted that the dominant VS pattern of narrative becomes less than dominant in direct speech (MacDonald 1975). Consider the following numerical data from Genesis:

(5) Narrative versus Speech in Genesis

a. the wayyiqtol is used 1971x in narrative but only 123x in speech (and only 21x with an overt Subject)

b. of 2507 main (non-subordinate) narrative clauses, only 107 are SV (4.3%) while 896 (including wayyiqtol) are VS (over 50%)

c. of 1748 main (non-subordinate) speech clauses, 134 are SV (7.7%) and 200 are VS (11.4%)

The remarkable non-use of the wayyiqtol in direct speech confirms its primary role as the narrative or story-telling verb. Add the radical shift towards near balance of SV and VS in speech texts and it is clear the one’s position on the discourse type will significantly impact the methodology and conclusions for basic word order.

How do we decide which discourse type is a better candidate for representing basic word order? Narrative is typically taken as the determinative discourse type: “If storyline clauses in narrative discourse in a given language are VSO, then that language should be classified as a VSO language” (Longacre 1995:333); this view holds that dialogue introduces complexities that likely depart from basic word order. However, Payne (1995) suggests that “[m]ost claims about word order have undoubtedly been based on narrative data and, without conscious awareness, the typological cubby-holes to which languages have been assigned are likely biased by formal features correlating with temporal sequentiality” (1995:454). In other words, precisely because clauses in narrative are strung together in some sort of temporal order, narrative (rather than direct speech/dialogue/conversation) may exhibit departures from standard word order (see also Downing 1995:20).

Another distinction that may affect the word order discussion is between main and subordinate clauses. Subordinate clauses often appear to be more conservative, that is, they show less syntactic diversity than main clauses (this is what Ross 1973 named the ‘Penthouse-principle’, i.e., that the rules are different if you live in the penthouse = upstairs/main clause). This observation has interesting implications for both word order typology and diachronic syntax. For identifying basic word order, some, like Bickford (1998:214-16), argue that subordinate clauses take priority in the identification of basic word order. For diachronic syntax, it has been noted that word order changes in, for example, English, German, and Kru, first took place in main clauses and only later (often much later) applied to subordinate clauses (see Matsuda 1998 and Bybee 2002 for discussion and bibliography). Importantly, if it is established that a diachronic word order change has affected main clauses but not subordinate clauses, it reverses the priority of the clauses for word order typology: the new order exhibited in main clauses should be taken as basic.

Biblical Hebrew, I suggest, should be added to the list of languages that exhibit Ross’ Penthouse principle. As the data in (6) illustrate, there is no doubt that subordinate clauses (6b) are overwhelmingly VS in Biblical Hebrew, even when all the criterion are applied, while the number of SV and VS main clauses (6a) are nearly identical.

(6) Main versus Subordinate Clause Word Order in Genesis

a. Main

224 SV: Gen 2:6 ‎‫וְאֵד יַעֲלֶה מִן־הָאָרֶץ

216 VS: Gen 27:41 ‎‫ יִקְרְבוּ יְמֵי אֵבֶל אָבִי

b. Subordinate

15 SV: Gen 31:32‎‫‎‫כִּי רָחֵל גְּנָבָתַם

126 VS: Gen 4:25 ‎‫כִּי הֲרָגוֹ קָיִן

There is also comparative evidence in Northwest Semitic that ancient Hebrew was initially a VS language in both main and subordinate clauses. However, by the post-biblical period, Hebrew exhibits a shift in word order character, such that soon after the turn of the era, rabbinic Hebrew appears to be an SV language. Indeed, it has even been argued that Biblical Hebrew itself exhibits an (early BH) VS-to-SV (late BH) shift (Givón 1977). These lines of evidence converge in such as way as to suggest that Biblical Hebrew experienced a shift to SV order in main clauses while the older VS order was preserved in subordinate clauses. If so, two questions proceed from this. First, if the basic word order of main and subordinate clauses differ, which is to be taken as the typological classification for the language? Second, is it possible to identify when this shift occurred? If Genesis exhibits SV basic word order, as I argue below, then the shift must have occurred earlier than previously argued.

Finally, it should not go unnoticed that Siewierska’s definition of the basic clause type includes a semantic notion: indicative clauses rather than non-indicative (i.e., modal, subjunctive) are better candidates for basic word order. In biblical Hebrew, modal clauses—whether with the morphologically modal jussive, the modal of use of the imperfective yiqtol, or the modal use of the perfective qatal—are consistently VS (7a). In contrast, indicative clauses (excluding the wayyiqtol) are not so clearly VS (7b)—indeed, they are SV by more than 2-to-1.

