An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

Hebrew grammarians saw the stem system as divided between Qal ‘light’ and the
derived or ‘heavy’ stems. This is a markedness opposition, since all the derived
stems have some additional mark. It is not, however, obvious what linguistic
conclusions follow from this conception. 29
f One of the bases of markedness theory is found in the lexicon. The unmarked
form of a word that can be inflected is the dictionary or citation form. In a lexicon
of English one turns to ‘day’ to investigate the forms days and day’s, and to ‘daze’
for dazed and dazes. In word-based lexicons of Hebrew (those in the Koehler-
Baumgartner mold), the citation form of the word is basic, while in traditional
Semitic lexicons (including the Gesenius dictionaries of Hebrew) the words are
further categorized by the citation forms of the roots. It is important not to mistake
the forms used in lexicons for actual unmarked forms, since lexicons must make a
variety of compromises between the most economical representation of the words
and the practical needs of users. Rather, we can say that the idea of the unmarked
form of a word grew out of the idea of the citation form; spelling conventions also
played a role in shaping the concept of markedness. 30
3.4 Variation
a Language varies along the same parameters as other aspects of human culture,
that is, it varies through time, according to geographical, social, and political
context, and in [Page 58] conjunction with the age, gender, and relationship of the
29 A related and still more difficult matter is the fact that languages differ in the extent
to which they mark phenomena: “The practical workings of language also require
such minimal grammatical meanings as the past tense. And they require a minimal
logical symbolism that has to include, for instance, negation, class inclusion,
conjunction, and various kinds of levels of non-contradiction within discourse. The
logical and syntactic operations…differ greatly from one language to the next in their
status and frequency. For example, Homeric Greek has more overt logical operators
and they are more frequent than is the case in Classical Hebrew. Similarly, we find
enormous differences between speakers of the same language when it comes to the
frequency and status of minimal grammatical and logical meanings”; Paul Friedrich,
The Language Parallax (Austin: University of Texas, 1986) 125.
30 The application of markedness within the lexicon is most successful in dealing with
well-bounded semantic fields, e.g., kinship terms (Greenberg, New Invitation to
Linguistics, 79–80) and color terms (pp. 82–83). On color terms in Hebrew (in all
phases of the language, despite the title), see A. Brenner, Colour Terms in the Old
Testament (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement 21; Sheffield:
JSOT Press, 1982). For a model study in precision, again related to realia (readily
identified elements of the ordinary world) of meat, fish, and bread, see P. Swiggers,
“The Meaning of the Root LḤM ‘Food’ in the Semitic Languages,” Ugarit-
Forschungen 13 (1981) 307–8.