The Biblical Hebrew infinitive

The paper proposes that the same functional categories which determine the inflection of the Biblical Hebrew finite verb also determine the feature specification of the Biblical Hebrew infinitive. This proposal depends both on demonstrating that the infinitive is a verb, rather than a noun (or a verbal noun), as traditionally assumed, and on showing that the functional categories that embed the infinitive are clausal rather than nominal. The article starts by examining the traditional distinction between the Infinitive Absolute and Infinitive Construct, and makes an argument for a single infinitive, with two allomorphs. The former is a verb marked as [+Mood], while the latter is marked as [–Mood], and both are also specified for two other clausal functional categories: T and Asp/Mod. These two latter categories determine a 4-way classification of finite/infinitival verbs: [+T+Asp/Mod], [+T–Asp/Mod], [–T+Asp/Mod], [–T–Asp/Mod]. This classification determines a concomitant 4-way alternation of attachment options of subject and/or object clitics to the verb: [+subj.cl.+Obj.cl.], [+subj.cl.–Obj.cl.], [–subj.cl.+Obj.cl.], [–subj.cl.–Obj.cl.], and moreover accounts for the distribution of the different verb forms.

Verb phrase secondary predication: Biblical Hebrew as a case study

In this article, I discuss secondary predication in Biblical Hebrew, showing that contrary to what linguists such as Rothstein (2004. Structuring events. Malden, MA & Oxford: Blackwell) suggest, there are languages with verb phrases as secondary predicates.In particular, I deal with a construction in Biblical Hebrew I refer to as the double infinitive-absolute construction, where in addition to a finite verb, the sentence contains two conjoined occurrences of an infinitive absolute, where the first is of the same root and binyan (pattern) as the finite verb but deprived of temporal and agreement features, while the second is of a different root and (maybe) binyan. I show that Biblical Hebrew uses this construction to form a new complex verb with the primary predicate, such that it shares the subject or the object with the primary predicate, depicting a situation that overlaps in time with the situation depicted by the primary predicate or results from it.

Towards the usage of Figura Etymologica in the Septuagint

In this article, the author deals with the question of how the Septuagint renders a Hebraic construction that contains the absolute infinitive and a finite verb. The author bases his considerations on E. Tov’s article “Renderings of Combinations of the Infinitive Absolute and Finite Verbs in the Septuagint — Their Nature and Distribution” that was published in “The Greek and Hebrew Bible. Collected Essays on the Septuagint”. It has been conducted a comparison between the groups indicated by E. Tov (there are six in the whole and two of them are used most of all, namely a finite verb with the participle and a finite verb with a noun) and a kind of figura etymologica, i. e. verb with object. Technically, LXX’s renderings are almost the same as the figura mentioned above. Comparing functions and meanings of the Hebraic and Greek constructions (i. e. figura etymologica), the author has made a conclusion that the way Hebraic constructions were rendered is not literal Hebraism as much as an appropriate possibility to translate correctly the essence of these constructions in Greek. Furthermore, the author compares places from the Greek prose and poetry with their counterparts in the LXX. It turns out that these are almost identical with the two main rendering types by means of which constructions with the infinitive absolute and a finite verb are translated. Apart from this, it finds out that behind Greek renderings lie not constructions with the infinitive absolute of Masoretic text, but combinations of a verbal form with an object, in addition in most cases they are created from/have different roots. The fact that the translators of the LXX found Greek equivalents surprisingly freely suggests again a thought about the consciousness of their choice and their knowledge of the Greek classical literature.

The Ancient Egyptian Second Infinitive? ‘iw + subject + r + infinitive’ Interpreted Through the Biblical Infinitive Absolute and the Polish Second Infinitive

Infinitives and infinitival constructions seem to be a kind of conceptualization embedded in a language with a ‘genus’ different to that of other grammatical forms. But why did human cognition invent infinitives and their associated constructions? On an ontological level, infinitives indicate intentionality that is pro-modal and timeless future-situationoriented (Prokopowicz 2012). Timeless future orientation expresses accomplishment or achievement, which are different states of perfectivity. If verbal finished forms direct our attention to the complexity of events, which we can for instance classify and express in ‘eventive’ sentences, infinitival forms draw our attention to situations (for a different context, see Borghouts 2010: ‘situative clauses’; Prokopowicz 2012: ‘quality, state, activity, event vs situation’). Situations are more complex than events as they involve a speaker with varying intentions, as well as the cotext of this speaker’s expression. Infinitival forms are less sentence-projected and more discourse-projected.All of this research has an obvious hermeneutical background. If something is expressed syntactically in one language, it may as well be expressed morphologically or semantically in other languages.