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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Verbal Aspect

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
  • To: George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>
  • Cc: "b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Verbal Aspect
  • Date: Tue, 28 May 2013 13:11:02 -0700

George:

On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 3:26 AM, George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au> wrote:
Hi Karl!

I've changed the subject line of the thread.

Thanks for those links to SIL. The aspect definition they offer is along the perfective-imperfect polarity, which I don't think has the explanatory power of the definite-indefinite polarity. Their definition of definiteness is, as far as I can see, limited to substantives, rather than verbs.

I never considered aspect and definiteness/indefiniteness to be the same, which is why I listed them separately. However, it looks as if you’re right that definiteness/indefiniteness doesn’t refer to verbs.

I just learned that Ruth is a member of SIL, so we should ask her what term is used to indicate whether a grammaticalization or syntactical construct refers to an action that definitely will, is, has happened as opposed to another indefinite action that should, might happen?

But let's come back to Prov 31.10–21. You can't see definiteness but I can. Are you associating definiteness with a specific subject, while indefiniteness adheres to an indefinite/generic subject?

Yes, and that’s also the SIL definition.
 
If so, I can understand why you can't see definiteness, because the subject of the poem is 'a woman'. However, I'm not defining definiteness in this way. That would be tying definiteness too closely to the type of action (Aktionsart) rather than to the way the author depicts it (aspect).

What is your definition of “aspect”? Rolf mentioned that there are more than 20 definitions for the term, so that could be a reason I often have trouble understanding what people are saying on this forum.
 
 You can still have a generic subject (eg. 'a woman') doing a definite action—something that is presented in specificity. I used an analogy before about camera zoom to capture this. A yiqtol is a wide angle view so that you see the action as if from a distance. Think of a distance shot in a film. A qatal, however, can present the exact same action but with different aspect—a more close up view that fills the frame.

Even this doesn’t describe the uses of Qatal and Yiqtol in Proverbs 31:10–31. In this passage, to use the camera zoom analogy, both Qatal and Yiqtol are presenting actions at the same focal length and at the same distance.
 
The actions themselves are identical, but the depiction is different. I think I would agree with you, therefore (shock horror!), that the actions can be pretty much the same, but the change of verb form provides a different angle (aspect!) of the action.

I don’t see the different angle brought about by the grammaticalization. 

In my model of the Hebrew verb, definiteness is not the only category considered. There are three categories I consider: definiteness (definite or indefinite), proximity (close or distant), and complexity (simple or complex). The breakdown of the major conjugations would be as follows:

Qatal: definite, close, simple. (eg. he killed, he has killed, he had killed)
Yiqtol: indefinite, distant, complex (eg. he will kill, he might kills, he should kill, he used to kill, he kills [gnomic])
Wayyiqtol: definite, closing in (producing narrative momentum), simple (this is the narrative 'live action' verb)
Weqatal: takes its cue from a head clause, but is transparent (this really is a Qatal, but the conjunction subordinates it grammatically to something else, while the bare Qatal is independent).

To my surprise, I just looked up “indicative” on the SIL site, and it’s missing. Not there. Yet it’s listed in standard dictionaries as being a linguistic term referring to a mood, modality. In what follows, I’ll call it “simple action”.

I don’t see your pattern at all. All four of your conjugations are used for simple action—definite simple action and indefinite simple action. I don’t see how proximity fits in here at all. I need to see examples, probably many of them, before this pattern gets through my denseness.

In narrative and discourse, where timeframes are usually specified, the verbs can be related to the timeframe to determine when the action occurs, even though the verbs themselves don't tell you this.

One pattern that seems to contradict your model is simple action, present referent (simple action happening at the time of the utterance) conversation preserved in Tanakh—the default pattern appears to be subject (noun/pronoun/pronominal suffix), verb in Qatal, object (optional). A negation precedes the verb and often displaces a stand alone pronoun preceding the verb. The subject can be a person, object, or an action in the form of a participle.

Where the speaker wants to express other than simple action, such as subjunctive (should), intent, possibility, and some others, then a Yiqtol conjugation is used instead of a Qatal.

These patterns seem to contradict your model, big time.
 
In poetry, however, there often is no specific timeframe, and as such the aspects convey purely different ways of looking at an action, which can be varied for stylistic variation. This kind of stylistic variation, usually between Qatal and Yiqtol, is the product of parallelism, which specifically looks for stylistic variation as a poetic device.

I claim there seems to be a fuzzy line between when to use a Qatal and when a Yiqtol. Where a use can be near or on that fuzzy line, the writer makes a judgment call. In poetry, that judgment call can be for reasons of poetic license.

Cheers!


GEORGE ATHAS
Dean of Research,
Moore Theological College (moore.edu.au)
Sydney, Australia

Karl W. Randolph.



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