Linguistic Markers of Polar Interrogatives in Biblical Hebrew

What marks a yes/no question as a question in biblical Hebrew? In the vast

majority of cases, the answer to this question is the ־ ה interrogative. However,

there are several clear cases of polar interrogatives without clause initial ־ ה that

must have some other linguistic marker of interrogative modality. The present

article examines possible syntactic and prosodic markers in these clauses and

compares their grammatical features with polar interrogatives in the book of

Genesis that have the ־ ה interrogative. After establishing the grammatical patterns

of polar interrogatives with prefixed ־ ה, I examine the cases without interrogative

־ ה and argue that while shifts in word order do not correspond to the

ways in which polar interrogatives are marked, prosodic shifts in intonation—

largely inaccessible to modern readers—must have produced the interrogative

sense. This raises the issue of whether some clauses that are typically understood

as declaratives might be construed as questions when the context allows

for both possibilities. I also find that although syntactic shifts do not produce

interrogatives, word order does relate to the focus of questions, indicating the

questioned topic.