Introduction The Role of Waw in Clause Syntax

123 clauses, etc. Clause sequences and the forms of the verbs found within them are also important areas of the study of biblical Hebrew.

6.3.1 The Role of Waw in Clause Syntax

6.3.1.1 Introduction

Analysis carried out in a traditionaldescriptive approach to the study of biblical Hebrew will typically discuss a linguistic entity like as a conjunction and then list various meanings. For example, Pratico and Van Pelt’s discussion presents “the basic form of the conjunction and, but, also, even” Pratico and Van Pelt 2001, 43, listing the various meanings that may be necessary to properly render in its various contexts. One of the difficulties with this type of definition is that it seems perplexing to the beginning learner that a word like “and” can also mean “but.” Often, in the attempt to keep the description simple and brief, there is no discussion of the parameters by which the choice between “and” and “but” needs to be made. It is presumably not the intention of authors like Pratico and Van Pelt to make it appear that any meaning is possible wherever occurs, but unfortunately this unintended result is too often the case. Even if the learner has an intuitive sense of the contexts which might call for one or another “meaning,” it would be better if the learner were alerted to the fact that the varied senses are indeed context-sensitive. Miller’s “The Pragmatics of waw as a Discourse Marker in Biblical Hebrew Dialogue” is a good example of research which explores the functions of in text Miller 1999. It is exactly this type of research in other areas of clause syntax that will advance understanding of the syntax of the biblical Hebrew text. 124 is a functor, and is best identified by its function rather than its meaning. From this perspective, then, functions as a conjunction, syntactically conjoining either similar or dissimilar items. This more general function of as conjunction avoids the need to say that “means” and, but, or, etc. This is not mere semantics, but rather reflects an analytical perspective that focuses on morphosyntactic function in order to simplify the description of certain problematic linguistic items. It is not a different with different meanings, but the same linguistic item for which the syntactic function is context- sensitive. This perspective is also beneficial for the analysis of at the clause level. By focusing more on the function of rather than a lexical meaning such as and, the tendency will be to look for the clause level function rather than to default to translating every with and. Cognitively, the analysis of does not focus on its meaning, but rather on its potential effect on the interpretation or processing of the text. From this perspective, the occurrences of will be read in terms of the connections they establish and maintain throughout the text. As Halliday and Hasan state, the function of conjunction is “a specification of the way in which what is to follow is systematically connected to what has gone before” Halliday and Hasan 1976, 227. The description of as conjunctive or disjunctive states a fundamental distinction, but there are many context-sensitive nuances that need further analysis. The following three sections discuss some of the basic functions of . 125

6.3.1.2 Nominal Conjoining