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tradition of the biblical text through the addition of a complex system of “accents” which were
superimposed on the traditional Hebrew text between the sixth and the tenth centuries CE.
Although the accentual system also was used for cantillation purposes, its complex system of
conjunctive and disjunctive accents provides important evidence for prosodic phrasing, which
can be utilized for differentiating the role of the pronoun in these two types of sentences which
are otherwise structurally identical.
Keywords: Biblical Hebrew, left dislocation, tripartite nominal clause, copula, Masoretic
accents, prosody, syntax.
1. Introduction
The so-called tripartite verbless clause in Biblical Hebrew consists of two nominal phrases and
a pronominal element. As described in the traditional Hebrew grammars, the pronominal
element—a third-person independent pronoun, which we refer to as PRON—may appear as
either the second constituent or as the third constituent. Example (1) illustrates PRON as the
second constituent and (2) illustrates PRON as the third constituent.2
ים (1) ה י־יהוה הוא אל כ
kî YHWH hûʾ ʾĕlōhîm
because YHWH PRON:MS God
“Because the LORD he God.” (Psalm 100:3)
ט הוא (2) פ ים׀ ש י־אלה כ
kî ʾĕlōhîm šōpēṭ hûʾ
because God judge PRON:MS
“Because God judge he.” (Psalm 50:6)
At least four analyses of the pronominal element have been advanced, each with implications
for understanding the structure of the sentence. One approach has been to view the pronominal
element as a copular constituent, which serves only to link the two nominal constituents in a
predication (Albrecht 1887, 1888; Brockelman 1956). In this analysis, (1) is translated “The
LORD is God” and (2) is translated “God is a judge.”
A second approach has been to view the pronominal element as the resumptive element of a
left dislocated constituent (Gesenius, Kautzsch and Cowley 1910; Andersen 1970; Zewi 1996,
1999, 2000; Joüon-Muraoka 2006). Left dislocation involves a constituent which appears at the
front (left) edge of a sentence outside of the sentence proper; the left dislocated constituent is
resumed within the sentence by a pronominal element with which it agrees and is co-referential.
If the PRON in (1) is understood as the resumed element of a left dislocated constituent, the
sentence is translated: “As for the LORD, he is God.” The personal name is left dislocated and
the co-referential pronoun hu’ provides resumption within the sentence. Similarly, (2) is
translated “As for God, he is a judge.”
2 Each Hebrew example includes the Hebrew text (with the Masoretic accents), transliteration, morpheme-by-
morpheme gloss, and translation. The glosses follow the Leipzig Glossing Rules with the addition of the following
abbreviations: C = conjunctive accent; D = disjunctive accent; GENT = gentilic suffix; MQ = maqqēp; PRON =
pronominal element. Because the stem formations of Hebrew verbs (e.g. Qal, Niphal, etc.) are not relevant to the
linguistic analysis presented here, they are not indicated in the glosses.
At the interface of syntax and prosody
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A third approach combines these two interpretations of the pronominal element. For example,
Holmstedt and Jones (2014) identify some tripartite verbless clauses as left dislocation
structures in cases where syntactically there is agreement in number and gender with the
resumed element and pragmatically the left dislocated element is the topic in a topic-focus
structure. Example (1), for example, they identify as a left dislocation construction: “As for the
LORD, he is God.” By contrast, in the syntactically identical sentence in (3), they identify the
PRON as a copula because they do not view the first constituent as pragmatically functioning
as a left dislocated constituent in the larger context. They translate (3) as “The LORD is his
portion”:
יהוה הוא נחלתו (3)
YHWH hûʾ naḥălātô
YHWH PRON:MS inheritance:3MS
“The LORD is his portion.” (Deuteronomy 18:2)
The example in (4) is syntactically identical to (3) and is both syntactically and lexically
identical to (1). Holmstedt and Jones, however, classify it as ambiguous because the pragmatics
of the first constituent are not clear in the context:
יםיהו (4) ה הוא האלה
YHWH hûʾ ʾĕlōhîm
YHWH PRON:MS God
“The LORD is God” or “The LORD, he is God.” (Deuteronomy 4:35)
Khan’s (2006) approach is similar.
In this paper we present a fourth approach for distinguishing tripartite verbless clauses from
verbless clauses with a left dislocated subject constituent based upon the interface between
syntax and prosody. This research expands and clarifies the “last resort” analysis of tripartite
nominal clauses previously set forth for Biblical Hebrew in Naudé (1990, 1994, 1999), for
Qumran Hebrew in Naudé (2002), and for Biblical Aramaic in Naudé (1993, 1994). (The
relation of this analysis to editorial theory and complexity theory is described in more detail in
Naudé and Miller-Naudé [in preparation]).
The paper is organised as follows: In Section 2 we describe the manuscript traditions of Biblical
Hebrew and the prosodic information that can be gleaned from those traditions. In Section 3 we
analyse these constructions from the perspective of a “tripartite nominal clause”. In Section 4
we analyse these constructions from the perspective a left dislocated constituent which is
resumed in the matrix clause. In Section 5 we offer our conclusions.
2. Biblical Hebrew, Tiberian Hebrew and Prosody
Biblical Hebrew reflects to a large extent the varieties of Hebrew that were spoken in Israel
from the beginning of the Iron Age (about 1200 BCE) to the Hellenistic era (about 165 BCE).
The term refers to the form of the language of the Hebrew Bible/Tanak/Old Testament as it
appears in the modern scholarly printed editions; it is based on a form of the biblical text found
in medieval manuscripts that derives from a school of scholars known as the Masoretes (from
the Hebrew verbal root msr which means “to hand down”).
