Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] The perspective of this native speaker of Modern Hebrew of Biblical Hebrew tenses

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The perspective of this native speaker of Modern Hebrew of Biblical Hebrew tenses
  • Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 23:29:54 +0100

Dear Peter,

Se my comments below.

Peter Kirk wrote:

snip


To answer your question about numbers, I would like to point out that apocopation is connected with *person* and not with *root*. This suggests that apocopation is phonologically/morphologically and not etymologically conditioned. I bring a quote from p. 120 of my dissertation:

"In the 1st person singular/plural group, 66.9 percent of the forms that could have been apocopated are normal and 33.1 percent are apocopated. In the 3rd person plural group of Hiphils, 75 percent of the forms that could have been apocopated are normal, and 25 percent are apocopated; in the 3rd person singular group only 1.3 percent of the forms that could have been apocopated are normal and 98.7 percent are apocopated. The logical conclusion to draw is that the choice of apocopation or not is connected with phonological factors and morphology, because the stress patterns are different in 3rd person masculine singular forms compared with 1st person singular/plural and 3rd person masculine plural forms."

Do these data apply to WAY- prefixed forms, to non-prefixed forms, or to others? One reason for different results for the first person is that, as is well known, first person jussive (or cohortative) forms commonly (although not always) carry a suffix -A (written as he), and this suffix rules out apocopation. I would need to look more closely at the reason for the difference between singular and plural. I don't rule out phonological factors applying alongside semantic ones.


The data above includes only WAYYIQTOLs. The table which the comments above relates to, refers to 715 WAYYIQTOLs of 1st person singular/plural. Of these, 101 have a paragogic he ("cohortative"), 51 are apocopated; 103 could have been apocopated but are not; and 460 could not be apocopated. This shows clearly that non-apocopation was the trend for 1st person-forms; the opposite of what we would expect if a short form was sought whenever possible because the antecedent was a short YAQTUL.


Best regards

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo









Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page