English language and linguistics research seminar: Lucie Perez, University of Copenhagen: Motion Verb Goals in Ancient Hebrew Religious Sources

Lucie’s research examines the syntax of motion verb goals in ancient Hebrew religious texts, encompassing both factive and fictive motion events. 

Her analysis raises several challenges, such as the distinction between goals and other semantic roles or the identification of factive versus fictive motion. 

In this presentation, she will focus on the latter issue, outlining the characteristics of the data and illustrating them with textual examples.

Abstract:

In Biblical Hebrew, goals can be marked by a preposition, by a suffix called a directive -he, by a combination of both, or they can be unmarked. While it may initially seem that some of these markings are interchangeable and do not produce a drastic change in meaning, recent research has shown that several syntactic and semantic aspects of the goal and of the text itself play a role in the choice of marking. Goal characteristics such as animacy, definiteness, individuation, and complexity have a significant influence on this choice (Medill, 2020). Specific books also contain some markings more frequently than others. However, some important aspects of the data are yet to be investigated. 

In addition, while the Hebrew Bible is one of the largest sources that we have of ancient Hebrew, it is not the only one. Material from the Dead Sea Scrolls, now accessible through open-access online databases, can also be incorporated into the study. Furthermore, the effect of the verbal lexeme could be explored in greater depth. Finally, most recent studies have focused on prose and/or on factive motion, leaving aside prophetic and poetic texts, as well as fictive motion. My research project tries to address these gaps by expanding the dataset to include additional sources and fictive motion. 

After presenting the sources, together with a general literature review and a description of my research project, I will discuss a few cases of factive and fictive goals from the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, exemplifying some of the challenges encountered during the annotation process.