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Three groups of Masoretes were active, namely in Babylon, Palestine and Tiberias. Their most
important task was transmitting the consonantal text with the utmost accuracy. In contrast,
earlier scribal activities at Qumran do not reflect the same tradition of precise and conservative
copying, but rather exhibit interventions by the scribe (see Tov 2004: 250-254). In addition to
these texts a number of biblical texts have been brought to Qumran from elsewhere which are
closer to the Septuagint and the Samaritan tradition (Tov 2001: 107). Therefore the Qumran
scrolls attest to a multiplicity of texts that co-existed with the one which is found in the Tiberian
Masoretic tradition. Originally Biblical Hebrew writing consisted of consonants only. In order to prevent the loss
of the correct pronunciation, which was transmitted orally, around 600 CE the Masoretes began
to devise a system of signs to record and standardise the received pronunciation. The work of
the Masoretes was continued for many centuries by a large number of scholars. The most
important system is known as the Tiberian Masoretic system and is the product of the work of
the Ben Asher family in Tiberias about 900 CE. The consonantal text that was incorporated into
the Tiberian Masoretic tradition is a textual tradition that was transmitted with precision since
at least the third century BCE. In addition to the consonantal text, the Tiberian Masoretic
tradition concerns the layout of the text, indications of divisions into paragraphs, vocalisation,
accent signs, marginal notes, treatises and the orally transmitted reading tradition. The accent
and vocalisation signs, but not the reading tradition that the signs represented, as well as the
majority of textual notes and treatises were developed by the Masoretes. The other components
were inherited from earlier traditions (Khan 2013: 3-4). The highly meticulous work of the Masoretes gave rise to the term for the careful biblical text
that they produced, the Masoretic text. The earliest complete text in which this system is
preserved is the Leningrad Codex from the year 1008, which is now housed in the Russian
National Library in St Petersburg. The scientific editions of the Hebrew Bible in the series of
Biblia Hebraica use the Leningrad Codex as their base text, specifically the third edition of the
and-DET-Gibeonite:PL NEG from-sons.of Israel PRON:MP
“As for the Gibeonites, they are not of the Israelites.” (2 Samuel 21:2)
In addition to syntactic indications of the sentence boundary, there are prosodic indications as
well. Cross-linguistically left dislocation involves a “gap” at the boundary between the
dislocated constituent and the matrix sentence. In spoken language, this gap may be realized by
a small pause or an interjection (Berman and Grosu 1976) which sets apart the dislocated
element with its own intonational contour (see also Korchin 2015: 14-15). In the Masoretic
tradition of the Hebrew Bible, left dislocated constituents are consistently set apart from the
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sentence with a disjunctive accent, as can be seen in the examples here. The same is true when
the sentence boundary is not syntactically indicated by a sentence adverbial, as in (21):
ן (21) ד הוא הקט ודו wə-ḏāwīḏ(D) hûʾ(C) haq-qāṭān(D)
and-David PRON:MS DET-small:MS
“As for David, he was the youngest.” (1 Samuel 17:14)
In left dislocation structures, the order of constituents within the matrix sentence may be in
predicate—subject order rather than subject—predicate order, depending upon the information
structure of the sentence. In (22), the prepositional predicate is placed in first position within
the matrix sentence to provide contrastive focus—the land of Egypt is before you, not someone
else:
וא (22) ם לפניך ה י צר רץ מ א
ʾereṣ(C) miṣrayim(D) ləpāneykā(C) hîʾ5
land:FS.of Egypt to-faces-your PRON:FS
“As for the land of Egypt, it is before you.” (Genesis 47:6)
5. Conclusions
In conclusion, we have seen that the tripartite verbless clauses and left dislocated verbless
clauses are structurally distinct, both syntactically and prosodically. Traditional attempts to
analyse all verbless sentences with three constituents in which one constituent is
morphologically a pronoun resulted in incorrect identifications of the pronominal element as
either a copula or a resumptive pronoun.
The analysis by Holmstedt and Jones (2014) attempted to distinguish tripartite verbless clauses
from left dislocated verbless clauses by examining both the syntax and the
semantics/pragmatics of the construction within its textual context. The analysis presented here
relies upon the vocalisation tradition as preserved by the Masoretic accentual system to
differentiate the two constructions rather than upon our ability to discern the semantics or
pragmatics of the initial constituent of the construction within the biblical text. In many
examples, our analysis confirms that of Holmstedt and Jones—for example, sentence (1) does
present an example of left dislocation. In far fewer examples, our analysis is not identical. Of
the left dislocation examples they identify, 10% are examples of “last resort” pronouns or of
simple verbless clauses.6 Of the 38 examples they identify as “copular” (which we see rather as
the use of a “last resort pronoun”), 13 examples (34%) are instead examples of left dislocation.7
Furthermore, all of their “ambiguous” examples (including example [4] above and Appendix
C) can be clearly identified as either left dislocation (12 examples) or tripartite verbless clauses
5 Reading the pronoun with the qere (“reading” tradition) rather than the ketiv (“written tradition”). 6 The following verses that Holmstedt and Jones (2014: 77-82) identify as left dislocation should rather be
57:6; Psalm 39:5; Job 41:3; Nehemiah 8:9. Genesis 37:27 is a simple verbless clause. 7 The following verses that Holmstedt and Jones (2014: 83-85) identify as “copular examples” (which we see
rather as verbless clauses with a “last resort” pronominal element) should rather be identified as left dislocated