Jun 27 2008
Glossary
List in alphabetical order: A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z
A
The postconstructus, or absolute form, refers to the second element of a construct phrase. Some grammars describe it as the genitive case; however, an absolute is not morphologically marked in Biblical Hebrew.
The Biblical Hebrew noun system is not based on inflection, or declension; thus, it does not have a marked accusative case. A language with inflection (such as Greek or Latin) marks a nominal as accusative to indicate the verbal object.
A verb or clause whose subject is also the agent performing the verbal action
Affix is general term for any morpheme that may attach to a word or other morpheme. Three types of affixes found in Hebrew are prefixes, infixes and suffixes.
The person or thing that causes the verbal action in a clause is the agent. In active clauses, the agent is synonymous with the subject; however, in a passive clause, the agent and subject are not the same.
Example:
Active Clause – “Dog bites man” (agent & subject = dog)
Passive Transform – “The man was bitten by dog (agent, but not subject = dog)
This term refers to the kind of action of verbs. The aktionsart of a verb may describe the durativity, iterativity, or causativity of a verbal action.
Example:
Durative – “The boy runs”
Iterative – “The boy runs on Fridays” (intermitted repetition); “The boy always plays” (continuous repetition)
Causative – “The boy runs from the policeman”
The variation of sounds, or phonemes, used with the same morpheme. In English, the morpheme “-ed” varies phonetically based on its use.
Example:
“married” /d/
“picked” /t/
“handed” /əd/
The variation of sounds used with the same letter, or phoneme.
Example of English allophone “u”:
“hut” ⇒ /u/
“put” ⇒ /oo/
An anaphor is the element (typically a pronoun) which refers back to an antecedent. Other anaphoric elements include reflexive pronouns (which may not have a specified antecedent, e.g. “myself,” “yourselves”) and reciprocal pronouns (e.g. each other).
Example:
“Take yourself away from here” (“yourself” is an anaphor)
A grammatical unit to which another element of a phrase or clause refers.
Example:
“Sally likes cats; she lives with half a dozen of them.” The antecedent of “she” is “Sally,” and that of “them” is “cats.”
Anthropomorphism is a figure of speech that adopts human characteristics to nonhuman entities.
Example:
“the hand of God”
With the changing stress patterns in words, sometimes a final unaccented vowel or consonant will be cut off. This disappearance is call apocopation.
The later (“then”) phrase/clause, that is the result, of a conditional clause (“if…then”) is the apodosis. The first part (“if”) is called the protasis.
Apposition is the placement of two or more semantically equal elements (i.e. nouns or noun phrases) next to each other that share the same syntactic function or place.
Example:
“The Lord God, the God of Abraham, is the one true God.” (The noun phrases, “Lord God” and “God of Abraham,” both hold the same syntactic position of subject)
The process by which a consonant or vowel adopts the phonological value of an adjacent phoneme.
Example:
Prefix “in” + noun “mortal” ⇒ “immortal” where the “n” assimilates or takes on the value of the following letter “m.”
The lack of a copulative, relative marker or other type of conjunction between words, phrases and clauses
Example:
“I ate the food [that was] left over in the refrigerator.” With the absence of the words in brackets, the final clause is an asyndetic relative clause.
The placement of an adjective to modify a noun in a noun phrase is the attributive position. In English this place is before the noun modified (i.e. “warm day”). In Hebrew, an attributive adjective follows the noun and must agree with it in gender, number and definiteness. The other position of an adjective in Hebrew is called the predicate position.
B
See construct phrase below.
C
A number which denotes quantity but not order is a cardinal number, such as 2 and 15, not an ordinal number.
See declension below.
Casus Pendens refers to a noun phrase standing outside of the normal clause construction and replaced by a resumptive pronoun in the clause (also called fronting or dislocation construction by some grammars)
Example:
“The God of the Hebrews, he has created the world.”
A cataphor is the element (typically a pronoun or relative) whose antecedent comes later in the clause thus it refers forward.
