Tamar Zewi, «The Syntactical Status of Exceptive Phrases in Biblical Hebrew», Vol. 79 (1998) 542-548
Exceptive phrases are usually considered appositions to the sentence parts from which they are excepted. This paper considers the syntactical status of exceptive phrases from a functional point of view. It indicates the similarities between exceptive phrases, extrapositions and cleft sentences. It compares the Biblical construction of exceptive phrases to that of Classical Arabic, and learns important facts from the syntactical status of the parallel Arabic construction as reflected in the Arabic case system. Considering all the evidence, the paper asserts that exceptive phrases after negative sentences actually present the new information exhibited by the speaker or writer, that is, the logical predicate or the comment of the sentence.
Indirect object:
Kl) ytdlwm-l)w ycr)-l)-M) yk Kl) )l wyl) rm)y
I will not go, he replied to him, but will return to my native land (Num 10,30
Adverbial phrase:
l)r#&yb-M) yk Cr)h-lkb Myhl) Ny) yk yt(dy )n-hnh rm)yw
He exclaimed, Now I know that there is no God in the whole world except in Israel (2 Kgs 5,15)
Another instance of adverbial phrase is not cited from the Bible but from a Biblical inscription, namely, letter number 4 from Lachish:
w(bdk. )yn[ ] y[ ] s]lh[ s]mh )th (w[] ky )m. btsbt. hbqr. =rqbh tbstb M) yk
[Myh d]w( ht) hm#$ xl#$ y[n] ny) Kdb(wI do not send there your servant today but at dawn 3
II.
The syntactical status of exceptive phrases is commonly considered similar to that of the sentence parts from which they are excepted. This view is parallel to a common understanding of another syntactical situation in which sentence parts take a position outside the sentence to which they originally belong, and actually stand as appositions to a new member of the original sentence fulfilling their role. In fact, these words refer to the well known structure of extraposition. In extrapositions a sentence part is usually put in frontal position, less frequently in final position, and it is replaced by a retrospective pronoun fulfilling its role in the main sentence.
A situation in which two sentence parts play the same syntactical role is usually regarded as apposition. The extraposed sentence part might be regarded as a special kind of apposition and in many syntactical studies its syntactical role is defined as similar to that of its retrospective pronoun 4. The following are instances of extrapositions in which extraposed sentence parts play various syntactical roles in a manner similar to that of exceptive phrases 5:
Subject:
)wh Kynpl Myrcm Cr)
The land of Egypt is open before you (Gen 47,6)