The Biblical Hebrew Word Order Debate

This book explores the current debate over basic word order in Biblical Hebrew. There are at least two separate but related purposes to making typological judgments about basic word order in any given language. The first is describing the language in question in the most accurate way and adding to our body of linguistic knowledge as a whole. The second involves the interpretation of speech and text in the language in question. The latter is especially pressing in light of dead languages. The obvious problem with a dead language is that living speakers cannot be consulted on what is or is not grammatical. This means that word order judgments potentially have great explanatory power. This also means that there are unique linguistic challenges to making word order judgments. I am primarily interested in how the word order judgments by Hebraists affect exegesis of the OT.