Articles |
Word Order and Information Structure in Ruth and Jonah: A Generative-Typological Analysis*
University of Toronto
The relationship between syntax and information structure is an increasingly popular subject of research within Biblical Hebrew studies. However, there exist two asymmetries within current approaches taken as a whole: first, the only theoretical linguistic frameworks employed are situated somewhere within the functional approach to linguistics (in contrast with formal, and specifically, generative approaches); second, a Verb-Subject typological classification for Biblical Hebrew is assumed without empirical justification. Yet, the relationship between syntax and semantics, on the one hand, and pragmatics, on the other, is primarily unidirectional; in other words, pragmatics necessarily accesses the syntactic and semantic features of a text, but not vice versa. It stands to reason, then, that any model of information structure can only be as accurate as the syntactic and semantic model upon which it builds. This study presents a typological and generative linguistic analysis of the data in Ruth and Jonah, an Subject-Verb classificiation for Biblical Hebrew and an Subject-Verb based model of information structure.
* An earlier, shorter version of this article (‘Topic and Focus in BH if BH is SV’) was presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Philadelphia, November 20, 2005. I thank Cynthia L. Miller and John A. Cook for reading multiple drafts and providing insightful feedback. Finally, I thank Randall Buth, whose opposing paper (‘Topic and Focus in BH if BH is VS’) provoked further refinement in my analysis. All opinions expressed are solely mine, as of course are any errors.