Let us consider the following sentence.
I am walking.
Latin and Greek think of “am walking” as a verb phrase. In other words, they bracket like this.
I (am walking).
But in Hebrew, “walking” is a participle, or a verbal adjective, complementing the verb “am”. The sentence looks like this.
(I am) walking.
A similar phenomenon occurs with stative verbs.
I (am afraid).
(I am) afraid.
The associative law says that a * (b * c) = (a * b) * c. While certain mathematical operations enjoy associativity, it does not hold in language or music. Rebracketing always involves a change in interpretation. This example demonstrates that this change can sometimes be extreme. Here, the brackets create entirely different parts of speech.