Re: Question

On Wed, 17 Apr 2002 22:10:26 +1200 Wesley Parish
<wes.parish@...> writes:
> As far as other Semitic languages go, I know a bit of Hebrew -
> Classical, aka
> Biblical, not modern `Ivrit.  And that is strictly VSO - but one
> thing you
> have to watch out for in Classical Hebrew is its wonderful
> coordinated
> sentence structure.  VSO, and VSO, and VSO, and VSO ...  that is
> allied to
> the incorporation of a w/u- modified "imperfective" tense/aspect as
> a strictly narrative tense.
> Wesley Parish
-

Although you still have to watch out for abnormal orderings used for
poetic emphasis/confusion, such as the famous(?) line from one of the
Prophets (i think Yesha`yahu/Isaiah) that goes _k'ekhol qash leshon
eish_, which can either mean "as straw consumes a flame" if you read it
with standard VSO order, or "as a flame consumes straw" if you read it as
VOS.  I'm pretty sure there are a whole bunch of homiletic discourses
based solely on this ambiguous sentence.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "`od yavo' shalom `aleinu, ve`al kulam."