A Re-examination of Verb Agreement with Conjoined Subjects in Biblical Hebrew
Partial agreement refers to sentences that have conjoined subjects but a singular verb. Although word order is commonly cited in the Biblical Hebrew literature as affecting partial agreement, there is no consensus regarding such an effect. This syntactic study of all clauses with a compound subject...
| Published in: | Journal for semitics |
|---|---|
| Subtitles: | SBL Annual Meeting 2020 Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew Seminar: Linguistic Variation in Biblical Hebrew |
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Unisa Press
2021
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| In: |
Journal for semitics
|
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Hebrew language
/ Grammar
/ Syntax
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| RelBib Classification: | BH Judaism HB Old Testament |
| Further subjects: | B
Discourse Analysis
B partial agreement B R-expression B pro B Syntax |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Partial agreement refers to sentences that have conjoined subjects but a singular verb. Although word order is commonly cited in the Biblical Hebrew literature as affecting partial agreement, there is no consensus regarding such an effect. This syntactic study of all clauses with a compound subject in Genesis-2 Kings reveals that a singular verb always agrees with the initial conjunct. The results are incorporated in a cross-linguistic typology of partial agreement. Other key results are that only a coordinate compound headed by an R-expression (rather than a pronoun) is a subject, and that partial agreement is the dominant pattern when the verb and first conjunct are contiguous. A two-step process of Agree—first in syntax and then in phonology—is able to produce the optional partial agreement patterns, laying a better foundation for future studies to analyse the semantic and discourse-analysis effects on verb agreement. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal for semitics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.25159/2663-6573/9295 |