Monday, April 20, 2015

Yes, verb first

In conclusion, basic word order in the typological sense is the pragmatically unmarked order. Basic word order is usually established by the criterion of statistical dominance. The mainstream view that BH is typologically VSO is strongly supported by the statistical evidence. BH, like other VSO languages, has an underlying SVO word order from the generative perspective, but this fact does not affect the typological classification of the language. Basic word order in BH does not vary according to discourse genre.— Word Order in the Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause, page 17

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