(7) Indicative versus Modal Clause Word Order in Genesis

a. Indicative

164x SV: Gen 2:6 ‎‫אֵד יַעֲלֶה מִן־הָאָרֶץ

77x VS: Gen 27:41 ‎‫ יִקְרְבוּ יְמֵי אֵבֶל אָבִי

b. Modal

14 SV: Gen 16:1 ‎‫‎‫שָׂרַי אֵשֶׁת אַבְרָם לֹא יָלְדָה לוֹ

102 VS: Gen 1:3 ‎‫‎‫יְהִי אוֹר

As this section has illustrated, the clause type criterion covers a lot of linguistic ground. For Biblical Hebrew, applying this criterion leads one to set aside clauses without lexical Noun Phrase Subjects, work with an awareness that narrative and direct speech exhibit different patterns (primarily due to the conventionalized use of the wayyiqtol in the narrative genre), distinguish between the word order of main and subordinate clauses (and choose which has priority for determining basic order), and look to the order exhibited by indicative clauses rather than non-indicative clauses. Although filtering the date through this criterion requires significant effort and results in a smaller database of ‘basic word order’ clauses than some prefer:

Determining the word order of a language on the basis of such a small sample seems somewhat precarious. More importantly, basic word order in this approach bears little resemblance to the way that the language is most frequently used. (Moshavi 2010:15)

I used this quote in my first post, and pointed out the deep problems with Moshavi’s appeal to language use. Now it is time to point out the fundamentally unscientific attitude reflected in her statement. Regardless whether we “like” the size of the database that results from applying various tests to a raw corpus, we must deal with the facts. Wishing for more, or ignoring the tests that should be applied is hardly responsible scholarship. And since it is clear that Hebrew does pattern differently along each of these divides (Subject type, genre, clause level, and semantic type), it is a filtering process that is absolutely required.

We’re getting there! One more criterion and then a concluding post.

Ahhh … there’s nothing quite so invigorating as arguing that a centuries-old view is just plain wrong.  

(No ominous music or devilish chuckles today, just a sigh of ‘almost there’ satisfaction. Even with the best of databases, good scholarship requires checking and re-counting all the examples and my eyeballs hurt from a month of it!)

References

• Bickfoard, J. Albert. 1998. Tools for Analyzing the World’s Languages: Morphology and Syntax. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

• Bybee, Joan. 2002. Main Clauses are Innovative, Subordinate Clauses are Conservative: Consequences for the Nature of Constructions. Pp. 1-18 in Complex Sentences in Grammar and Discourse: Essays in Honor of Sandra A. Thompson, ed. Joan Bybee and Michael Noonan. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

• Downing, Pamela. 1995. Word Order in Discourse: By Way of Introduction. Pp. 1-27 in Word Order in Discourse, ed. Pamela Downing and Michael Noonan. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

• Dryer, Matthew S. 2007. Word Order. Pp. 61-131 in Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Volume I: Clause Structure, ed. Timothy Shopen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Givón, Talmy. 1977. The Drift from VSO to SVO in Biblical Hebrew: the Pragmatics of Tense-Aspect. Pp. 184-254 in Mechanisms of Syntactic Change, ed. Charles N. Li. Austin: University of Texas Press.

• Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements. Pp. 73-113 in Universals of Language, ed. Joseph H. Greenberg. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

• Longacre, Robert E. 1995. Left Shifts in Strongly VSO Languages. Pp. 331-54 in Word Order in Discourse, ed. Pamela Downing and Michael Noonan. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

• MacDonald, John. 1975. Some Distinctive Characteristics of Israelite Spoken Hebrew. Bibliotheca Orientalis 23(3/4):162-75.

• Mallinson, Graham, and Barry J. Blake. 1981. Language Typology: Cross-linguistic Studies in Syntax. North-Holland Linguistic Series. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.

• Matsuda, Kenjirô. 1998. On the Conservativism of Embedded Clauses. Pp. 255-68 in Historical Linguistics 1997, ed. Monika S. Schmid, Jennifer R. Austin, and Dieter Stein. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 164. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

• Payne, Doris L. 1995. Verb Initial Languages and Information Order. Pp. 449-85 in Word Order in Discourse, ed. Pamela Downing and Michael Noonan. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

• Ross, John Robert. 1973. The Penthouse Principle and the Order of Constituents. Pp. 397-422 in You Take the High Node and I’ll Take the Low Node, ed. C. T. Corum, T. C. Smith-Stark, and A. Weiser. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.

• Siewierska, Anna. 1988. Word Order Rules. Croom Helm Linguistics Series. London: Croom Helm.

In the last post I introduced and discussed the criterion of frequency—the most commonly applied test for basic word order. While there is simply no way to determine basic word order apart from this criterion, I suggested that it must be carefully applied. In particular, I argue that the raw numbers must be further filtered by other criteria, such as distribution, which I will discuss in this post.

