Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Vincent DeCaen <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>]

dear B-haverim,

as promised, a report on Hatav 1997, one of the works Matt recommended.

it's not clear what contact there was with the Hebraist community, but
the lack of major works of the 80s and 90s in the bibliography looks
suspicious. I have no idea who Izre'el is, btw: do any of you?

a Hebraist would have pointed out that Hatav is offering a notational
variant on Driver 1874 (sic). I dealt in painful detail with both
Ewald and Driver in my Zeitschrift fur Althebraistik 9.2 (1996)
article.

basically, an uneconomical three-feature system:

                F_1     F_2     F_3
                
yiqtol          +
qotel                   +
qatal                           +

the big O's razor would cut out one of the features, at least. sigh.
(yiqtol should be unmarked.)

the TMA theory looks 5-10 years out of the loop. the business about
intervals looks quaint. the systematic confusion of past, perfect and
perfective is par for the course. substitute PAST for Hatav's perfect,
and you're cooking.

Biblical Hebrew is of course not tenseless. but this is taken for
granted, as a basis for better understanding aspect and mood. sigh. oh
well. still worth looking at.

after a careful line-by-line, I'll update you. I'll also do the same
for Goldfajn.

cheers.
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Vincent DeCaen, Ph.D.  <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>

Hebrew Syntax Encoding Initiative
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/~decaen/hsei/intro.html
c/o Deparment of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
4 Bancroft Ave., 2d floor, University of Toronto, Toronto ON, M5S 1A1
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...the idea of a perfect language risks becoming nothing more than a
waste bin for prejudices which have not survived confrontation with
linguistic reality.
  --Mark Sainsbury, "Russell", 1979: p15