Step 4a – Analyzing Cognate Nominatives: Passive Clauses

A common behavior of the grammatical relation object is that an argument realized as an object in an active clause is promoted to subject in the comparable passive clause. My interest in the possibility of a cognate nominative was prompted by the question of whether cognate accusatives behaved as objects in this regard.

Our search for adjunct cognate accusatives returned a few hits in passive clauses. In these cases the cognate accusative is not promoted to subject, but remains a cognate accusative. Consider the following examples:

‏לֹא יִמָּכְרוּ מִמְכֶּרֶת עָבֶד

“They shall not be sold the sale of a slave” (Lev 25:42)

‏וְאִנָּקְמָה נְקַם־אַחַת מִשְּׁתֵי עֵינַי

“And I shall be avenged one vengeance for my two eyes” (Judg 16:28)

Our cognate nominative search also returned a few passive examples. We can search for these specifically by specifying the verbal stem in our Hebrew construct:

Here are a couple of the hits on this search:

‏וּפְקֻדַּת כָּל־הָאָדָם יִפָּקֵד עֲלֵיהֶם

“The fate of all humankind falls upon them” (Num 16:29)

‏ וּמִקְצָת יָמִים עֲשָׂרָה נִרְאָה מַרְאֵיהֶם טוֹב

“At the end of ten days their appearance appeared good…” (Dan 1:15)

In what way do these examples differ from the previous two cognate accusatives? The verb ראה selects a stimulus which is realized as object and promoted to subject under passivization. Compare this active clause:

‏וְאֶרְאֶה אֶת־הַמַּרְאֶה הַגָּדֹל הַזֶּה

“I saw this great vision” (Exod 3:3)

Therefore, Dan 1:15 seems to be following the typical behavior for objects under passivization with the cognate nominative מַרְאֵיהֶם filling the semantic role stimulus.

Num 16:29 is a little more complicated, but there are comparable examples of פקד governing an object accusative with a causative sense:

‏וּפָקַדְתִּי עֲלֵיהֶם חַטָּאתָם

“I will assign their sins onto them” ≅ “I will punish them for their sins” (Exod 32:34)

I think that Num 16:29 is analogous to this construction with פְקֻדַּת כָּל־הָאָדָם ‘the fate of all humankind’ filling the same semantic role as חַטָּאתָם ‘their sins’ (note also that it is the nature of חטא that produces the reading ‘punish’ for פקד, while Num 16:29 has a more neutral connotation). If this is the case, then this cognate nominative is also behaving like a typical object under passivization. In both of these cases the cognate nature of the argument seems incidental to the syntax.

Explore posts in the same categories: Syntax

Tags: Accordance, Biblical Hebrew, Cognate Accusative, Cognate Nominative, Cognate Object, Verbal Semantics

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