The Criterion of Distribution

The first criterion that recognizes the salience of context in the basic word order discussion is the test of distribution. Given two or more alternatives for a syntactic construction, the one that occurs in the greater number of environments is unmarked and, hence, the basic order. Note that this is not the same as statistical dominance, because the issue at hand is not simply ‘occurrence’ but ‘environment’. For instance, in English, manner adverbs like slowly may both precede and follow the verb (He walked slowly and He slowly walked), but as the more highly restricted option, the Adverb-Verb order is the marked choice, thus leaving the Verb-Adverb option the basic order (Dryer 2007:69, 74).

For Hebrew, the test of distribution can be illustrated well by considering the wayyiqtol form. First, if we take the wayyiqtol to include an indicative verb that operates in a past temporal setting and compare it to other indicative verbs that also operate in a past temporal setting, an assymetry is easily observable:

(1) Distribution of Wayyiqtol

a. Verb-Subject (918x 866x [correction]): Gen 22:13 ‎‫‎‫וַיִּשָּׂא אַבְרָהָם אֶת־עֵינָיו

b. Adjunct-Verb-Subject (34x): Gen 22:4 ‎‫בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁי וַיִּשָּׂא אַבְרָהָם אֶת־עֵינָיו

c. Subject-Verb: Ø

d. Complement-Verb-Subject: Ø

e. Subordinator-Verb: Ø

(2) Distribution of Qatal

a. Verb-Subject (46x): Gen 22:20 ‎‫הִנֵּה יָלְדָה מִלְכָּה גַם־הִוא בָּנִים לְנָחוֹר אָחִיךָ

b. Adjunct-Verb-Subject (57x): Gen 10:25 ‎‫‎‫וּלְעֵבֶר יֻלַּד שְׁנֵי בָנִים

c. Subject-Verb (171x): Gen 4:18 ‎‫וְעִירָד יָלַד אֶת־מְחוּיָאֵל

d. Complement-Verb-Subject (15x): Gen 22:23 ‎‫שְׁמֹנָה אֵלֶּה יָלְדָה מִלְכָּה לְנָחוֹר

e. Subordinator-Verb (e.g., 182x with אְֲשֶׁר): Gen 25:12 ‎‫יִשְׁמָעֵאל בֶּן־אַבְרָהָם אֲשֶׁר יָלְדָה הָגָר

(3) Distribution of Yiqtol

a. Verb-Subject (44x): Gen 27:41 ‎‫יִקְרְבוּ יְמֵי אֵבֶל אָבִי

b. Adjunct-Verb-Subject (39x): Gen 2:24 ‎‫עַל־כֵּן יַעֲזָב־אִישׁ אֶת־אָבִיו וְאֶת־אִמּוֹ

c. Subject-Verb (71x): Gen 24:40 ‎‫יְהוָה אֲשֶׁר־הִתְהַלַּכְתִּי לְפָנָיו יִשְׁלַח מַלְאָכוֹ אִתָּךְ

d. Complement-Verb-Subject (9x): Gen 2:23 ‎‫‎‫ לְזֹאת יִקָּרֵא אִשָּׁה

e. Subordinator-Verb (e.g., 39x with אֲשֶׁר): Gen 17:21 ‎‫‎‫יִצְחָק אֲשֶׁר תֵּלֵד לְךָ שָׂרָה‎

The qatal and yiqtol Verbs are found in a wide variety of word order patterns, both preceding (2a, 3a) and following (2c, 3c) the syntactic Subject, allowing Adjuncts (2b, 3b) and Complements (2d, 3d) to be fronted, and existing in main (2a-d, 3a-d) and subordinate (2e, 3e) clauses. In contrast, wayyiqtol clauses exhibit a highly restricted pattern: the Subject always follows the Verb, it cannot be negated, it does not allow the fronting of its Complement, and it does not follow overt subordinators like אֲשֶׁר or כִּי. In fact, the only constituent that can stand in front of the wayyiqtol is a fronted temporal Prepositional Phrase Adjunct, as in (1b), although that even this is allowed may be considered a controversial claim.

Thus, the distributional criterion provides an important filter for the frequency criterion. In this case, distributional asymmetries show the wayyiqtol to be the marked form, which directly implies that its fixed VS order should not simply be taken as the basic order for Biblical Hebrew even though the VS wayyiqtol clause is by far the most common clause type in Hebrew prose. This is not to say that the criterion of distribution has provided an argument for SV or VS order; rather, it provides a strong argument against the inclusion of the wayyiqtol data in determining basic word order.

And once the wayyiqtol is set aside, the SV vs. VS determination is not nearly so clear as tradition suggests.

—cue ominous music … and devilish laugh by moi.