Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

Lee,
> Dear Dave,
> Rolf Furuli says wayyiqtol is imperfective (tenseless);
> Vince DeCaen says it is modal/sequential;
> Randall Buth says it is perfective (past tense);
> Bryan Rocine says it is imperfective/sequential;
> Many traditional scholars say it is equivalent to qatal.
> Niccacci focuses on discourse function rather than aspect and tense.

If this summary doesn't demonstrate our total confusion about the 
Hebrew verbal system, nothing will!  Obviously, we all still have a 
lot of work to do.

> You are saying that it is perfective, but not necessarily sequential.
> (If I have misrepresented anyone, please correct me.)

"Misrepresented" is much too strong, and to me implies 
deliberateness.  However, I do think one part of my view has been 
misunderstood here.  I don't see it as perfective, but I can see how 
it would be easy to reach that conclusion about my view from my 
posts.  I will try to clarify.  I see the WP as a simple statement, 
e.g. "I stubbed my toe.  It hurt."  Obviously the hurt comes after the 
accident, but the verb forms don't tell us that.  Also, it's clear that 
stubbing one's toe is a perfective event, but again the verb form 
doesn't tell us that.  The meanings of the verbs involved tell us that, 
i.e. the semantics of the two clauses code this information, the 
syntax doesn't.  With the WP, things like aspect, sequentiality (if 
there is such a word), tense etc. are coded by the semantics and 
pragmatics of the clauses and words, not by the syntax of the verb 
form.  Does that make more sense?  Sorry for any confusion I may 
have caused earlier.

> Dave, my questions for you (and anyone else) are:
> 1) What is the origin and function of the Wa+Dagesh morpheme?

I see this morpheme as what Ray Jackendoff calls a "specified 
grammatical formative" that happens to resemble the conjunction in 
its consonant.  This shouldn't surprise us: we have other examples 
of this phenomenon, such as the H-article and the H-interrogative, 
as well as the elided form of MN looking just like the participial 
formative in non-qal verb stems.  In essense, I don't see us dealing 
with an attached waw, but with  an attached waw+patah+dagesh.  
In my view, its function is to signal the simple (usually past) 
declarative, having no syntactic relation to what precedes it 
(syntactic being the key word there).  I haven't explored its origin 
because, for the moment at least, I don't think it has any bearing 
on my view of the WP.

> 2) Is it of any significance that wayyiqtols are normally shortened forms? 
> If so, what
> is the significance?

I don't think it's of particular significance.  I think it came about 
because of phonetic considerations.  

> I believe that Vince has said that the Wa prefix signals sequence,
> and the shortened form proves modality.  Rolf has said that the Wa
> was invented by the Masoretes. I'm not sure what other people
> think. 

Me neither.  Rolf's view is very close to that of A. Loprieno's, but 
that's about as much as I know off the top of my head.

[snip - nothing to add]
> 7) I have few problems relating my model to any and all Hebrew texts 
> (although that

Hey, we all do!  That's why the work continues, and why we have 
forums like this so we can all interact and learn from one another.

> does not prove that I am correct. It could just prove that I am good at 
> twisting the
> facts).  There is really only one aspect of the BH system that I am 
> struggling with --
> the WeQaTaL.  Most traditional scholars called it "conversive," in order to 
> match the
> wayyiqtol as "conversive."  But if wayyiqtol is *not* conversive, then why 
> should we
> assume that weqatal is conversive.  Niccacci calls the weqatal 
> "continuation."  And he
> seems to be accurately describing the data.  If a weqatal follows a yiqtol 
> (habitual),
> then it is translated as habitual.  If a weqatal follows an imperative, 
> then it is
> translated as an imperative. If a weqatal follows a yiqtol (future) then it 
> is
> translated future.  If a weqatal follows a wayyiqtol, then it is translated 
> past
> tense.  The weqatal seems to have no life of its own.  Although the weqatal 
> has been
> sufficiently described, it has not been *explained.*

I'm going to go out on a limb here and state something that I 
haven't said publicly before, but have held for years: I don't think 
there truly is such a thing as the weqatal.  It has no distinct form, 
very unlike the WP (except for the Masoretic accentuation, which 
may or may not be accurate) and can be explained just as easily 
as a simple qatal that happens to occur at the beginning of a 
clause with a conjunction.  We are told in our baby Hebrew 
classes that there are examples of W+qatal that are not weqatals, 
yet we're supposed to accept that somehow somebody knows the 
difference.  I don't buy it.  As you pointed out, the "conversive" idea 
is more than a little suspect, and I tend to wonder if the medieval 
grammarians didn't come up with the 4-part verbal system with two 
unconverted and two converted forms for the sake of symmetry.  In 
any case, I don't see enough phonological or syntactic evidence to 
convince me that there really is a "converted" qatal or a qatal with 
"waw-consecutive."  Now I'll duck...


Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
A Bible that's falling apart means a life that isn't.