Example:
“Tell me if you need one and I will call for the ambulance” (cataphor = “one”; antecedent = “ambulance”)
The verbal expression of cause or causality is called a causative.
Example:
The causative of “go” is “bring”
The causative of “be holy” is “make holy, consecrate”
A clause is the combination of a subject and predicate. A clause is larger than a phrase, but smaller than (or equivalent to) a sentence.
Example (clauses in italics):
“Setting off on a journey to the Wild West, James was excited to be leaving home, and he was anxious for adventure.”
The cohortative form is understood as a first person, indirect command. This form is marked morphologically by the qames he suffix.
A collective noun, or collective singular, is a singular noun that refers to a group.
Example:
“sheep,” “fish,” “deer”
Complex Subject/Object/Sentence
A sentence is called complex if one or more clauses are used therein. Likewise, a complex subject (or object) would contain more than one element functioning as the subject (or object).
Example:
Coordinate clause: “Sally goes to the store, and Jill shops.”
Subordinate clause: “While Jill is shopping, Sally goes to the store.”
Complex subject: “Sally and Ji.. are going to the store.”
A clause in which the protasis is a qualifying phrase/clause (“if”) and the apodosis is a result phrase/clause (“then”) is a conditional clause.
Example:
“If you play in the street, then you may be hurt.”
Verbal conjugation refers to all the various forms of a verb. Some options include: tense, aspect, modality, person, gender, number, etc.
Example: Present of the verb “to be”
I am
You are
He/she/it is
We are
They are
A constituent is a word, or word group, that functions are a grammatical unit within a clause (e.g. subject, verb, direct object, indirect object, etc.).
Example:
The following sentence is composed of three constituents: “(1) The God of Israel (2) created (3) the heavens and the earth.”
A phrase containing two or more nouns of which the first is in the construct state (status constructus) and the second in the absolute state (postconstructus) is a construct phrase (or bound phrase).
The first element in a construct phrase must be in the construct state/form. This form is characterized by the reduction of stress patterns intrinsic to the absolute form of the nominal.
A syntactically independent clause joined to another by a coordinating conjunction, adverb or other means is a coordinate clause.
Example:
“Tim is blond, and Sally is blonde.”
The copula connects the subject and predicate of a nominal clause. Typically it is the verb, “to be.”
Example:
“Sam is tall.” (copula = “is”)
D
A grammatical device used to identify the syntactical relation of words in a clause. A language that marks declension (i.e. case) morphologically is called an inflected language. These languages (e.g. Greek, Latin and German) use affixes to indicate the case of nouns and other words. Hebrew is said to have abstract case (i.e. no morphologically marked case system).
Definiteness refers to a grammatical component of nominals that denotes specificity of identification or ambiguity. This specificity can be marked by articles or by affixes.
Example:
Definite: “the glass of water”
Indefinite: “a glass of water”
Deixis is a means of expression based on the context of the remark. In other words, the meaning of the element/word is dependent upon the situation in which it is spoken (i.e. it is determined extralinguisticly, that is by factors not contained within the linguistic data). Deictic words include: “this,” “that,” “here,” “there,” and “that.”
Example:
“This table is nice.” The demonstrative refers to a different table depending on the speaker
“Jane is now here.” The referent of “here” and the time of “now” is variable as the speaker changes.
A deictic particle that is used to determine proximity, temporality and discourse relation. English demonstratives include a “here” marker, this, and a “far” marker, that. Other Romantic languages (and Greek) have a “near” demonstrative.
Example:
“This car, not that one”
A denominative is a word (usually a verb) whose meaning is derived from a noun.
Example:
The verb “to type” is a verbalized form of the noun “type.”
The mood which determines the commitment, desire or requirement of the verbal action is the deontic modality.
Example:
“She may go to the store later.”
“Sammy should not be involved in this.”
A direct object is a grammatical constituent (typically a nominal) that is the objective element of a clause. In distinction from an indirect object, a direct object is the element that is affected by the verbal action.
