The Relative Clause in Biblical Hebrew: A Linguistic Analysis: A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Hebrew and Semitic Studies) at the UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN – MADISON

"This dissertation represents a comprehensive study of the structural (syntactic) andfunctional (pragmatic) features of the Biblical Hebrew relative clause within the linguisticframework of the Minimalist Program (as articulated in Chomsky 1995b, 1998, 1999). There aretwo purposes for this work. First, it is an exhaustive analysis of relative clauses in the HebrewBible. I examine every type of Biblical Hebrew relative word and every type of Biblical Hebrewrelative clause in order to identify the salient structural and pragmatic features concerning thisclause type. In particular, I introduce the linguistic issues of overt and covert antecedents/heads,overt and covert relative words, resumption, restrictiveness, and extraposition, and offer ananalysis of these phenomena with regard to Biblical Hebrew.The second purpose of this work is to demonstrate the value of a generative linguisticanalysis upon the language of the Hebrew Bible by addressing one of the most common BiblicalHebrew clause types, the relative clause. The relative clause is particularly suitable in this regardfor two reasons: 1) there has been no comprehensive modern linguistic analysis of the BiblicalHebrew relative clause, and 2) every Biblical Hebrew grammar contains a discussion of therelative clause. The former allows this work to provide a significantly new contribution toBiblical Hebrew studies. The latter allows this work to illustrate by comparison the contributionof generative linguistics beyond the results of the taxonomic, Latin-based philologicalapproaches of most past and recent Biblical Hebrew grammars."