Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics
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Subject: Language And Linguistics
Edited by: Geoffrey Khan
Associate editors: Shmuel Bolozky, Steven Fassberg, Gary A. Rendsburg, Aaron D. Rubin, Ora R. Schwarzwald, Tamar Zewi
The Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online offers a systematic and comprehensive treatment of all aspects of the history and study of the Hebrew language from its earliest attested form to the present day.
The Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online features advanced search options, as well as extensive cross-references and full-text search functionality using the Hebrew character set. With over 850 entries and approximately 400 contributing scholars, the Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online is the authoritative reference work for students and researchers in the fields of Hebrew linguistics, general linguistics, Biblical studies, Hebrew and Jewish literature, and related fields.
Subscriptions: Brill.com
Associate editors: Shmuel Bolozky, Steven Fassberg, Gary A. Rendsburg, Aaron D. Rubin, Ora R. Schwarzwald, Tamar Zewi
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The Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online offers a systematic and comprehensive treatment of all aspects of the history and study of the Hebrew language from its earliest attested form to the present day.
The Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online features advanced search options, as well as extensive cross-references and full-text search functionality using the Hebrew character set. With over 850 entries and approximately 400 contributing scholars, the Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online is the authoritative reference work for students and researchers in the fields of Hebrew linguistics, general linguistics, Biblical studies, Hebrew and Jewish literature, and related fields.
Subscriptions: Brill.com
Evidential
(1,267 words)
Evidentiality is a category that indicates the source of information bringing a speaker to utter an underlying proposition, and by so doing to establish the reliability of the propositional content (Chafe and Nichols 1986). Cross-linguistically, the category is marked by quite a wide array of linguistic means (Willett 1988; Palmer 2001). Scholars point to a correlation between grammaticalization of the category and the oral/written divide: oral languages tend to have dedicated morphemes or gramm…
Exceptive Construction
(822 words)
The term ‘exceptive construction’ denotes a dependent clause or phrase which restricts, excludes, or opposes parts of the content of a preceding main clause. Although constructions conveying all three of these meanings have the same structure in Biblical Hebrew, those which express opposition are sometimes regarded as adversative, and are accordingly treated together with other adversative constructions, which in Biblical Hebrew are usually introduced by particles whose meaning is ‘but’, e.g., אוּלָם
ʾūlå̄m, אֲבָל
ʾăḇå̄l, and also the conjunction -וְ
wə- (on the confusion am…
Exclamation: Biblical Hebrew
(627 words)
Grammars of Biblical Hebrew traditionally include within the category of ‘exclamations’ a wide range of linguistic elements, such as adverbs, interrogative pronouns, interjections, conjunctions, and imperative verb forms. In biblical research, the term ‘exclamatio…
Existential: Biblical Hebrew
(2,354 words)
1. Existential and Locative Clauses Biblical Hebrew has two syntactic structures which indicate that somebody or something exists in an absolute sense (existential: ‘there are no ghosts in the world’) or that somebody or something exists or is to be found in a certain location (locative: ‘the book is on the table’).…
Existential: Modern Hebrew
(1,873 words)
Existential sentences assert the existence of some entity either ontologically or in some particular location. The former are sometimes referred to as ‘universal-existentials’ and the latter as ‘existential-locatives’. Structurally, prototypical existential sentences in Modern Hebrew open with the existential particle יש
yeš followed by an indefinite NP with an optional Locative or Temporal as in: (יש צדק (בעולם)/(בימינו
yeš
ṣedeq (ba-ʿolam) / existential particle justice (in-the-world) /
(be-yamenu) (in-days-ours) ‘There is justice (in the world)/(these days)’. אין
ʾen …
Existential: Rabbinic Hebrew
(1,859 words)
An existential clause is a clause that expresses a proposition about the existence or the presence of something. The existential predicators in Rabbinic Hebrew are יש
yeš ‘there is/are’, אין
ʾen ‘there is/are not’, and the verb לא) היה)
(lo) haya ‘there was (not)’, the last of which declines according to person, gender, and number of the subject. The ‘pure’ existential clause lacks any complementation and indicates the very existence or non-existence of what is denoted by the NP subject (NP = Noun Phrase, i.e., a noun, a noun followed…
Explicative wå̄w
(1,245 words)
The coordinating conjunction
wå̄w can indicate that a conjoined element explains an immediately preceding element; in English, the function is filled by ‘that is, i.e.’. The Hebrew coordinating conjunction
wå̄w, which can coordinate nouns, verbs, phrases, or clauses (Williams 2007:152), functions in a multitude of different ways, as noted by many (seven different uses according to Arnold and Choi 2003:146–149; thirteen different uses according to Williams 2007:152–156; over twenty different uses according to Clines 1995:596–598; thirty different uses according to
HALOT 1994…
Date:
2014-10-01
Explicative wå̄w
(1,248 words)
The coordinating conjunction
wå̄w can indicate that a conjoined element explains an immediately preceding element; in English, the function is filled by ‘that is, i.e.’. The Hebrew coordinating conjunction
wå̄w, which can coordinate nouns, verbs, phrases, or clauses (Williams 2007:152), functions in a multitude of different ways, as noted by many (seven different uses according to Arnold and Choi 2003:146–149; thierteen different uses according to Williams 2007:152–156; over twenty different uses according to Clines 1995:596–598; thirty different uses according to
HALOT 199…
Extraposition: Biblical Hebrew
(1,235 words)
Extraposition is a frequently used stylistic device for beginning a prose or poetic sentence (more than one-thousand examples in the Hebrew Bible): one part of a sentence, the so-called ‘pendens’, is removed from its normal contextual position and transferred to the beginning of the sentence; the remainder of the sentence is then called the ‘pendens clause’. Often, though not always, a pronominal or deictic substitute, a so-called ‘resumption’, is inserted into the place where the extraposed ele…
Extraposition: Modern Hebrew
(821 words)
Extraposition (a term coined by Jespersen 1937:35) refers to a construction in which an element is shifted from its canonical location to the beginning or end of the sentence as a new, isolated, subject; it is also referred to as
casus pendens (if the movement is to the beginning of the sentence; Driver 1892:264–274) and
left/right dislocation. According to Bussmann (1996:272a), the latter term was coined by Ross, but Ross himself, in his book
Infinite Syntax! (1986:253), attributes it to M. Gross. In Modern Hebrew the shift is usually to the front of the sentence, e.g., דני—פגשתי אותו אתמ…