An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

d The American linguist Leonard Bloomfield offered a similar definition with some
arresting illustrations. He defined a sentence as “an independent linguistic form,
not included by virtue of any grammatical construction in any larger linguistic
form.” He exemplified this definition with the following utterance: ‘How are you?
It’s a fine day. Are you going to play tennis this afternoon?,’ commenting
“Whatever practical connection there may be between these three forms, there is
no grammatical arrangement uniting them into one larger form: the utterance
consists of three sentences.” 20 However, defining the sentence as the largest unit
of grammatical description fails because in fact the sentence is a grammatical
constituent of the discourse, a larger grammatical form. 21
e Such definitions as these do have the advantage of defining the sentence as a
linguistic unit composed of identifiable, lesser linguistic units. More particularly,
we can define a sentence as a linguistic form composed of one or more clauses. If
there are multiple clauses, they are bound together by conjunctions signifying that
together they compose[Page 79] one grammatical unit, although we must allow
that the discourse is bound together by patterns of “macrosyntactic conjunctions,”
just as patterns of “microsyntactic conjunctions” bind clauses within a sentence
(Chap. 38). A full definition of the sentence, which we shall not undertake to
offer, would include a statement of how it differs from the macrosyntactic
utterance of discourse.
f We define a sentence as a linguistic unit not as large as a discourse but larger than
those grammatical elements that cannot exist independently but are syntactically
dependent on one another within this larger linguistic unit; namely, the clause, the
phrase, the word, the morpheme.
g Sentences may be incomplete. Some of the smaller units comprising a larger one
are left to be inferred from context; in the surface structure of an utterance, words
that need “to be supplied” to make it into a typical construction are said to be
elided. The words are readily supplied from the surrounding context (in the
utterance or in the situation) and from the grammatical systems known to
characterize the language. Sometimes the conjunction binding either clauses or
sentences together is elided; at other times one of the other elements of a clause is
elided, such as the subject or the predicate.
h A sentence may be coextensive with a single clause, in which case it is a simple
sentence, or it may consist of two or more clauses, in which case it is either
compound or complex. 22 Consider, for example, the utterance,
20 Leonard Bloomfield, Language (New York: Holt, 1933) 170.
21 Lyons, Theoretical Linguistics, 172.
22 For a full typology, see Richter, GAHG 3. 50–64.