Differentiating dislocations, topicalisation, and extraposition in Biblical Hebrew: Evidence from negation

What it is about

The paper sorts the constituents that stand at the edges of a Biblical Hebrew sentence into six constructions, by three features: inside or outside the matrix sentence, moved or base-generated, and resumed or not. Topicalisation (fronted, no resumptive) and extraposition (moved to the end, no resumptive, e.g. the relative clause split from its head in Exod 1:8) sit inside the sentence; left and right dislocation sit outside it and are picked up by a pronoun or clitic. Two further types, "heavy topicalisation" and the newly named "heavy extraposition", stand outside the sentence yet have no resumptive. Negation is the test: a topicalised constituent can be negated on its own (constituent negation, the negator before the fronted phrase), but a left-dislocated one never can; whatever negator is used (lōʾ, ʾal, ʾên, hălōʾ), its scope is the whole sentence. The authors argue, against Westbury, that resumption, not just fronting, is what separates left dislocation from topicalisation. The null subject of a finite verb does not count as a resumptive.

Ideas

• I1. A deterministic edge classifier over the trees: a preverbal constituent with a coreferent pronoun or suffix in the clause → left dislocation (UD dislocated); without one → topicalisation (an ordinary dependent, fronted). Clause-final NP coreferent with an earlier pronoun → right dislocation. Count each over the Torah.
• I2. Boundary signals for dislocation: a wayyiqtol, an interrogative, הִנֵּה, a vocative, a parenthetical or כִּי between the fronted phrase and the verb puts the phrase outside the clause. Use them to attach the phrase as dislocated rather than obj/obl.
• I3. Negation scope as a feature: לֹא/אַל/אֵין directly before a fronted non-verbal phrase → constituent negation (scope = that phrase); before the verb → sentence negation. Write it into prag polarity so that only the negated constituent is denied.
• I4. Extraposed relative clauses (Exod 1:8 type): attach the אֲשֶׁר clause to its noun head across intervening material, not to the nearest word; measure how often our head rules get this wrong against PTNK.
• I5. Do not treat the pro-dropped subject of a finite verb as a resumptive: a fronted subject with no overt pronoun is topicalisation.

For Mova

I1, I2, I4 and I5 belong in Syntax: the clause and the sentence (dislocation, relative clauses) and in the head rules of tools/macula (the dislocated relation, chapter 13 §6), each checked against UD Ancient Hebrew PTNK with macula compare. I3 is a candidate rule for tools/macula/src/prag.rs (neg-polarity), and a paragraph in 08-syntax.md on negation.

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.5842/56-0-832

@article{millernaude2019differentiating,
  title = {{Differentiating dislocations, topicalisation, and extraposition in Biblical Hebrew: Evidence from negation}},
  author = {Miller-Naudé, Cynthia L. and Naudé, Jacobus A.},
  journal = {DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals)},
  year = {2019},
  doi = {10.5842/56-0-832},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5842/56-0-832}
}

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