Disjunctive Questions in Biblical Hebrew: A Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Analysis

A disjunctive question presents an alternative to a previously-expressed state of affairs. Biblical Hebrew has four constructions for forming disjunctive questions. After an initial ha-question, the second can be introduced with ha, im, w partial derivative im, or. o. While Hebrew reference grammars simply acknowledge the variation, this paper systematically addresses these constructions and distinguishes them on syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic grounds. The key results are a finer distinction between conjunction and disjunction and a recognition of how ellipsis discriminates between polar and alternative questions.