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.
With exceptive phrases the situation is more complex. In Classical Arabic, unlike Biblical Hebrew, there exist not only negative sentences that include exceptive phrases but affirmative as well 11. Exceptive phrases behave differently grammatically in affirmative sentences and in negative sentences. In affirmative sentences the case marking is usually accusative 12. In negative sentences, the construction most similar to the Biblical Hebrew one examined here, the regular case marking might also be an accusative, but more frequently it changes according to the status of the sentence member to which the exceptive phrase stands in apposition, or badal in Arabic 13.
These two options actually reflect the dual nature of the syntactical status of exceptive phrases. On the one hand, the case marking of exceptive phrases in affirmative sentences is normally accusative, reflecting a special syntactical status different from the status of the sentence member to which they stand in apposition. On the other hand, the case marking revealed in negative sentences, which is similar to that of the sentence members to which exceptive phrases stand in apposition, clearly reflects the fact that these phrases are appositions.
Moreover, the accusative case marking of exceptive phrases in affirmative sentences reminds one of the accusative case marking of the Arabic xabar ka4na. This Arabic term refers to the predicate of sentences employing the Arabic verb "to be" as a copula 14. The predicate that follows this copula is not in the nominative case as expected from predicates, but in the accusative. Still, the syntactical role of this sentence member is undoubtedly that of a predicate, and in terms of functional grammar it is that of a comment. The accusative case of the predicates of ka4na and a few other similar words might be considered parallel to the accusative case of exceptive phrases in affirmative sentences in that in both structures it indicates the comment of a sentence. In this way, Arabic grammatical rules reflect the true nature of exceptive phrases, and they support the thesis suggested here that exceptive phrases are appositions that add new information to their sentence, thus being its comment.
It is interesting to note here the view of the Arab grammarian