Books by Grace J. Park
This study uses modern linguistic theory to analyze a frequently recurring syntactic phenomenon i... more This study uses modern linguistic theory to analyze a frequently recurring syntactic phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible that has thus far resisted explanation: kî ’im.
Korean translation of William Schniedewind’s How the Bible Became a Book (Eco-Livre, Seoul, 2006)
Papers by Grace J. Park
The כי clause in Ruth 1:17b (כי המות יפריד ביני ובינך) has been analyzed either as the protasis o... more The כי clause in Ruth 1:17b (כי המות יפריד ביני ובינך) has been analyzed either as the protasis of a conditional clause for the immediately preceding כה יעשה clause (כה יעשה יהוה לי וכה יסיף): “(Thus may YHWH do to me and more also), if death separates me from you” or as an assertion by itself: “(Thus may YHWH do to me and more also); (only) death will separate me from you”. Both of these approaches suffer from either serious grammatical difficulties or an incompatibility with the archaeological evidence for familial burials in ancient Israel. In this paper, I argue that the כי clause in Ruth 1:17b should be read as a rhetorical question: “Will death separate me from you? [Certainly not!]”
The existence of an asseverative function for the particle kî in Biblical Hebrew has been frequen... more The existence of an asseverative function for the particle kî in Biblical Hebrew has been frequently debated due to the fact that this use of kî would occur in matrix clauses, while kî generally forms subordinate clauses of one kind or another (temporal or causal clauses, for example). In practice, discussions of asseverative kî have focused on attestations of the particle that are unusual or not clearly subordinate. In this paper, I reanalyse these exceptional uses of kî as examples in which kî acts as a nominalizer in a matrix clause, forming a construction that in other languages is often termed stand-alone nominalization. This analysis extends a model for nominalization in Biblical Hebrew that I have applied to ’ăšer in an earlier paper, a typological model that derives from a recent, wide-ranging study of nominalization in non-Western languages.
I analyze ’ăšer in biblical Hebrew as a nominalizing particle on the basis of a broad typology of... more I analyze ’ăšer in biblical Hebrew as a nominalizing particle on the basis of a broad typology of clausal nominalization drawn from recent work on non-Western languages. I argue that the nominalizing function of ’ăšer developed through a grammaticalization process in which the lexical significance of ’ăšer (‘place’) was bleached, forming a light noun. Light nouns often act as the head of nominalized clauses in other languages (meaning, for example, “the one that,” “the time that,” “the reason that,” etc.) and I suggest that a light noun analysis of ’ăšer offers many advantages over previous analyses of ’ăšer as a nominalizer. Robert D. Holmstedt, for example, has argued that ’ăšer is a nominalizer based on a Chomskian framework in which covert head nouns alongside ’ăšer are frequently posited, but these covert head nouns are superfluous in my analysis. Moreover, according to Holmstedt’s framework, the use of ’ăšer is limited to two syntactic functions, namely complementizer and relativizer, and the ’ăšer clauses that do not fit into this framework (for example, those that can only be analyzed as matrix clauses) are regarded as ungrammatical. However, the broader typology that I use in this paper emphasizes the close link between clausal nominalization and adverbial clauses as well as stand-alone nominalization (nominalization of a matrix clause). Therefore, I suggest that we include these supposedly ungrammatical examples within a coherent typology of clausal nominalization, gaining a unified picture of the different ways in which ’ăšer functions as a nominalizer in biblical Hebrew.
In this paper, I argue that polar ’im clauses in oaths should not be seen as conditional protases... more In this paper, I argue that polar ’im clauses in oaths should not be seen as conditional protases that elide a self-curse, but rather as rhetorical questions. When we apply this line of argumentation to the אם clauses in the oath in Lachish 3 (lines 9–13), the interpretation of the letter shifts from a soldier’s defense of his literary abilities to a straightforward acknowledgement of his inability to make sense of the letter from his superior. My reading of the ’im clauses in Lachish 3 (lines 9–13) as a pair of rhetorical questions is based on two general patterns in the Hebrew Bible: the form of double ’im clauses and restrictions on the use of וגם. This reading is also supported by the soldier’s use of the idiom to »open his eyes« (lines 4–5), which I argue should be understood on the basis of similar usage in the Hebrew Bible, such as II Reg 6,17.
Book Reviews by Grace J. Park
Conferences&Workshops by Grace J. Park
Talks by Grace J. Park
“Stand-alone Nominalization in 1 Sam 25:26: Towards a Broader Typology of Clausal Nominalization in Biblical Hebrew,” Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (San Diego, November 22, 2014)
“The Rhetorical Question in Ruth 1:17,” Mainz International Colloquium on Ancient Hebrew (Mainz, Germany, November 2, 2013)
“The Polarity of ’im in Forming Rhetorical Questions,” Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (Boston, November 23, 2008)
“KTU 1.23: Outback into Sown,” Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (San Diego, November 19, 2007)
“Rereading Lachish 3: Oath formulae and the Question of Literacy,” Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (Washington DC, November 20, 2006)
“Textual and Sociolinguistic Investigation of the Term Nagid,” Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (San Antonio, November 22, 2004)
“Samson and the Foxes: Ancient Near Eastern Parallels and their Implications,” Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (San Antonio, November 21, 2004)
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Books by Grace J. Park
Papers by Grace J. Park
Book Reviews by Grace J. Park
Conferences&Workshops by Grace J. Park
Talks by Grace J. Park