Wednesday, May 06, 2015

Um, can you say that again—in English this time

Although the preposed constituent in a focused clause is commonly referred to as the focus of the clause, this is not entirely accurate. Because preposing is normally performed on entire clause-level constituents, material that belongs to the activated proposition is often preposed along with the focus. This phenomenon is particularly common when the preposed item is a prepositional phrase. In these cases, it is usually the noun phrase governed by the preposition that is the focus.— Word Order in the Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause, page 122

No comments: