The Quivis Construction in Biblical Hebrew

This paper deals with the evolution of the biblical Hebrew construction known as quivis. This construction, named after the Latin term quivis ‘whoever’, consists of a double noun with a distributive sense, ¹ taking the pattern N₁+N₁ or N₁+waw+N₁² The quivis construction (henceforth QC) underwent a certain development with the transition from Classical Biblical Hebrew to Late Biblical Hebrew (henceforth CBH and LBH, respectively; note also MH = Mishnaic Hebrew), a process that makes it an important diachronic marker in classifying and analyzing CBH vs. LBH. This development has thus far not been completely and accurately described. The present paper seeks to present a complete description of the development of the QC, including its syntactic and semantic aspects, its applicability, and its linguistic background.