Theoretical Approaches to Anaphora and Pronouns in Biblical Hebrew

Abstract

Apollonius Dyscolus (second century C.E.) defined the pronoun not merely as a noun substitute but implied that a pronoun may refer to nouns anaphorically. The study of Latin scarcely improved the knowledge of anaphora and pronouns and, for centuries, thinking about anaphora and pronouns was essentially limited to the activity of compiling inventories of grammatical categories and virtually no attention was given to the role of anaphora and pronouns in syntax and discourse as such. New insights into the description and explanation of the distribution of anaphora and pronouns in human language came in the late twentieth century with the advent of Chomsky’s generative linguistics. This paper presents the current state of knowledge regarding anaphora and pronouns in Biblical Hebrew as well as the unresolved issues and questions open for further research.