Word order, summary

It was shown that preposing for focus in BH relates to an activated but not necessarily presupposed proposition. Despite the fact that BH focused clauses are often rendered with a cleft sentence in English, the English constructions most equivalent to BH focusing are focusing by accent marking and preposing (in the casual register), both of which relate to activated propositions. The presupposition/activation distinction clarifies several important points regarding BH preposing for focus, including the fact that yes-no questions and commands, which often do not involve presupposition, may be focused. The distinction also helps to explain how additive focusing by preposing differs from focusing by גם, an adverb that can relate to a presupposed but non-activated proposition. It also explains why some focus-of-negation clauses cannot be appropriately translated with an English negative cleft sentence: because clefts relate to presupposed information, a cleft is an appropriate translation for focus-of- negation only when the relevant activated proposition happens to be presupposed as well.— Word Order in the Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause, page 168

<idle musing>
Well, that's the final post from the book. I hope you enjoyed the ride enough to read it for yourself. Andrew tells me that they are about to issue a paperback version with corrections, so if you are like me and prefer a hardback, you'd better act fast!

I'm not sure what I'll be excerpting from next—although I'm currently excerpting from three other books, so maybe with the increase in my schedule during the summer, I'll just let it stay at three. The last few books I read weren't very amenable to excerpting.
</idle musing>

Praise God for short-term memory

The essence of the comprehension process is described by Kintsch (1998: 93) as follows: “We comprehend a text, understand something, by building a mental model. To do so we must form connections between things that were previously disparate: the ideas expressed in the text and relevant prior knowledge.” A reader builds a mental representation of the text in the form of a network of propositions derived from the text and stores it in long-term memory. As the reader proceeds through a text, a proposition is constructed corresponding to each sentence and stored in short-term working memory. After the sentence processing is completed, the proposition representing the sentence is copied to long-term memory and linked to the textual representation already stored there. Furthermore, additional propositions, drawn from the reader’s knowledge and experience, are added to the representation and linked to the sentence representation. These propositions include, for example, bridging inferences regarding referring expressions in the text, inferences about causal connections between sentences in the text, and elaborative inferences that fill in details unspecified in the text (Kintsch 1998: 188–99).

As the reader moves on to the next sentence, the central information contained in the previous sentence is retained in short-term memory in order to aid in comprehending the next sentence. All of the propositions in the text representation directly linked to the information in short-term memory, including inferred information, are in long-term working memory and can be quickly and easily converted to activated information. In short, when reading a sentence, the gist of the previous sentence is activated and information inferred from or directly linked to the previous sentence is accessible.— Word Order in the Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause, pages 95–96 (emphasis original)

What to do with that pesky Hebrew vav

Scholars are divided as to the proper syntactic classification of clauses with a “subordinate” ו. Van der Merwe et al. (1999: §40.8) recognize a separate use of ו as a subordinating conjunction. Waltke and O’Connor (1990: §38.1h), in contrast, write that “the system expressed in the text may skew the unexpressed semantic system”; that is, the formally nonsubordinate ו clause may be used to express a logically subordinate idea. Steiner (1997: 168) takes an intermediate view between these positions, stating that “the boundary between coordination and subordination in BH is not as sharp as in English.” He views ו as a universal connector that can be used to connect coordinated or subordinated clauses.— Word Order in the Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause, page 57

Now we're getting somewhere

As the emphasis-centered model has largely fallen out of favor, backgrounding/temporal-sequencing and information-structure models dominate the field of contemporary research on BH word order…

The present study explores the significance of information-structure functions for preposing in BH. The concepts of focusing and topicalization are clarified and redefined so that they provide insights into when and why preposing occurs. A sample of preposed clauses is examined to determine whether information-structure functions are statistically dominant or whether functions that relate to the clause as a whole, such as simultaneity and anteriority, are the dominant kind. In addition, differences between preposing in narrative and direct speech are explored. In subsequent chapters, focused and topicalized clauses are analyzed in detail from the syntactic and the pragmatic perspectives.— Word Order in the Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause, pages 46, 47

Topic? Who knows!

