The Distribution of Independent Personal Pronouns in Qumran Hebrew

In this paper the maisn lines of a syntactic account of the distribution of independent personal pronouns in Qumran Hebrew are developed within a minimalist framework. The proposed analysis relies crucially on the operations of a structure building mechanism. Traditionally, these pronouns have been associated solely with the structural subject position. In this paper, however, it is argued that independent personal pronouns can also be utilised as empty pronominal subjects; subject topics; dislocated constituents and resumptives; markers for specificational verbless clauses; and in quantification structures.