אחרי + Verb

We recently fielded three questions on grammatical descriptions in our textbook along with one concerning a type of exercise in the Reader.  In this and the next two posts we summarize the question and follow with our answers.

Question:

On page r-55, bottom line, the sentence begins as follows:  אחרי אכלו האנשים….  But while English can say, “After the men ate…” can biblical Hebrew use אחרי followed by a verb? (This applies also to the first  fill-in-the-blank exercise on page r-39:   אחרי___ בניתי.)

BBH_r55BBH_r39

Answer:

On אחרי + finite verb: Lev 25.48, 1 Sam 5.9. And with אחר (not אחרי) + finite verb: about a dozen more examples (where אחר is not “afterwards” but “after verb-ing”). The explanation is that אחר functions like a preposition and so takes a nominal complement; in these cases, the following finite verbal clause has been nominalized and so functions as the complement (and clitic host) of אחר/אחרי. This is why the construction can also have an אשׁר (or in post-biblical Hebrew, שׁ) between אחר and the finite verbal clause. Waltke and O’Connor (IBHS 1990) mention this in §38.7. 

We recognize that the Hebrew Bible has only 2 examples of אחרי + bare nominalized clause and about a dozen examples with אחר. But syntactically, this is equivalent to אחרי + אשׁר + nominalized clause, for which there are many more examples. Just like relative clauses, the אשׁר or שׁ is not always there to signal the nominalized clause.  

We thought very carefully about the pedagogy of teaching rarer constructions and often drew the following conclusions. First, students want to be able to express “after I verb-ed, I verb-ed”. And so, we gave them a legitimate BH construction for this. Second, we are embedding in introductory students the basic patterns what will serve them as they read texts and progress to the intermediate and advanced levels. In this case, we are subtly teaching them that not all nominalized clauses need an אשׁר or even כי to function in the place of nouns. So what they learn here goes for למען, מפני, עד, יען and a few other items that may stand before an אשׁר marked nominalized clause or a bare nominalized clause. Thus, we advocate inculcating the students with a vision for the whole forest rather than getting hung up on the individual trees.  

So our pedagogy is built on embedding the deeper patterns of Hebrew grammar rather than focusing solely on numerically dominant constructions. Of course, the vast majority of what we teach is also numerically dominant, but especially in the writing exercises of the Illustrated Reader, we occasionally teach a less frequent but very useful structure like אחרי + nominalized verbal clause.