Example:
“The dog bit the man”
The phonetic union of a vowel and a glide is called a diphthong (Greek: “two sounds” as apposed to a pure vowel or monophthong, “one sound”).
Example:
“ou” in “house”
“oo” in “boot”
A disjunctive is a syntactical relationship marked by a conjunction that is either inclusionary (“or”) or exclusionary (“but”). In English, such a disjunction can be expressed by “but,” “nor” or “yet.”
A durative verb denotes continuous action.
E
The omission of a phoneme or morpheme through syncopation, apocopation or other phenomena is elision.
Example:
“nature” > “natural” (vowel elision, u, through change of emphasis because of the addition of an suffix)
“he is” > “he’s” (vowel elision, i, through contraction)
In Hebrew, the energic nun is an infix that separates the pronominal suffix from the verbal ending in some forms. It is semantically bleached (i.e. has no semantic value).
An epexegetical clause or phrase helps to explain the meaning of the preceding text.
Epicoena is a characteristic of some nouns that refer to a semantically mixed gender group via a morphologically masculine or feminine form.
The origins of a word, phrase or clause and its meaning
A factitive is a type of verb that denotes an action producing a result or consequence.
Example:
“Sam makes breakfast.”
A fientive verb designates a durative and dynamic action (i.e. one of movement or change of state) in which the subject performs the action.
Example:
“Jaime walks to the store.”
“Applied to words, a figure denotes some form which a word or sentence takes, different from its ordinary and natural form. This is always for the purpose of giving additional force, more life, intensified feeling, and greater emphasis.” –E.W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech used in the Bible, pg. v
Example:
Anadiplosis (i.e. like sentence beginnings) Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void.”
A finite verb is an inflected verbal form that occurs in an independent clause.
Consonants that are articulated by the restriction of the throat (i.e. by obstructing air flow) are fricatives. In Hebrew, the fricatives are the begadkefat letters. The sibilants are a subset of fricatives.
Example:
The ch in “Bach” or [f]
A constituent placed in the position before the verb is said to be fronted (i.e. right fronting).
G
The inflected case which shows possession is the genitive case.
A glottal stop is a momentary break in sound caused by the closing of the throat. This stop is the typical air restriction required by any consonant.
Example:
“He is” (the break between the two words)
H
A hapax legomenon (Grk: “once said;” plur. hapax legomena) is a word that is used only once in a text.
A hendiadys (Grk: “one through two”) is a figure of speech that uses the combined idea of two words to express one meaning.
Example:
“The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire” (meaning burning brimstone; Genesis 19:24)
A homograph is a word that is spelled the same but not necessarily pronounced the same or has the same meaning as another.
Example:
Lead (verb: “guide somebody”) vs. Lead (noun: “a mineral”)
A homonym is a word that is derived from the same root (i.e. spelled the same) as another word but whose meaning is different.
Example:
Intimate (verb “to hint at something” or “formally announce”) vs. Intimate (adjective “private”)
A homophone is a group of letters which have the same phonetic value, phone.
Example:
Phone and Fox
A grapheme marking a noun as if it was a plural that functions as a social deictic is the honorific plural.
Example:
Elohim is the plural of the word El “god”
Hyperbole (Grk “over casting”) is a figure of speech that uses deliberate and obvious exaggeration for emotional effect, also known as epauxesis, hyperoche, hyperthesis and superlatio.
Example:
“The cities are large and fortified to heaven.” (Deuteronomy 1:28)
I
An idiom is a word or phrase whose meaning cannot be understood by the meaning of its constituents.
Example:
“Butterfly” is neither a type of “butter” nor a kind of “fly”
“What is up?” is a common greeting
Illocution is the reason or purpose of an utterance. The five types of illocution are:
To assert something
To commit to doing something
To attempt to get someone to do something
To bring about a state of affairs by the utterance
To express an attitude or emotion
The imperative mood is a directive modality used to indicate commands.
Example:
“Go to the store”
The imperfective aspect indicates incomplete action or aspect with respect to its internal state (i.e. it is progressive).
Example:
“I am going to the store”
The indicative mood is the modality of verbs in objective statements.