The various definitions of topic remain problematic. The most accepted conception of topic, the notion of “aboutness,” has thus far resisted objective formulation, despite valiant efforts on the part of many researchers. Gómez- González (2001: 31) sums up the state of the field as follows: “the intricacies raised by the numerous and heterogeneous variations of the semantic interpretation have led many scholars to conclude that Theme/Topic in terms of aboutness cannot be regarded as an objectively identifiable unique category, but as a clearly intuitive, and therefore subjective concept.”— Word Order in the Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause, page 33

<idle musing>
Ain't that the truth! I'm wading through Lambrecht's Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus, and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents right now. Talk about dense! And confusing doesn't begin to describe it...I've heard people say it is one the hardest books they ever read. I agree. I'm not sure if it is the subject or the writing—or both!

So, for someone to say that the whole idea of topic is "problematic" is refreshing. At least I'm not the only one confused...
</idle musing>

Huh? Say that in English please

In conclusion, the backgrounding model and temporal-sequencing models are not applicable to all preposed clauses. The most plausible formulations of the theory apply exclusively to subject-preposed clauses; thus, object-preposing and adjunct-preposing are not afforded an explanation. Furthermore, many subject-preposed clauses do not describe backgrounded or nonsequential events and cannot be accounted for within these models.— Word Order in the Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause, page 31

Too vague to be useful

The concept of emphasis has been criticized as overly subjective and vague. It is difficult to say whether an emphasis on the preposed element was really intended or whether the researcher is simply assuming it to exist because of that element’s position at the head of the clause. In addition, the notion of emphasis in and of itself does not explain why and for what purposes the speaker wishes to emphasize something.— Word Order in the Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause, pages 18–19

<idle musing>
In other words, we need a good linguistic reason for the preposing of subjects and/or objects. "Emphasis" is just a catchall term to say "We're not sure, but this seems to make sense." Not terribly convincing, is it?
</idle musing>

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

Verb-first

Biblical scholars have long been aware that finite clauses in BH are most frequently verb-first. This fact was noted by the 19th-century biblical exegete Malbim (Rabbi Meir Loeb ben Jeḥiel Michael, 1809–79). Malbim (1973: §111) states that the general rule is that the sentence begins with the verb. In his commentary on 1 Kgs 20:18, Malbim (1964: 209) explains this rule as deriving from the principle that the most important item comes first. The verb is generally first because it is usually most important. A noun may be preposed in order to specify something about the noun or in order to express contrast, contradiction, or exclusion (Malbim 1973: §111).— Word Order in the Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause, page 10

If it were simple, we wouldn't be arguing about it...

One of the parameters by which languages can be classified is basic word order. “Basic” is often understood to mean the pragmatically unmarked or neutral word order. Of the several orders allowed by a particular language, usually one order occurs in a wide variety of discourse contexts, whereas the others have more restricted uses. The word order with a broader contextual distribution is the unmarked or basic order…

Basic word order is sometimes used to mean the statistically dominant order, the one that is most frequent in spoken or written texts. There is a widespread assumption that the pragmatically neutral word order is also the most frequent. According to Greenberg (1966b: 67), textual frequency is the only criterion by which basic word order can be established. “Statistically dominant” is clearly a less meaningful definition of basic word order than “pragmatically neutral,” because frequency is a feature of language use rather than language structure. In practice, however, researchers usually rely on textual frequency in establishing basic word order, because proving that a particular order is pragmatically neutral is an extremely involved procedure, requiring the identification and classification of all discourse contexts in which each word order occurs.— Word Order in the Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause, pages 7–8

Word order

The VSO language group makes up about 10% of the languages in the world (Carnie and Guilfoyle 2000: 3), including most of the West Semitic languages, Egyptian, Berber, Celtic, and other languages (O’Connor 1980: 118).— Word Order in the Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause, page 7