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  • From: "Lee R. Martin" <lmartin AT vol.com>
  • To: Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>, Hebrew List <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: WP
  • Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 11:21:37 -0500


Dear Dave,
Thanks for repeating your view.


> 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.

No, I am afraid that it doesn't make sense to me. I cannot agree with your
statements
above.

>
> > 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.

I agree so far, but...


> 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 appreciate your innovation, but your term "simple declarative" just does
not fit what I
see in the Hebrew text. Qatal is often "simple declarative." Yiqtol in the
present and
future tenses is "simple declarative."

By the way, I enjoyed your article on David's mourning. You may be correct
in suggesting
punctuation changes there.

--

Lee R. Martin
Pastor, Prospect Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee
Instructor in Hebrew and Old Testament
Church of God Theological Seminary
http://www.earth.vol.com/~lmartin/





  • WP, Lee R. Martin, 01/22/1999
    • Re: WP, Dave Washburn, 01/22/1999
    • Message not available
      • Re: WP, Rolf Furuli, 01/22/1999
    • Message not available
      • Re: WP, Paul Zellmer, 01/23/1999
        • Re: WP, Rolf Furuli, 01/23/1999
    • Message not available
      • Message not available
        • Re: WP, Paul Zellmer, 01/23/1999
    • <Possible follow-up(s)>
    • Re: WP, Lee R. Martin, 01/22/1999
      • Re: WP, Dave Washburn, 01/22/1999
    • Re: WP, Lee R. Martin, 01/22/1999
    • Re: WP, Dave Washburn, 01/22/1999
    • Re: WP, Bryan Rocine, 01/22/1999
    • Re: WP, Lee R. Martin, 01/22/1999
    • Re: WP, Dave Washburn, 01/22/1999
    • Re: WP, Lee R. Martin, 01/22/1999
    • Re: WP, Dave Washburn, 01/22/1999
    • Re: WP, Dave Washburn, 01/22/1999
    • Re: WP, Lee R. Martin, 01/23/1999

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