Word order and discourse functions in spoken Hebrew

Abstract

In this article we discuss the discourse functions of the alternative linearizations of Spoken Hebrew sentences, as reflected in the possessive sentence pattern. We begin by presenting the available variants of possessive sentences in Hebrew. Next, we address the issue of markedness in our discussion of the discourse functions of the different word orders. The discourse functions demonstrated are contrast, parallelism, side-sequencing, emotive and argumentative discourse. The study is based on corpora of naturally occurring speech. Previous studies of possessive sentences in Hebrew have focused mainly on grammatical issues. These studies have not addressed the field of discourse functions, nor have they used naturally occurring speech. The current study fills this gap.