This paper demonstrates that by using the anterior path as a template, it is possible to order and elucidate a dominant portion of the semantic domain of the Biblical Hebrew qatal form (i.e., the perfect, perfective, and past senses) as consecutive developmental stages of the anterior path. It is also argued that the perfect values of the qatal should not be explained as a type of aspect or tense. They belong to an independent category referred to as “taxis.” By employing the definition of prototypicality in terms of frequency, the authors conclude that in the light of statistical analysis, the domain of taxis constitutes the most prototypical part of the semantic potential of the qatal in Genesis (55.7%). The recognition of the category of perfect as an independent stage on the diachronic cline and acknowledgment of its weight in the meaning of the qatal likewise makes it possible to explain a number of the other senses of the qatal .

From the Left Dislocation problem to this volume's "solution"In recent years, Left Dislocation (LD), and the related notion of constituent order, received much attention from both generative and cognitive-functional perspectives. The former has generally focused on formal properties of LD, while the latter has focused on the range of discourse-pragmatic functions associated crosslinguistically with this type of structure. Although each framework continues to yield valuable insights into the nature of LD across languages, a typologically comprehensive explanation of the construction continues to elude linguists from both generative and cognitive-functional perspectives. A primary reason for this is found in the inherent limitations that have constrained each framework. Generativists, on the one hand have gradually acknowledged that it is nearly impossible to describe a LD construction adequately without taking its functional dimension into account. On the other hand, functional scholars pay more attention to the structure of LD and, especially, to its formal contrast with, or in relation to, other constructions (see, Andrason 2016c&d; Andrason and Visser 2016). As a result, the need for a more unified formal-functional approach to LD has become increasingly evident.Although the entanglement of form and function is acknowledged by most linguists (both from generative and functional schools) who study LD, there is another question that still divides the two schools: what constitutes the typological profile of the grammatical category of LD, both in terms of form and function? This question relates to a more general debate polarizing generative grammar and cognitive linguistics, viz. the issue of categorization. The two approaches understand categories differently. In general terms, generative linguists tend to advocate for a set of criteria that a construction must meet in order to qualify as an instance of a given category. In contrast, cognitive linguists argue that a category should rather be described and analyzed by making use of family-resemblance relationships. Although the prototype is

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Describing the system of an ancient language like Biblical Hebrew is an enormous challenge. Biblical Hebrew scholars through the years concentrated on the formal features of limited data at their disposal. However, a new paradigm in the study of language has provided a fresh perspective on aspects of language that was up till now either not fully appreciated, misunderstood or not even noticed. Improved models of what people do with language, and which include the social, cognitive and cultural aspects of language, now provide explanations for linguistic expressions that translators up till now believed they may or should leave untranslated. These models, among other things, have shown that texts are more than strings of clauses, each with their own propositional content. There are a variety of linguistic signs that have no referential meaning or syntactic function, but act as overt navigation signals for the way in which the information is supposed to be processed. These signals do not only invoke a relationship between the clauses, or clusters of clauses, contained in a text, but may also involve the entire cognitive worlds of all the participants of the communicative situation. These developments may shed new light on the interpretation and translation of the Biblical text.

Despite a slow start, one of the major trends in current Biblical Hebrew research is the use of structuralist-oriented approaches to identify and describe linguistic phenomena in terms of their distributional patterns. Designing more effective tools to carry out this type of research electronically leads to a situation where both the benefits and boundaries of structuralist approaches are starting to show. There is a growing need for more adequate theoretical frames of reference to interpret and complement the taxonomies of distributional patterns. In light of developments in the fields of pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, and sociolinguistics, some pointers are formulated that may assist scholars in their quest for a more comprehensive model of language and language use. It is believed that such a model, on the one hand, will help Biblical Hebrew scholars in defining more adequate heuristic tools for the investigation of specific problems, and, on the other hand, may serve itself as an integrating frame of reference for the interpretation of research results of various problems.