Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Lee R. Martin" <lmartin AT vol.com>]

Dave,
I forgot to respond to the last part of your post:

Dave Washburn wrote:

>
> 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.

I was not suggesting a 4-part verb system.  I believe in a 2-part system.  I 
was only
describing weqatal in the way it functions to continue other verb forms.  You 
did not really
respond to that issue.
--

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/