Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Henry Churchyard <churchyh AT ccwf.cc.utexas.edu>]

>>> From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>

>>> (c) We will also study unpointed texts to see if there is any
>>> difference between yiqtols and wayyiqtols in these.  If not, we
>>> have an additional argument (though inductive) that the difference
>>> is pragmatic and not semantic.  I have gathered a lot of data
>>> already, suggesting that a preterite tense is not grammaticalized
>>> in Hebrew (a), that the short forms of the cognate languages are
>>> not preterites (b) and that there is no difference between yiqtols
>>> and wayyiqtols in unpointed texts (c).

>> From: Vincent DeCaen <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>

>> (B) on the semitic side, lumping together short and long yiqtols is
>> mindboggling, and the resort to unpointed texts also mindboggling.
>> (i) I'm working on a manuscript called "The Tiberian Way" which
>> among other things rehabilitates the masoretes from the slings and
>> arrows of 19th century denigration. for you to come along with this
>> business is really frustrating. I don't know what others on the
>> list think. these guys spent generations perfecting a phonetic
>> transcription of a reading with roots as old as the mishnah. <sigh>

> From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>

> I agree that the Masoretes were extremely careful with their
> pointing. The reasons why I believe that the difference between
> wayyiqtol and yiqtol originated with them are: 1) There is no
> evidence for this difference before the Masoretes. (Origen, for
> instances did not know about it.)  2) There is no difference between
> wayyiqtol and yiqtol in unpointed texts, and all the differences
> seen in the MT can be reduced to one difference - apocopation
> (togetherwith enclitic waw).  If there is absolutely no evidence for
> a difference between wayyiqtol and yiqtol before the Masoretes, how
> do we know there was such a difference?

Mybe I'm misunderstanding you, but some points: 1) How do you suppose
that the Masoretes went about "inventing" such a contrast?  Despite
what Kahle thought, they don't really seem to have been
"theoreticians", in the sense of remolding the recitation tradition
and written text to make them artificially conform to innovative
abstract ideas about what Hebrew "should be".

2) You ignore the stress-shift in non-lamedh-he forms; the shifted
position of stress actually corresponds exactly to the expected stress
position in 2nd. millennium B.C.E consonant-final preterite *yaqtul
(as opposed to vowel-final imperfect *yaqulu); I hope to have on-line
soon a chapter from my dissertation about how the Tiberian consecutive
imperfect stress shift has its origin in the existence of these
separate forms before the early change of word-final short vowel loss,
but a lot of the facts have already been assembled e.g. in Joshu
Blau's 1976 outline grammar.

3) Lamedh-he truncation is of wider applicability than wayyiqtol
(perhaps originally because lamedh-he truncation allowed the jussive
to be marked in all cases, while in non-lamedh-he roots, the jussive
is marked only in a relatively small number of cases by the time of
Tiberian), so I'm not sure how you can say the two are strictly
equivalent.

--
         --Henry Churchyard     churchyh AT ccwf.cc.utexas.edu