Example:
“I went to Tom’s house”
The indirect object is a grammatical relation that is the recipient or goal of the verbal action.
Example:
“I gave Paul (IO) the book”
A morpheme, or affix, placed within a word is an infix.
An infinitive is a non-finite verb that is not marked (i.e. inflected) for tense, aspect, modality, gender, number or person. In Hebrew, infinitives take two forms as either an infinitive construct (the shorter form) or infinitive absolute (the longer form).
Example:
“You have to be quiet”
See declension above.
The interrogative mood is an epistemic modality signaling a question.
Example:
“Do you have any flour?”
A verb that does not take a direct object is said to be intransitive, contrary to a transitive verb.
Example:
“He died” ; “They were sleeping”
The iterative aspect denotes verbal repetition.
Example:
The prefix re- shows iterative aspect: “reread” ; “redo”
J
The jussive mood is a modality that indicates a command, permission, wish or agreement typically in the first or third person.
K
The term kethib, “written,” refers to the received text of the Masoretic Text [MT]; whereas, the word used in recitation is called the qere, “what is read.” In the MT where the Masoretes deemed the consonantal text (kethib) unsatisfactory, they provided alternative spelling (qere) as a marginal note. The written form was pointed according to the read form; therefore, the form in the text should not be understood with the present vowels.
L
The fundamental lemma, or form, of any semantic unit (refers to the “dictionary form” of a word)
M
A figure of speech that refers to a whole by mentioning only the first and last elements is merismatic.
Example:
“from A to Z” means “the entire thing”
“from soup to nuts” means “everything”
“the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) means “the entire universe”
Like a simile, a metaphor is a figure of speech that seeks to relate a concept by using a related concept.
Example:
“The water in the lake was transparent glass.”
The changing of order of phonemes in a word is called metathesis.
Example:
“nuclear” is pronounced as “nucular” in modern English
Metonymy, also called denominatio or pars pro toto, is a figure of speech using a part to describe the whole.
Example:
“King David warred with the Philistines.” (David represents the armies that David commanded)
A minimal pair refers to two words, phrases or clauses that vary only by one element used to compare linguistically similar patterns.
Example:
“pin” / “pen”
“the word of God” / “the word of man”
A property of verbs that demonstrates the believability, obligatoriness, desirability or reality (i.e. illocution) is called modality or the mood.
Example:
“he was reading” (indicative mood) vs. “he wished he was reading” (subjunctive mood)
See modality above.
The smallest linguistic unit that has meaning or grammatical significance.
Example:
The ending “-(e)s” as a marker of the plural
The prefix “in-” expressing negation
The “-ed” ending marking the simple past
The study of the internal structure and forms of words is morphology.
N
A nominal refers to a noun, noun phrase or a word functioning as a noun but is not a noun grammatically.
In languages that mark declension morphologically, the subject of a clause is said to be in the nominative case.
A word that refers to people, places, things and ideas and functions as a subject or object is a noun.
O
An object can be a direct object or indirect object (or object of a preposition). It refers to a nominal that is not the subject of a clause.
A word that phonetically resembles a sound is described as onomatopoetic.
Example:
“bang,” “gong,” “boo” or “barbarians”
A number which shows order, position, or sequence, such as first or fourth, not a cardinal number
A phrase whose words are contradictory that is incongruitious is oxymoronic.
Example:
“square circle”
“smart fool”
“conspicuous absence”
P
A final nun that follows vocalic verbal endings usually at the end of sentences and paragraphs is called a paragogic nun.
A type of pun that uses words that sound similar but have different meanings is paronomasias.
Example:
“You are Peter (petros) and upon this rock (petra) I will build my church” Matthew 16:18
A participle is a syntactic unit that can function as a verb or an adjective.
Words not fitting into any explicit grammatical category are called particles.
Example:
“Atlas!”, “Oh”
A partitive describes a part of the whole.
Example:
“some of it”
The passive is a transformation of an active sentence in which the agent is not the subject and the patient is not the object.
