Analysing Valence Patterns in Biblical Hebrew: Theoretical Questions and Analytic Frameworks

When not recognizing the peculiarities of a syntactic construction, translators and exegetes tend to resort to the most common meaning of the verb present in the structure, adjusting the sense of the passage by making explicit information assumed to be implied in the text or by making other adjustments. Verbs, however, can have different meanings in divergent syntactic structures. The relatively few elements which determine the significance of a verb have been made explicit in a flow chart of “yes”–”no” questions for Hebrew verbs. A researcher’s choices as to the relation of an element to the verb, assuming information present elsewhere in the context, and the presence of an idiomatic expression should be annotated.