Keep in touch, stay in sight: locally-interpreted overt subjects in 1QIsaa

Abstract

This study discusses textual variants at the sentence level in 1QIsaa, in which syntactic phrases in MT, mainly objects, seem to have been interpreted as overt subjects in the scroll. These variants are attested in two syntactic contexts: (a) clauses with non-canonical word order; and (b) subjectless clauses with third-person masculine verbs. In both contexts, an overt subject does not appear in its expected linear position. Consequently, an unintentional interpretation of the first suitable syntactic phrase as an overt subject at the closest proximity to its predicate is sometimes observed in the scroll. This (mis)interpretation is evaluated from a sentence-processing perspective and explained by (a) economic processing; and (b) the probability of comprehenders’ interpreting linguistic input as a simpler and more plausible structure in their language. A preference for subject interpretation is well attested in other Subject-before-Object languages, indicating a general bias of comprehenders toward the simplest structure of the linguistic input, in which all syntactic phrases are realized in their canonical positions with no moved or absent elements.