Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Vince,

>rolf,

>your full answers have proved enlightening. thank you. they have
>raised even more serious questions, and perhaps I can ask you to
>indulge me again. (btw, I have your masters thesis on disk, but as yet
>have not found a guru who knew what format you used or how to get the
>fonts: could you send something offlist with detailed instructions?
>I'm in a Linux environment but have access to dos/windows.)

You can open the disk with my thesis on any Mac-computer. I think I put the
fonts on the disk, if you open it and they are not there I will send new
ones. My thesis was finished four years ago, and I have learned much since
that time, not least from the discussions on b-hebrew. This month a 300
page book of mine about the role played by theology and bias in Bible
translation is published in the US. It has a 25 page Appendix on Greek and
Hebrew verbs focussing on aspect and the interplay of the different
semantic planes to convey meaning. It is written as" popular" as possible,
and has a much longer explanation of aspects than my thesis. You can find
an ad on http://www.elihubooks.com/role.htm

>
>(1) if you accept short/long as a modal distinction, why not be
>consistent and accept the wayyiqtol as decomposed into wa + y +
>yiqtol, where the yiqtol is the modal? see Palmer "Mood" 1985 on
>consecutives and mood in the world's languages.

Your suggestion might be true; I have no ready answers for all the
questions regarding Hebrew verbs. What I do, however, is not to take for
granted what most researchers have done the last 100 years, namely that BH
has four conjugations. The primary difference in the system is prefix-form
versus suffix- form, and it is natural for me to ask: Can all the finite
forms be accounted for by just two conjugations and not four?

The most problematioc one is wayyiqtol. But, as a matter of fact, any
wayyiqtol can be translated with a verb and the conjunction "and", so this
conjunction is clearly a semantic part of the form. Further, nobody has
ever given a plausible suggestion as to HOW a simple conjunction can change
the meaning of a verb "180 degrees". So I see no reason to view the wa-
element as anything alse but a conjunction.

But let us put ourselves in the position of the Masoretes. The year is 912,
we sit in a synagogue when Psalm 139 is recited. We hear the first part of
verse 17 weli ma(h)-yyaqru re(eka. The second and third words are read as a
unity. How are we to transcribe them? The verb is a qatal but mah is joined
to it, and because our phonetic rules say that a patah cannot be the vowel
of an open syllable, the first root consonant is doubled. Thus we get
may-yf-qe-ru. The gemination is neither semantic (phonemic), nor pragmatic,
but simply phonetic. I would not say that all wayyiqtols can be explained
on phonetic grounds as easy as this example, but there is a connection
between patah, stress and phonetic rules which may outrule a semantic
interpretation.
>
>(2) Porter assigning Greek "tenselessness" is beyond the pale: just
>guessing that his work wouldn't be acceptable for professional
>linguists in university departments, but who knows. would be safe to
>say that Porter is nonstandard by quite a bit. is Porter your main
>source?

Porter is respected and viewed as a fine researcher and the same is Mari
Olsen who is a professional linguist.
>
>(3) The "imperfect" in Greek was misnamed: let's call it "fred". the
>fred-form can be easily analyzed compositionally as PAST, period. the
>IMPERFECTIVE is unmarked in Greek and doesn't need to be specified.
>just to be perfectly (pun intended) clear, are you keeping grammatical
>aspect (IMPERFECTIVE) separate from a traditional label "imperfect"
>(fred-form)? I ask because it has been a common misunderstanding over
>the years to equate fred/imperfect with Hebrew's sue/imperfect/yiqtol.
>that would be a grave mistake. traditional labels are perilous things.

Fred is completely different from Petra (the imperfective viewpoint).
>
>(4) Why is Origen, forgive my ignorance, a privileged source for the
>liturgical reading preserved by temple scribes?

He was a very learned person, and better, he was one of the few who
systematically transcribed Hebrew letters with Greek letters. His work is
viewed as fundamental to our understanding  and pronunciation of Hebrew
letters.
>
>(5) Here's the million dollar question: what definition of aspect,
>operational or otherwise, are you using that would exclude the
>participle from bearing progressive aspect (at least as verb or
>adjective)? in all the literature there is not one scholar, unless you
>know of one, that doesn't recognize the aspectual properties of the
>participle. what warrant do you have to contradict that one? this is
>important since all argumentation ca.1990-present relies on this
>anchor point.

It is impossible to describe aspect with just a few words. But just as you
stress the difference between imperfect and imperfective, I will stress the
difference between aspect and Aktionsart. It seems that you do not see the
same difference here as I do. In my eyes Aktionsart is the same as the
lexical or objective nature of each verb. Terms such as "durative" and
"punctual" are Aktionsart terms and not aspect terms. Aspect is strictly
subjective, which means that it has no specific semantic value in itself,
but it functions just as an enzyme or a vitamin in the cell, it has a
tremendous power to combine with other objective factors to convey meaning.
But it also has the force to be ambigueous and not make visible particular
details. There are several fundamental semantic factors in a clause, and
the interplay of these with aspect is what conveys meaning.

My view is that the prefix- and the suffix form of Hebrew represent the
imperfective and the perfective aspect respectively, and this is the
backbone of the very system.  The participle is an objective part of the
verbal system, and the active participle indicates a durative event or
state, so it comes closer to Aktionsart than to aspect. Durativity is not
aspect, but the reporter's subjective viewpoint (aspect) can make visible a
part of a durative event or state. The active participle can do just one
thing, the imperfective aspect can do scores of different things. We may
perhaps to a certain extent compare the participle to the reference of a
word and aspect to the concept behind the word. they are completely
different.  Let me add that even though my view of the Hebrew aspect is
novel, it is closely connected with the standard definition of aspect, the
difference being that my view is a definition cultivated in detail and
applied to the subtleties of one language - Hebrew.



Regards
Rolf

Rolf Furuli
Lecturer in Semitic languages
University of Oslo

>_____________________________________
>
>these questions should pretty much do it. I look forward to the answers.
>
>btw, unless you like theoretical/generative linguistics applied to
>phonology, and lots of statistical stuff, you might not be as excited
>by henry's work. further, my "The Tiberian Way" is motivated in part
>as an answer to Henry's work. so who knows. I do know one thing: there
>is currently no appetite for advanced phonological work in this little
>field of ours. just <sigh> discourse this, and <sigh> discourse that.
>
>cheers
>-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
>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
>-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
>
>...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
>
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