An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

classification refers to[Page 65] the syntagmatic relations among the various types
of words and the various word orders possible in higher units. In English, ‘black
dog’ is an acceptable phrase, ‘dog black’ is not. Similarly, the combining of words
in the following English sentences is acceptable:
The black dog bites cruelly.
The brown chimpanzee eats heartily.
The strong wind blew furiously.
On the other hand one never finds the sentences,
Dog the bites black.
The heartily chimpanzee eats brown.
The strong blew wind furiously.
Bit ate opened.
‘The’ occurs with some words and not with others, and the same sort of
restrictions are found for the other words. By noting words that can occur in
comparable environments we can group words into classes. On formal grounds we
can group the words in these sentences as
T class: the
W class: black, brown, strong
X class: dog, chimpanzee, wind
Y class: bites, eats, blew
Z class: cruelly, heartily, furiously
b Traditionally, grammarians call the T class “the article,” the W class “the
adjective,” the X class “the noun,” the Y class “the verb,” the Z class “the adverb.”
Such a formal system of categorization yields parts-of-speech groups. Words
belonging to a part-of-speech class can be analyzed into semantic subclasses. For
example, ‘dog’ and ‘chimpanzee’ can occur with the verbs ‘bite’ and ‘eat’ but not
with ‘blew,’ whereas ‘wind’ can occur with ‘blew’ and not with ‘bite’ and ‘eat’
(except metaphorically). On the basis of distribution we can analyze Noun class
into Noun (a) class and Noun (b) class. We aim here not to exhaust the possible
classes into which words can be categorized but to explain how such
categorization is done on both formal and semantic grounds.