Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

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

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Jonathan Mohler <jonathan.mohler AT gmail.com>
  • To: B-Hebrew Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Verbal Aspect
  • Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 00:48:29 -0500


To all who have contributed to this discussion:

I would like to add my own contribution, but before I do so I would like us to define the difference if any between subjunctive and jussive.  This is a source of confusion for me, even after four years of Greek and Hebrew.  I recently worked through Robert Chisholm's workbook on Jonah and Ruth.  Chisholm often uses the _expression_ "this imperfect is jussive in meaning."  I suppose he means the form is imperfect, but the pragmatic use is jussive.  I would prefer if he just called the form a yiqtol or wayyiqtol.  

As to the issue with the subjunctive, I have never heard a clear definition by an English speaking teacher.  Does subjunctive refer to form or function? I was raised in the French part of Belgium. I took Dutch as a second language and German as a third.  As an adult I spent 12 years in Kenya, where I learned Swahili and Luyia.  I speak English, French and Swahili natively, and the others conversationally.  Every one of these languages uses subjunctive to express a jussive.  For this reason I think I am confused as to the difference between the two.

Jonathan E Mohler
Baptist Bible Graduate School
Springfield, Missouri, US


On May 29, 2013, at 11:00 AM, John Leake wrote:

Indeed, Krahmalkov maintains that the tripartite distinction between indicative, subjunctive and jussive was strictly maintained in Phoenician, and that this continued into Neo-Punic. In the last phases of Punic the subjunctive was orthographically represented, but the subjunctive and jussive were always distinguishable from the indicative since Phoenician maintained the final nun of the 2nd and 3rd persons plural in the indicative prefix form)




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page