The patient is the recipient of the verbal action. In an active clause it is synonymous with the direct object. See also agent.
Example:
“The dog bit the man” (active)
“The man was bitten by the dog” (passive)
The semantic verbal property that refers to a completed action is perfective. In contrast with the imperfect form, the perfect may be translated as a simple past.
Example:
“He finished the lesson.”
The smallest distinguishable unit of speech in a given language written with brackets [l] or [m] is a phone.
The basic unit of sound or speech in any language made up of one or more phones written between backslashes /t/ or /d/.
Phonetics is the study of sounds (phones, phonemes, etc.) and articulation.
Phonology is the study of the sound structure and their meanings in language.
Two or more words grouped together without predication forms a phrase.
The unnecessary repetition of words is pleonasm.
Example:
“free gift”
“I ain’t in no slump; I just ain’t hitting.”
“It’s déjà vu all over again” (Yogi Berra)
See absolute.
The precative is a modality that signals a request.
The portion of a clause that is not the subject is the predicate.
Example:
“I am going to town.”
“Jim ate the sandwich.”
Predicative refers to the semantic position of an adjective. A predicative adjective can form the predicate of a verbless clause with the modifying noun as the subject. See also attributive position.
Example:
“the house is green” (predicative adjective position)
“the green house” (attributive adjective position)
A prefix is morpheme in the class of affixes that attaches to the beginning of words.
A prefixed morpheme used to distinguish verbal forms morphologically is called a preformative.
The particle placed before a nominal that can function adverbially or adjectivally is called a preposition.
Example:
“in the street”
“at the house”
A simple past form of a verb not marked with aspect or modality is a preterite.
Example:
“saw”
The lose of a word’s inherent accent based on its close relationship to an adjourning word
The subordinate phrase or clause (“if…”) in a conditional is the protasis. Also see apodosis.
A humorous play on words that can have multiple meanings is a pun.
Q
See Kethib-Qere above.
The so-called “weak” letters that lose their consonantal values are quiescent (“silent”).
R
A reciprocal construction is one that expresses mutual action or relation
Example:
“Carry each other’s burdens”
A semantic element to which other nouns or noun phrases are associated is said to be the referent.
Example:
“John went to bed. He awoke early.”
A grammatical construction in which two elements have the same referent is reflexive.
Example:
“The team went by themselves to the game.”
The simplest form of a word (i.e. dictionary form) is the root.
S
The range of meanings that a word or phrase may connote is the semantic domain.
The study of meaning in languages is called semantics.
A sentence is a grammatical unit that includes at least one clause.
Sibilants are consonants pronounced with a hissing sound (“s”).
A morphologically or semantically marked verbal form expressing a state of affairs instead of an action is stative.
Status Absolutus / Status Constructus
See absolute state and construct state.
The verbal stem refers to the conjugation of Hebrew verbs. The basis stems are the Qal, Niphal, Piel, Pual, Hithpael, Hiphil and Hophal stems.
The nominal on which the clause predication is based is the subject.
The subjunctive modality expresses wishes, expectations, permission and possibility.
A subordinate clause is an embedded clause found in a larger matrix (or compound) sentence.
The broad grammatical category including nouns and nominals is called the substantives.
A suffix is a type of affix attached to the end of a word.
Example:
-ed, -able, -ly
Syndetic refers to a word, phrase or clause that is connected to another using a conjunction. See also asyndeton above.
The study of the structure of clauses on a micro and macro level is called syntax.
A transitive verb is one that takes a direct object. See also intransitive verb.
U
V
The grammatical element that expresses action, position, process and state is a verb.
A clause that does not contain an explicit finite verb is a verbless clause (sometimes called a nominal clause).
A case, or declension, that marks the addressee is vocative.
Example:
“I call out to you, O Lord!”
Voice refers to the verbal form that indicates whether a verb is transitive or intransitive.
W
The main word, phrase and clause connector in biblical Hebrew is the waw. It can function as a conjunction (“and”) or disjunction (“but”).
X
Y
Z